Mind and Reality: Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds
Study the Zen koan, Case 26, Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds taken from the Gateless Gate (aka Wumen’s Barrier).
When we practice working with our minds, we quickly discover the immense impacts our thoughts have on our lived reality. And when we look at this using a Buddhist framework, we come to understand the relationship between mind and reality even more profoundly: that reality itself is really just the minds’ projection.
In this dharma talk, Zuisei draws on the power of the classical Buddhist teachings to help us understand the truth of the saying: “The three worlds (reality) are nothing but mind.”
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Gateless Gate, Case 26: Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds
The Main Case
The monks gathered in the hall to hear the Great Fayan Wenyi give a discourse before the midday meal. Fayan pointed to the bamboo blinds. At this two monks went to the blinds and rolled them up alike. Fayan said, “One has it, the other has not.”
The Commentary
Tell me, which one has it and which one has not? If you have your Zen eye opened at this point, you will then know how Master Fayan failed. Be that as it may, you are strictly warned against arguing about “has” and “has not.”
The Verse
When they are rolled up, bright and clear is the great emptiness.
The great emptiness does not yet come up to our teaching.
Why don’t you cast away emptiness and everything?
Then it is so lucid and perfect that even the wind does not pass through.
This koan came to my mind after I listened to a radio program about the power of thoughts to create our reality. It is, of course, a well-known teaching in our school. The saying: “The three worlds are nothing but mind” (the three worlds being the worlds of form, formlessness, and desire) comes from the Dasabhumika Sutra, Sutra of Ten Stages, the Avatamsaka Teachings of Huayen and Yogachara or “Representation Only” school. All that we experience is a product of our mind, of our consciousness. What we see in the world is really a representation, a projection of mind. This means that apart from mind, there is nothing to experience.
Now, even from a non-Buddhist perspective, we all understand that our thoughts affect our experience. If my thoughts are negative, my experience of myself and the world will also be negative, which will reinforce my negative thoughts, and so on. This is true of individual thoughts, and of the patterns they form. So, a single negative thought has the potential to condition the next thought to also be negative, the more I think negative thoughts, the easier it is to think them. This isn’t hard to understand. It’s hard to change but it’s not hard to understand that my thoughts shape reality.
In the Vimalakirti Sutra, Sariputra and the Buddha are talking about the nature of a buddha-field, which Shariputra sees as impure. So Shariputra makes the logical conclusion: the mind of the Buddha, before he was fully realized, must have been impure. Isn’t this exactly what we do when we have a difference of opinion with someone? It’s so easy to project our discomfort onto the other person. You are not seeing things correctly if you could only see what is right, this world—this society—would be a buddha land.
The Buddha reads Shariputra’s mind and he says to him, “The fact that some people see the Buddha land as impure is not my fault, nor is it the fault of the land.” (I’m paraphrasing) “It’s because of their ignorance that they see it as impure.”
And Shariputra says to the Buddha, “I see this great earth, with all its highs and lows, its thorns, its precipices, its peaks and its abysses—I see it all as filled with excrement.” I see my town, my city, this country, the world with all its strife, its prejudice, its injustice, and I see it is anything but a buddha field.
And a Brahmin, who’s standing nearby says, “The fact that you see highs and lows is a sure sign that there are highs and lows in your mind.”
Wait a minute, though. So if I am suddenly and unjustly let off my job, if my colleagues spend their time backstabbing one another, if my partner becomes depressed and unable to function, are those just the highs and lows of my mind? Are you saying that if only I didn’t see highs and lows, then there wouldn’t be highs and lows?—that they’re just in my mind? So I just have to think positively or is this a subtle form of gaslighting? And what does that mean, that they’re just in the mind?
When Fayan, the teacher in this koan, was a young monk, he went on a pilgrimage with a couple of fellow monastics. One day, they got caught in a rainstorm and were forced to take refuge in a temple. The abbot, Tizang, welcomed them warmly, and after a few days, when the rain had let up, they went to pay their respects before heading out. Tizang walked them to the gate, and as they were leaving, he pointed to a big boulder on the side of the road and asked Fayan, “The three worlds are nothing but mind and all things arise out of consciousness or recognition. Tell me, is that stone in your mind our outside it?” Fayan said, “It’s in my mind.” And Tizang said, “Oh you traveling monk, why are you carrying around such a heavy stone in your mind?” Is it my mind, or is it the environment? And how does this question help me to live my life?
Last week we spent a couple of days with Bikkhu Bodhi, systematically going through the sutras in which the Buddha spoke essentially on how to live together—what Bikkhu Bodhi called “Social and Communal Harmony.”
And you know, the sutras are a bit dry. They can seem abstract, some very philosophical. And the question that inevitably arises after teachings like these is, how do I take this into my life? How do I put this into action? To me, that is the question to ask, as practitioners. But I think that each of us have to answer it for ourselves because it is, really, the meat of our practice.
