Keys to Illumination

　　 Rather than a precipitate gallop up the slopes of some koan mountain Sheng-yen lists four modest aims for beginners on retreat.　These are: to realise that one is not in control of one’s own mind, to discover how to train in awareness, to calm the mind, to provide opportunities for repentance and hence to regain the freedom of immaculacy, and to practice with an individually suitable method that will yield insight (praj~naa) (Sheng-yen 1982, Crook 1991).　A beginner will usually start with watching the breath.　He/she soon discovers the truth of the first aim and seek to develop awareness encountering the barriers of wandering thought and fatigue in the process.　In addition, prostration sessions focusing on repentance are a means of facilitating the fourth aim.　Only when a mind has achieved at least a relative calm may the method shift through negotiation in interview to the use of

p.570

either a koan or to Silent Illumination.

　　 Koan practice does not differ from that taught in Japanese or Chinese monasteries.　There is the requirement to develop the “great doubt” from which after intensive effort a resolution may come.　Often stress is placed on a life-koan to be realised over many years of focussed effort.　In Master Sheng-yen’s retreats the emphasis is on working without tension, correct but not strained sitting, relaxed mind and “letting the universe do it.”　Since different participants may be using contrasting methods, the collective even obsessive focus on koans of a traditional Rinzai retreat with its accumulating power is less in evident and koans are unlikely to be solved with the explosive force described in some accounts of these retreats.　The realisation under Sheng-yen’s guidance seems likely to be gentler.

　　 In teaching Silent Illumination Master Sheng-yen lists several stages of practice (See New Chan Forum 15, Summer 1997).[2]  While these may result in a gradual evolution of insight the stages do not necessarily follow one another.　Some practitioners may quickly develop an advanced stage omitting or running quickly through the early ones.　Usually however the first practice is to develop “Total Body Awareness”──unlike the Japanese focus on posture the attention here is directed to the awareness of presence within the sitting body.　A successful awareness here depends on focussed attention on the sensation arising within the sitting.　Success leads to a calmed mind in which the boundaries between interior and exterior gradually disappear and time before and time after merge into one flow ── what Dogen may have called “without thinking.”  As one practices at this stage various meditation experiences of an encouraging nature appear and a realisation of “one mind” may arise in which the practitioner feels himself in confluence with

p.571

nature and the universal process.　These stages may arise through focussed intentionality.　“No-mind” as in the experience of “seeing the nature” (kensho) cannot however be the result of any deliberative practice.　When intention is present so also will be desire.　Where desire is present so must the self be there.　The concern with achievement, with getting a result has to be entirely abandoned but the attempt to do this merely completes a circle, the self still being present in the attempt to go beyond itself.　Here is the ultimate “gateless gate” likewise come upon in the intense focus within the Great Doubt of koan work.

　　 Kensho arises spontaneously when the trained mind simply lets go without any willed intention.　It cannot therefore be the object of any desire or wanting.　Only the faith in its possibility seems important.　One may wait for years but waiting itself is a mistake betraying desire.　Yet one cannot forget the possibility nor its significance.　“Seeing the nature” means seeing the immediate universal process as right before ones eyes, a boiling egg, a flying bird, a dropped tea cup.　There is no self present then──simply . . . .　Words are transcended but the experience is never forgotten being often the very pivot upon which a life turns.　Here then is the reason for Suzuki’s insistence on a context free Zen.　Yet, shortly, the self returns and practice continues, practice within a lineage, under guidance, in humility, with deference to history.　Even great masters probably have such an experience only occasionally in their lives.　It is sufficient.

　　 Silent Illumination and koan work in Chan are thus parallel paths.　They seem to suit different people and the practitioner through experiment and experience will come to develop an affinity to one or another of them.

Western Paths

　　 Master Sheng-yen once told me that the main difference between his Chinese and his American practitioners lay in

p.572

persistence.　A Chinese, once told how to practice, just goes and does it without question.　Since the Master said so──it will be right.　In the end, and that may only be after a long time, a profound result may arise.　A Westerner typically shows a very quick intellectual grasp of what is being demanded.  Western education enables quite complex ideas to be handled with relative ease.　But Western education also inculcates a perennially questioning mind and an individualism that seeks personal distinction.　When results do not come quickly a Westerner rarely persist into the Great Doubt but rather worries within conventional doubts: self criticism, scepticism concerning the master and the method destroys the very focus of attention he or she may have to an extent established.　This worrying, based in self concern, sustains an agitated mind which may then quite easily decide to try something else──supposedly quicker and less disturbing.