Bodhisattva

Whenever someone asked Zen Master Gutei about Buddhism he just held up one finger. We don’t know which finger he held up. But it’s kinda hard to imagine an old Chinese Zen master flipping people the bird. Some commentators have him holding up his thumb. But I don’t like to picture him like The Fonze either. So I just figure he stuck up his index finger.

So anyhow, he had this attendant. The stories just describe him as a boy. They don’t even give him a name, the poor kid. Maybe he’d be played by Jerry Lewis in the TV movie of Gutei’s life. Or maybe Frank Muniz from Malcolm in the Middle. So anyhow, one day a guy comes to the temple when Gutei isn’t around and he asks the kid, “What does your master say about Buddhism?” And the kid raises one finger.

Gutei gets word of this later on and he calls the kid into his private room. He asks the kid to say what he told the visitor about Buddhism. The kid holds up his finger. Suddenly Gutei whips out a big ol’ knife from his robes and slices the kid’s finger off!

The kid is howling in pain. Gutei says to him, “What is the Buddha?” The kid tries to raise his finger but he looks and sees he hasn’t got one anymore. At that moment he gets it.

Years and years later, on his death bed, Gutei says to his students, “I received this one finger Zen from my Master Tenryu. I used it all my life but never exhausted it.”

Now it’s important you don’t take this story too literally. I’ve run into people who read stories like this and use them as evidence that Zen is a philosophy of sado-masochism. But you know how stories grow over time. Each person who repeats it adds a little bit of drama to the tale. What starts out as a story about a bad flood somewhere in the Middle East becomes a tale of a worldwide deluge that wipes out every living thing on Earth. A little bit of gossip about Rod Stewart being gay turns into the tale of his stomach getting pumped and them finding a quart of Daryl Hall’s… I don’t want to gross you out. But it’s probably not true.

Same with this story. I seriously doubt Gutei ever actually cut off his student’s finger with a knife. But Zen teachers have ways of making a point that can feel just like you got your finger chopped off. There were a couple of times in my relationship with my own teachers where it was just as painful as having a digit hacked off. Maybe that’s the way the boy told the story.

Now before we get into the meaning of the story, let’s have some background on Gutei. He was a real guy, a ninth century Chinese Zen monk. He was known as Gutei because he liked to chant a certain sutra which began with that syllable. So people always heard him saying “gutei, gutei” and the name stuck. When he was young he decided to go live by himself in the mountains and concentrate on his practice. One day he’s sitting there and this Buddhist nun walks in wearing a big straw hat. She walks into Gutei’s hut still wearing her hat which is a bit rude since you always take your hat off when you come inside.

She says to Gutei, “If you can say something about Zen, I’ll take off my hat.” But Gutei can’t think of any reply, so he just sits there. So the nun repeats her statement. But Gutei is just dumbstruck.

So he tells her, “It’s getting dark out. Why don’t you spend the night here. I’ll fix you a place.”

The nun says, “If you can say a word about Zen, I’ll stay.” But Gutei can’t think of a god damned thing. So the nun leaves. Gutei was pretty broken up about this. Who knows what could’ve happened if she’d stayed! But here he’d studied and practiced and given up everything to go live in a mountain and still he couldn’t say anything to satisfy that nun. So he decided to just throw in the towel, move back down to the village, maybe get a job, buy a dog, just bee a normal guy.

But then, as he’s about to leave, a Zen teacher named Tenryu shows up. Gutei tells Tenryu the story about the nun and asks him, “What the hell should I have said?” Tenryu held up one finger. Gutei got it.

Now I know that sounds pretty wacky. I mean, what’s there to get? It’s just a finger. How does showing a finger explain anything to anyone?

But Zen is all about seeing reality for what it is. We think that the truth can be explained. Which means we think the truth be found in our own thoughts. See, because an explanation doesn’t really come from outside of our own heads. Whatever someone says to us, we transform in our own brains into whatever we think they’re saying. We almost never really listen to anyone.

So we’re forever chasing thoughts around in our heads. We look at each one and ask, “Is this one right?” Toss it aside. “Or maybe this one?” Toss that one aside. We modify them constantly, trying to create a perfect model of the world inside our brains. But it can’t be done. If there’s one thing you learn from Buddhist teachings it’s that no matter what thoughts you think or what descriptions you make they are all wrong. All of them!

So no matter what Gutei would have told that nun, it would have been wrong. It would have been limited, like trying to stuff the Grand Canyon into a shoe box. You might be able to get some sand in the box. But it’s not the Grand Canyon.

When Gutei asked Tenryu to explain, he held up that finger. The gesture of holding up one finger expresses the universal truth not by trying to explain it, or fix it into one specific place. It explains the universal truth by being the universal truth. The universal truth is a guy holding up his finger. It’s this moment. It’s where you are right now.

But getting back to the original story, we see that even though Gutei borrowed his one finger Zen from his teacher Tenryu, when Gutei’s attendant tries to use it, he screws it all up.

There’s an old joke that relates to this. A guy gets sent to prison and during his first night there he hears the inmates shouting at each other from cell to cell. One guy will yell out, “47!” and the whole block breaks up into uproarious laughter. Another guy yells, “23!” and again the whole block busts out laughing. The new inmate turns to his cell mate and asks what this is all about. The cell mate explains that the block is full of old timers. They’ve heard the same jokes so many times they’ve just given them numbers. The new inmate decides he wants to give it a try, so he yells out, “17!” Nobody laughs. His cell mate says, “Well, some guys know how to tell a joke and some guys don’t.”

Just like the new inmate who didn’t know the jokes the numbers referred to, Gutei’s student could imitate his teacher, but he didn’t understand what was behind Gutei’s gesture. Gutei could say volumes about the nature of reality by just holding up a finger. But the student’s finger said nothing except that he could imitate his teacher.

This is a metaphor for what happens in lots of Zen training centers all over the world. We’ve all learned that the way you learn something is by imitation and memorization. Your teacher gives you some information, you commit it to memory and when test time comes you spit it back out and if your ability to memorize is good, you get an “A+.” But Buddhist teaching is not like that. Buddhist teaching is learning how to be just what you are at every moment. It has nothing to do with information transferal or memorization.

This is expressed by what happens after Gutei cuts the boy’s finger off then asks him what Buddha is. When the boy tries to imitate Gutei again, he finds that he can’t. By cutting off the boy’s finger, Gutei forces the boy into coming up with his own unique explanation of the truth. He has no choice because it is no longer possible for him to imitate his teacher. When he finally expresses himself, he gets it.

The story ends with Gutei on his death bed saying he could never exhaust his one finger Zen. No matter where you are, it is always here. It is always reality. Verbal explanations are used up easily. A verbal explanation that satisfies this year, means nothing ten years later when the fashions have all shifted. But direct pointing to reality is always new.

-Brad Warner

http://homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/

bokonon84

good show.... blao~!