Daring to Ask
Photo by Nick Karvounis
We have to be willing to take a risk in order to see clearly.
In this talk on case 31 of the Gateless Gate: Zhaozhou Saw Through the Old Woman, Zuisei speaks of the spiritual life as a perilous journey. “Every time we ask,” she says, “we expose ourselves. But when we don’t ask, we also expose ourselves. So we might as well take a risk—be wild and daring—and see what comes of it.”
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
This transcript is based on Zuisei’s notes and might differ slightly from the final talk.
A student asked an old woman, ”Which way should I take to Mount Wutai?”
The old woman said, “Go straight on!”
When the student had taken a few steps, she remarked, “He may look like fine fellow, but he too goes off like that!”
Later, another student told Zhaozhou about it.
Zhaozhou said, “Wait a while. I will go and see through that old woman for you.”
The next day he went and asked her the same question.
The old woman, too, gave him the same reply.
When he returned, Zhaozhou announced to his community, “I have seen through the old woman of Mount Wutai for you.”
The commentary: The old woman knew how to work out a strategy and win the victory while sitting in her tent. Yet she is not aware of the bandit stealing into the tent. Old Zhaozhou is skillful enough to creep into the enemy’s camp and menace her fortress. Yet he does not look like a grown-up. Upon close examination, they are both at fault. Now tell me, how did Zhaozhou see through the old woman?
The Verse:
The question is the same each time.
The answer, too, is the same
In the rice there is sand,
in the mud there are thorns.
This weekend I led a retreat on the Eight Conditions of Wisdom, a teaching that the Buddha gave to his monks in a sutra called the Prajna Sutra. In many ways, these eight conditions parallel the eightfold path and the six paramitas. I won’t go into all eight, but I wanted to bring up again the first two here, which are: studying with a teacher and asking questions.
This second one, of course, is central to any spiritual path. It is the ability to ask, to wonder, to look beyond what is currently visible that propels a person toward a spiritual path. But the fact is, it doesn’t always manifest itself as a question per se. Through the many years I sat on the Guardian Council, I spoke with people who wanted either to come into residency or become students. For many, their impetus to enter into practice was not formulated as a question. Maybe it was a kind of unease, acknowledged though not fully identified. A sense of things not being quite right and the need to figure out why.
Others slide very smoothly into practice. Someone gives them an introductory retreat as a gift, they may not have a burning life question, necessarily, but they come, they enjoy it, and so they start sitting. Maybe they read a little about Zen or Buddhism, and it resonates. So they continue sitting and after a while they think, this is good, but how do I go deeper? And they do sesshin and it’s painful but they also love it and want to do more.
It’s like being carried by a stream and it’s flowing and it’s working. And still, at some point the question inevitably appears: why am I doing this? Because the stream will only carry you so far. At some point the current wanes, and you yourself have to start paddling. At some point we each have to reckon with our intent and our aspiration. Especially in those moments, when practice doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t flow—quite the contrary. It feels hard or sputters or downright dry or worse, pointless. And if we’re not clear about why we’re doing it, we’ll stop. Which is perfectly fine, no one says we have to do this forever. But if we do want to do it, we’re much more likely to continue if we know why.
I’ve spoken about how in my own journey I had a clear sense that there had to be more to life than what I was seeing. I had, early on, a strong sense of a need to live a life larger than just about me. I didn’t even know exactly what that meant, but it was a strong feeling, still is. Maybe a sense of needing my life to matter, extend beyond my own needs and wants. Slowly I found my way to Zen and when I first sat down on a folded pillow at home and began to count my breath I thought, “Oh, oh! Now this is something I am going to do for the rest of my life.” I found a refuge in zazen that has never dissipated for me—even during those times when it’s been hardest to do it. I’ve been fortunate that to me it is like water, like air, like a most basic sustenance.
But before long, I sensed I needed guidance. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about a teacher (I had no idea what that meant or where I would even begin looking). I just wanted someone to tell me whether I was on the right track. I was afraid—which, frankly, is the right response
It’s not the only response, but it is right. Because, you have no idea how this will change your life, but if you’re paying attention, you very quickly see that it will. Though, hopefully, that is exactly what you want—not to continue as you always have, but to be disrupted in the best possible way.
I think, at some point, the questions do pop up, and it’s important to ask them. Koan training is such a powerful tool to teach us how to ask. How to ask with your whole being. It also teaches you how to hone in on the pith of the problem. To sift through the words in order to identify “What is being asked here?” To learn the difference between what is actually there and what you’re filling in with your mind, your assumptions, your opinions.
