Impermanence

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Case 3: Juzhi’s one finger teaching — part 1

In the ’90s, I was greatly affected by the film, The Piano. At first I was disturbed, what with a suicide attempt by drowning, forced marriage, mutilation, and uncomfortable relationships. My roommate’s friend loved the movie and played the soundtrack, also disturbing, on repeat. My roommate and I shook our heads with derision. (As an aside, we were very mean to her friend. If I knew, 30 years later, how to find her I would apologize. I was under my roommate’s spell. As it turns out my roommate was the crazy one. All the same, I participated and share the blame.) Later, I felt myself drawn to watch The Piano again and again. Then I, also, began to play the movie soundtrack on repeat! There was something to it — deeper than the love affair of the main character, Ada, deeper than the escape from an abusive husband, or than Ada’s erotic connection with her piano. The “melancholy beauty” of the New Zealand seascapes, and the sepia and blue-toned cinematography create such an ache in the viewer for — one knows not what. I figured out that the near drowning was like an awakening or rebirth for Ada as she escaped the hardship of an unwelcoming farmstead and an arranged marriage to make a new life with her lover. While the film is recognized for its groundbreaking female narrative by a female director (it was the ‘90s) I can see now how parts of the film resonated with my young withdrawn self that ached with unidentified spiritual longing and curiosity. The film got at something unknowable to know.

I’m remembering this film now as I explore a Zen koan in which a young boy loses his finger. Ada’s finger was — in a dramatic scene that is hard to erase from memory — chopped off with an axe by her enraged husband. Zen koans, much like Old Testament stories, sometimes have a little violence. Read the full koan about master Juzhi’s one finger teaching here, but to sum up, a young monk is in the habit of imitating his master, whose main teaching was to simply hold up a finger. When Juzhi hears of this, he asks the boy to demonstrate. When the boy raises his finger, Juzhi then cuts it off. Incidentally, I recently watched the series Boy Swallows Universe (which is based on a book by the same name) in which another boy loses a finger. It’s a difficult, compelling, and heartwarming story set in Australia. I recommend it.

Back to case 3… Guo Gu is a teacher, translator of koans from Japanese, and author of Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life. He relates this version of the koan:

Among the variations to the story, the more interesting one is not the one recorded here in the case but one that goes like this: Juzhi comes back and says, “Oh, we had some guests today?”

“Yes, Master.”

“So, what did they ask?”

The boy answered, “They asked for the meaning of buddhadharma, and they asked for your style of teaching.”

“How did you respond?”

The boy held up his finger. It was at that time that the master took out his knife and sliced it off. The boy was in such excruciating pain that he ran out of the room. He had been with the master for a long time; he was used to holding up his finger just like his teacher. So on his way out, Juzhi asked the boy, “What is the meaning of buddhadharma? Speak! Quickly!” The boy tried to hold up his finger. Except that his finger was gone. It was at that moment, when the boy saw that his finger was missing, that he became enlightened.

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This isn’t just a tale about the arrogance or naivete of the boy pretending that he understood the teaching. This koan has many interpretations such as: impermanence, one of the main Buddhist teachings. Impermanence is one of the “three characteristics of existence.” The other two are unsatisfactoriness and not-self. These three characteristics are related: the constant narrative running through our minds that we take to be me, mine, and I, finds reality to be unsatisfactory when we are at odds with the fact that things change. We grow up, get sick, grow old, lose friends, family, possessions, positions, time, and then die. Struggling against the truth of change is painful and also ridiculous (see M.O.’s poem at the end) when you really think about it. Change is in every moment. You are changing at a cellular and molecular level with every breath, to say the least. The universe is always moving in one way or another and who are we but seemingly distinct shapes of that universal movement.

The finger is here and then it is not. At the end of the koan, the teacher holds up his finger once more, acknowledges that it has been a good teaching, and then dies. He is here and then he is not. I think that is the most accessible lesson in this koan: the inevitability of change. But I love the version that Guo Gu shares in which the teacher demands an answer from the boy, “Speak! Quickly!” And then comes the shock of realization: where what you thought was real and whole and yours (a finger for example) is not there after all. This is the truth of not-self. Constant chatter in the mind creates the past and the future for a present sense of self that is not really here. Studies have found that the brain is constantly doing this even when we feel like we are “relaxing.” Researchers couldn’t understand at first why the brain continued to use so much energy when it was supposed to be unoccupied. This is one main reason meditation is so helpful: it interrupts a self-making default network in the brain that is always active and is based on fear and desire. Meditation gradually interrupts it enough that it loses its default status. This here and now — you and I — is shapeshifting in relation to everything else happening in a given moment. Understanding this is actually a (gateless) gate to freedom because there is no need to worry or control. But we can be careful with how we resonate in the relational space of constant change and shapeshifting because understanding, kindness, and gratitude go a long way toward peaceful hearts and a peaceful world. 

More on peace next time. Meanwhile I hope you enjoy this humorous and insightful poem by Mary Oliver. Such wit in her satirical worry over the earth turning and the rivers running! We do put that kind of weight on our shoulders from time to time — about our families, the wars overseas, climate change. Some of us do so chronically. When the only thing we have some control over is our own heart-mind, and how it responds to the world.

Worried
By Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

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