Buddha Dharma in the Wash House (Luo)



The chapter Cleansing reminded me of an old joke. I found a version of it:

Two young novice monks had not yet renounced their addiction to cigarettes, so the first one approached the Abbot: “May I smoke while I pray?” The Abbot said no.

So that same novice was startled to see his friend smoking the next day, AND to learn that the Abbot had given permission.

“You have to know how to phrase it,” the friend said, laughing. “You asked if you could smoke while you pray. I asked if I could pray while I smoked.”

(Source: https://www.stewardshipoflife.org/jokes/)

What is going on?

Two reasons for the different answers. Firstly, each question consists of a main and a subordinate clause. “May I smoke?” is the main clause of the first question, and “while I pray” the subordinate clause. The two are reversed in the second question. The main clause, having a subject and a predicate, can stand alone meaningfully, whereas the subordinate clause is meaningless without the main clause. The meaningless part is consequently easily ignored, leaving the meaningful part in place of the meaningful whole. Secondly and more importantly, smoking in the first question and praying in the second by appearing first set the themes of the questions. Now as we learn from the result that smoking is discouraged but not absolutely forbidden, while praying is always encouraged, what response is expected of each truncated question as well as of each theme is clear.

The two novices are asking the same question, but about different things. Now the question may be rephrased almost neutrally by eliminating the subordinate clause and counteracting the thematic effect. For example, the Abbot’s answer to the question, “Are the two things, smoking and praying, compatible?”, might be difficult to predict.

Transposed to Dogen’s context, the question is this: Are the two things, the wash house and buddha dharma, compatible?

Dogen himself gives two contradictory answers:

Quietly think of the teaching, “In the wash house, dharma is not expounded.”

The Tathagata graciously expounded dharma to Rahula inside the wash house.

If the syntax of Dogen’s comments is preserved in the translation, we may infer that, as far as buddha dharma is concerned, it is compatible with the wash house.

Buddha dharma is all-pervasive. It is purification, which is precisely to be practiced on the defiled, the wash house, the everyday life. Apart from the quotidian existence there is no other existence, as apart from the time being there is no being. All the access we get to buddha dharma is just this. If buddha dharma is not compatible with the wash house, it is not compatible with any part of life.

Dogen has been consistently advocating for the practice of buddha dharma in all activities – in the painted rice cake, that is, in studying sutras and commentaries, in the duties of the tenzo, and in zazen, and there is no distinction between special and ordinary activities, no distinction between the sacred and the profane. To engage mindfully and sincerely in every activity constitutes practice-realization.

Consequently, the act of expurgation is to be regulated in accordance with buddha dharma, to conduce to buddha dharma, and to be buddha dharma. By imparting to the wash house experience earnestness, attentiveness, and regularity of conduct, Dogen himself is expounding buddha dharma in the wash house.

On the other hand, as far as the wash house is concerned, it is incompatible with buddha dharma.

Here we are talking about one of what might be called the most objectively disagreeable bodily functions. Objectively - not because it is essentially so, but because it is so physiologically, to the senses, as the first dart. What is disagreeable to the senses does not necessarily engender mental suffering, and indeed Rahula voluntarily endures it as a kind of training: “You stay here not because of poverty, nor because of having lost wealth, but for the sake of seeking the way. A home leaver should thus bear hardship.” But no one is ever asked to enjoy bodily pain; no one is asked to enjoy the wash house. Objectively disagreeable also because it is so socially. All the instructions, don’t stare, don’t groan, don’t make a mess, wash yourself, don’t take another’s clothes, amount to the same thing – don’t give rise to resentment either in yourself or in others. This is cleanliness, the removal of the defilements of rancor and resentment, which easily result from the social disagreeableness of the situation and are diametrically opposed to buddha dharma.

All this, however, is not why the wash house is incompatible with buddha dharma. Rather, the wash house is dualistic, impermanent, dependently arisen, and non-essential, whereas buddha dharma is emptiness. There is no room for the wash house in buddha dharma because buddha dharma is the negation of the wash house.

Do you depend on practice-realization?

It is not that there is no practice-realization. It is just that it should not be defiled.

The dependence on practice-realization, then, is defilement. Can I become dependent on cleanliness? The wash house is a delusion – but so is the monastery. To meditate on the teaching, “In the wash house, dharma is not expounded,” is to remind yourself that learning, teaching, sutras, doctrines, and zazen are just the same as the wash house.


Comments

  1. kjhMay 11, 2021 at 9:32 AM

    What a great way to situate your exploration where the buddha dharma belongs (and whether it belongs in the wash house) with the smoking monks. It really draws our focus to the prayer and the buddha dharma as continuous and, as you put it, all-pervasive modes. As such, all of our other habits, quirks, and activity need to occur in (subordinate to, yet still contained within) the prayer/dharma practice. So, yes, when you really push the matter, all our base bodily functions and drives are, in a way, compatible with the buddha dharma because we do not step out of the buddha dharma mode to defecate or fornicate, to sleep or smoke. But the main/subordinate feature (which is so clear when you illustrate it grammatically) is what really matters here

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  2. AnonymousMay 14, 2021 at 10:27 PM

    "The dependence on practice-realization, then, is defilement." Very helpful analysis.

    So, on a very literal level, the objective unpleasantness of the wash house is associated with certain undeniable dependence of ours, e.g, on food and water. How shall I then view my dependence? Shall I depend on them in the same way I depend on practice-realization, learning, teaching, doctrines and zazen? What does that mean?

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    Replies
    1. Hao LuoMay 18, 2021 at 2:06 PM

      Thanks for your question! Made me wonder what we mean exactly by dependence. It seems that there are different kinds of dependent relationships. Even in the sequence of dependent arising as described in the Pali texts, the dependence of attachment on craving appears to be different from, say, the dependence of consciousness on psycho-physicality, in that, although both are “epistemological,” there’s room for the exertion of the will in the former but not in the latter. So, too, with “ontological” dependencies, i.e., cause (or conditions) and effect. Now the idea of practice-realization is precisely the negation of the distinction between the epistemological and the ontological. The injunction to eliminate dependence wherever the will, the I, is concerned, however, remains the same. So, if I understood you correctly, I tend to answer your question, “Shall I depend on food and water in the same way I depend on practice-realization, learning, teaching, doctrines and zazen?”, in the positive; but I’d modify it to try to make my meaning clear: my survival depends on food and water in the same way that my enlightenment depends on practice-realization, etc., but I should (imperative) depend on nothing.

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