REGISTER

A student asked Zhaozhou, “Has the dog buddha nature, or not?”
Zhou replied, “Yes.”
The student said, “Then why did he jump into that skin bag?”
Zhou responded, “Even though he knew better, he just couldn’t help it.”

—Book of Serenity, Case 18

So opens Zhaozhou’s Dog, the well-known dharmakaya koan, one often given as a first koan to practitioners. In the second half of the koan, when asked again if a dog has buddha nature, Zhou replies, “No!”

From Zen’s point of view, the universe is utterly simple: there are only two bits. One is form, or phenomenon, and the other is no-form, or emptiness. Presence and Absence, as translated by David Hinton.

But these two parts are not in the least separate. Rather, they are dependent on each other for their existence. The Heart Sutra, Zen’s foundational text, reads: “Form is emptiness and emptiness is form/Form is exactly emptiness and emptiness is exactly form.” What a lovely painting of a rice cake!

As soon as we say “form” or “emptiness,” we divide the universe into two with ideas of how things should be. And we go on dividing, opening a gap between ourselves and others, between ourselves and ourselves, and between ourselves and the world. This creates all sorts of mischief, and sometimes pain. “People are disturbed not by things themselves,” writes the Stoic Epictetus, “but by the views they take of them.” We know that but we can’t help ourselves from doing it. Neither can my dog.

The world of “Yes” is hairy, sweaty, muddy, shitty. Oh, did I mention flatulence? My dog farts, especially when we are watching TV. And she is an obsessive ball chaser; she has at least ten old tennis balls scattered around the backyard. “Yes” invites us to realize the intrinsic purity and beauty in the world of messiness. Messiness, too, is our original nature. It is not wrong.

In the world of “No,” there is not one thing. Everything is a No-thing. Even “No” has no meaning outside of “No.” At some point 2,500 years ago, somebody made up a word to point to this thing of No-ness: buddha nature. The bouncy, messy, happy skin bag; this is the skin of both No and Yes. It is our skin.

Our recent Luminaries guest Henry Shukman recounts a story of his solo retreat in the mountains of New Mexico.

I was having a restless time. My brain was in recovery from a concussion, the current state of US politics was dire, and our retreat center down in Santa Fe was having difficulties—all of which made me uneasy, sometimes angry, sometimes sad.

He sat, focusing on a thanka of Green Tara, and something switched for him.

Again, it struck me: Anger was 100 percent fine, from a goddess’ point of view. From the perspective of awakening, anger was not a problem. It was “empty”—transparent and boundless…

Going outside to gaze at the mountains, he realized that “…all [is] a single arising, a single body, a single cloud, a single wonder, a single flash of lightening… Nameless. Marvelous. Empty. And here.”

Translator’s note: What most recently caught my eye during a review of this koan with a friend was the final line quoted above and Koun Yamada’s lengthy commentary on it. The Chinese characters read:

(為) Doing (他) Other (知) Knowledge (而) Even so (故) Intentional (犯) Transgress

One translation is “Because he knows yet deliberately transgresses (Cleary).” The Pacific Zen translation is beautifully direct: “It knew what it was doing and that’s why it dogged (Sutherland, Tarrant).” Yamada’s is: “Because he committed himself intentionally.”

In discussing the koan, Yamada mentions that some people get hung up on whether a dog is capable of a crime or transgression. That, he says, is completely missing the point. The key is to directly appreciate the dog-ness of the dog.

Whoof! Yap!

—Jon Joseph

COME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome.

Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community