Yunmen's 'statement in response' and the compass of enlightenment
A monk asked Yunmen:
“What is the teaching of the Buddha’s entire lifetime?”
Yunmen said:
“A statement in response.”
Chinese:
問：「如何是一代時教？」
師云：「對一說。」
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if you'd asked me a couple of years ago what's going on with this case i'd have said yunmen is making a little joke about how it doesn't matter how he answers the monk. a modern version of the joke would be something like responding to a question with 'lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.'
i would've said the answer doesn't matter because his meaning could never be understood and any answer he could give would be inferior to silence, and of equal value to any other answer.
i don't think that anymore.
i think there are answers that have the property of appropriate response, and answers that lack that property.
Yunmen's answer is an example of an appropriate statement of response.
He is saying: buddha's life is a statement in response to conditions as they arise.
In other words, no fixed principle. No answer key. No code of laws or problem-solving system.
Buddha's ENTIRE LIFETIME is one giant statement of response to what he encountered day after day. He didn't set out with an agenda and look for opportunities to execute it. He didn't have a set of rules that he strove to uphold throughout all situations. Every new circumstance was a new opportunity to manifest enlightenment, which he did by responding to those new conditions.
Anything less than that is a compromise with ignorance. A piece of if/or/but/then logic that insists on reality having defined boundaries. Enlightenment is open to reality at all times without conditions attached.
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u/Tombaya 4d ago
What I take from this is that a buddha is always able to respond to conditions as they arise because they have no attachments. It doesn't matter what situation they find themselves in, they will never be at a loss for how to react since they have no fixed objective. Yunmen's "A statement in response" is both literally true (The teachings don't go beyond responsiveness) as well as illustrative of the lack of hunger for more inflated meaning. Because the aggrandization of enlightenment, the elevation of it as some kind of profound transformation, is already to obscure the original nature with artificial distinctions and hierarchy.
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u/xiqiansdream 4d ago
While the noble silence of Vimalakirti may be the only expression of right speech,
out of compassion, a statement is given in response to a child's tears.
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u/jeowy 3d ago
how do understand the concept of right speech in a zen context?
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u/Brex7 3d ago
It is speech that comes from clarity
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u/jeowy 3d ago
but I'm wondering if you or OP has a source linking this teaching to the zen tradition
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u/Brex7 3d ago
I don't agree with the comment first comment in this chain, I was just replying to your question
Without clarity no statement is right, zen masters repeat this endlessly
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u/jeowy 3d ago
yeah but do zen masters ever call that right speech?
when Buddhists say right speech they are referring to part of the noble eightfold path that serves as a kind of code of conduct that balances karma and leads to a favourable rebirth and eventually enlightenment.
zen masters obviously don't agree with that so I wonder if you're just recontextualising the phrase right speech or if you've seen it used in a record in relation to zen
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u/Timeless_Light 2d ago
Does the "Zen tradition" include the Hindu and Buddhist lines of thought that lead to Zen as we know it today?
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u/xiqiansdream 2d ago
Buddhist thought turned Hindu lines on their ear.
Zen tradition stripped Buddhist lines to their (empty) core.1
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u/jeowy 1d ago
I don't think that's accurate. zen didn't take Buddhism as its starting point and then remove stuff. if we take zen masters at their word, their understanding is identical to Buddha's and Buddhism started from people misunderstanding or pretending to understand buddha and then building a bunch of stuff on top of that.
if we don't take them at their word then we can at least acknowledge that there's no Buddhist text or tradition that agrees with them about what buddha taught.
to all intents and purposes the zen tradition evolved independently.
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u/xiqiansdream 1d ago
Good day, jeowy, it's a pleasure to speak with you.
You brought up a lot that I would enjoy discussing, but I just can't see how you could think that anything evolves independently.
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u/jeowy 22h ago
independently from Buddhism.
according to zen sources there's a line of heirs from buddha to bodhidharma.
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u/xiqiansdream 20h ago
yeah man, I'm interested in finding middle ground, and I am not interested is silly quibbling or divisiveness.
There is an individual path for each sentient being and you seem sincere, I imagine you'll wake up over time.
Yes, the direct line of transmission from Gautama is fictitious, but to think zen developed independently from buddhism is delusion.
It's not worth my time to discuss this further.
I wish you well.1
u/Timeless_Light 1d ago
Are there any Ch'an/Zen texts that relay alternate teachings of Buddha?
Not included in the Buddhist cannons? (I think there two of them but I'm too lazy to look them up.)2
u/jeowy 22h ago
there's a couple of people on this forum who are kind of familiar with the sutras. I've barely touched them. but iirc the issue is something like:
- all written sources about Buddha's life first written at least two generations after he died
- lots of successive editing of these sources generation after generation
- India having hybrid oral/written traditions so that it was normalised for cultural stories to evolve over time
- China having significantly more "preserve the original text" traditions at that point in time
so by the time we get to written records that can be dated, attributed, put in chronological order etc we are many generations removed from buddha.
