Zen Master Tan Gong Transmission Speech

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]

“El delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido,” said the Spanish poet Calderón de la Barca. A human being’s greatest crime is to have been born.

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]

At a monk’s burial service Zen Master Joju said, “There is just one dead man and so many people sending him off.” Then he added, “So many dead people sending off one living man.” To die is also a great crime.

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]

The two lanes of life and death—are they the same? Are they different?

Zen Master Joju said, “The person of the Way asks about life and death.” What is there to say about life and death?

No life, no death, what do you say?

KATZ!

Happy April’s Fools Day!

Life is like a floating cloud which appears.

Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.

These are two lines from “The Human Route,” a poem we first encounter when we start kong-an practice in the school. It is not clear who wrote it. One theory is that the fourteenth-century Korean Zen master Na Ong wrote the poem; another one is that his sister wrote it. Zen Master Tan Wol told me, “One clear thing is that the poem has been in the text of Buddhist funeral chants since a long time ago.” These two beautiful, poetic lines give us a glimpse of what we understand intellectually; however, we usually ignore their meaning, or act as if we are going to live forever.

In early November 2014, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, AML, one of the two major types of leukemia. When you get that diagnosis things happen fast—very fast—they want to admit you right there and then. I managed to convince the doctor to let me go back home for one night to notify family, some friends, some teachers in the school, and get “collectivated,” as Tigger would say. That night was a night of great sadness, because I knew the odds were not good, that the process was going to take a long time and, I felt, I was letting Brenda and Oriana down.

“The Human Route” continues:

The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.

Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.

Yes, originally “no cloud”—but the sense of I, of me, is so strong. “Why me?” Yeah, why me? I eat healthy; I’m vegetarian; I meditate; I, I, I. Zen Master Wu Kwang said that “when you really face the fact that there is nowhere to go and no choice, then you enter your situation completely.” To stay alive, I had no choice but to be compliant and follow the situation completely, moment by moment by moment. But “most of the time we have no awareness of the tissue-thin nature of each moment,” as my Zen-Master-brother Barry wrote to me in an email. That tissue-thin nature points to the immediacy of the infinite here-and-now, of seeing things as they come to be, of paying attention versus being in control, of getting the sense of self out of the way—no I-my-me; just do it.

Life has coincidences. Zen Master Dae Jin also had leukemia, the same kind that I had, even to the subtype; he got it a year before I did. We would talk and compare notes, and he would tell me not to get the transplant, because he was having a hard time after he got his. Within a year, he passed away, and the other side of “why me?” appeared. I’m still alive—why me? More recently, Oleg Šuk JDPSN also passed away after a long battle with leukemia. I’m not sure what type he had but, again: why me?

I was raised Catholic, and my primary and secondary school years were with the Jesuits. Now the Jesuits, or Compañía de Jesús, were founded by San Ignacio de Loyola, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who was in trouble with the Spanish Inquisition for being one of the alumbrados, one of the enlightened ones. In Buddhist circles enlightenment is a desirable quality, but back in sixteenth-century Spain, enlightenment was truly a matter of life and death.

My dear Father Hunt once said, “All I’ve ever wanted to do was to see God, and Zen has provided the best way for me to do it.” And before you get any ideas, Zen ideas, he also says that “G-O-D is a three-letter word.” I’m not going to claim something like that, but Zen and the teachings in the school have provided context, and perhaps alternative interpretations, for some teachings of the Christian mystics. The alumbrados, like Santa Teresa de Jesús or San Juán de la Cruz, spoke of recogimineto and dejamiento. Recogimiento has a meaning of recollect in the sense of going inside oneself, becoming still. Dejamiento has the meaning of self-abandonment, of letting go, in the spirit of Zen Master Seung Sahn’s “don't hold on to your feelings”; “don't make anything”; “don't be attached to anything”; and “put it all down.”

We have direct and simple teachings in our school, teachings like “don’t-know mind,” “together action,” “just do it.” These teachings are so simple that even after many years of practice we don’t believe them, and perhaps that is why the teachers have to repeat themselves over and over again. But we also have questions: “When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? What are you?” When I started practicing, my guiding teacher, Zen Master Dae Kwang (Do An Sunim at that time), asked me, “Why do you eat every day?” And this is a question that I still carry with me—gracias, Zen Master Dae Kwang. You can give some obvious, intellectual answers, be satisfied, and perhaps drop the question altogether. But if you stick with the question, after a while it makes your thinking stop, it gives you direction. And, for me, that has always been the greatest treasure in this school, the direction of our practice, of our actions, the “one more step is necessary,” the “correct situation, correct relationship, correct function.” About twenty years ago, a question in a box of Cheerios gave more insight into “why do you eat every day?” Who are you eating them for?

Why? And for whom?

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]

“Why me?” appears, and the whole universe is pushed away.

But there is one thing which always remains clear.

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]

“Why me?” appears, and life and death appear.

It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]

No “me.” Just do it! The one pure and clear thing appears.

Then what is the one pure and clear thing?

 KATZ!

A twofer today! Two Zen Masters for the price of one! I hear there is cake too.