Advance in emptiness

I’ll give one more example from judo. We have a sort of endurance test for advanced people who want to train. Sometimes, there are 50 or 60 of them, and they go round the floor on their faces, just hauling themselves along like this. It’s very, very tiring. The thing is to go to the limit of endurance. While people are going, “Oh, God,” they’re not really tired. If they’ve got the energy to go, “Oh” like that, they’ve got extra energy. But sometimes you see some quiet fellow. He’s going along and he suddenly turns pale. The teacher, they think, is an absolute brute – but, as a matter of fact, he watches very carefully. But you can’t, in such a case, say to this man, “Now you are at the limit. You take a rest,” because it’s a very, very delicate thing. If one man drops out, everybody drops out. It only hangs together because all 60 are managing to keep up.

What happens in those cases is the teacher experiences one of his irrational rages that judo teachers sometimes suffer from. He’ll suddenly pounce on this inoffensive chap, who’s very, very keen, always tries very hard. He picks him right up. The old boy has still got quite a bit of strength, flings him in the middle of the floor and begins to shout at him: “I’ve told you again and again.” When the body gets tired, the body is not symmetrical, ever. When the body gets very tired, you get a slight twist. The teacher said, “I keep telling you, you let your body get twisted.” Of course the chap gets twisted. “Of course you get tired. I tell you again and again.” The others are all keeping going and they’re all thinking, “I’m glad it’s not me.”

The chap himself, he’s very, very tired, and he knows he has tried his damnedest. Sometimes, he can even cry a little bit. The teacher dumps him back and then he says, “Alright, we’ll stop the exercise.” Now that chap is subjected to intolerable injustice and he’s having a terrible humiliation. He’s having a terrible reprimand, but he’s also having a rest.

Sometimes, perhaps, when I’ve been trying very hard at something, with a great sincerity, and the universe suddenly picks me up and slams me down, I’ve done nothing wrong at all, and gives me hell. I think sometimes from that example, “Is there something? Is there some purpose in this?” This can help me a lot, this concrete example we can find in our lives. In our training, we can find these examples which we can apply to our lives. In training, the life experiences appear sometimes in very concentrated form. Then we can apply them to our lives.

A teacher told his pupils, “In the emptiness, you can make a spiritual advance.” They forgot it, but one kept on at the teacher: “What is this emptiness you talk about?” The teacher said, “As you’re so keen, I’ll tell you, but you have to prepare yourself,” so he gives him an elaborate preparation for three weeks. Then he has to fast two days. He says, “Then come to the temple at dawn,” so he comes to the temple and the teacher is in these full robes, enormously impressive, with a big staff. He goes in, and he makes this bow and the teacher says, “I have something very important to tell you now,” and he crashes the staff three times on the ground.

After a bit, the pupil thinks, “What’s going on?” Then he realises it’s no good thinking like that, so he stays still. Then he begins to feel a sort of emptiness in himself, spreading out, a sort of peace. Afterwards, the teacher says, “Now, in your life, when you’ve suffered a great tragedy, when you’ve had a great disappointment, that’s the time. Your whole world has collapsed. Now there’s an emptiness. Don’t fill that emptiness with thoughts, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ Feel the emptiness and you’ll find a light in it.”

When a Zen teacher was dying, he said, “I’m going to declare the truth to you.” He was in the open air. They all listened and a bird sung very sweetly. He said, “That’s it. Don’t let anyone tell you different,” and he died. People think, “Supposing the bird hadn’t sung.” This is one of the riddles. There would have been an emptiness.

In one of the oldest collections of kōans in Japan, the Kamakura collection, these were the first kōans that were invented in Japan, and there’s the one about the flower. As the Rōshi explained, this sutra is called the ‘Sutra of Brahma’s Doubt ’, containing a story about the Buddha turning the flower, and the smile of the disciple, who was one of the grimmest of the disciples, namely, Mahākāśyapa – very grim. A man came to the teacher and asked about this, so the teacher said, “Well, it doesn’t need a lot of words. The Buddha held up the flower and Kāśyapa smiled. Buddha said, ‘Now, that’s the transmission of the spiritual eye.’” This inquirer said, “But this story is a forgery. It’s not in the official canon of scriptures at all, the ‘Sutra of Brahma’s Doubt’” and the Rōshi explained this to us the other day. He was a scholar. He said, “Look, I can’t take seriously something that’s forged by some Zen man in the Tang Dynasty, nothing to do with the Buddha at all, or Mahākāśyapa.” The teacher sets it to him as a kōan.

I only mention the story because the response, the living response, has to do with the original form of the doubt. The original form of his doubt was that this scripture was a forgery. When he solves the kōan, he has a realisation, and he expresses the realisation in the words: “Ah, the ‘Sutra of Brahma’s Doubt’ is in the canon.” He means it’s in the scripture.

They say, “When you speak, you should not try to become one with the audience but become one with the words,” so, when you hear yourself speak, that’s the time to stop. As I read that, I hear myself speak, so it’s time to stop. Thank you for your attention.

Titles in this series are:

Part 1: Collected Stories

Part 2: Egoism or Pride

Part 3: Christianity was put down in Japan

Part 4: Fifty-two stages of Buddhism

Part 5: You are caught in technique

Part 6: I have nothing

Part 7: Advance in emptiness