"Buddhist scholar, John McRae, attributes this text to the
Ox-head School of early Chan. McRae explains that research of the Ox-head
School (named after the mountain Mount Niu-t'ou, Ox-head Mountain), has, until
recently, been almost entirely devoted to the study of this text, the
Chüeh-kuan lun (Jue-guan lun) which was rediscovered through the publication in
1935 of D. T. Suzuki's Shōshitsu issho (Lost Works from Bodhidharma's Cave). In
all, there are six extant Dunhuang manuscripts of this text, all of which were
published by Suzuki in 1945 and then by the eminent Japanese scholar Yanagida
Seizan in 1970. The authorship of the text is in dispute. McRae notes that the text, which he dates as
sometime after 750, has been variously attributed to Shen-hi, Bodhidharma,
Niu-t'ou Fa-jung, the legendary figurehead of the Ox-head School or perhaps by
someone else later in the Bodhidharma tradition…
The text is an early example of the creativity of early Chan
writing. It is structured as a dialogue between master and pupil but is
obviously a fictional encounter. Highly structured as it is, it may be, as
McRae notes in his essay, The Antecedents of Encounter Dialogue in Chinese
Ch'an Buddhism , “intended to model ideal teacher/student interactions and may
in fact have resembled to some degree actual exchanges that took place between
living meditation masters and practitioners.”
McRae translates the title as Treatise on the Transcendence of Cognition
and the two individuals...as ‘Professor Enlightenment' and ‘Conditionality'…The
Ceasing of Notions…is [the title] translated by Venerable Myokyo-ni (Irmgard
Schloegl, 1921–2007) and Michelle Bromley from earlier versions in German,
English and Japanese (but notably, not Chinese).
The master in the text tries to lead the student from his
notions of delusions and clinging, seeing everything in a dual way, to a true
understanding of Chan. Master Nyuri constantly points to the student's errors
in seeing things as a duality and not recognizing the emptiness in all things,
including his questions. Throughout the dialogue, the student fails to
understand the master's teaching until the very end when he becomes
‘enlightened', “finally breaking through to the pure, non-discriminating
illumination of śūnyatā”."
[1]
Professor Enlightenment was silent
and said nothing. Conditionality then arose suddenly and asked Professor
Enlightenment: "What is the mind? What is it to pacify the mind
(anxin)?"
[The master] answered: "You
should not posit a mind, nor should you attempt to pacify it-this is called
'pacified.'"
Question: "If there is no
mind, how can one cultivate enlightenment (tao)?"
Answer: "Enlightenment is not
a thought of the mind, so how could it occur in the mind?"
Question: "If it is not
thought of by the mind, how should it be thought of?"
Answer: "If there are thoughts
then there is mind, and for there to be mind is contrary to enlightenment. If
there is no thought (wunian) then there is no mind(wuxin), and for there to be
no mind is true enlightenment." ...
Question: "What 'things' are
there in no-mind?"
Answer: "No-mind is without
'things.' The absence of things is the Naturally True. The Naturally True is
the Great Enlightenment (ta-tao)."...
Question: "What should I
do?"
Answer: "You should do
nothing."
Question: "I understand this
teaching now even less than before."
Answer: "There truly is no
understanding of the Dharma. Do not seek to understand it." ...
Question: "Who teaches these
words?"
Answer: "It is as I have been
asked."
Question: "What does it mean
to say that it is as you have been asked?"
Answer: "If you contemplate
[your own] questions, the answers will be understood [thereby] as well."
At this Conditionality was silent
and he thought everything through once again.
Professor Enlightenment asked:
"Why do you not say anything?"
Conditionality answered: "I do
not perceive even the most minute bit of anything that can be explained."
At this point Professor
Enlightenment said to Conditionality: "You would appear to have now
perceived the True Principle."
Conditionality asked: "Why [do
you say] 'would appear to have perceived' and not that I 'correctly perceived'
[the True Principle]?"
Enlightenment answered: "What
you have now perceived is the nonexistence of all dharmas. This is like the
non-Buddhists who study how to make themselves invisible, but cannot destroy
their shadow and footprints."
Conditionality asked: "How can
one destroy both form and shadow?"
Enlightenment answered: "Being
fundamentally without mind and its sensory realms, you must not willfully
generate the ascriptive view (or, "perception") of
impermanence."
[The following is from the end of
the text.]
Question: "If one becomes [a
Tathaagata] without transformation and in one's own body, how could it be
called difficult?"
Answer: Willfully activating (ch'i
ÑÃ) the mind is easy; extinguishing the mind is difficult. It is easy to affirm
the body, but difficult to negate it. It is easy to act, but difficult to be
without action. Therefore, understand that the mysterious achievement is
difficult to attain, it is difficult to gain union with the Wondrous Principle.
Motionless is the True, which the three [lesser vehicles] only rarely
attain."
At this Conditionality gave a long
sigh, his voice filling the ten directions. Suddenly, soundlessly, he
experienced a great expansive enlightenment. The mysterious brilliance of his
pure wisdom [revealed] no doubt in its counter illumination. For the first time
he realized the extreme difficulty of spiritual training and that he had been
uselessly beset with illusory worries.
He then sighed aloud:
"Excellent! Just as you have taught without teaching, so have I heard
without hearing...
[2]
"Here there is a threefold pattern of beginning questions,
intermediate hesitation, and final achievement…which resembles Zhiyi's scheme
of the three truths of absolute, relative, and middle. It is also structurally
similar to Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern, but in this case the
second element achieves its impact by the application of the fundamental
Mahāyāna concept of Sūnyatā, or emptiness. Indeed, the same tripartite
structure is apparent in the thought of at least one important Indian
Mādhyamika philosopher. That is, an expression of Buddhism is made in the first
element, the terms of this expression are erased in the second element, and the
understanding of Buddhism is thereby elevated to a new level of profundity in
the third element."
[3]
from:
[1]
Jue guan lun [Zen Irodalom Zen Literature]
[2]
The Antecedents of Encounter Dialogue in Chinese Ch'an Buddhism by John R.
McRae
[3]
Seeing through Zen Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan
Buddhism by John R. McRae [University of California Press]
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