Isan

Isan

(Master Isan was as great a master as one can be, but has left behind him neither great scriptures nor great commentaries. Isan functioned exactly as Buddha had said an authentic master would - to disappear in the blue sky like a bird, leaving no footprints.

Why this idea of leaving no footprints? It has great implications in it. It means a great master does not create a following; he does not make a path for everybody to follow. He flies in the sky, he gives you a longing for flying, and disappears into the blueness of the sky - creating an urge in you to discover what it is like to disappear into the ultimate. - OSHO)

A little Biography of Isan

Isan left home at fifteen... there was a totally different world, a totally different urge in humanity. What is a fifteen-year-old boy...? But the urge must have been so widespread and so thick in the atmosphere that even a fifteen-year-old boy is intelligent enough; he will catch the fire.

At the age of fifteen, Isan must have learned from others' mistakes. He must have watched carefully his parents, his neighbors, his teachers - their lifeless lives, their meaningless wanderings, no sense of direction except misery and suffering. All that they have is some promising hope that may be fulfilled in the future, perhaps in the next life or perhaps in paradise. But this life is going to be a suffering, it cannot be otherwise. It is the nature of life and they have accepted it. At the age of fifteen he left his home. He was not going to commit the same mistakes that everybody else was committing.

He left home at fifteen to become a monk, studying under the local vinaya master. A Vinaya master is only a rabbi, a pundit, a learned scholar. Vinaya is the name of the Buddhist scriptures. The very word 'vinaya' means humbleness, and Buddha teaches that to be humble is to be close to nature. All his scriptures - and they are many - have been called the Vinaya scriptures because their fundamental teaching, from different directions, is the same: just to be nobody, just to be ready to disappear into the blueness of the sky without leaving any footprints.

Obviously he was in search; he went to study under the local Vinaya master. A fifteen-year-old boy does not know where to go. So whoever was in the locality, the most famous and learned scholar - he went to him.

Isan moved from one teacher to another teacher. He went on, looking for a man who is essential, who is not a Buddhist but a buddha, who does not believe in any hypotheses - who knows. And when he came to Hyakujo, immediately something transpired. He found the master.

That was the way students, disciples, devotees, went on searching, from one monastery to another monastery, from one monk to another monk. There are no visible signs, no certificates to say who is enlightened. You have to find with your own heart someone in whose presence your heart starts dancing. It is an inner finding - one in whose presence your whole life becomes light, in whose presence certainly your mind is gone as if it had been a shadow, and utter silence falls over you.

When he came to Hyakujo, he immediately became a disciple.

Hyakujo sent Isan to mount I as abbot. Isan lived as a wild hermit initially, but by and by began to attract disciples; they finally increased to one thousand in number. Isan taught at mount I for more than forty years.

The Verse

Tossing away the bamboo utensils, and the wooden ladle,
Isan immediately cuts off obstructions.
The barrier Hyakujo set up for Isan did not stop him;
With his feet he overturns the Buddha like flax.
The tips of his feet radiate the Buddha like flax.

-          As translated by R.H. Blyth

Buddha

Be for yourself

your own light,

your only refuge.

Eno

The abused mind

turns around the lotus

The awakened mind

makes the lotus

turn around him.

Isan followed exactly what Buddha had said. He is a great master, but almost forgotten

Who remembers people who have not created great followings, who have not made organized religions, who have not chosen their successors, who have not made their religion a politics, a power in the material world? Isan did none of that. He simply lived silently. Of course thousands of disciples were attracted towards him, but it was not his fault. You cannot blame him for it - it was just the magnetic force that he had become by disappearing into enlightenment. The light shone to faraway lands and those who had eyes started moving towards a small place hidden in the forest where Isan lived.

Slowly slowly, thousands of disciples were living in the forest - and Isan had not called a single one.

They had come on their own.

(An old Chinese Zen story. I have loved it so much that each time I remember it I rejoice it immensely.

The emperor of China was a very great painter; he loved painting, and he used to call other painters to the palace every year to have an exhibition. When he had become very old, he declared, at one annual function, “Now I am very old and I want to see the most perfect painting in the world. I will provide space in the palace to the painter, and whatever he needs…”

So a few painters who thought they could create such a painting stayed in the palace. Somebody completed his painting in one month and brought it to the emperor. He had done well, but it was not the most perfect.

By and by three years passed, and only one painter remained. For three years he had been painting — and he was not painting on canvas; he was painting on the wall of the palace where his room was allotted to him.

