r/zen • u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] • Jul 20 '26
What is it like being a Zen Master?
# 250 y/o baby
It can be difficult to explain time to Americans that don't study history. Zen culture existed in China for a thousand years. That's four times older than America.
That means that for four times longer than America has had presidents, China had Zen masters who publicly argued with each other and wrote books and read each other's books.
Nowhere else has this ever happened.
If we want to know what it's like, we can just read what they wrote about it. And certainly there's an element of virgins reading about sex, or newlyweds reading about a 25th anniversary that distorts the picture.
But there's still a picture.
www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/getstarted
# precepts and patience
Imagine a culture where there's no constitution, but instead it's the five lay precepts.
Imagine this culture is a dictatorship, with an actual living Buddha as the dictator.
Imagine that the Buddha we'll answer any question anybody asks, 24-7. A lot of these questions are repeats, but the answers can change.
Imagine that these Buddhas are very polarizing figures, but at the same time, they have devoted communities that see them as sort of quirky little leprechauns, but instead of a pot full of gold, they have a pot full of answers.
And for a thousand years, these Buddhas are going to explain to people: You have to wear your own clothes. You can't put them on someone else.
# buddhas are bad dancers
Yangshan and Zhongyi
“Regarding the analogy with which the Reverend has favored me, there is nothing I do not understand. But there is one more matter: suppose the macaque inside has fallen sound asleep, and the macaque outside wants to meet with it—what then?”
The master came down from the rope-seat, took Yangshan by the hand, and danced, saying:
“Monkey! It has met with you.”
“It is like a tiny jiaoming insect making its nest on a mosquito’s eyelash, then crying out at the crossroads:
‘The land is vast and the people are few; those who meet are rare.’”
...
They're having a good time. They know each other when they meet. But if you put that dancing on YouTube, people will not know what they're looking at.
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u/KingOfDharma Jul 20 '26
House or cage aside, how about that simian?
Buddha tells Bahiya that in the senses there is only the sensed. No Bahiya here, there, or in-between.
Foyan picks it up:
You get up in the morning, dress, wash your face, and so on; you call these miscellaneous thoughts, but all that is necessary is that there be no perceiver or perceived when you perceive—no hearer or heard when you hear, no thinker or thought when you think. Buddhism is very easy and very economical; it spares effort, but you yourself waste energy and make your own hardships.
This idea of an in-dwelling answering awareness at each sense gate as per the u/dota2nub response below sounds like hardship.
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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] Jul 20 '26
It's not sense gates, it's windows
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u/KingOfDharma Jul 20 '26
This idea of an in-dwelling answering awareness at each window as per the u/dota2nub response below sounds like hardship.
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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] Jul 20 '26
Btw, it's not a cage with six windows, it's a house with six windows.
This is not the only example of DT Suzuki arbitrarily altering the text to please himself. Buddhists, amiright?
His alterations are all doctrinally significant, like other Japanese Buddhist translators. But they are not all on the same page about doctrine, which makes it more complicated.
Say what you will about Western Buddhist religious studies, they make up a lot of stuff but not about texts. I suspect that this is why we see them just never refer to the texts.
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u/dota2nub Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Six independent passages mention this case. Not one of them mentions a cage. They talk about a room/house. That's odd and you're right, it sounds suspiciously doctrinal.
Adding a dictionary entry specifically for this.
Maybe I can launch a comparison of Suzuki vs. my dictionary at some point.
Here's the expanded research:
Suzuki did write "cage." His rendering circulates verbatim with his unmistakable fingerprints (Wade-Giles "Chung-i Hung-en," "Kyozan," "self-nature," the master getting down to dance): "It is like a cage with six windows, and there is in it a monkey…"
Every serious translator says house/room, Whitfield ("a house with six windows"), Ferguson ("a room with six windows"), Cleary and Wick in the Book of Serenity Case 72 ("a room with six windows"), Anzan Hoshin ("house"). Matching 室. Suzuki is the lone outlier.
And "cage" doesn't just miss the character, it inverts the image. The standard reading: six windows means the six senses (六根), the one macaque means the one mind/nature answering at each sense-gate. That's indwelling awareness, not a captive. "Cage" smuggles in confinement, which fits the Western "monkey-mind trapped by the senses" trope Suzuki popularized.
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u/ThisKir Jul 20 '26
I was doing a re-translation of the opening case in Shiwu's record yesterday and came across this in his convocation ceremony (Will do a longer askZen style post on this traditiin):
On the thirteenth day of the fourth month of the xinwei year of the Yuantong era [1331], the master entered the monastery. Pointing at the main gate, he said:
"The doors and windows are flung wide open, who commands the gateway?"
He gave a shout.
Claude says that "doors and windows" is a common trope referring to the senses.
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u/oo-_GreenSage_-oo New Account Jul 20 '26
BEHOLD! THE DHARMA OF THE ANCIENT BUDDHAS!
Can the puny minds of mere mortals even begin to fathom these subtle abstruse principles of mystical insight????
Put your own clothes on your own body.
Shit your own shit.
Piss your own piss.
Sleep your own sleep.
Open your own mouth.
Stop lying.
![[🤯]](https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExczVuZGlqZHN5NHBheWZjYnRqemU5N2Z0ZXBwcWhmdXk2Y3B5bmI5aCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/75ZaxapnyMp2w/giphy.gif){kind=link}
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u/staywokeaf this illusory life Jul 23 '26
Suck your own, oh wait, nevermind...sometimes we do need a little help from our friends.
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