The Undying Lamp of Zen Read online

  “An indispensible aid to the practice of Rinzai Zen and an accessible entree to the Zen experience in general. Torei is a compelling guide; his tone is energetic, no nonsense, and full of personality.”

  —Sweeping Zen blog

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  The Undying Lamp of Zen is a pure and powerful distillation of Zen doctrine and practice written by Torei Enji (1721–1792), a Zen master and artist. Torei was best known as one of two “genius assistants” to Hakuin Ekaku, a towering figure in Zen Buddhism who revitalized the Rinzai school, which focuses on koan practice. Torei was responsible for much of the advanced work of Hakuin’s later disciples and also helped systemize Hakuin’s Zen teachings. The Undying Lamp of Zen includes a range of principles and practices, from the most elementary to the most advanced. It is an indispensable aid to the practice of Rinzai Zen, while also providing tested traditional techniques for public access to Zen experience.

  Premier translator Thomas Cleary provides a thorough introduction and illuminating footnotes throughout, and his masterful translation lets Torei’s distinctive voice shine through; Torei is energetic, no-nonsense, and full of personality. No other English translations of this classic are available and Zen aficionados will want to add this to their collection.

  THOMAS CLEARY holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley Law. He is widely known for his translations of seminal classics in Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, military science, and martial arts.

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  THE UNDYING LAMP OF ZEN

  The Testament of Zen Master Torei

  TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY

  THOMAS CLEARY

  SHAMBHALA

  Boston & London

  2011

  SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  Horticultural Hall

  300 Massachusetts Avenue

  Boston, Massachusetts 02115

  www.shambhala.com

  © 2010 by Thomas Cleary

  Cover art: Calligraphy by Torei, courtesy of the Gitter-Yelen Collection.

  Cover design: Deborah Hodgdon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Torei, 1721–1792.

  [Shumon mujintoron. English]

  The undying lamp of Zen: the testament of Zen master Torei/translated and edited by Thomas Cleary.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN 978-0-8348-2313-6

  ISBN 978-1-59030-792-2

  1. Zen Buddhism—Doctrines—Early works to 1800. 2. Rinzai (Sect)—Doctrines—Early works to 1800. I. Cleary, Thomas F., 1949– II. Title.

  BQ9268.T67313 2010

  294.3′927—dc22

  2010008666

  CONTENTS

  Translator’s Introduction

  PREFACE

  1. THE SOURCE OF ZEN

  2. FAITH AND PRACTICE

  3. VISIONARY STATES

  4. TRUE REALIZATION

  5. PASSING THROUGH BARRIERS

  6. PROGRESSIVE TRANSCENDENCE

  7. WORKING APPLICATION

  8. LEARNING FROM A TEACHER

  9. MATURATION

  10. CIRCULATION

  Appendix: On Practice

  References

  E-mail Sign-Up

  TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

  The Undying Lamp of Zen is a testament of one of the most eminent Zen masters of premodern Japan, Torei Enji (1721–92), written in anticipation of his imminent death. Because of the circumstances of its composition, it is an exceptionally explicit statement of Zen Buddhist doctrine and practice.

  Torei became a monk at an early age and studied Zen under the guidance of several teachers, including Kogetsu (1667–1751), a distinguished master of the Rinzai sect of Zen. Torei first met Kogetsu when he was only five years old, but the personality of this master already inspired his interest in Zen even at this early age. Ordained at the age of nine, Torei went traveling for study when he was eighteen. After some experience of Zen, on the advice of Kogetsu he called on the redoubtable Hakuin (1685–1768), a towering figure who revitalized Rinzai Zen, particularly the study of the Zen koan.

  Hakuin had many enlightened disciples, but Torei is traditionally accorded special status as one of two shinsoku or “genius assistants” of Hakuin. Torei was responsible for much of the advanced work of Hakuin’s later disciples and also contributed considerably to the systematization of Hakuin’s Zen teaching.

  After his Zen enlightenment was tested and acknowledged by the notoriously rigorous Hakuin, Torei’s physical health broke down repeatedly, ultimately to a point where he was pronounced incurable by physicians. As he himself explains in his own preface, this was when and why he wrote The Undying Lamp of Zen.1 At the time he was barely thirty years old.

  The Undying Lamp of Zen affords a rare glimpse into the school of Hakuin as it was in the master’s own time, conveying the intensity and fervor of revival as well as the practical precision of technical expertise. Insisting on the experience of enlightenment, and then even more on progressive practice after enlightenment, Torei provides accessible methods for both parts of the process.

  Teaching Zen according to Ekayana “One Vehicle” Buddhist principles, and in answer to the needs of his own time, Torei shows how to reunify the diverse Buddhist schools experientially while retaining the advantages of their specializations. Torei also reconciles Buddhism with the other religions and philosophies of his culture—another Ekayana practice—in this case Shinto, Confucianism, and Taoism.