All of these profound Buddhist philosophical teachings that have come down to us: the Yogachara, the Madhyamaka, Huayen schools, the Prajnaparamita literature. The teachings of emptiness, buddha nature, types of consciousness, interdependence. Their purpose is not just to create interesting schools of thought, complicated intellectual frameworks, their purpose, ultimately, is to help us understand reality clearly so we can live skillfully and, we could say, rightly.
Fayan knew this, as the teachers before and after him knew this. They were well versed in these schools and their teachings. We just get “he hit the monk with a cushion, he held up a stick or a finger or a sickle, he twisted the other’s nose.” But behind those ordinary actions are these thousands of years of teachings, probably millions or billions of written pages.
So, when Fayan sees his opportunity, he takes it. Two monks roll up the blinds, and he delivers the killing and life-giving blow: “One has it, one has not.”
Bring it closer to home. Imagine it’s the second day of the ango intensive. There’s eighty people in the performance hall at the sangha house and everyone is a little tired. It’s the middle of th afternoon at the end of a long week of training and you’re just hanging in there, waiting for the break so you can have a cup of coffee or at least stretch your legs. And the sun is coming in through the windows and is hitting right on Hojin Sensei and Shugen Sensei’s faces as they speak, making them squint. Two people notice and immediately get up. Exactly alike, they roll down the blinds, they go back to their seats. And one of the teachers, very softly, very casually, saying it almost as if not saying it, (I can completely see Hojin Sensei doing this) says into their mic,
“One has it, one has not.” And now everyone in the room is fully awake. And most alert. Most uncomfortable, are the two people who rolled down the blinds. Is it me? Do I have it? Do I not? What did they mean?
When Fayan had his own students, a monk asked, “What is the ultimate truth?” Fayan said, “First, I pray you will live it. Second, I pray you will live it!” Third and fourth and fifth, I pray you will live it. And I won’t just pray, but I will help you to live it.
But do I have it, or do I not? Is this the rock I want to carry around in my mind?
The Buddha said that there are two ways to practice meditation: You can practice like a dog or you can practice like a lion. If you throw a stick at a dog, it will chase after the stick. No matter how many times you throw that stick, no matter how far you throw it, the dog will always chase after it.
You methodically take up a thought, identify it, and apply its antidote. And this is a necessary practice, because it’s not like you can just throw away the stick to get rid of it. The dog will just trot after it and bring it back. So you can’t just ignore your thoughts, some you can, most you can. But some you have to meet, acknowledge, and work with. It’s the only way that the dog finally lies down.
But, you can also practice like a lion. If you throw a stick at a lion, the lion will chase after you. The lion is not going to waste time with the stick, it’s going to go straight for the source. That’s what it’s interested in.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche says, “Sometimes, let your thoughts flow and watch the unchanging nature behind them. Sometimes, abruptly cutting the flow of thoughts, look at naked awareness.” Both methods are looking at the source. Both involve a great degree of trust that we don’t have to get involved in our thoughts, that we may not even always understand them.
From a psychological perspective, we can look at a Theory of Thought:
1. Thoughts have meaning, something in your past, they’re saying something about you and your mind, so it’s important to understand their patterns and create antidotes. (Your father was always disappointed in you; how do you replace this thought with a healthier narrative.)
2. It’s not the meaning that’s important, it’s challenging the truth of the thoughts that helps us to be free of them. (Is it true that nobody loves you? Is it true that you’re always in pain?)
3. What’s important is to be present to them, mindfulness. Don’t give them weight, don’t treat them lightly. Witness, allow them, and watch them come and go.
I think Buddhism doesn’t choose one of these over the others. It says, it’s all important and, there’s more.
The Madhyamaka or Middle Way School of Nagarjuna says that all phenomena are empty, including thoughts and mind, including emptiness. It says that a past thought is dead, like a corpse, a future thought hasn’t been born. Present thoughts we cannot locate, they have no form, no color, no traces. Further, a past thought cannot be connected to a present thought. That would mean that the past thought is present, or viceversa, same with future thought. Continuity is an illusion, thoughts have no true existence.
So what if an angry thought doesn’t necessarily have to follow the previous angry thought, or a depressed thought, or a confused thought? What if there’s a lot more space than I think around each of these thoughts? What if, understanding that a thought needs me to continue its momentum, I let it drop, or I shift it, or I see oh, wait, this is empty. I don’t need to get involved with this. What if, deliberately practicing my thoughts, I change my mind?
I heard a story about a South African man named Martin Pistorius (no relation to Oscar Pistorius, the paralympic athlete.) When he was 12 years old and for no medical reason that any doctors could detect, he slowly lost control of his body. First he lost his coordination, then he couldn’t walk, then he couldn’t speak. He could only make grunting sounds. Before long he couldn’t do that anymore. Then he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t drink, he couldn’t relieve himself. His body went into a vegetative state.
And the doctors told his parents “Just keep him comfortable until he dies,” which they predicted would happen in a year or two. Instead, he lived for 3, 4, 5 years and he kept going. For 12 years he was locked inside his body, unable to move or speak or in any way communicate with those around him and for most of that time, they thought he was unconscious.