He had painted a beautiful forest… and a moonlit night, a small river, and a very small footpath going round and round around the trees and then disappearing in the forest.

After three years he came to the emperor and said, “Now you can come. Whatever I can do I have done. I think it is the most perfect painting in the world. So I invite Your Honor to come, and I don’t ask any reward — these three years were the most precious that I have lived. Just your seeing it is enough.”

All the other painters had been painting for reward, and when you are painting out of some motivation, for some reward, your painting cannot be perfect. Your motivation will be the dust.

This painter said, “I am not at all interested in any reward; you have already given it to me. These three years I have lived such a beautiful life, day and night; nothing could be more than you have given me.

Now just look at the painting so that I can go back home. My children, my wife, may be waiting for me.”
The emperor went with him. Certainly this painter had done the greatest job. He became so interested that he asked the painter, “Where does this small path go, finally?”

The painter said, “I have never gone on it but if you are willing to come with me, we can go and see where it leads. This question has arisen in me also many times, `Where does this small path lead?’”
So the painter and the emperor both entered the path and disappeared behind the trees, and nothing has been heard about them since.

This story has always made me immensely happy. There is no returning from perfection, there is no going back. Perfection takes you and you disappear.)

Life of Isan:

Isan reiyu, otherwise known as kuei-shan ling-yu, lived from 771 to 853. He left home at fifteen to become a monk, studying under the local vinaya master in what is today the fukien province.

He left home at fifteen… there was a totally different world, a totally different urge in humanity. What is a fifteen-year-old boy…? But the urge must have been so widespread and so thick in the atmosphere that even a fifteen-year-old boy is intelligent enough; he will catch the fire.

He left home at fifteen to become a monk, studying under the local vinaya master. A Vinaya master is only a rabbi, a pundit, a learned scholar. Vinaya is the name of the Buddhist scriptures. The very word `vinaya’ means humbleness, and Buddha teaches that to be humble is to be close to nature. All his scriptures — and they are many — have been called the Vinaya scriptures because their fundamental teaching, from different directions, is the same: just to be nobody, just to be ready to disappear into the blueness of the sky without leaving any footprints.

He was ordained at hangchow at the age of twenty-three.

Being ordained means that now he is making an absolute commitment to find himself. He is declaring to the world, “Help me not to go astray.” It is an announcement on his part of his innermost longing. Now it becomes socially known that he is a seeker, and in those days seekers were helped by the society in every possible way — with food, clothes, shelter. The whole society seemed to be running around the central longing of becoming a buddha. If circumstances wouldn’t allow them now, people were waiting for the right circumstances so they could escape in the blue sky.

(Ordained at hangchow at the age of twenty-three, he traveled to chiang-si and became a disciple of hyakujo.)

He found the master. The learned teachers that he must have come across could not fulfill his appetite. They could not give him what he was asking for. He was not asking for more knowledge; he was searching for the one who knows. He was interested to inquire into the very structure of the knower, of the witness.

Isan must have moved from one teacher to another teacher. He went on, looking for a man who is essential, who is not a Buddhist but a buddha, who does not believe in any hypotheses — who knows. And when he came to Hyakujo, immediately something transpired. He found the master.

That was the way students, disciples, devotees, went on searching, from one monastery to another monastery, from one monk to another monk. There are no visible signs, no certificates to say who is enlightened. You have to find with your own heart someone in whose presence your heart starts dancing. It is an inner finding — one in whose presence your whole life becomes light, in whose presence certainly your mind is gone as if it had been a shadow, and utter silence falls over you.
When he came to Hyakujo, he immediately became a disciple.

Later, hyakujo sent isan to mount i as abbot. Isan lived as a wild hermit initially, but by and by began to attract disciples; they finally increased to one thousand in number. Isan taught at mount i for more than forty years.

“it is not obtained from others. Therefore, when you are enlightened, your original nature manifests itself. Now you have attained it — carefully cultivate it.”  -- OSHO)

Zen Masters

Kodo Sawaki

The monk without home Discover the inalienable life Which is without going and coming.

That is the practice of the Way. Then you will reach the true vision And your ego will not be a transitory self But an eternal self.

As long as we do not wake up to that, It is useless to be born in this world.

 

Hyakujo

 

A day without working,

a day without eating

Nansen

-Have you eaten your rice soup?

