Cold Mountain

 

Zen Buddhism for anybody Vol. 1:

Halos by day; horns by night

There’s a long boring argument among scholars, over the enlightenment or non-enlightenment of some legendary Zen poets.

Their arguments cover a large, varied and curious field of nonsense, but most agree on accusing the work of poets like Cold Mountain, Ikkyu and Ryokan of quite regularly expressing feelings of sadness and desire, which, according to these funny scholars, are not compatible with the Buddhist ideal of detachment.

That is: “They wrote poetry about feeling sad, or hungry, or lonely... Enlightenment is supposed to transcend these feelings; thus, they were not enlightened!”

One might immediately notice here how these poor dummies are beating their heads against the very same barrier that blocked our friend Ming in the previous koan. They are wrongly interpreting Buddhism as an escapist idealization of some “fantastical rainbow world” with no blockages, no sadness, no desires... This is the kind of mistake which could get a fool reborn as a fox five hundred times...

Attached to the fantasy that “it would be far better never to get yourself dragged by the net to begin with”, we block ourselves from understanding the freedom of the golden scaled koi fish as it jumps out of the net.

Of course that Ryokan and Cold Mountain and Shakyamuni and Bodhidharma and me and you – each and every person was and is exposed to the countless nets in the sea. We’re all affected by pain and hunger; by frustration and misfortune...

You can’t “meditate yourself” to some inhuman world that is absolutely free from difficulties and from suffering.

It should be stressed that Zen’s ideal (or, at least, Zen’s ideal as described by some of its most renowned masters) rejects none of our natural human conditions. It actually employs, in this non-rejection, the same stubbornness that it dedicates towards its non-attachment to them.

In a good mood,

The enlightened person becomes a Buddha;

In a bad mood;

Fur and horns grow on the body.

“Detachment” does not mean “rejection”.

Should we really reject part of what we are, so that we maybe correspond to some imaginary ideal; or should we just be exactly who we are?

To hope for a river where no nets are falling from the sky, or to develop the art of jumping out of the net? One of them is the essence of Zen; the other one is a prejudice from people who know nothing about the essence of Zen.

In a nutshell, the idea of Buddhist detachment and enlightenment as “beds of roses”, different from our daily experience – different from the natural world, and independent from it – corresponds to the “kitsch” interpretation of Zen Buddhism.

The kitsch is like covering the ears and screaming LA LA LA at the same time, trying to block the problems of the world by isolating oneself in a cozy and frail fantasy-bubble where feces don’t exist.

Zen Buddhism, in the opposite direction, is a school notoriously known for its contempt towards fussiness and sanctimony; a school from which some of the most prominent masters were making poetry about feces.

An old Chinese saying preached:

"Never fix your sandals when crossing a field of melons, and never straighten your hat when you’re under a peach tree. People will think that you are stealing fruit."

Well, it was precisely a Zen Buddhist monk who replied to this saying with a poem, like this:

Brothels and bars!

No tree and no fruit

Should ever prevent a Buddhist

From straightening their hat!