REGISTER

Summer is more than halfway done. Already I am starting to grieve. Every year I look forward to the blueberries in May, and then it is a joy to greet ripe blackberries towards the end of June. Now, the blackberries are finished and the blueberries are only a memory. Now we are picking tomatoes and cantaloupes. Our summer garden is soon done. When I look at the trees, they seem tired, the pawpaw already dropping its leaves. Now just half way through, Genevieve said to me last night, “It is beginning to feel like fall,” as the cooling wind blew our faces. 

Dongshan’s big question as he practiced under Nanquan was whether inanimate objects preach the dharma or not. Well, yes, rocks and sticks, and pawpaws and blueberries, too; tomatoes and cantaloupes and peppers, all preach, practice the dharma, and accompany us on the Way. So, the end of the summer practice period is in the air.

Summer is a time for practice. Just as Pacific Zen Institute gathered in retreat in June and Bluegrass Zen went on retreat in early July, the monks of Tang Dynasty gathered in monasteries all summer to practice the Way. That’s what we have been doing, all summer we bodhisattvas have practiced the Way of the Open Heart in person and in the online practice of the PZI Open Temple. Now, it’s in the wind, in the whitening leaves – the summer practice is winding down. 

This brings me to today’s koan, from the Blue Cliff Record, Case 8. It was at the end of a summer practice period that Cuiyang (Kingfisher-Cliff Mountain) engaged his dharma brothers, Baofu (Prosper-Nurture Mountain) Changqing and Yunmen (Cloud-Gate Mountain) in a conversation. Here is a mash up of the koan using David Hinton’s translation and others:

Instructing the assembled sangha at the end of summer session, Kingfisher-Cliff Mountain said: “I’ve been here all summer for you, my friends. I’ve talked and talked. Now, look closely at this Kingfisher-Cliff: Did my eyebrows fall out?”
“It takes an empty mind to be a thief,” observed Prosper-Nurture Mountain.
“Revealed,” quipped Reward-Perpetua Mountain.
“Barrier,” declared Cloud-Gate Mountain.

This is an interesting koan. First, about those eyebrows: there is a Chinese folk tale that says when someone distorts the dharma their eyebrows fall out, and as they communicate with wisdom and insight they grow. Is Cuiyan really concerned? And Cuiyan’s dharma brothers, what of them as they make their response? “Barrier!” called out Yunmen.

I think of the ways I check myself as I approach the end of something, a season, a relationship, the ways that I evaluate as good or bad, my behavior, actions, thoughts, feelings. Is this what Kingfisher-Cliff Mountain is up to? Here he is with his dharma siblings, all students of Xuefeng and all renowned Chan Masters. Is he checking himself, calling himself out as wrong? Or are the four of them having what we might call a good time? But mostly, I just can’t get over Kingfisher Cliff and those eye brows, him sticking his face out, asking everyone to look, “Now, look closely at this Kingfisher-Cliff: Did my eyebrows fall out?” Which face do they see? Do you remember this koan, also from the Blue Cliff, Zhaozhou’s Stone Bridge:

A monk said to Visitation-Land: “I’ve long heard talk about how Visitation-Land is a stone bridge. But now I’ve come, all I see is a little plank.”
“Well, if all you see is a little plank,” replied Land, “Of course you don’t see a stone bridge.”
“What is this stone bridge?” asked the monk.
“Mules cross-beyond over it. Horses cross-beyond over it.”

Let’s get together on Thursday and have a conversation about Kingfisher-Cliff Mountain and his eyebrows at the end of the summer practice period.

—David Parks