Affluenza
Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori Roshi
True Dharma Eye, Case 36
Deshan’s “Assembly on Vulture Peak”
Featured in Mountain Record 26.3, Spring 2008
The Main Case
Deshan Dehai was once asked by a monastic, “Who was able to hear Shakyamuni Buddha at the assembly on Vulture Peak?”
Deshan said, “The acarya heard it.”
The monastic said, “I wonder what was spoken at the assembly on Vulture Peak?”
Deshan said, “The acarya understands it.”
The Commentary
The meeting at Vulture Peak still resounds throughout the whole universe. Yet, this monastic is stumbling about trying to understand it. Deshan doesn’t hold back and reveals the family secret without hesitation. Still, the monastic is unable to see it. Do you see it?
If you wish to understand the truth of this dialogue then you must first see into the word “acarya.” Is this Kashyapa, Deshan, the monastic, or is it you? The treasury of the eye of truth is always given and received by one self. There has never been anything given to another; there has never been anything received from another. This is called the truth of the Buddhadharma. This being the case, how can the meeting on Vulture Peak be anywhere but here? But say, what is the family secret revealed by Deshan?
The Capping Verse
The spiritual potential of the thousand sages
is not easily attained.
Dragon daughters and sons, do not be irresolute—
ten thousand miles of pure wind,
only you can know it.
 John Daido Loori, Roshi |
The strength of the mind-to-mind transmission in the Zen tradition lies in the fact that it is not based on intellectual knowledge or institutional bureaucracy. It is a face-to-face, mind-to-mind acknowledgment of the realization of our inherent nature—an intimate communication between teacher and student.
The first occasion of that mind-to-mind transmission took place on Vulture Peak 2,500 years ago. Shakyamuni Buddha had already been teaching for a number of years and had a large following. It is said that among the assembly of thousands were Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin and attendant, and Mahakashyapa, who became his first disciple. The Buddha took his seat facing the crowd, but instead of offering a lecture, he remained silent. After a while he simply held up a flower, twirled it, and blinked his eyes. Of all those gathered there that day, only Mahakashyapa responded: he smiled. Seeing this, the Buddha exclaimed, “I have the all-pervading dharma, the incomparable nirvana, the exquisite teachings of formless form. It does not rely on letters and is transmitted outside the scriptures. I now hand it over to Mahakashyapa.” That was the first mind-to-mind transmission of the dharma. That is what has been handed down for countless generations to the present day. So what was it that the Buddha transmitted? What did Kashyapa realize?
It’s important to understand that the transmission of the dharma is not meant to create another belief system. Neither belief nor knowledge are strong enough to cut through delusion, to transform one’s life. The truth must be realized. It must be made real, because realization is transformative. And it’s that realization that takes place between the teacher and the student. The transmission is simply an acknowledgement of that fact.
Upon his own enlightenment, the Buddha said, “I and all sentient beings enter the Way.” He was confirming the fact that each one of us is already perfect and complete, lacking nothing. That being the case, how could there be a transmission from A to B, from teacher to student? That’s one of the paradoxes of Zen that plagued even Dogen. He spent years searching for the answer to the question, since we’re already enlightened, why do we have to do anything? Why do we have to practice? It’s a good question. I have a number of students who feel the same way. Standing in excrement up to their nostrils, they say, “I don’t have to do anything. I’m already enlightened. Just don’t make a wave.”
The great master Wumen, commenting on the transmission between the Buddha and Mahakashyapa, said:
The yellow-faced Gotama is certainly outrageous. He turns the noble into the lowly, sells dog flesh advertised as sheep’s head. At that time, if everyone in the assembly had smiled, to whom would the true dharma be handed? Or again, if Kashyapa had not smiled, would the true dharma have been transmitted? If you say that the true dharma can be transmitted, then the yellow-faced old man with the loud voice deceives simple villagers. If you say it cannot be transmitted, then why was Kashyapa alone approved?
This is both the dilemma and the historical context from which the koan we’re dealing with emerges. The monastic who approached Deshan was obviously aware of this story and he wanted to know, “Who was able to hear Shakyamuni Buddha at the assembly on Vulture Peak?” “Deshan said, ‘The acarya heard it.’” But who is the acarya? Indeed, that’s the question, the pivotal point of this koan. “The monastic said, ‘I wonder what was spoken at the assembly on Vulture Peak.’” I would say, it’s not so much what was spoken, but what was not spoken that matters. “Deshan said, ‘The acarya understands it.’” It’s all one reality. That’s what needs to be seen.
The commentary says, “The meeting at Vulture Peak still resounds throughout the whole universe. Yet, this monastic is stumbling about trying to understand it.” What is it that exists throughout the whole universe? “Deshan doesn’t hold back and reveals the family secret without hesitation. Still, the monastic is unable to see it.” Then we get into the heart of the koan. “If you wish to understand the truth of this dialogue, then you must first see into the word ‘acarya.’ Is this Kashyapa, Deshan, the monastic, or is it you?”
“Acarya” means senior—senior priest, senior practitioner. It’s interesting how various translators of this koan, in their attempt to make it understandable to Westerners, decide who the acarya is. Some of them translate it as, “I heard it”—identifying the acarya with Deshan. Some of them say, “Mahakasyapa heard it”—identifying him with Mahakasyapa. One of them says, “You heard it”—identifying him with the reader. First of all, they’re all wrong, and second, they’ve destroyed the koan. If Deshan wanted to be that specific, he could have said “Mahakasyapa” or he could have said “you.”
One of the beauties of the Chinese language is that the subject is never clear, and so it’s a wonderful vehicle for koans. But the moment we bring the dialogue into English, we lose something, because English is so specific, it nails things down. And if it doesn’t nail things down, then the translators make sure it gets nailed down. That’s what we like to do, nail things down. We like certainty. Of course, that destroys all the poetics—and the dharma—of the koan.
 photo by Laura Tulaite |
That acarya could be Mahakasyapa—he was the senior practitioner in the Buddha’s assembly. The acarya could be Deshan—Deshan very definitely could say, “I heard it.” The acarya could be the monastic. The real question is, what was it that was heard? What was it that Mahakasyapa saw? This very body and mind is the body and mind of the universe. That’s what he saw. Was his smile any different than your smile? Was Buddha’s blinking of the eyes any different than your blinking of the eyes? It’s the vagueness of this koan that keeps it rich.
“I wonder what was spoken at the assembly on Vulture Peak?” “The acarya understands it.” Deshan’s response reminds me of Soen Sa Nim’s teaching. When someone asks a question, he says, “You already know.” Of course we already know. We were born buddhas and we will die buddhas. Some may realize it, some may not. But the fact is that the buddha nature is already there. It’s there but it’s buried beneath years and years of conditioning. Buried beneath all kinds of complex programming that we’ve all gone through growing up—the conditioning of our society, parents, teachers.
Some years ago an article appeared in The New York Times that reported a new disease that has emerged in American society, an affliction. It causes mental and emotional deterioration in that it affects the will, commitment, and drive. It causes confusion between what we need and what we want. It weakens vitality, and results in lethargy and an overwhelming lack of spirit. It’s called “Affluenza.”
This is not a joke. Sociologists, child psychologists, and psychiatrists seem deeply concerned about it, thinking that it is a serious problem. Because although many adults are afflicted with the disease, its major victims are the children and teens of our affluent society. A growing number of children are so wealthy nowadays that they can have anything they want. They have nothing to strive for, nothing to challenge them. Nothing to give them spirit.
One of my students told me the story of his previous teacher, Nowak Roshi, who used to get up every morning and climb into the pigpen of his farm. Then, switch in hand, he would chase one of the pigs around, whacking it on the rump. The pig would oink and Nowak Roshi would huff and puff in the mud and slop. The chase would go on for about half an hour. One day, a student finally asked Nowak Roshi the purpose of the whole thing. The teacher just looked him right in the eye and said, “It gives her spirit.”
 photo by Matthew Hayward |
Well, think about it. This poor pig, without the least exertion of effort, gets everything she wants. She gets fed every day, she has mud to slop around in, she gets to mate periodically—she’s the furthest thing from a wild pig. Wild pigs are very smart, fast, muscular and courageous. They have spirit.
One morning, watching the business news I listened to an executive from Tinkerbell Cosmetics. I had never heard of it before. It’s a company that makes cosmetics for children ages five through eleven. I watched these five-year-old, six-year-old faces, putting on lipstick and eye shadow, having their hair coiffed, applying fingernail polish and toenail polish and then imitating the high fashion models while the executive gloated about her multi-billion dollar industry.
“Oh, the kids love it!” she said. The whole catastrophe was being laid on these children and the adults all delighted in it. And to top it all off, the executive pointed out that children between six and eleven years old have twenty billion dollars of their own to spend each year—plus an additional thirty billion via their parents.
Children that grow up in that kind of environment are not equipped for life. If anything goes wrong to tip the structure that supports them, they’re lost, to say nothing of the question of life and death. Forget about it! The future of Zen in the West, or the East for that matter, seems grim. Where are the practitioners going to come from? Zen may continue to be popular, but will it be real? Is it real right now in this country?
It’s impossible to address the questions “Who am I? What is truth? What is reality? What is life and what is death?” without commitment, without spirit, without great determination, great faith, and great doubt—in other words, hard work. Zen Buddhism is a teaching that turns us inside out, that enters our guts, that transforms from the inside out. It’s no small thing. It requires implicit permission and trust. But if the question is not alive, it doesn’t work. If there’s no trust, it doesn’t work. If there’s no determination, it doesn’t work.
You can’t come into a place like this monastery and say, “Do me. Enlighten me.” Only you can do it. There’s no teacher on the face of the earth, including the Buddha himself, who could do it for you. So if you’re not hopping and jumping, alive with vitality and spirit and ready to throw yourself into it whole body and mind, it simply does not happen.
Although “the treasury of the eye of the truth is always given and received by oneself,”—you give it to yourself and you receive it from yourself—still it requires practice, realization, and actualization. That’s what you find when you make your way through the layers of conditioning and arrive at the ground of being. Practice, realization, and actualization. And in order to get there, you need the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, in other words, the teacher, the teachings, and the community of practitioners.
“The treasury of the eye of truth is always given and received by oneself.” There has never been anything given to another; there has never been anything received from another. This is called the truth of the buddhadharma. This being the case, “How can the meeting on Vulture Peak be anywhere but here?”
“But say, what is the family secret revealed by Deshan?” That’s an important secondary point in this koan. If you see the first point, you should be able to understand the family secret. Some people call it the family shame. What is the family shame? Wumen said:
A flower is held up
and the secret has been revealed.
Kashyapa breaks into a smile
and the whole assembly is lost.
The Capping Verse:
The spiritual potential of the thousand sages
is not easily attained.
Dragon daughters and sons, do not be irresolute—
ten thousand miles of pure wind,
only you can know it.
Only you can know. No one can tell you about it. No one can give it to you. You can’t receive it from anyone. That’s why questions like, “If we’re already enlightened, why do we have to do anything?” come up. But keep in mind that our inherent perfection is buried. Although we begin in Buddhism with the premise that all beings are perfect and complete, lacking nothing—that is, we begin with original perfection—the fact is that it needs to be realized.
It’s hard to realize that throughout our lifetime we’ve been fed propaganda. The Tinkerbell corporation is a drop in the bucket. With communications and media the way they are, everybody’s in on the fun, destroying the minds of young children. Movies do it, advertising does it, parents do it, and the children’s peers do it. They do it through books, through magazines, through video games, on and on and on. And it’s getting worse instead of better. These kids will be our business executives twenty-five years from now. They’ll be teachers, doctors, airline pilots, surgeons, priests, and Zen students. It’s something to think about.
Dragon daughters and sons, do not be irresolute. That’s the key. People still transform their lives. People still realize themselves. The buddhadharma would not have come down this far if that weren’t the case. So it can be done. It’s not easily attained, just like the capping verse says: The spiritual potential of the thousand sages is not easily attained.
 photo by Dez Pain |
When you see that person—when you meet yourself—you’ve met the Buddha. You’ve met the flower on Vulture Peak. You’ve met Mahakashyapa, Deshan, the ten thousand sages. It’s nothing but this very body and mind, your body and mind. And yet to realize it is not enough: you need to actualize it. That means to manifest it in the way you live your life, the way you treat other people, the way you treat the environment, the way you take care of things. It takes resolution, commitment, and spirit. All we can do in a monastery is to create a form, point the way, and create the optimal conditions to realize oneself. What you do when you put yourself on your cushion is totally up to you. The pure wind of the buddhas and ancestors is a very personal matter. Only you can experience it.
True Dharma Eye: Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans, is a complete, modern English translation of Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koan or Chinese Shobogenzo. This important collection of koans, translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and John Daido Loori, is accompanied by John Daido Loori’s commentary, capping verse and footnotes (Shambhala Publications, 2005).
John Daido Loori, Roshi is the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery. A successor to Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, Roshi, Daido Roshi trained in rigorous koan Zen and in the subtle teachings of Master Dogen, and is a lineage holder in the Soto and Rinzai schools of Zen.
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