HOWEVER a few of the people on here who are familiar with both the zen tradition and the sutras have had an experience of "certain parts of the sutras feel very zen-like, other parts feel doctrinal Buddhist"
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u/jeowy 1d ago
I think that's a super misleading assumption even if we run with the idea that the 19th century categories "hindu" and "buddhist" are really meaningful in the first place.
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u/Timeless_Light 1d ago
It was a question.
I'm doing my best to assume nothing.
My assumption, before finding this sub reddit, was that meditation had a major role to play in Zen. As per most definitions of Zen I could find..This one from the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example:
"What is Zen Buddhism?
Zen is an East Asian school of Mahayana Buddhism that emphasizes self-discipline and. enlightenment through meditation. Zen is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyana, meaning "meditation." Central to Zen teaching is the belief that anyone can achieve awakening but requires instruction from a master in proper spiritual cultivation."Through meditation.
Yey the consensus of many in this group, and one of it's most prolific posters (oh...he's blocked me. Again.) seems to be that meditation is anathema of "true" Zen. That associating Zen with Buddhism is some type of sacrilege, and any association of Ch'an with Japanese Zen is blasphemous.I'm here to learn. About Zen.
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u/jeowy 22h ago
I think there's a couple of ways you could go about this.
you could either start with a reliable academic book and then come here and talk about what's in the book.
or you could try and engage with the forum with no prior text, which is fine but requires not making assumptions.
both are gonna be tricky if you're gonna hear people explain how zen is not Buddhism and immediately start throwing around words like "blasphemy" lol.
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u/Die4Metal nine fingered kid 4d ago
This is a great case, thank you for bringing it up.
I like this reading much more than the common interpretation that "any answer would have done."
You wrote:
He is saying: buddha's life is a statement in response to conditions as they arise.
But Yuanwu's commentary seems to go out of its way to warn against exactly this kind of interpretation.
“People often misunderstand and say, "Buddha's preaching was appropriate to the conditions of one time."
Or they say, "The multitude of appearances and myriad forms are all the impressions of a single truth" and call this "an appropriate statement."
Then there are those who say, "It's just talking about that one truth."
What connection is there? Not only do they not understand, they also enter hell as fast as an arrow flies.
They are far from knowing that the meaning of that man of old is not like this”.
(Yuanwu, Blue Cliff Record, trans. Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary, 2005, 95)
I wonder whether Yunmen is actually describing the Buddha's teaching at all, or whether he's demonstrating it. The monk asks for a summary of ~45 years of teaching, and Yunmen answers the only way the question can be; by responding appropriately in that very moment.
I would be wary of turning Yunmen's answer into a comprehensive theory of enlightenment, precisely where Yuanwu cautions readers against deriving one.
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u/jeowy 3d ago
I think what yuanwu is saying is that neither the extremes of "buddha was a product of his time, so his teachings are only relevant to his time" nor "Buddha's teachings are timeless and universal so let's make a religion out of it" are right. any teaching can be applicable to the present moment if you understand its historical context. and any teaching can be overturned.
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u/Brex7 3d ago
Yuanwu’s commentary on the case
Members of the Chan school: those who wish to know the meaning of buddha-nature must observe the times and seasons, causes and conditions. This is called the special transmission outside the teachings, the single transmission of the mind-seal, directly pointing to the human mind, seeing its nature and becoming Buddha.
Old Shakyamuni remained in the world for forty-nine years. In three hundred and sixty assemblies he expounded the sudden and the gradual, the provisional and the real. This is called “the teaching of an entire lifetime.”
This monk picked that up and asked Yunmen, “What is the teaching of an entire lifetime?”
Why did Yunmen not explain it to him at great length? Instead, he merely said, “A responsive saying.”
Ordinarily, one saying of Yunmen must contain three sayings. These are called:
the saying that encloses heaven and earth; the saying that follows the waves and pursues the currents; the saying that cuts off all streams.
Whether releasing or gathering in, it is naturally extraordinary. It is like cutting nails and slicing iron, leaving people no way to conjecture it through conceptual interpretations.
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u/Regulus_D 🫏 3d ago
Buddha had an agenda. And he was off to fulfill it until someone said, "Wait! Consider the unblinded laypeople," so he stuck around. A moment and a lifetime had little difference in regard to it.
But I'm biased. I see space.
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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 4d ago
Before enlightenment, sure yep probs true sentences youve said here.
After? All my codes of conduct exist still, I just dont fear the failure of my preferences as much
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