-Yes -So, go and clean your bowl

Kodo Sawaki

The monk without abode
Discover the inalienable life
Which is without comings or goings
That is the practice of the Way

Then they will gain access to the right view
And your ego will not be a transient I
But an eternal I

If one has not awakened to this
It is useless to have been born into this world

(I have heard, three professors were discussing very hotly some philosophical point at the railway station. They got so involved in the discussion, and they forgot that the train stops for only three minutes. As the train started moving, still they were not aware. Suddenly one of them saw, and all three ran to catch the train. Only two could manage to get on to the last compartment. One was left, and he was standing there so sad that a porter, who had been watching what was happening, said, “Why are you so sad? Soon there will be a second train coming, and just within a few hours you will meet your friends.”

He said, “That is not the point. I am the one who was supposed to go! They had come only to see me off. Now everything has become a mess….”

But in a hurry, it can happen.)

The highest wisdom is without goal, without consciousness. We can only get it unconsciously, naturally, automatically.

Living master

Isan was asked by ichu to compose a gatha for him. That was so stupid a question, because Isan was not going to die.

(Gatha means a poem. Ordinarily that question is not right; it is asked only at the time when the master is dying. The disciples ask as a memorial, "Just write down a small poem. Your last word, in your own handwriting, will be our greatest treasure." That last word is called gatha.)

Isan replied: "it is foolish to compose one when face to face. When I am face to face with you, read me, read my heart. A gatha is written when a master is dying because he will not be anymore available. It is so foolish to ask such a thing when we are face to face. Feel my presence. And, in any case, writing things on paper!"...

Isan is saying, "In the first place, it is foolish when I am present not to rejoice in my presence, not to dance with my presence, not to be ecstatic and drunk with my presence. And secondly, in any case, writing things on paper! - what will be their value? When you cannot understand the living master and his word, that dead paper, that dead ink - what are you going to do with it?" - OSHO

( Story about Koyzan

On one occasion, two zen monks came from a rival community and,
arriving at isan's monastery, commented: "there is not a man here who can
understand zen."

later, when all the monks were out gathering firewood, kyozan saw them
both resting. He picked up a piece of firewood and said to the two: "can you
talk about it?"

Both were speechless, at which kyozan commented: "do not say that there is
no one here who can understand zen."

Then kyozan got back to the monastery, he said to isan, "today,I exposed two
zen monks."

"how?" isan asked, and kyozan told him of the exchange.

Isan commented: "I have now exposed you as well."

The anecdote is simple. Zen does not believe in complexity, in unnecessary linguistic jargon. It points to the fact directly, without even taking the help of words, because words can never help you.

In fact the word is the barrier. Remove the word, allow the no-word, no-mind state, and everything is as crystal clear, clean as it has been since eternity. Just your eyes were clouded with words... your minds have gathered so much rubbish, which you call religious. In fact, all rubbish is religious, and vice versa.

He had come to master Isan to be praised. But Isan could not be deceived so easily. Isan said to him, "I have now exposed you as well. You are as stupid as those two monks. Neither they know what silence is, nor do you know what silence is."

And truth is an absolutely silent state of being, so silent that you almost disappear, so silent that you become simply an awareness, no body, no mind - all are left behind; there is just a small flame of awareness in the beautiful silence surrounding you. Nothing can be said about it.

If somebody asks you, "What is truth?", show him your silence. Show him your fragrance, show him your love. Share with him your presence.)

About Isan and the Monastery

Hyakujo wanted to choose an abbot for the Daii Monastery. He told the head monk and all the rest of his disciples to make their Zen presentations, and the ablest one would be sent to found the monastery.

Then Hyakujo took a pitcher, placed it on the floor, and asked the question: “This must not be called a pitcher. What do you call it?” The head monk said, “It cannot be called a wooden sandal.” Hyakujo then asked Isan. Isan walked up, kicked over the pitcher, and left.

Hyakujo said, “The head monk has been defeated by Isan.” So Isan was ordered to start the monastery.

Sekiso wrote:

The mountain range,
The water, the stones,
all are strange and rare.
The beautiful landscape, as we know,
belongs to those who are like it.

I will have to repeat it:
the beautiful landscape, as we know,
belongs to those who are like it.
The upper world, the lower world,
originally are one thing.
There is not a bit of dust;
there is only this still and full
perfect enlightenment.

Isan was as great a master as one can be, but has left behind him neither great scriptures nor great commentaries. Isan functioned exactly as Buddha had said an authentic master would –“ to disappear in the blue sky like a bird, leaving no footprints.”

