The Hua-t’ou (話頭） and Zen Meditation

Well even the Zennist can be read with profitability once in a while.  Today, the Zennist points to a paper on the 'net by Stuart Lachs, who unlike the Zennist, or perhaps the author you're reading at the moment, is a pretty reliable source for what it is when it comes to the facticity of Zen, though my intent is to be at least as skillful at disseminating of the true core of Zen as Lachs.  I quote:

The Chinese term Hua-t’ou can be translated as “critical phrase.” Literally it means the “head of speech” or the “point beyond which speech exhausts itself.” In Korean, hua-t’ou are known as hwadu and in Japanese as wato. In this paper I will use the Chinese term hua-t’ou exclusively. A hua-t’ou is a short phrase (sometimes a part of a koan) that can be taken as a subject of meditation and introspection to focus the mind in a particular way, which is conducive to enlightenment...

A hua-t’ou however is a stand alone, always short phrase or a part of a koan that can be taken as a subject of meditation and introspection. Though teachers may give talks about working on a hua-t’ou, there are no standardized collections of huat’ou with poetic, often complex commentary as there are with koans that require explication and some knowledge of ancient Chinese metaphor.
 

Though not widely known in western Zen circles, hua-t’ou meditation is popular in Korean and Chinese Zen. Since the famous Korean monk Chinul (1158-1210)   discovered hua-t’ou meditation late in his life, it has been the favored form of practice for Korean Zen monks to the present day. In China the practice began before the 11th century. Hsu-Yun (1840-1959), the most famous Zen monk in the 19th and 20th centuries, practiced and taught hua-t’ou meditation as his favorite form of meditation
practice.

The hua-t’ou, though popularized a long time ago, is a good method for people today: it does not require a group or regular meetings with a teacher and besides being practiced in formal seated meditation, it can or really should be practiced throughout the day, even while at work. Hence, it allows for a full time Zen practice while living and working in the world.

Lacks goes on to note the difference between koan　(公案) practice, which leads to focus on the 話頭, and shikantaza (只管打坐) practice.

I'm not really certain that 話頭 practice is largely unknown in Western Zen circles - there are a bevy of Rinzai Zen temples here in the West nowadays, as well as Korean Zen temples (not to mention descendents of Hsu Yun and others.)  Too, anyone who reads D. T. Suzuki's works on Zen will come across the 話頭 sooner or later.

But I can't but agree with Lachs' later point: the 話頭 - a way of orienting the mind, putting it in a place where critical thought is held in abeyance,  is ideally suited for being carried throughout the day.  I think it's somewhat of a disservice that is done in focusing on the "sudden enlightenment" aspects of Rinzai Zen.  If the thought of "sudden enlightenment" arises in your head, you've lost the 話頭.  So yeah, I think the Soto folks sometimes mischaracterize Rinzai practice because they really don't understand it.

And sometimes, descendants of teachers trained in Rinzai Zen make this mistake: it is a fact that some teachers in the White Plum lineage have tried to dissuade students from practicing mu (無 ) throughout the day, but yeah, Lachs is right: doing this in the midst of activity is what teachers from Ta Hui down to Hakuin have recommended.

Over on Barbara's site today, there's an exposition of the religious aspects of Buddhist practice,  triggered from a discussion with Petteri and myself.  Me, I've been very lucky to come across the 話頭, and a teacher who "teaches" it, to help me get from point A to point B, no matter how close A is to B.  There are other ways, to be sure, but this way, done with attention, is well suited for my place in life. And yes, it even is done as a way of quieting the critical mind during the rituals of Zen itself.

Guess where I'm going? Plus: re: Brad Warner, like everyone else, like me, caveat emptor

It's not to Nevada, but rather the other country to which Paul Krugman makes an economic comparison here.  So I'm not likely to get much into this blog until Saturday.

There are many things I'd like to do in the week ahead, but there are many things I have to do. Hopefully those things that have to be done I will do, and those that I want to do, for which I have time, will be helpful.

For whatever reason - maybe because it's in response to an equally jumbled post from Brad Warner I'm adding the following to this post:

I wish I could have an in-depth response to Brad Warner's post here, as well as his post on depression here. However, to summarize, I was taken aback by both of them. In the first blog post about AA, if you've read the Stinkin' Thinkin blog, well, enough said, I hope. But in case it isn't enough, let me point out that Zen practice requires about as much faith, I'd say, as getting in the pool to swim when one is completely out of practice, or for that matter, taking up 書道 when one's writing has been decried as chicken scratch^*. Twelve step groups do not function that way.  Zen wasn't predicated or founded on quack science.  Zen Buddhist tradition and practice does not have what can in any way be called an undercurrent of narcissism. And the founder of AA's "root heritage" predecessor teacher wasn't any better. 

