Contents:

YUNMEN'S BRIGHT LIGHT..........................................................................................................................1

ROSS BOLLETER..................................................................................................................................1

Yunmen gave instruction saying, "Everyone has their own light. If you want to see it you can't. The darkness

He himself answered, "The storeroom. The gate." Again he said, "It would be better to have nothing that to

Although Yunmen was a student of Hsueh Feng he was in fact enlightened by the ancient and eccentric

teacher MuChou (Chen TsunSu). It is said that MuChou lived alone in a hut near the high road travelled

by monks when they were going on pilgrimage from monastery to monastery. MuChou would make grass

sandals and leave them on the side of the road so that monks could replace their old worn out footwear.

MuChou was most secretive about this and it took years to find out who was responsible for the generous

MuChou's teaching methods were extremely rough, utterly abrupt. It is said that he would listen to the

sound of the footsteps of approaching monks and if they didn't indicate the Way he would refuse to open his

door. Yunmen came to him twice and Mu Chou refused to open the door; the third time, Yunmen succeeded

in getting his foot in. MuChou grabbed him and urged him, "Speak! Speak!" As Yunmen was about to say

something, MuChou threw him out, slammed the door on him, breaking one of his legs. The intense pain

Yunmen went on to become a great teacher with over sixty enlightened disciples, unwittingly becoming the

founder of the Yunmen School which lasted into the thirteenth century in China until it was absorbed into the

Linchi (Rinzai) School. The Yunmen school was responsible for the creation and preservation of some of the

great masterpieces of Ch'an literature in this period, including the book of one hundred koans entitled The

Blue Cliff Record. from which this case is taken Apart from Yunmen's Bright Light, there are thirteen other

Yunmen's style is splendidly incisive and he became celebrated for his one word responses, which became

With "Ch'in!", "Kobyo!", "Kanshiketsu", Yunmen vividly reveals the Great Way. He uses words in a way

utterly unclouded with notions and concepts of meaning or nomeaning. The One Word Barrier, while

powerful and penetrating, is never merely rough, and the spirit of his way is lofty yet accomodating;

Yunmen said to the assembly, "Within heaven and earth, in the midst of the cosmos, there is one treasure

hidden in the body. Holding a lantern it goes towards the Buddha hall. It brings the great triple gate and puts

A monk asked, "What is the roar of the earthen ox on top of the snow ridge?" Yunmen replied, "Heaven and

There is weird splendour in these koans which show the unclouded depths of Yunmen's vision as poet and

Zen teacher. Yuan Wu in his comment on "Yunmen's One Treasure" in The Blue Cliff Record says if

Yunmen,"by means of unconditional compassion he acts unasked as an excellent friend!" (6)

Yunmen said that if we want to see our light, we can't. When we turn inward to see the source of our being, to

discover the light of self nature, everything is dark and there is nothing to be seen. Searching inwardly for

our true self is like the eye trying to look at itself, like the sun trying to shine on the sun.

In this condition the darkness is dark, dark. If we look at this from one angle, this seems to be the darkness of

a dead end where our whole enterprise seems to have foundered in despair and delusion. Yet this condition,

no less than opening fresh eyes to the Morning Star, or sighting distant peach blossoms, is the Way itself,

conveying our essential nature. When the practice feels dry and fruitless and we seem to scoop from the same

empty waterhole, when "the tree withers and the leaves fall", (7) we find everything right there.

If we continue to practise and to carry the koan in the place where "the darkness is dark, dark," then inside

and outside become one; there is no gap between self and other and there is nowhere to search. This is a

familiar place in practice and is referred to over and over again in Zen literature. Here is Bassui Zenji, a 14th

century Japanese Rinzai teacher, whose natural koan was "Who is (the Master of) hearing that sound?",

At last every vestige of selfawareness will disappear and you will feel like a cloudless sky. Within yourself

you will find no "I", nor will you discover anyone who hears. This Mind is like the void, yet it hasn't a single

spot that can be called empty. Do not mistake this state for selfrealisation, but continue to ask yourself even

more intensely, "Now who is it that hears?" If you bore and bore into this question, oblivious to anything

else, even this feeling of voidness will vanish and you won't be aware of anything total darkness will

prevail. (Don't stop here, but ) keep asking with all your strength, "What is it that hears?" Only when you

have completely exhausted the questioning will the question burst; now you will feel like a person that has

come back from the dead. This is true realisation. You will see the Buddhas of all the Universes face to face

Even when our resources are utterly depleted we don't give up but steadily return to the koan using all the

energy we have at that time, but not straining, not forcing. For Bassui it was "Who is it who hears?", for us it

is most likely to be Mu, but the procedure is the same, the same light, steady, unfaltering vigilance.