  As it was intended to be a final testament, The Undying Lamp of Zen represents a range of principles and practices rarely found assembled in one place, from the most elementary to the most advanced. It is an indispensable aid to the practice of Rinzai Zen, while also providing tested traditional techniques for public access to Zen experience.

  In a further sense, this treatise is a testimony to the power of vowing, an essential ingredient of Torei’s teaching and practice, by which he recovered and unleashed the massive willpower and expansive energy that would heal him and propel him for another forty years of dedication, to be diffused throughout the school even after his death.

  The founding of the Japanese Zen lineage to which Hakuin and Torei refer their spiritual heritage is traced back to Daio (1235–1308), who learned his Zen in Song-dynasty China. Hakuin’s branch of this lineage became obscure in the sixteenth century, with nothing being known of a number of the masters save their names. This changed with the emergence of Master Gudo (1577–1661) as the teacher of the emperor. Very little is known of Gudo’s work, but he acknowledged numerous spiritual successors. One among them, a barely literate layman, left home in his fifties after having practiced Zen under Gudo’s tutelage for thirty years. This was Munan (1603–76), who would become the spiritual grandfather of Hakuin and the ancestor of modern Rinzai Zen.

  Munan left a relatively rich record in simple vernacular, providing explicit instructions in the essential processes of Zen. The pivotal issues that preoccupied Hakuin and Torei in their efforts to revitalize Zen can already be seen in the work of Munan. He was a layman for most of his life, and when he left home and became a monk, even though he was a recognized successor of a national teacher (a title for teachers of emperors), he
had nothing to do with monastic careerism but lived a life of simple austerity, sustained by richness of spirituality.

  Munan’s teachings place great emphasis on the realization of satori, or Zen enlightenment. This is a common characteristic of Rinzai Zen, but the emphasis becomes particularly marked under certain historical conditions, and also particular psychological conditions, even to the point where satori may be taken to be an end, rather than a means. In response to this trend, Munan also stressed the pitfalls in overestimating satori, and the consequent importance of maturation and development in the aftermath of the awakening experience. This concerted attention to the special requirements of each phase of Zen practice was to continue in Munan’s lineage, becoming particularly prominent in the work of Hakuin, and even more so in the teaching of Torei. According to Munan:

  Satori is the eye of Buddha, the marrow of Buddha, direct enlightenment and great comfort; everything seems fine. But as wonderful as it is, satori is a great enemy of Buddha; do not doubt. When detached from all things by satori, if there is any knowing subject at all, in a state where one is unconstrained by anything, one will act willfully, even killing parents and rulers. Thus the enemy of Buddha is satori.

  The Chinese Zen Master Baizhang cautioned, “If one should say, ‘I am capable of explaining, I am able to understand—I am the teacher, you are the disciple,’ this is the same as demonic suggestion.” Munan said, “Even if your perception of nothingness is certain, personal faults emerge, like clouds blocking the sun and moon. One must purge oneself of faults day and night.”

  Therefore, the mystical and moral dimensions of experience were tightly woven together in this line of Zen. Again the master Munan sums this up in a characteristically pragmatic manner, foreshadowing the persistent emphasis found in the later works of his spiritual descendants Hakuin and Torei:

  Although our school considers satori in particular to be fundamental, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re finished once you’ve realized satori. It is imperative to cultivate conduct according to the teaching to complete the path. “According to the teaching” means knowing your basic mind as it really is. “Cultivating conduct” means using accurate insight and knowledge to eliminate obstacles of ingrained habit. This is why it is considered comparatively easy to awaken to the Way, while practicing it in action is most difficult. Therefore Bodhidharma, the great teacher, said, “Those who know the Way are many; those who practice the Way are few.” Just kill your body with a diamond sword; when this body perishes, you will not fail to attain great liberation and great freedom.

  The analogy of satori to a diamond sword highlights the role of enlightenment as a means of human liberation and development rather than the end thereof, while at the same time underscoring the importance of a means that is really effective, thus leading back to refinement of satori. This mutual reinforcement of satori and character development is concisely illustrated in one of the recorded conversations of Munan, wherein someone asked him about the deterioration of Buddhism. He said,

  It’s quite difficult to express in words. To call yourself a renunciant because you shave your head disgraces the very name. This is a serious matter. Even if you leave your ordinary home and live under a tree or on a rock with a couple of changes of clothing and one bowl, it would be hard to say you’re a real renunciant.

  What a real renunciant seeks is this: Our bodies have eighty-four thousand ills, the chief among them being sexual desire, desire for gain, birth and death, jealousy and envy, and reputation and advantage. Normally these are hard to control. Using satori day and night to destroy the body’s ills one by one, we should become pure.

