Hana Matsuri: Exploring Zen
Comments by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
April 3, 2005
Introduction:
Welcome to our Hana Matsuri service. Hana Matsuri means “Flower festival” in Japanese, and this is the celebration of the birth of the Buddha partly as it is done in Japan. The statue of the baby Buddha is one my father brought back from visiting that country, as are the wooden ladle and the tea. The arbor around the Buddha represents the garden into which he was born. We cover it with flowers like those that bloomed around him and his mother that beautiful spring day. It is said that sweet showers fell at his birth, so the tea represents the sweet showers and you can ladle it over the Buddha to bring blessings upon life on earth.
You may have noticed by now that you don’t have an order of service. We wanted you to feel unencumbered by paper, to just be here now, with us, present and aware. We’ll guide you as we go through the service. We have chosen some poems and a koan for your contemplation in the days to come, and placed the announcements on the back of that, so that will be available to pick up as you leave the service today. You may also ladle tea over the Buddha as you leave if you didn’t get to do so earlier.
Comments:
After all these years of celebrating seeds of Buddhism in Hana Matsuri services and my early years experiencing it as a young adult in my Aikido classes, and choosing a Zen center for my retreat years ago, I found in reading Osho this past week that I really have a Zen Buddhist outlook on life, in my own way, which is the point of Zen: that faith is. I wasn’t going to read you this koan when I picked it for your handout, but it’s so much in my mind that I’ll share it verbally with you and you will be taking it home to think about after the service. A koan is an anecdote or story written to bring you to an awareness you might otherwise not reach:
The Sixth Patriarch was once pursued by the monk Myo to Daiyurei. The Patriarch, seeing Myo coming, laid the robe and bowl on a stone, and said, “This robe symbolizes faith; how can it be fought for by force? I will leave it to you to take it.” Myo tried to take up the robe, but it was as immovable as a mountain. Myo was terrified and hesitated. He said, “I have come for Dharma, not for the robe. I beg you, please teach me, O lay brother!” The Sixth Patriarch said, “Think neither good nor evil. At such a moment, what is the True Self of Monk Myo?” At this, Myo was at once enlightened. His whole body was dripping with sweat. With tears he made a bow and asked, “Beside these secret words and meanings, is there any further significance or not?” The Patriarch said, “What I have just told you is not secret. If you will realize your True Self, what is secret is in you-yourself.” Myo said, “Although at Obai I followed other monks in training, I did not awaken to my True Self. Thanks to your instruction, which is to the point, I am like one who has drunk water and actually experienced himself whether it is cold or warm. You are really my teacher, lay brother!” The Patriarch said, “if you are so awakened, both you and I have Obai as our teacher. Live up to your attainment with care.”
(“The Gateless Gate: Koan #23, Think neither good nor evil,” from Zen: Images, Texts, and Teachings, by Levering)
Just as in every religion, there are teachings and there are corruptions. Zen is a way, a path of Buddhism, and some define it more strictly than others. Osho describes it in a very accessible way, and a very simple way. Osho was a Zen mystic who lived this past century and died in 1990, so he is contemporary. He says of all the teachings of Zen, only one anecdote should not disappear. Many of you have heard it:
Buddha was to give a talk one day, and thousands of disciples had come from miles around. When Buddha appeared he was holding a flower. Time passed, but Buddha said nothing, he just looked at the flower. The crowd grew restless, but Mahakashyap, who could restrain himself no longer, laughed. Buddha beckoned him over, handed him the flower, and said to the crowd, “all that can be given with words I have given to you; but with this flower, I give Mahakashyap the key to all the teachings.” (p. 18, Zen: Its History and Teachings, by Osho)
That story is worth pondering. I have pondered it for over twenty years since I first heard it. Buddhists have been pondering it, generationally-speaking, for thousands of years. What would you have done if I had come with just a flower for a service? I’ve considered it many times, but I am a minister, not a priest, and you expect words from me, among other things. Besides, I like words and that might be where I differ from some of the Buddhist teachings which say that words are only useful between the wise and the ignorant. We know the value of silence, but words are also vitally important. They are guides from one of us to another. They are companions. In many ways, we are our words.
Zen Buddhists teach that silence is the way we come to understand ourselves, our true nature. At the same time, stories and anecdotes are the method as well. There are no scriptures, just these stories and silence, and a great sense of humor, for the origin of Buddhism lies not only in Buddha’s enlightenment, but in the flower and in the person who laughed at him and at it and at the whole of existence. What other religion, which is not a religion, is founded on laughter?
The paradoxes of Zen are to keep us from making rules and giving away our power to others. We try to find great teachers and seek truth in religious teachings, and the irony of it is that the truth is inside us all along. All we need to be is to be. If we search for it, we can’t find it, but when we stop looking, there is it. We are it. We are the truth, living and breathing, and all there is.
I was taken by the analogy Osho used to describe the evolution of Zen from Indian Buddhism. He used the image of the seed, coming into being in India at the enlightenment of the Buddha. Centuries later, Bodhidharma brought the tradition to China where it was able to grow into a tree, balanced with the teachings there of Lao Tsu. Centuries later, Taoism and Buddhism melded into something new that was brought to Japan by Rinzai to eventually flower into Zen. Even though the name “Zen” comes from the Indian “Dhyana” meaning “stillness,” and evolved through its Chinese variant of “Ch’an,” Zen is more than and different from the Buddhism we still find practiced in India. There are different schools just like we have many Protestant sects in Christianity. Some are more open than others. Some are more welcoming to the human spirit.
Zen doesn’t exclude anything. It is about the fullness of life, not escaping life. It is about the absurdity of life and the paying attention to life. As Osho writes,
You have to know the source of life—the source from which you spring, just as roses spring. It is not a question of prayer, it is a question of intense exploration inside to find your roots. You will be surprised: your roots are the roots of the moon, of the sun, of the stars—of all existence.” (p. 69)
We will have some silence later, and some poems, some music. In meditating, remember what Osho says about it: “Meditation is simply a silent thread inside you.” (p. 80) Listen to the silence and be here now.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson