Hello!
At the moment I’m staying at a Theravada Buddhist hermitage and enjoying the reconnection with Buddhist thought and practice. This small monastery belongs to the Thai Forest Tradition and the abbot here was my first teacher. Although my practice is Daoist, these opportunities to dwell within the Buddhist gate are deeply enriching. I know it might sound strange, but I find an extraordinary amount of beauty in Buddhism’s conceptual framework and practices. Over the past few evenings I have interviewed Luangpor, a term of respect for the abbot here, and I will share the finished article with you in the coming days.
In the meantime, here is an extract from a talk given By Gilbert Gutierrez, a Dharma heir of Chan Master Sheng Yen (1931-2009). It’s a commentary on a passage from one of the greatest Chan masters of the Ming Dynasty called Boshan, also known as Wuyi Yuanlai (1575-1630). Essentially, it discusses the way we should practise in order to make true progress. It caught my eye as a thought provoking discussion on what one might call achieving ‘immersion’ — a state in which we practise constantly and with great singularity of mind. This kind of state is required in order to develop towards a certain goal as efficiently as possible, and the higher hanging fruit of inner cultivation are impossible to attain without it.
Italicised passages are direct quotations from Boshan, unitalicised passages are Gutierrez’s commentary. Footnotes are a few thoughts on the text I couldn't resist sharing. Enjoy!
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Taut, Impenetrable Practice
Your practice must be taut, impenetrable, integrated and pervasive.
Taut means very, very tight. Impenetrable; like if you were going to rappel down the face of a very steep mountain, almost completely vertical. I’m sure you would knot the rope very, very tightly. It wouldn’t be like the way you tie your shoelaces; you’d make sure it doesn’t slip. Just so, in meditation practice you hold the method tight, not with stress but with right effort. Tight means it’s seamless, nothing can get in. Impenetrable. Like room darkening shades, not even one little ray of sun comes through. When you’re on the method seamlessly, and a thought comes wiggling around, you spot it a mile away and it doesn’t get in. Why? Because you’re so dedicated to holding the method that these things cannot generate enough mind power to come to centre stage.
What is taut practice? Our human life exists in the in-and-out of our breath. Without resolving this great matter of birth and death, when the next breath does not come you will be completely lost as to your destiny. Since you don’t know where you will go after you die, you have no choice but to be taut in your practice.1
Master Boshan is saying that when you die you’re not going to have that choice to do taut practice. If you want to get out of samsara, you choose Buddha; you don’t choose the default program which is ignorance. If you continue to practice, I guarantee you will make progress. Every time you sit, your samadhi and your quietness will get stronger and stronger, and you will get into samadhi faster. But if you’re doing a fifty-fifty practice (50% mind movies and 50% method) then that’s what you’re going to get. And it won’t improve until you decide to kick it into gear.
No Clinging
What is impenetrable practice? It is like the nonexistent gap between the hair of the brows and space. Needles cannot penetrate it and water cannot wet it. Your practice should not have any gaps. If there is even the tiniest gap, that is where demonic situations can gain entry.
Don’t get scared by the word “demonic”. The Shurangama Sutra talks about fifty demonic states, and they are all good things that happen to you, except that you cling to them — it’s the clinging part that makes it demonic. For example, if you can see the future, that’s pretty good. But if you cling to it and identify yourself as “I can see the future”, then it’s a demonic state. Anything that you experience, you want to put it down, not to cling to it.
What is integrated and pervasive practice? When the world expands ten feet, the ancient mirror expands ten feet.
What is the ancient mirror? That’s mind, everything is reflected on it, in the right way. To you, it’s the reverse way because you’re on the other side of the mirror.
But when the ancient mirror expands ten feet, the firing furnace also expands ten feet.2
All potentiality of phenomena expands as well. Everything is connected.
You shouldn’t attach to or abide in any place. Do not seize the snake’s head nor snatch at both ends of it. Just be boundless and limitless.
The snake’s head is just phenomenal occurrences, vexatious thoughts. You don’t have to try to capture the snake, you just have to understand how the snake appears.
An ancient worthy said. “The way is perfect like great space/ Without lack, without excess.”3 When you have really attained the stage where your practice is integrated and pervasive, then internally you will not perceive a body and a mind. Externally, there will be no such thing as the world. This is the beginning of gaining an entry into genuine practice.4
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There is a harmful taboo around death in contemporary Western culture. From a traditional Buddhist perspective, an important function of practice is developing the ability to die well. This is because the quality of mind during the death process is said to determine our future rebirth. Within many Buddhist traditions, there are records of masters spending long periods in a kind of stasis between life and death, managing their transition to the next life with the utmost care. In Tibetan Buddhism, this is called thukdam. Interesting article about it here.
Note the use of alchemical language here. I don’t know whether Boshan had any background in neidan, but this line certainly makes sense from an alchemical perspective: the degree to which the alchemical process unfolds is entirely dependent upon the quality of one’s mind. Although I generally appreciated Gutierrez’s commentary, its weakness when it came to this line made me wonder if he also struggled a little to fit it into a purely Chan Buddhist perspective!
This quote comes from perhaps my favourite piece of Chan Buddhist literature, the Inscription on Believing in Mind (Xin Xin Ming) by Third Patriarch Sengcan. You can read DT Suzuki’s translation of it here.
“This is the beginning of gaining an entry into genuine practice.” Integrated and pervasive practice, immersion in one’s practice. This is the essential prerequisite for the truly profound to unfold. As a famous saying has it, “the path of the internal is an inch wide and a mile deep”. Before we have established immersion, we remain outside the gate.