Isan was very polite. Naturally his politeness would affect whatever happened around him. He was a very humble person, never tried to convert anybody, but on the contrary slipped deep down into the forest, so nobody came to him. He felt it a little embarrassing to be the master and degrade somebody as a follower -- a very nice, very delicate personality, the personality of a poet, of a singer, of a dancer.

Choosing  Kyozan as his successor, and waiting for forty years -- what patience! -- almost transforming a stone into a diamond. But Isan was determined to make one point absolutely clear to humanity: if Kyozan, a simple and ordinary person, not belonging to any speciality, any category, without any talent, any genius -- if he can become enlightened, it will be a proof. To give this proof to humanity he chose Kyozan and worked hard on him. And the day Kyozan became enlightened, the day Isan transferred his enlightenment and the two flames became one, Isan disappeared from the world of matter, body, mind.

“If you are enlightened, then there is no duality of this world and that world, of a lower world and a higher world, of a material world and a sacred and holy world. In the moment of perfect and full enlightenment, THERE IS NOT A BIT OF DUST. The mirror is so clean it reflects the whole in its totality. You become the truth, you become the beauty, you become the divine. There is not anything other than your vaster self. You lose your smaller self into the oceanic self, into the self which is cosmic. Who is there to abandon what? One simply enters into the dance and disappears.”

The Verse
Rather than putting the body to rest, rest of heart!
If the mind is at peace, the body knows no grief.
But if both the mind and body are pacified, thoroughly, as one,
This is the life of perfect sainthood, where praise is meaningless.

As translated by R.H. Blyth

THE BLUE SKY MUST FEEL ASHAMED TO BE SO SMALL.

Your consciousness becomes so vast, and in that vastness, in that oceanicness, who cares about trivia, whether your tie is tied rightly or wrongly? Who cares about small things? And all our worries are about small things. You have never worried about anything great. Just look back and you will not find a single thing about which you can say, "It was great that I worried about it" - just very small things.

( Now for a laugh …

Kowalski is returning home from a morning's hunting, with his shotgun in one hand and his hunting bag slung over his shoulder.

His friend, Slobovski, sees him across the road and calls out, "Hi, Kowalski! Been hunting?"

"That's right," replies Kowalski. "Been hunting ducks."

"Far out!" says Slobovski. "How many did you get?"

"Well," replies Kowalski, "if you can guess how many ducks I've got in my bag - I'll give you them both!"

"Ah!" says Slobovski, scratching his head. "Three?"

Do not laugh ….. Ah!  Ah! A! )

Once the mind has understood it, it is no longer an enemy

I have heard about a beggar who was the laughingstock of a whole village. The village was a tourist center because of its very ancient ruins, palaces, forts. And that beggar was also one of the special attractions — the guides who used to take the tourists around would always take them to see the beggar, too.

They would say, “You will have to see this strange phenomenon: you just show him a rupee and a paisa, one in each hand, and tell him, `You can choose either.’”
They said, “But we don’t see… what is the miracle in that?”
The guide would say, “You try it! You will see the miracle.”

So people tried — the beggar would always choose the paisa. And then everybody would laugh, and they would say, “Strange! — can’t this beggar understand that he is choosing a paisa against a rupee?” Then others would take the chance, and that was the beggar’s whole work during the day, to choose the paisa against the rupee.

One day a very curious man saw all this happening. He remained behind after the tourists were gone; he went to the beggar and he said, “I can see that you are not an idiot. You are very intelligent. But why do you choose the paisa?”

He said, “Because of my intelligence! Once I choose the rupee, the game will stop. The game is continuing every day, for years….” Then the man became aware of the greatness of his intelligence. “He is right: if he chooses the rupee, then the game is finished. Then the guide will not bring anybody, and nobody will try to test his intelligence. They enjoy…” And the beggar said, “I also enjoy their stupidity! My daily income is nearabout ten to twelve rupees average. But it is because I continue to choose something which nobody expects. Even the retarded person will choose the rupee — but because I am doing something absurd, they laugh and they enjoy. I also laugh, but I don’t show it. I laugh when everybody is gone.”

Whatever mind you have — it is capable to see the fact that enlightenment brings a tremendous treasure to all your actions, a beauty to whatever you do, a joy that remains like an aroma around you. The mind is absolutely capable of understanding this. And once the mind has understood it, it is no longer an enemy; it dissolves itself into the tremendous phenomenon of enlightenment. That is the right action on the part of the mind, but it can happen only in a certain way: you have to give the mind a chance to see the effects of enlightenment.