After No Comes Yes
Photo by Benjamin Patin
What is the thing that we can rely on? We turn to pleasure, to status, to power, to a relationship, to a job that will give us security, but this is like building a house on a single stilt set deep in a bog, or in quicksand. Yet there is something true and lasting. What is that thing?
Zuisei quotes Wallace Stevens’s “The Well Dressed Man with a Beard” to point to the place in which, after all the “No”s, a “Yes” can be found.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one,
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket's horn, no more
Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech
Of the self that must sustain itself on speech,
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,
Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,
Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,
The aureole above the humming house . . .
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
This is from Wallace Stevens’ “The Well Dressed Man With A Beard.”
I first came across this poem—really just that last line—in an essay about a total eclipse, by Annie Dillard. And in it she is laughing at the fact that the mind, which is so metaphysically ambitious, the mind that wants to live forever, that wants the world to return its love, or its awareness, the mind that wants to know everything will, if given the chance, settle for two eggs over-easy.
She’s in a diner, having just experienced a total eclipse, the fullness, the mystery, the terror of such an experience—I experienced one once, in Mexico we were right in its path. The most terrifying, the most unmooring part of an eclipse is the shadow cone of the moon, which moves 1800 miles an hour—1,800 miles! You can’t even conceive of such a thing, so you don’t. It’s too much for the mind to hold, so you give it an egg and it quiets down.
I tried it, thought of something upsetting, then I tried eating a piece of chocolate… I guess I’m wired differently from Shoan. The chocolate covered almonds are safe (but she knows that, when we shared an office, chocolate was in my drawer, not hers). I felt pleasantly subdued, but only slightly. Then I tried an apple, and that was better—the juicyness, the crunchiness, the freshness that fills your mouth all at once, it made it harder to feel the painful feeling (this is how addiction works, though I doubt anyone is addicted to apples). Then I thought, let me go all out and I took out a bag of potato chips… Well, let’s just say if you ever want me to do anything for you, just give me something crunchy and salty and hot (my mouth is watering).
I thought this poem evokes nicely some of what happens during sesshin.
No was the night. Yes is the present sun. Without the night, the sun wouldn’t rise. We need both, or rather, they need each other. Katagiri Roshi said, “In the relative, we’re always responsible. In the absolute, we’re always forgiven.” We’re forgiven, because in the absolute, there is nothing to forgive, there is no transgression, no wrong-doing—no right-doing either. But no one lives there, so in the relative, we are always responsible. In the relative, the sun rises on our actions, our thoughts, our intent. And the sun rises every day, of course, but sometimes, it is shadowed by clouds: (all the formations we create with our thoughts), with the mind that is never satisfied.
The thing is, the mind can be satisfied. In fact, we see, in moments of quiet, of clarity, that the mind is naturally satisfied because it is naturally complete. The mind that knows what it is, what this is, does not hunger, does not lack. The mind that gets caught in rehearsing a thought all day, doesn’t know this. It thinks it must sustain itself through speech and feels threatened—deeply threatened—when it cannot do that. Just think of a period of zazen. Think of the fear that comes up when things really begin to quiet down.
I think of people who work or spend a lot of time alone and get into the habit of talking to themselves (the electrician was doing that the other day—having a whole conversation with himself and our old, old wiring. He was just outside the interview room).
We’re relational beings, and first and foremost, we relate to ourselves. I think it’s also a self-soothing act, to talk to ourselves. It says here I am, I’m still me, everything is as it should be.
In “Body-and-Mind Study of the Way” Master Dogen says:
This boundless sky and entire earth are like unrecognized words, a voice from the deep. Words are all-inclusive, mind is all-inclusive, things are all-inclusive.
What does it mean, that words are all-inclusive? What does it mean that “A moment or two of mind is a moment of mountains, rivers, and earth, or two moments of mountains, rivers, and earth,” as he says later in the fascicle? Is that the moment we’re looking at the mountain, or the moment we’re in it? What about when we think about it? Where is the mountain then? Is the mountain I see the same mountain you see? When I say mountain do you hear mountain, and are those the same? Does it make a difference?
Think of the many unexamined stories we tell ourselves all the time. Women are provocative, men are testosterone-driven. Mexicans are lazy, Americans are loud, the British are proper, native peoples in any continent are child-like, naïve. (When I got to college—a large metropolitan college in a large American city—a fellow student who’d heard I was from Mexico asked if growing up I’d gone to school on a donkey.) I wish I could think faster on my feet in those situations. I would have said, “Oh, I didn’t go to school growing up. My father is the head of a cartel and I’m taking over from him. This is just for show.”
What we say is what we believe, or what we come to believe. Words and phrases shape our view of the world, our view of ourselves. “I am depressed,” “I’m no good at math, or art, or speaking,” “I know better than they do,” “I am right.”
I have asked myself many times, in the midst of conflict: “Would you rather be right, or would you rather be free?” Part of me would rather be right, sure, but not the part that brought me here.
Wislawa Szymborska said in The Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.
Piggy-backing on what Shoan said yesterday, what about the words, “I’m sorry”? Not, “I’m sorry, but” not “I didn’t mean” just “I’m sorry.” What is the power of words?
I just read a book on writing by Stephen King, and in it he’s talking about the toolbox that a writer needs in order to tell a story well. Not a profound metaphor, exactly, but a useful one, a practical one. I think of upaya, skillful means, as my toolbox and it contains various implements that I have learned, along the way, will help me to act and speak and think a bit more skillfully.