The vigil of working with the koan and the koan working with us prepares the ground, and in the most

fundamental sense, is the ground of realisation. In that deepened condition, unknowingly we ready ourselves

and any spark can light up the cave. For Yunmen it was the pain of his leg being broken by the door as

MuChou slammed it; for Wumen it was the sound of the drum announcing the noonday meal; for

LingYun, after thirty years of practice, it was the sight of the pink blossoms of distant peach trees; for

"The storeroom. The gate." For Yunmen these are our lights and when we are ready and utterly open they

shine with our true nature. Not only the storehouse, the gate, but the star and the wattle, the drunk enveloping

us with his beery breath at the party, the shit in the toilet; all these are our own lights. And not only the sharp

and crystalline calls of the world, but also the boring, the infuriating and the painful voices that arise in our

zazen; all the states and conditions which generate and compose our emotional weather; all the homeless and

rejected parts of the self that cry out and long to take us in and be taken in, to give and receive refuge. These

However, if we search for our true nature in the world of colour and form we can't find it. Searching for the

flower, the star, the storeroom, the gate that will be the agent of our enlightenment is as futile as the inward

introspective search for our own light. If we try to turn towards it, we deviate. Seen one way, our trying

cannot discover or confirm our own bright light; from the other side the searching and striving is itself the

whole matter. This is conveyed in a telling and lovely way in the first of Tosotsu's Three Barriers:

The purpose of going to abandoned, grassy places and doing zazen is to search for my selfnature. Now, at

The lonely figure that searches in the undergrowth provides its light no less than the storeroom, the gate.

"It would be better to have nothing than to have something good. In saying this, Yunmen warns us against

clinging to enlightenment and getting caught up with attainment; better, he says, to live without a trace of

have and have not, then the planes roar through, the birdsong penetrates everywhere, we laugh and cry, get

up, forget to get up, make love, put on clothes, go to the beach, get born, die; all this without the impediments

of ownership. However, unfortunately, there is no trouble in recognising whose telephone bill it is when it

Again, in saying, "It would be better to have nothing than to have something good", Yunmen warns us not to

go on clinging to his words. There are grave dangers in utilising "The storeroom, the gate" or "dried shitstick,

or "sesame rice cake" as mechanical koan responses that neither illuminate the Way or succeed in propping

up the gate. Better to show the whole empty universe in our silence than to formally reiterate his words. One

moment their flash illuminates the whole world, the next we drag them around like carcases. Even worse,

they get handed onto others. Once is enough. Enough is enough. Yunmen refused to allow his listeners to

take notes during his talks. "What is the use of recording my words and tying up your tongues?" he is said to

have cried as he chased away those who wanted to memorise his sayings. It is thanks to Hsianlin

Ch'engYuan who dressed himself in a paper robe and wrote down Yunmen's sayings and dialogues on it,

that we have the substantial collection of koans and stories that nourish Zen practice in our times. (10)

In the flickering, unsteady darkness of the practice we come up to the gate a thousand times and judder at the

final step. Likewise the Universe itself presents the whole matter over and over again till ordinary things

As practice deepens we just accept the fear and hesitation as we come up to the gate but don't go through; on

each occasion we just resume our vigil with the koan. In time, the "inner" world of yearning and striving and

the "outer" world of 'the storeroom and the gate" fall into deeper and deeper affinity. Unaided, the Way is

Yunmen speaks of us wanting to see our own light: Rilke, the great German poet of the early twentieth

century whose later work (especially the Ninth Duino Elegy) inhabits a realm which has a considerable

overlap with Zen, leans on the other side when he writes of the yearning of things for us to notice and include

Yes, the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled towards you out

of the distant past, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing .....(11).

This is the fleeting world that needs us and in some strange way keeps calling to us, as Rilke puts it, the most

fleeting of all. (12) As we yearn and search, so too do the star, the wave, the violin. The fleeting world shines

out moment by moment as the fallen jacaranda blossoms staring up from the back lawn, the cark cark of the

crows, the son or daughter arguing back, challenging our authority each calls out to be included.

We find this calling, this beckoning in our tradition when in the first Oxherding picture, the herdsman is

fruitlessly searching for the Ox (which in the series of ten pictures depicting particular stages on the Way,

stands for the Mind of Realisation). It is evening and the herdsman is exhausted and unable to find any trace

The cicadas chirp chirp with all their might; the Ox is right there, but the herdsman is not ready for this and

the journey and the search for refuge continue. Yet the cicadas continue to call and, moment after moment,

each thing longs to be included; the cat comes up to the back door for its evening meal, someone turns on a

radio next door. Events scuffle, jostle to be taken in. "Here I am!" they shout.

Dogen saw this clearly when he wrote: "The Dharma wheel turns from the beginning. There is neither surplus

nor lack. The whole universe is moistened with nectar, and the truth is ready to harvest." (13)

When we accept the invitation, the self and the Universe find refuge when there is no self, no other. In this

realm, all beings are saved, as they have been from the beginning. When Shakyamuni having sat all night

under the Bodhi tree looked up and saw the Morning Star with fresh eyes, the Morning Star, no less than

Yunmen put it this way: "Medicine and sickness mutually correspond to each other. The whole universe is

medicine. What is the self?" In asking what is the self, Yunmen is asking a similar question to "What is our

The night is full of cicadas; the fan hums loudly, shivering stars cover the sky at midnight; we sit nodding off,

turning back over and over again to the koan. Depth calls to depth. Each person, each being, each thing longs

1. Chang ChungYuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism (Vintage Books, Random House, New York,

6. Cleary, Thomas and J.C. (transl) The Blue Cliff Record (Shambhala, Boulder and London, 1977) Case 62,

7. Yamada and Aitken (transl) The Blue Cliff Record, Case 27, "Unmon's Manifestation" .

8. Bassui Zenji, "The Talk on One Mind" from Kapleau, Philip (ed), The Three Pillars of Zen (Anchor

11. Rilke, R.M., "The First Duino Elegy" from Mitchell, Stephen (trans), The Selected Poetry of Rainer

13. Aitken Roshi, Robert, The Mind of Clover (North Point Press, San Francisco, 1984).