Return to Summer/Fall 2002
Teacher, Student
from a Dharma Talk by Zen Master Wu Kwang
One day, many years ago, a Zen Master came into the monastery vegetable garden, where the monks were cutting vegetables. The Zen Master walked up to a cabbage, drew a circle around it, then told all the monks, "No one should touch this, and no one should move this." Then he walked on.
A bit later he returned and saw that the cabbage was still where he left it. At that, he took his stick and drove all the monks out of the garden, exclaiming, "Isn’t there anyone here who has any wisdom? If I had been here, I would have taken the sickle and said, ‘Master, do you want this shredded for coleslaw or boiled with turnips?’"
That is a story about teacher and student relating. In traditional stories, you see many forms of student teacher relationships, and all those old stories are instructive in some way.
Sometimes the student is in awe of the teacher or holds some expectations or ideas. Then you see how the teacher takes all that away. Or there may be a kind of sparring, where both are cultivating the practice of clarity. In others, the student has exceeded the teacher in some way and may speak poorly of him; that is called “the children surpassed the parents.” In some, a student may remain with a teacher for a long time—or only a brief time.
All this is important to us, because we are all called upon, at various times, to be in the teaching role, formally or informally, either by example or by elucidating some teaching. We are also always in the studying role, because something is always speaking to us and calling us forth to pay attention and respond in some way.
We can find examples of much of this in the stories of Zen Master Joju and his master Nam Cheon. Joju was one of those who stayed with his master for a long time. He entered Nam Cheon’s monastery when he was 17 years old and stayed until Nam Cheon died, when Joju was 57. He stayed in the monastery three more years, observing a period of mourning for his teacher, then went traveling around China, calling on the different assemblies and masters to test himself. As he left on that journey, he said, "If I meet a child of 7 whom I can learn something from, I’ll become his student. And if I meet a man of 80 to whom I can teach something, I’ll become his teacher." That is a wonderful attitude of openness toward both giving and receiving, teaching and studying.
In the early days of the Providence Zen Center a student appeared who had been traveling around checking out Zen centers and teachers. He decided to stay at Providence a while to observe Zen Master Seung Sahn and see whether he was really an enlightened teacher. But one day while sitting in meditation, this man had a sudden insight: "How am I going to discern whether this Zen master is enlightened or not? How the hell would I even know?" After that he settled down and began to learn something.
Another old-time story from China—during the Tang Dynasty—tells of a great Zen master, Ko Sahn. A student who had been with him for some time began to get disheartened about his progress and decided to seek out other teachers and assemblies. Everywhere he went they would ask, "Where are you coming from?" and he would reply, "From Ko Sahn’s place." They would all respond, "Oh, Ko Sahn! He is a great and subtle master, who has a profound grasp of the teaching." After hearing this many times and not seeing anything special in the assemblies he had visited, he decided to return to Ko Sahn’s place. When he got there, he said, "Master, you have a subtle and profound grasp of the essential meaning. How come you never revealed it to me?" Ko Sahn replied, "When you cooked the rice, didn’t I always light the fire? And when you’d carry the rice pail and serve food, didn’t I always hold out my bowl to you? When did I ever betray your expectations?" At that, the monk had some experience.
In some yoga traditions you see this teaching style, with some inner kind of alchemy going on, where they talk about heating up the cauldron, the internal cauldron, raising the energy and cooking the mushrooms or the magic elixir or whatever. But here Ko Sahn makes it simple. He just says, "When you would cook the food, didn’t I light the fire?"
And that, of course, describes the teacher’s job and the student’s job: the student’s to cook the food, the teacher’s to give ignition to the cooking. There are, obviously, many kinds of food and many kinds of hungers. But our practice is like cooking food, eating food, digesting food and, most importantly, assimilating food.
Ko Sahn also said, "When you would carry the rice pail and serve food [whatever you had gotten hold of and cooked up inside], didn’t I always hold out my bowl to you? When did I ever betray your expectations?" That’s the attitude of teaching and studying, and of openness and effort. And, of course, it continues with a wonderful sentence, "When did I ever betray your expectations?" Just in the simple act of doing the simple, everyday things—cooking the food, holding out the bowl, sweeping the floor, conversing back and forth—when did I betray your expectations? When did you ever not see the subtle and profound meaning? That shows a style of student/teacher relationship where the teacher—recognizing that some idea the student is holding is preventing his just seeing what is and experiencing it clearly—takes that idea away.
Sometimes—unlike the lengthy interaction between Joju and Nam Cheon—teaching takes place in a short period of time. One such tale was about Hui Chung, who came to call on the Sixth Patriarch. When the Sixth Patriarch asked, "Where are you coming from?" Hui Chung replied, "I just came from Sung Sang Mountain." Then the patriarch asked, "What is this thing that has come from Sung Sang Mountain?" Hui Chung did not know how to answer. He went away for eight years, just sitting and asking himself that question, "What is this?" After only one interview, he went for eight years, cooking his own food. When he returned, he said to the patriarch, "To call it a thing already misses the mark." The patriarch then tested him one more time: "So should you cultivate it or not?" Hui Chung replied, "To cultivate it is OK, but to view it as painted is a mistake." And that was the extent of Hui Chung’s study with the Sixth Patriarch.
Another story about Joju tells of a time when he was standing on a ladder, drawing water from a wheel, when he saw Nam Cheon come walking by. Suddenly he let his feet dangle in the air, while he held onto the rungs with his hands, and yelled out, "Save me, save me!" Nam Cheon slowly went to the ladder and climbed up rung by rung, saying, "One…two…three…four…five." Then Joju put his feet back on the rung and turned to Nam Cheon, saying, "Thank you, Master, for saving me a moment ago." As a teacher, Nam Cheon was not in a big hurry to save the student. So, just "One…two… three…four…five," demonstrating that you have to do this for yourself.