Mu my New Best Friend.
Michael D. Breen
For years, almost thirty, I have
sought, chased, craved for a response to my koan “Mu”. No I am not the first
one, thousands, have sought what at times could be cynically passed up as a
miasma, an illusion or another promised non existent spiritual treasure.
The koan Mu has been for me the
basis of my spiritual practise, my Zen meditation since 1986. The koan, is a
kind of Zen spiritual exercise or gymnastic or maze whence you become clearer
about your true nature or move some way towards enlightenment. The often quoted
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?” is a koan. So is “Who listens, who
hears?” The koan Mu arises in the story where a monk asked Master
Chao-chou, “Does a
dog have Buddha nature?” The reply was, “Mu”. So students of Zen are
recommended to cut their teeth and their file aged dentures on that koan, Mu.
Students are advised to sink into the koan, to become one with it, not to think
too much about it but to let work on the meditator.
What often happens or has happened to
this student is that I project onto Mu my fears, my wonky framework while Mu
attends and lets me listen to me.
But now there is a change. In a Zen
talk by my former teacher John Tarrant Roshi, I was struck by his so simple
description of love as “hanging out with” a person with whom you are intimate. When
I applied this to my koan Mu new possibilities opened up and I was infused with
a sense of relief.
Before I describe the relief let me
describe my former self- imposed strictures. My psyche had inferred Mu was a
job for the “big boys”, a prize for the purest of heart, mind and rock solid
willpower. In other words, the breakfast of champion saints. Eye, there’s rub,
saints! Knowing one is many, many times distracted from the koan I realized the
job was gently to bring the wandering ox, the consciousness, back to the path
of meditation and not to bother about progress. But I always felt there were
better meditators than me.
From early Catholic training and
training for the Jesuit priesthood I was happy to see part of myself as an ox
and quite an errant deviant ox at that. What I did not see until John Roshi’s
talk was that in trying to train the ox I was struggling with myself. That was
my struggle, my agon.
And I had
never thought of hanging out with an ox; I was superior to the bestial side, I
just had to keep that part in check.
Meditation often took on the dread
of a chore. It was something like a bitter uncomfortable tonic or the punishing
regime of an elite athlete. It was like a penance or the ritual of a sacrament
where the form must be enacted scrupulously if grace were to flow. Where did
that come from? In short the Irish clergy imported this kind of Catholic
Christianity into Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Basically
the Irish are fun loving, live for the day Zorba like people. But under British
rule the Irish had to close their houses of priestly training and go elsewhere.
Mostly they trained in France where the spiritual/religious climate had been
blighted by Jansenism. Jansenists like Augustine and their Manichean fourteenth
century dualistic forebears held that the body and animal drives were a baser part
of the person and needed to be treated with penance and asceticism to allow the
soul, the good bit, to flourish.
So one had to war against the lower
baser nature throughout life if one were to be saved. Meanwhile, hell forever
awaited the slackers. The Irish clergy colonized a lot of Australia and other
places with their French learned muscular Christianity. That spiritual wrestle
was taught to us as late as the 1950s and 1960s. For many of us this strength
through spiritual agon followed on seamlessly from school where we had to
strive and progress.
Struggling with a lesser self had
become part of my modus vivendi. So much so that I did not recognize it until
recently that it was still operating. Unlike the Buddhist embrace of all of
ourselves as one, I lived with a civil war which spilled over into
interpersonal wars from time to time.
The desires to improve implied a lesser and better self and a worse one
like Jansenism. A more enlightened spirituality would suggest that by being
genuinely aware of our actions and thoughts enables more ability to live with
them or to manage them than the search and destroy method. And I suppose that
the struggle will not be projected off on to the spiritual director or Roshi in
teaching sessions or
consultations.
An emaciated
Buddha hears the lute player and singing girls.
Sala Kaew
Sculpture Park Nong Khai Thailand
Buddha
lived through six years of fasting and severe hardships in the forest of
Uruvela with his five companions. This emaciated Buddha figure appears in some
temples and paintings. Then one evening while meditating he heard young girls
playing lutes and singing. He mused, "When the strings of the lute are loose, its sound
won't carry. When the strings are too tight, it breaks. When the strings are
neither too loose nor too tight, the music is beautiful. I'm pulling my strings
too tightly. I cannot find the Way to Truth living a life of luxury or with my
body so weak." The Buddha
was then ministered to by a young woman who fed him nurturing milk. The
reaction of his companions is telling. They were disgusted by their master’s
laxness and went their own way. As masochistic fundamentalists are wont to do. Their
Jansenist equivalents were the notorious Nuns of Port Royal whose strictures
and arrogance led to their suppression and the destruction of their buildings
To be able to hang out with Mu is comforting. There is
also more space for the feminine and compassionate bodhisattva Quan Yin whose name means, "Observing the Sounds (or Cries) of the World". I feel so much more with Mu,
who or which is now more like a mate, a go-anywhere companion not just a
special exercise on my meditation cushion. Does this always mean that the mate
is in good form? Or that we always get on well? Of course not.
Does this sound a bit casual? Is it presumptuous
or lacking in respect for Mu? Or are those questions just the vestiges of a
servile spirituality? Maybe these questions are koans in themselves, meanwhile
I will be happy to hang out with Mu.