In the second case, I'm taken aback because Warner can't bring himself to say simple words here: if you are deeply troubled by depression, get help.  In fact, if you have a substance abuse issue get help.  Just like with anything else caveat emptor.

___________
* Note that one might be out of practice to the point where one has forgotten they can do basic swimming activity, as was my case.  Furthermore, those with bad writing have been said - I forgot where - to have more talent at  書道  than those who have very very neat penmanship.  That says something.    I think what it says is that one should not be nailed to the mast of one's preconceptions.  So do your own homework about everything, including what's written in this post.

On the other hand, why the heck not adopt Eastern things?

Via Reverend Fisher's blog I came across this piece in the Guardian announcing that you don't need the "right" kind of zafu to be a Buddhist.  That in turn lead to Fisher's interview with one Miles Neale on "McMindfulness."  The author of the Guardian piece writes:

Unlike many western Buddhists, I don't feel a strong connection with the East. I've never been to India or Tibet, don't get excited about Japanese tea ceremonies, and am usually filled with irritation and embarrassment when fellow westerners greet me by saying "Namaste" or in some other way acting as if they're from Bodhgaya rather than Brent Cross or Bangor. While deeply grateful to the lineages through which Buddhist practices are taking root in the west, my attraction to them is primarily their clear and direct transmission of insights and instructions that speak to me practically, ethically and spiritually. The fact that they came from Asia seems unimportant.

So reading Dzogchen Ponlop's new book Rebel Buddha gave me heart. Ponlop is a well-respected Tibetan teacher, steeped in the cultural heritage of his tradition, and yet his central premise is that western Buddhists risk making fools of themselves if their practice is based on attachment to foreign rituals that were adopted wholesale by spiritual seekers in the 60s. "If the Buddha's teaching is to remain relevant," says Ponlop, "we can't hold on to our hippie-era presentation of it... it is senseless to hang on to the forms of a traditional, Asian Buddhist culture and pretend we can fully inhabit that experience in a meaningful way."

Ponlop notes wryly that he has encountered students who think they can't meditate properly unless they're sitting on precisely the "right" kind of zafu – they moan if asked to go out into the fresh air and practise sitting on a park bench, as if that experience wasn't enlightened enough. If the cause of suffering is fixation, as the second noble truth declares, then that must apply to fixation on Buddhism as much as anything else. It seems the human psyche, with its habitual patterns of grasping, avoidance and delusion, is highly skilled at turning gold into manure...

Ponlop isn't saying that the traditions themselves should be jettisoned, or that westerners can just go ahead and create their own version of Buddhism according to what suits – the danger there is the creation of a hollow shell that reflects spiritual immaturity rather than real understanding (see the recent discussion here on Hinduism and yoga, and the trend towards what Miles Neale has smartly called McMindfulness. Instead Ponlop is pointing us to the use of the meditative method as a way to forge a fresh embodiment of genuine wisdom for our culture and age.

Neale says:

Meditation is undergoing a similar surge of interest, albeit twenty years younger then the yoga boom. Everyone seems to want to learn and practice mindfulness. There are mindfulness workshops everywhere, mindfulness techniques for this condition and mindfulness for that condition, every other book is on mindfulness, and every third therapist wants to study mindfulness and use it with their patients. And like I’ve already said, that’s great—the more mindfulness the better—I stand by it and want to encourage it.

But I also see a kind of compartmentalized, secularized, watered-down version of mindfulness being offered, which I call “McMindfulness” in a forthcoming article of mine. Meditation for the masses, drive-through style, stripped of its essential ingredients, prepackaged and neatly stocked on the shelves of the commercial self-help supermarkets. From my perspective, McMindfulness lacks the integrity of the tradition and lineage from which it originates. My fear is that in wanting to procure meditation from Buddhism and the postures (asana) from yoga, we may be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

You see the Buddha didn’t just teach mindfulness, and Patanjali didn’t just teach postures. These great, enlightened sages taught the power tools within a psychological context, sandwiched neatly like the cream of an Oreo between ethics and wisdom. You can just have the cream—it’s lovely—but its more delicious as a cookie. People teaching and studying mindfulness these days typically focus exclusively on awareness training—you know, calming down, focusing on the breath, relating to thoughts and emotions with impartiality. This is incredible, and, as the research indicates, it does help to reduce symptoms and offer relief. But what happens when the high of the yoga class ends and the calm of the meditation session is over? You have to go back to the ordinary suffering of your life. Its like leaving your house a mess when you leave for a vacation—sitting on the beach for seven days is great, you feel rejuvenated, but you have to come home to the mess.

