It seems I’m saying something foolish. For if this castle is the soul, clearly one doesn’t have to enter it since it is within oneself. How foolish it would seem if we were to tell someone to enter a room he is already in. But you must understand that there is a great difference in the ways one may be inside the castle.

Our koan today is likewise foolish, and likewise necessary. Necessary because until that “place in the room” is realized, we don’t do the work we’re here to do with full intensity, and life suffers. Whether the work is cleaning up the muck from the river, building a Zen center, or mowing the lawn, it won’t get our full attention if we’ve not “entered where we are.” It’s that half-hearted, “half-assed” way of being that this training can make whole. The wholeness of not only our individual lives, but of this whole planet depends on that entry into this real, raw moment. It is the only right action. It is the only imperative. That’s what this koan deals with, and what every koan deals with. Let’s not miss that. Too much is at stake to do this in some dull and distant way.

Here is some background to the meeting of Aryasinha and Basyasita in our main case, drawn from the accompanying commentary:

The father of the young successor introduced his son, Sita, to the present Buddha, explaining that the boy was born with is left fist clenched. The strange condition, he said, still persists. Aryasinha then explained the hidden karmic cause of this strange condition: “In a previous existence, I was a simple Buddhist monk. I received a small crystal of perfect Nondual Wisdom, offered to me by the Naga kings of the Western Ocean. I entrusted this priceless wisdom treasure to a certain young man named Basia, who guarded it with great loyalty.” Aryasinha then demanded of Sita, “Now give me back that original gem.” Immediately Sita’s left hand opened, for the first time since birth, releasing a clear stone.

In this, Aryasinha decisively pointed the next Buddha toward the open door of Mahamudra, the inexhaustible treasure of the eye that discerns everywhere only ultimate teaching.

What seems to be a hindrance, what seems to be a problem is revealed as our gift, as our place of opening – what we’re here to do. It is said that: “Mahamudra dawns only when one lets go every precious treasure, both from this conventional world and from the Dharma realms, only when one melts and lets go every responsibility, no matter how sacred.” The koan rests and springs to life in this jewel, the “thing” each of us carries around as our excuse, our complaint, the story of our life. How can you let go, the koan demands, without losing the wisdom that unique experience has given you?

Implicit is the possibility. How can you be free from the causes that are affecting how this moment is experienced, without blithely and irresponsibly denying their reality?
Implicit is the fact that Buddha after Buddha, generation after generation has done just that, has been that free. Now the jewel is in this hand. Will we ease the grip, let go of the control, let the light radiate?

In the stages of spiritual training, we begin with letting go of thoughts and, in a certain sense, that’s the easy part. As we begin to work with thoughts, we also begin to recognize the irrelevance of most of the material possessions we carry around with us. Most of us find some level of simplicity that feels appropriate and begin to let go of the gathering up, the having, and the identity that has developed from having lived with all our “stuff.” We then begin to accumulate spiritual experience, spiritual capacities and insights, techniques and postures. That’s when the true work begins.

Master Seng Ts’an thaught that “the Great Way is not difficult for those who are unattached to their preferences.” This is a beautiful and intricate line because of what it doesn’t teach. It doesn’t teach that the Great Way is not difficult when you have no preference. That might be true, but it isn’t particularly helpful. What it does teach is to be alert to attaching, to the sense of having to have something or some condition in order to be whole. To see how our attachments function is much more subtle, and quite often embarrassing. Of course, most of us will prefer comfort over discomfort, kindness and respect over meanness and disrespect, and we usually prefer to get our way. I watch this attachment and suffering in our dog, Lobo, when he wants me to go out with him and I can’t because I’m working. I’ll let him in, and he’ll sit there for a minute or two, and then whine to go out. I’ll let him out, and he’ll stand outside for a few minutes, and then whine to come in. He wants a situation that isn’t happening: both of us outside. Fortunately, he eventually chooses his life, and will find a bone to chew, or a dream to run and play inside of, napping away while moving his feet in pursuit of some sleep-imagined chipmunk.

The Great Way is not difficult for those who are unattached to their preferences;
Cling to a hairbreadth of distinction and Heaven and Earth are set apart.
If you want to realize the truth, don’t be for or against;
As vast as infinite space, it is perfect and lacks nothing.

And so we sit still during zazen, not because stillness is better than movement, but in the profound and simple commitment to this moment as it is. From that commitment, right action is realized. That commitment takes us into the real work of clarity, and to dealing with the foggy nature of attachment. The implications of being stuck in a way of seeing, in a point of view we don’t recognize as one of many, are manifold, and often destructive. It is really important that we appreciate the revolutionary power of practicing that commitment.

Master Keizan speaks of the endless, vast implications in the commentary to this case, saying: “Even though there are myriad of forms and thousands of basic categories, they are all simply the original Mind Light.” Mahamudra is abiding continuously not only within but as this primordial radiance; it is neither meditation practice nor mental insight. It neither grasps conceptual and perceptual appearances nor abandons them. It neither speaks nor avoids speech. That is the jewel in the hand, opening endlessly.

But does it live? “No conscious being,” Keizan says, “is fundamentally deficient of buddhahood.” To begin to work with this koan we need to consider what realizing this innate sufficiency might do to how we live. What are the responsibilities that suddenly become the vital activity of this life if we realize that no being, including the being saying “no being,” including the eye that sees all beings, is deficient in Buddha-nature? What’s our work – our activity – if that is the truth?

The koan commentary continues: “Mahamudra is a non-teaching because it has let go of the jewel of Buddha wisdom. There is no separate path to buddhahood and therefore no separate path to such a goal taken by separate conscious beings. Even to chant the Heart Sutra, ‘no path, no wisdom, and no goal,’ is still instinctively to clasp the crystal of Prajnaparamita in our hand.”

In koan after koan, monks come forward into the teaching room and say, “I’ve let go of it all.” And the teacher says, “Let go of that.” “I am poor and destitute,” the student comes forward and says. The teacher says, “Shame on you. There you are, having drunk three full glasses of the greatest wine, claiming your lips are dry.” Year after year of practice, we’ll think we’ve dealt with the hard part, gotten past it, let it go. Now we’re cleaned out, now we’re ready. Immediately the next koan, the next jewel appears, and we kill its light like a kid gripping a firefly. This is the time to let go, not yesterday, and not tomorrow. I’m always learning this (and thinking I won’t need to learn it again.)

How can we guard the jewel passed from Buddha to Buddha? A commentary on the koan reveals the way: “Aryasinha requests Basiasita to guard well the incalculable treasure, Mahamudra, but not in any sense of defending it from intruders by keeping it locked or hidden away, for by its very nature Mahamudra always remains immediately accessible, fully revealed. No one and nothing can stain it. Guarding it means refusing to hold onto it.”

This koan invites us to entertain the possibility that, perhaps, our life is not a mistake. Perhaps, our clenched fist disability is actually where the unseen jewel, the radiant light, of our life is contained, if we let go of our ideas. That letting go is the beginning of freedom, the guarding of the mind-light mahamudra with our lives. The closing poem from the koan shows the fire of that kind of life “bursting” forth. Don’t let it lie flat on the page as a poem of ink and paper: let the blood poem live in your way of seeing, speaking, acting –

The ancient springtime mind-light, original
Before blossoms or leaves,
Shining, bursting, blazing from bare limbs,
Blending with all, benefiting all,
Great mind-seal mahamudra.

(Bonnie Myotai Treace. Mountain Record)