As Roshi often says, the koan presents exactly what you need to know. It gives you all the information you need in order to see it. But often, it seems so bare that we have a hard time trusting that. The same is true of a life koan. Very often, the way through is right before us and it is simple and bare. But, we distrust simple and bare, so we build sand castles around this beautiful, smooth pebble, trying to make it more interesting or more palatable. With time, we learn to see the beauty of that smooth pebble and we realize that adding to it just takes away from its beauty. And that it is not what the pebble is asking of us. It just wants to be seen as it is, if we can say it wants anything that’s built into its function, its nature, it is to be seen as it is.
Which, just to balance things, is also what is so powerful about shikantaza, just sitting. It is very much like sitting in front of a clear, bright mirror. Or at the edge of that still lake. And you’re able to see every ripple, every flicker of light, every movement on the surface of the water, all the way to its bottom.
In this koan, a student is traveling to Mount Wutai, in the northeastern part of China. Mount Wutai is one of its four sacred mountains. Each of these is considered to be the bodhimanda or “seat of enlightenment” for a great bodhisattva. Mount Wutai is the seat of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom. Since the beginning of the seventh century, pilgrims were coming to Mount Wutai from India and China to pay their respects to Manjushri. And later a number of temples were built there.
Here we’re in the 9th century, and a particular pilgrim meets an old woman on the road. We don’t know her name. We don’t know her occupation, although it is likely she was selling something like tea or sandals—or maybe she was a pilgrim herself. She is identified as old, as these nameless women in the koans often were, which, I think, can be taken one of two ways: she is an elder steeped in the teachings of Zen with a long life of practice behind her, as the koans often show. Or, she is old as an expedient means, then the students (who in the koans are always male) wouldn’t have to grapple with their desire if she was beautiful. Or, they wouldn’t have to feel so bad at being “beaten” by a female peer. I don’t know which it is. Maybe she really was really old, but I know for a fact she was not nameless. I’ve decided to give her a name: Shiji. I made it up, just as I made up what she looked like: tall and thin and straight, with not an ounce of feebleness in her. Her voice is soft but firm, she has soft, gray hair cut short around her face and eyes that sparkle. Her hands are surprisingly smooth for her age, but no one really knows what that is. She always wears a hat, a straw hat with a broad brim. When the pilgrims come and she sends them off with her command, “Go straight on!” she removes the hat and flourishes to show them the way.
She has a name, which means she has a life and a personality. She has history. And she matters, she counts…
This pilgrim meets Shiji on the road and asks, “Which way should I take to Mount Wutai?” A very simple question: I need to get to Mount Wutai, how do I do that? He’s just asking for directions—that’s what he thinks. She, on the other hand, has other things on her mind.
He sees an old woman and does not think to himself, “Ah, a Zen master! Let me ask her a question, or let me test my understanding.” He sees what he wants to see, and therefore he misses what is in front of him. Someone said yesterday, anyone can be a teacher, anyone can teach us. But how often do we let that be actually true? How often do we reject a teaching when it doesn’t look the way we want it to?
Shiji is not thinking about directions. She sizes up the student with a single glance. She knows what he sees and what he doesn’t see because it is written all over him. He is broadcasting it loud and clear. So she responds very directly, “Go straight on!” And the student does just that, failing, once again, to ask, to wonder, to probe deeper, he just walks on ahead. And Shiji calls out after him, “He may look like a fine fellow, but he too goes off like that!” Definitely sounds like a dismissal, doesn’t it? Like she’s disapproving of him. Why? What should he have done to respond to her in a way that she would approve? How would you respond?
What this student may or may not know is that Shiji always responds to pilgrims who ask her the way to Mount Wutai in exactly the same way. “What is the way to Mount Wutai?” “Go straight on… he looks like a fine fellow, but he too goes on like that.” And after a while, word gets around. One day, a student tells Zhaozhou about it. The great Master Zhaozhou, who was enlightened at the age of 18, and then spent the next 62 years studying Zen with various teachers, going on pilgrimage, and refining his understanding. His first meeting with his long-time teacher, Nanquan fits very nicely with this first of the eight conditions for wisdom—meeting and studying with a teacher—so let me share it with you:
When Zhaozhou first met Nanquan, the master was lying in bed with a cold. Still, Nanquan turned to the young monk and asked him, “Where have you been recently?” Zhaozhou said, “At Zuizo” (which means “auspicious image”). “Did you then see the auspicious image?” Nanquan asked. “I did not see the image, but I have seen a reclining tathagata.” This gets Nanquan’s attention, so he gets up and says, “Do you already have a master to study under?” Zhaozhou says, “I have.” “Who is it?” Zhaozhou comes close to Nanquan, bows to him and says, “I am glad to see you so well in spite of such a severe cold.”
And for the next 40 years, Zhaozhou remains with Nanquan until he dies. At 80, Zhaozhou finally settled down in the town of Zhaozhou and began to teach. It’s said that he lived until the age of 120, and that he once said, “If I meet a 100-year-old who wants to learn the dharma, I will teach them. If I meet a seven-year-old who can teach me, I will study with them.”
Here, Zhaozhou is already a revered teacher and the head of Bailin Monastery. He hears from this student—and maybe from others—what the old woman has been doing, and he says to his assembly, “Let me go check her out.” “I will go see through her for you.” What does that mean? It’s an unusual thing for a teacher to say. I’m going to see what you haven’t seen, and then what—I will tell you about it?
There is no way that a great teacher like Zhaozhou is going to come back and just tell his students what he saw. What would be the point of that? I’m surprised that no one asked to go with him, see how he questioned Shiji. Or maybe someone did and we’re just not told that in the koan. He goes, he asks Shiji exactly the same question the other students asked. She responds in exactly the same way she did before, and he goes back to his monastery and declares, “I’ve seen through the old woman for you.” What did he see?
Put yourself in the place of one of the students. You’ve heard the whole story, you’re waiting eagerly for your teacher to come back so you can hear what happened. Will he defeat the old woman in dharma encounter? Or could she possibly defeat him? Is there something profound in her teaching, or she just sounds like she knows what’s going on? They’re probably all on the edge of their seats, maybe they’re placing bets. Zhaozhou comes back and all he says is, “I’ve seen through the old woman for you.” Did anybody ask, “What did you see? What happened?”
We’re not told if they did, and it doesn’t matter, because we have all the information we need. So what do you do with it? What are you left with?
Huiguang, one of the women whose name we chanted this morning, was a 12th-century master known for her skill in debate, her intelligence, and her deep study of the dharma texts. Her posthumous name was Great Master Jingzhi. She wrote a poem on this koan:
Tongue of Zhaozhou
Day after day, an old woman.
Radiance of the urna canopies the earth,
Investigating and shattering with distinctive brilliance.
Going back to that which knows no bounds
Is to enter calmly a state devoid of insight.
The urna is a curl of hair at the center of the forehead which the Buddha had and was said to be a sign of his enlightenment. From this spot, a piercing light emanates, drenching the whole universe with its brilliance. Is Huiguang speaking of the Buddha, or Zhaozhou, or the old woman? Are they different? And why does she say that going back to that which knows no bounds you enter into a state devoid of insight. Isn’t insight what this whole thing is about? Seeing, understanding, realizing? What’s the point of entering a state of no insight? What is that good for?
The commentary says:
The old woman knew how to work out a strategy and win the victory while sitting in her tent. Yet she is not aware of the bandit stealing into the tent. Old Zhaozhou is skillful enough to creep into the enemy’s camp and menace her fortress. Yet he does not look like a grown-up. Upon close examination, they are both at fault. Now tell me, how did Zhaozhou see through the old woman?
This implies that Shiji knows what she’s doing in her little stall and that every time a student approaches her, she is victorious. I’d like to turn that on its head and say that it’s the students who’ve completely exposed the old woman, and she knows it. I don’t think she’s concerned with victory or defeat at all; why should she be? She’s walking on the ground of reality. She doesn’t have time for games. This is not a game for her, nor for Zhaozhou. Maybe she knows who it is, stealing into her tent, maybe she doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. She’s still going to respond with the truth, because that is what she does. That is her imperative.
But then Wumen says, “They are both at fault.” (Shiji and Zhaozhou). What is their fault? This phrase appears so often in the koans. A teacher pours their guts out, and the commentator says, “They’re at fault.” Why? And of course, the main question still remains, “What did Zhaozhou see?”
If we’re asking the right questions, even more questions will appear. But that doesn’t mean we walk around befuddled. It simply means we have finally begun to see.
In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard says:
When I see [closely] I analyze and pry. I hurl over logs and roll away stones; I study the bank a square foot at a time, probing and tilting my head. Some days when a mist covers the mountains, when the muskrats won’t show and the microscope’s mirror shatters, I want to climb up the blank blue dome as someone would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall.
We have to be willing to take a risk in order to see clearly. We have to be willing to rip open the cocoon that has kept us safe and bound for so long. If we fall, we fall, but better to fall than to stand still with weeds growing around your feet and vines climbing up your legs and torso. This is a perilous journey, no question about it. Every time we ask, we expose ourselves. But, when we don’t ask, we also expose ourselves. So we might as well take a risk—be wild and daring—and see what comes of it…
Dillard also said: “I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.” Well, since the beam reaches everywhere, that shouldn’t be too hard. But, we have to know that’s where we’re resting—in the midst of all that light.