Neale is right in that there's more to Buddhism than meditation - much more, and the folks from the East taught that.   He's spot on that "McMindfulness" lacks the integrity of the tradition and lineage from which mindfulness originates.   On the other hand, it's not bad to point out that the tradition evolved as it passed from India to China by way of contact with Taoism.  But I say his point's right in another way: the integrity of the tradition and lineage through which this stuff passed suffers most in the watering down of skill required to put the ethics and other aspects of Buddhism into practice off the cushion.

Then there's the issue of, for want of a better term, globalization, which might, in this case, be the flip side of Orientalism.  There are folks like me that stand between (or among?) West(s) and Easts(s): my wife is Chinese;  many of my colleagues are from Asia; I'm conversant in Japanese (except to the Yakuza).  I train with Eastern and Western folk, both professionally and in the Zendo.  It was through a Japanese master calligrapher that fired my interest in the subject. (This was admittedly, long after exposure to the art at Mount Tremper, where someone asked that I suspend my judgments about whether I could do such things.)

In the course of my very short, very unskilled  practice of 書道 I learned many things can make something go wrong: the orientation of the paper, the layout of the tools for doing the writing, the amount of ink on the brush; in short, there's many variables that have to come together just so in order to have any kind of skilled work result.   If I was to dismiss this whole practice as "too Eastern" for a Long Island kid of Eastern European descent, there's mountains of things I could never begin to learn.

Practice is where you find it.  Maybe some of those folks who buy into "McMindfulness" will find the real deal, just as some of those kids who saw Bruce Lee movies were inspired to train with real martial arts masters.  If my son gets an inkling of the value of disciplined practice from a Jackie Chan movie, I won't complain.  Attachment is a two way street.

I do find it slightly ironic though that Shambhala Sun Space, of all places, is discussing "McMindfulness." If "McMindfulness" will come from anywhere, it might come from "mainstream" "Western Buddhist" media, which to this guy standing in the middle, looks a tad Orientalist to me.

Then again, I was like that once myself.  Japan was the place from where my father went on his business trips.  It was special in the 1960s. So people grow and evolve and change.

It's been a couple of very busy days... AND YES, IT WAS PRACTICE!

I have had an especially busy return to work after my vacation, with an even busier home life at the same time.  So I found it strangely comforting - and helpful - to read the criticism of Brad Warner by that guy Muho from Antaji.   While I don't want to really get into the spat of Warner versus Muho, I did make a comment on Warner's blog post to the effect that 切磋琢磨 (せっさたくま） - being polished by others -  is important.   It is sooo true. 

On the other hand,  I also generally agree with Nathan's response, which says we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that everything we do we can't label practice if we haven't been, you know, practicing.

However, I do have to disagree with both Nathan and Muho a bit. As for Muho, I think he's off the mark when he says:

If you live with a family or work with others, that is also practice, but if those that you live and work with do not share the perspective that the whole day is practice, it will be very difficult to uphold your practice during the 24 hours of the day.

And with Nathan's response:

However, the way Muho's statement seems off to me is in its assumptions about the external environment people live in, and how that might affect practice and insight. 

 The reason I disagree with both  of them has to do with the past few days I've had: absurd business and stress corresponding to various getting back to the routine. In such a time the only sane response is practice, mindfulness, compassion, graciousness and humility.   There simply has not been time for anything else.  And yes, others karma does inter-relate and affect my experience. I'm not dead.

Has my practice been perfect? Definitely it has been pitiful.  But there is no alternative but to keep trying.

It's a bit like the enso I did here (right below this post). Does it compare well with any great master's enso? No, it's garbage by comparision.  But it's a sincere effort on my part, and if you think it's trivial to do it, I invite you to try to do it.  To do the practice sometimes you have to do the practice where you find yourself, with the level of skill and ability you have at the time. 

 It also reflects the environment in which I created the enso; so it is with the other beings around us.  Muho might say, "Oh, it's difficult to work with people who are not consciously praticing," but to me that sounds almost patronizing; he's not living the life where one is stuck in THIS bag of skin.

I have more polishing to do. Others will polish me. They might not have the advantage of being declared Buddhists, but this is the life in which we are together.  It's time to get through the day.