  “Satori” means the basic mind. Accurately recognizing the right and wrong and good and bad of things, getting rid of what’s wrong while preserving and safeguarding what’s right, regularly sitting to meditate to help realization of reality, if we strive to get rid of evil and continue this effort over the years, our minds will become peaceful.

  Munan’s designated successor Dokyo Etan (1642–1721) is a relatively obscure figure who is mostly known from the stories of Hakuin. When he was an adolescent, a Zen elder visiting his father’s establishment was asked by attendant samurai to write out the name of the bodhisattva of compassion as talismans for them. When the youth also asked for one, the Zen elder refused, telling him he had the bodhisattva within him and shouldn’t seek outside. The boy became absorbed in wondering about this bodhisattva within, even to the point of distraction.

  This went on for several years, until he became so absorbed in this introspection that he forgot himself while climbing a ladder one day, fell off, and was knocked unconscious on hitting the ground. He then experienced satori the moment he regained consciousness. For another three years he sought out Buddhist teachers to gain perspective on his experience. Then he met Zen Master Munan when he traveled to the capital with his father at the age of nineteen. After a severe apprenticeship with Munan and acknowledgment as his spiritual successor, Etan took on no monastic office but remained a recluse all his life.

  In Hakuin’s lineage, Etan is referred to as Shoju Rojin, the Old Man of True Perception, after the name of his hermitage. In Buddhist Sino-Japanese, shoju is really a technical term, a translation of the Sanskrit samadhi, concentration or absorption. Although his interactions with Hakuin are typically represented as mediated by clusters of Zen koans, Shoju’s essential practice is referred to as continuity of right mindfulness, and his epithet evokes his lifelong devotion to perfecting this practice. According to a commemorative poem attributed to him, nonetheless, it was not until he was more than fifty years old that he finally attained unbroken continuity. This element of long-term effort in Shoju’s story plays an important role in the school of Hakuin, as noted by Torei, to emphasize cultivation and maturation after enlightenment. Hakuin himself illustrates this point emphatically in a letter to a Zen elder:

  There’s nothing without a beginning, but those who can achieve an end are rare. People in Zen schools start out with admirable will and respectable conduct, but when they come to have a roof over their heads and cold and warmth are up to them, fame and profit are sweet as sugar while focus on Zen is bitter as yellow plum. Growing slacker and more negligent with the passing days and months, they wind up becoming a bunch of maggots. Facing old age will be a bellyful of sadness.

  Looking for those who are capable of starting and who also complete the end, you can count them on your fingers. I happen to be one of them. Abbacy is indeed something to be careful about and wary of. Recently I have heard you retired. That’s delightful, but regrettable, because Zen is not something that you stop when you have understood and discard when you have realized. The more you understand, the more you study. The more you realize, the more you take up. This is called the unfinished case.

  Don’t let the frequency and complication of worldly duties stymie you; don’t prefer to sit as if dead in a peaceful, quiet place. Whether walking, sitting, standing, or lying down, earnestly keep it carefully—where do you lose it, where do you not lose it? This is a predecessor’s way of focus on Zen.

  Now you are letting a defeated general expound military matters. It seems somewhat shameful. Nevertheless, the overturned car ahead may be a safeguard for the cars behind.

  In Torei’s conception of devotion to perpetual practice, emerging from his own experiences and vigorously reinforced by the teaching heritage of Munan, Shoju, and Hakuin, time is not only quantitative and referential, but particularly qualitative and experiential. Persistence thus becomes meaningful only in the context of procedural efficiency. Torei explains this principle of timing in Zen practice with the analogy of the four seasons in an interesting letter to a layman who has already realized satori:

  Overall, in practice timing is of prime importance. If you don’t know the timing, you waste effort and diminish your own spiritual strength.

  It is like plowing in spring, weeding in summer, harvesting in autumn, and conserving in winter. Your spring
plowing work is done, and your seedlings of seeing nature have grown healthy. From now the summer season is most important, just transplanting to the fields of totality, and weeding. Everything else should be deferred to autumn and winter.

  The “fields of totality” means transferring that solidly empowered great meditation concentration into the midst of both pleasant and unpleasant situations, activity and quietude, sorrow and joy. “Weeding” means seeing through good thoughts and bad thoughts, confusion and clarity, whenever they occur, perfecting the great potential beyond things, becoming like a fine sword.

  Other than this, the ancient examples, official decisions [koan], and so on, should by all means be put off for now. One of the ancients was even made to sleep for three days and three nights because when the joy of empowerment is extreme, it then damages your faculties for the Way. There was also a famous teacher who wrote the words retreat of silence with instructions to keep to them for three years. The ancient worthies of the Soto sect of Zen would have students cultivate absorption in the relative and absolute for three years after seeing nature. Absorption in the relative and absolute is what I call summer practice.