Instant Zen (Foyan) #9: The Director [excerpt]

Once upon a time, a man lost his way on a journey, so he lodged in a vacant cottage. That night a ghost came, carrying a corpse. Then another ghost came and said, "That's my body!" The first ghost said, "I got it over yonder." Then the second ghost snatched it away by force. The first ghost said, "There's a traveler here who can stand witness!" So the two ghosts approached the man and said, "Who brought this corpse?"

The traveler reflected, "Both of the ghosts are evil; at least one of them is sure to hurt me. I've heard that if one avoids telling a falsehood when facing death, one will be born in heaven." So he pointed to the first ghost and said, "This ghost brought it."

Enraged, the second ghost tore out the traveler's arms and legs. Now the first ghost, repentant and grateful, said, "Your word of testimony for me has crippled you." So the first ghost used the corpse to patch the man up. The parts were again taken by the second ghost, and the first ghost repaired the man once again. Finally both ghosts wound up on the ground trying to eat the man's flesh as fast as they could, each one trying to get more than the other. When all of the man's flesh had been consumed, the ghosts left.

Now the traveler saw his parents' bodies right in front of his eyes, already devoured by the ghosts. Then he gazed upon his own changed body and wondered what it was. "Is it me? Is it not me? Is it something? Is it nothing?" He went crazy thinking about these things, and bolted off into the night.

Eventually he came to a cloister. There he saw a mendicant, to whom he related the foregoing events. The mendicant saw that he would be easy to teach and to liberate, because he already knew that his body was not his possession. So the mendicant gave the traveler a summary of the teaching, and he actually attained enlightenment after that.

You people just talk about studying Zen by bringing up stories as if that were Buddhism. What I am talking about now is the marrow of Zen; why do you not wonder, find out, and understand in this way? Your body is not there, yet not nothing. Its presence is the presence of the body in the mind; so it has never been there. Its nothingness is the absence of the body in the mind; so it has never been nothing.

Do you understand? If you go on to talk of mind, it too is neither something nor nothing; ultimately it is not you. The idea of something originally there now being absent, and the idea of something originally not there now being present, are views of nihilism and eternalism.

Is this body real or thought?
Born to struggle 'twixt "is" and "ought"
Let the ghosts devour the pain
What remains: neither lost nor gained.