Both Bull and Self Transcended

(A continuation of the Zen story, "Ten Bulls.")


8. Both Bull and Self Transcended

Whip, rope, person, and bull -- all merge in No-Thing.
This heaven is so vast no message can stain it.
How may a snowflake exist in a raging fire?
Here are the footprints of the patriarchs.

Comment: Mediocrity is gone. Mind is clear of limitation. I seek no state of enlightenment. Neither do I remain where no enlightenment exists. Since I linger in neither condition, eyes cannot see me. If hundreds of birds strew my path with flowers, such praise would be meaningless.

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If yesterday's message was that two is one, today's message is that one is none. I love the drawing here - just a circle, no bull, no self.

I like to think of "emptiness" as the color black. We think of black metaphorically as the absence of all things, of nothingness. And yet, as any painter will tell you, black is actually the presence of all colors, of everything. It is both nothing and all things.

The lines in the comments that speak to me are these: Mind is clear of limitation. I seek no state of enlightenment. Neither do I remain where no enlightenment exists. I have been listening to a lecture series on Buddhism from The Teaching College, given by a professor from Boston College. In it, he quotes the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna: Everything is possible for one for whom Emptiness is possible.

If everything is delusion, the bull, the self, then there are no barriers left. There is no more attainment. I do not seek nirvana as an escape from samsara (the cycle of birth and death), because there is no difference between nirvana and samsara. They are one and the same.

The illustration for this phase is the enso, a Japanese circle which represents enlightenment, the universe, and the void. It is an artistic expression purely of this moment. I sit down with my calligraphy brush and draw a circle, the only circle that exists right now. It is not limited by anything, because it exists both completely within everything and absolutely beyond everything.

Here lies the paradox of Zen. The more you try to explain it, the more it becomes a riddle. But perhaps we need riddles in order to step outside of our differentiating mind, our overwhelming urge to categorize and solve and label.

This heaven is so vast no message can stain it.
How may a snowflake exist in a raging fire?
Here are the footprints of the patriarchs.

Ah, not messages, but dissolving snowflakes. No teachers, but only footprints of teachers. There is no here here. Wrap your mind around that!

(Sorry about the tardiness of the completion of this post. It was a 16 hour day at work yesterday, and although the spirit was willing, the body was weak...)
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The text and drawings are excerpted from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings. The story is by Kakuan, transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps, and illustrated by Tomikichiro Tokuriki. (Comments in italics are part of the text.) Copyright Charles Tuttle and Co.