In reality, around year 4, unbeknownst to anyone but himself, he woke up. He slowly regained consciousness, but couldn’t tell anyone that this had happened. So he would lie in bed, unable to move, speak, do anything for himself. But he could see and hear everything. He heard his mother, when in desperation, she stood over him one night and said, “I hope you die soon.” Not surprisingly, Pistorius became deeply depressed. And the thoughts just swirled around in his mind without respite, without break.
“You are trapped.” You will never get out of this. You are useless, your life has no meaning, you are worse than a vegetable. You will always be alone, you will always be alone, you will always be alone.
It was like being in an endless, black tunnel with perfectly smooth walls. A hollow tube without any exit, any break of any sort, no change, no space. And the further down the tube he went, the longer it got. “I was lost in the land where dragons lie and no one could rescue me,” Pistorius said.
All of us have at some point found ourselves locked inside our bodies, our minds, in their habitual, confused, reactive patterns. We too find ourselves in a cave, snuggled up to a sleeping dragon that at any moment is about to wake up. And we know that’s where we need to be. We know we have to face the dragon. That’s why we came here, that’s why we do sesshin, to go deep into our being where the shadows are long, the space narrow, where there seems to be no escape.
It always sounds so good in the legends, so romantic and brave. But when it means sitting on our cushion, facing the ugliest or most difficult parts of ourselves, and without an audience to cheer us on, it doesn’t seem so romantic.
Anyway, this was Pistorius’ life, his prison. And his thoughts, without any outlet, would just go on and on. “You are worthless,” “You are nothing,” “You cannot escape.” He couldn’t go online to distract himself, turn on the television… In fact, television was a big part of the problem. All day they planted him in front of the TV to watch Barney re-runs. He said, “You can’t imagine how much I hated Barney,” until, one day, he decided he’d had enough. He decided he couldn’t just let his thoughts churn and churn in his mind, but that he had to turn to them, because that was all he had.
And I think that moment when we lose all our choices is critical because as long as we think we can muddle along, most of us will. Changing is too difficult, too uncomfortable. We have to get to the point where we say to ourselves enough! Some of us do it early in life, some of us go through a whole lifetime circling the cave. Pistorius had no choice, either he changed or he died a slow, hellish death.
And so, without any training, any guidance, he began to pay attention to his thoughts, and he noticed, little by little, that as he did that, they got quieter. They didn’t seem to have so much power. They didn’t seem so meaningful, so real, so true.
Around this same time, he began to be able to move his eyes. Just the slightest movement, but enough to be able to see his surroundings, able to read shadows, tell the time of day. Now he could locate himself in time, and this helped him.
Pistorius found freedom in time, like finding a drifting log in the middle of the ocean. He could hoist himself up on it and float and look around and think, “Okay, here I am. What will I do about this?” But he was no longer being borne here and there on the current of his thoughts. Now he could begin to establish a direction, he began to have agency—if not over his surroundings—over his reaction to his surroundings. He was no longer trapped. And because he was no longer trapped, his mind began to change. And naturally, organically, his body began to change with it.
When they saw he could move his eyes and that he understood what was said to him, they gave him a computer through which he could speak, like Stephen Hawking. He regained limited mobility, and enrolled in college and studied computer science. He started his own web company, wrote a book, and as all of this was happening, he also fell in love. He who thought would always be alone and would always be unlovable, found his match. Him and his wife are still married, living a more or less ordinary life.
The question remains, however, why did Fayan say one monk had it, one didn’t? Which one, and how did he know? And why does the commentary say that if we can see clearly, we’ll realize that Fayan failed? What has his failure?
I’ve come to deeply appreciate these deeply, deeply uncomfortable moments, excruciating moments, in a life of practice. Because it is here that the greatest potential for change is present. If we can just tolerate the pain and curb our desire to get away, to numb ourselves, then the opportunity for something to happen that couldn’t happen before, when we were nice and comfortable, is there, and it’s open, and it’s waiting for us.
When they are rolled up, bright and clear is the great emptiness
The great emptiness does not yet come up to our teaching.
Why don’t you cast away emptiness and everything?
Then it is so lucid and perfect that even the wind does not pass through.
Shibayama says that the blinds separate inside and outside. When they are rolled up, the distinction disappears and everything is bright and clear. When nothing is left, when everything has been cast away, who can speak of wind, or of passing through or not passing through? Who can speak of burdens of the mind?
This is Octavio Paz’s “Wind, Water Stone"“:
Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.
Wind carves stone,
stone's a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
Stone, wind, water.
Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Wind, water, stone.
Each is another and no other:
crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:
water, stone, wind.
Mind and Reality, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 : Gateless Gate
02 : Vimalakirti Sutra
03: Wind, Water, Stone by Octavio Paz
04: Gateless Gate, Case 36: Meeting a Person of the Way with Vanessa Zuisei Goddard