Zazen is the main one, of course. I can be in the most terrible funk, but give me a couple of days of zazen—one full day—and by the end of it I’m usually asking myself, “What was I so upset about?” Of course, the danger is I’m just repressing what I’m feeling, and there have been times when I’ve done exactly that. I’ve hunkered down in the stillness and silence, hoping that whatever was bothering me would go away eventually. The thing is, it doesn’t, it doesn’t go away. If I haven’t dealt with it, it will come back, and with a vengeance.
So now I know, repressing or ignoring this doesn’t work. I might need some other tool to work with it. I may need to do liturgy which, to me, works beyond words, pre-words—even when it includes words. Liturgy engages my whole being. It engages my mind all-inclusively. It begins to shift old patterns of thinking and acting as I set my intent, over and over, to respond differently from the way that I always have.
I use art practice, letting the stories in my mind be expressed through my art. It’s not like I’m flinging paint on canvas and letting my feelings out that way. It’s more like I’m creating the ground in which to hold what’s arising in my mind. I try to explore, through my drawing, occasional painting, stillness and silence. To let everything come down to the movement of my hand and the marks on the paper, to let each dot on that piece of paper be all-inclusive, be “a moment or two of mind is a moment of mountains, rivers, and earth.” Rarely that happens while I’m writing, but it’s harder.
I use my body in body practice, I’m still learning how. But even before I knew, I knew—some part of me had a sense that just like stillness can hold everything, so can movement, the movement of my body.
After my mother died, sometimes it was too hard to sit still with my feelings. I had started doing zazen on my own, but I was just beginning. It was reading and running that kept me sane that first year after her death. I let my body work through my sadness, my confusion, and slowly my mind followed.
Dogen says: the mind studies the way running barefoot—who can get a glimpse of it? The mind studies the way turning somersaults—all things tumble over with it.
Running is all-inclusive, turning somersaults is all-inclusive. That is the nature of an infallible thing.
And so, slowly I keep adding tools to my box. Some tools are universal, some are very particular to me, my quirks, my afflictions, my blind spots. The more I know myself the more tools I have—or the better I become at using them.
But if everything slides away, Stevens says, One thing remaining infallible would be enough.
What is that infallible thing? That thing that is firm, that we can rely on? We turn to pleasure, to status, to power, to a relationship, a job that will give us security, to our children, who will fulfill our dreams and make us proud of who we are as parents, proud that our legacy lives on. But it’s like building a house on a single stilt set deep in a bog, or in quicksand. Or like building a skyscraper on a fault (a geological fault). The smallest shift in the ground and the structure shakes and wobbles. The fault looks like a hairline crack but it hides a chasm.
The crack is this “I.” There may not be another word in the language with more power. The power to create, the power to destroy this tiny little hairline of a word—at least in English. What is it? Will it include or exclude? Will it divide or unite?
What is the shift that happens in the mind—that determines one or the other?
Daido Roshi used to say, “You can say there is no self, you can say it’s all self.”
Oh, douce campagna of that thing, honey in the heart. This is the “sweet country” of that infallible thing—the thing that will not fall, will not crumble, does not dissatisfy, does not leave you wanting. To me it is a place, a thing, a state of being in which we can rest, completely.
It reminds me of the Buddha’s words when he was searching for a place in which to sit and turn inward, to sit until he saw through this “I.” And he goes wandering in the Magadhan countryside and comes upon a clear river with pleasant banks and a delightful grove. And he says to himself, ‘This will serve for the striving of a person intent on striving.’ And I sat down there, thinking, ‘This will serve for striving.’
He knows he has work to do. He knows it will require effort, yet he very deliberately chooses an agreeable piece of ground. He doesn’t go into a cave, he doesn’t choose any old field. He chooses a sweet spot, a sweet country which, of course, in the end, he finds in himself, he brings with him wherever he goes. But it helps to create a space in which to do that initial turning, as we’ve done here.
I imagine Daido Roshi, climbing through a window in the dining hall 38 years ago this week, give or take, when he was looking to buy this place, and him coming up the stairs and standing in the hallway, looking at this zendo— which at the time was filled with pews,—and thinking, “This place will serve for striving…” (Probably not in exactly those words.)
The Maharatnakuta Sutra (The Sutra of the Accumulation of Jewels) is a collection of 49 Mahayana sutras that was translated into Chinese in the 8th century by a monk named Bodhiruci and in one of the sutras, the Buddha is speaking to Mahakashyapa, one of his main disciples. He tells him that a forest-dwelling practitioner who has secluded herself in order to practice, must follow the dharma of a forest dweller and perform eight deeds to show kindness for all beings:
To benefit sentient beings, to gladden them.
To not hate them, to be straightforward.
To not discriminate, to be in harmony with them.
To contemplate all dharmas, and to be as pure as space.
These are the actions that create a sweet country. They are the tools in a practitioner’s toolbox, someone training to be a bodhisattva. They are the actions that show in their doing, in their practice, and in their fruit, that the mind can be satisfied.
After the final no there comes a yes. And on that yes the future world depends.
As Touzi said to Zhaozhou, “A practitioner can’t go by night. They have to arrive in daylight.” After the final no, a yes must follow. First, all the “no”s. No eye, no ear, no body, no mind, no death, no suffering, wisdom, no path. No, no, no, no, no. This is the boundless sky and entire earth are like unrecognized words, a voice from the deep. A thundering voice with no sound, a word with no meaning.
This is zazen, this is sesshin. One of the most loving practices I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes people experience sitting as cold, uninviting. “Not this thought, not this movement, not this story, not this turning away.”
But all of these no’s are so we can get to yes. Yes on which not just the future, but this world and every world depend…
After No Comes Yes, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 : The Well Dressed Man With A Beard by Wallace Stevens
02 : The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie