From Chapter 1: The Buddha Holds Up a Flower

THE GATELESS BARRIER, CASE 6

Once when the World-Honored One in ancient times was upon Vulture Peak [Mount Grdrakuta], he held up a flower before the assembly of monks. At this time all were silent. The Venerable Kashyapa alone broke into a smile. The World-Honored One said, "I have the All-Pervading Eye of the True Dharma, the Secret Heart of Incomparable Nirvana, the True Aspect of Formless Form. It does not rely on letters and is transmitted outside the scriptures. I now pass it on to Mahakashyapa."

COMMENTARY

Golden-faced Kudon impudently forced the good people into depravity. Advertising sheep's heads, he sells dog flesh, but with some genius. However, supposing that at that time all the monks had laughed. How would the "All-including eye of the True Dharma" have been handed on? Or if Kashyapa had not smiled, how would the True Dharma have been transmitted? If you say that the True Dharma can be handed on [anyway], the golden-faced old man with his loud voice deceived the simple villagers. If you say it can't be transmitted, why did Buddha say he had handed it on to Kashyapa?

VERSE

Holding up a flower,
The tail is revealed.
Kashyapa smiles,
The monks don't know what to do.

Kashyapa is Maha ("great") Kashyapa, one of the chief disciples of the Buddha. He was also one of the oldest of the Buddha's followers and was said to have been a distant cousin of the Buddha. After the Buddha's parinirvana, or entrance into nirvana at the time of death, it was he who was selected to lead the community of Buddhist practitioners, or sangha. Obviously he was a man of superlative wisdom and ability.

When we say "the Buddha," of course, we are talking about the historical person whose personal name was Siddhartha and whose family name was Gautama. He was also called Shakyamuni, which means "the silent sage of the Shakyas," the Shakyas being his family clan. Shakyamuni Buddha was born around the year 563 BCE in the foothills of what is present-day Nepal. His father was the ruler of a small principality, somewhat like Monaco today.

The Sanskrit word buddha is actually a title meaning "awakened." It comes from the root word buddh, meaning "absolute truth" or "ultimate mind." Perhaps in English it has some distant etymological relation to "bud," or to "flower" into Truth. One who has achieved this is a "budded one," a buddha. So, a buddha is one who has attained this absolute state, who has experienced, or has awakened to, Absolute Mind, or ultimate truth. He or she is a matured human being, one who has flowered into full potential. Often in Buddhism a lotus flower—which rises up out of the mud, climbs through the murky water toward the dim light above, and at last fully blossoms in the blazing sunlight—is a visual metaphor for this entire process of inner spiritual growth. A buddha is a flowered being, one whose mind has fully opened. Of course, there are infinite degrees of such opening. Someone who has had a first kensho has attained a brief glimpse into Truth. Full enlightenment and complete buddhahood still lie far ahead.

Most people are familiar with the broad outlines of the Buddha's life: he married at the age of sixteen and later had a son. Deeply troubled by the sorrows and the tribulations of human life, he could no longer endure the luxury and comfort of his father's palace. And so one night, at the age of twenty-nine, he left his wife and young child and became a wandering ascetic. For the next six years he practiced the most painful austerities possible, earnestly seeking enlightenment. When he was at the point of death he realized he could not come to awakening if he lost this human body. So he gave up the ascetic path and decided to steer a middle course between asceticism and self-indulgence, attaining the "middle way" of zazen. After doing ardent zazen all through the night under the bodhi tree, he had a great awakening when he happened to glance up at the planet Venus shining brightly in the dawn sky. What he said at that moment has been recorded in various sutras. In the Mahayana tradition's Avatamsakasutra it is recorded that he spontaneously exclaimed something like this—Wonder of wonders! All beings, whether male or female, tall or short, black or white, ugly or beautiful have this all-embracing bodhi-nature. All are buddhas! But because their minds are turned upside-down through delusive thinking, they fail to realize Self-nature, and therefore they suffer.

Later his son became one of his close disciples and his wife became a nun in the order that developed around him and his teachings after that historic spiritual event. After his great enlightenment, Siddhartha Gautama, the ex-prince who was now known as the Buddha, the Enlightened One, tirelessly taught the dharma—that is, the truth of the universe—always suiting his teaching to the capacity of his hearers' understanding. This has become a fundamental principle in Buddhism: the teaching must be suited to the capacity of the person to understand. For the next forty-five years until the age of eighty and his death, or entrance into parinirvana, he continued traveling the dusty roads of India, compassionately teaching whoever came before him, wherever he went.

So much for the two protagonists of this koan. Let us now return to the case itself. "Once when the World-Honored One in ancient times was upon Vulture Peak, he held up a flower before the assembly of monks." The "World-Honored One" is, of course, an appellation of the Buddha, and a beautiful one. Mount Grdrakuta was also known as Eagle or Vulture Peak, because its top resembled the head of a great bird. "He held up a flower before the assembly of monks." The literal accuracy of the incident that forms the ground of the koan is doubted by historians. Whether it ever happened or whether it happened exactly as recorded has nothing at all to do with the truth of Zen. The beginnings of all vital religions are shrouded in myth and legend. We must never make the mistake of thinking that a myth or a legend is a story that's untrue. Rather, it's a story so majestic, so all-encompassing, that it can't be kept within the small compass of fact. The truth of Zen does not depend upon whether this story is or is not literally, historically true. Since it so beautifully illustrates Zen principles, we accept it as being true in the profoundest sense.

The Buddha "held up a flower before the assembly of monks." When you stop to think of it, there's really nothing more expressive of the purity, innocence, and all-encompassing quality of our True Mind than a flower. A flower has an innate, inner vitality, a single-minded determination to face the sun, to grow, and finally to fully blossom, as well as to serve: bees are given pollen, animals eat the blossoms, humans find beauty. At the same time, it does not assert itself in any way. When the time comes to wither, flowers simply drop their petals, dry up, crumple, and are gone. The lotus flower, as has been mentioned, is itself an ancient Buddhist symbol of spiritual unfolding. The natural world and the truths of Mind reflect each other endlessly.