Dharma Talk. Charlie Laurel, November 3, 2024.
Blue Cliff Record, Case 89: Yunyan asked Daowu, ‘How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use those many hands and eyes?’ Daowu answered, ‘It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind their head for the pillow.’ Yunyan said, ‘I understand.’ Daowu asked, ‘How do you understand it?’ Yunyan said, ‘All over the body are hands and eyes.’ Daowu said, ‘That is very well expressed, but it is only eight-tenths of the answer.’ Yunyan said, ‘How would you say it, Elder Brother?’ Daowu said, ‘Throughout the body are hands and eyes.’
Guanyin, the archetypal great compassion Bodhisattva, sometimes depicted with an array of a thousand hands, each hand with an eye—perceiving the suffering of all the many beings. Responsive hands, spontaneously reaching out, in accordance to each unique circumstance.
Here we have a story of two monastics from 1200 years ago. Twelve hundred years ago, Yunyan asked Daowu, ‘How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use those many hands and eyes?’. What drives Yunyan’s question here? “How?” he asks, does she use her incredibly sensitive perception of the distress of the many beings? Perhaps we might pause here in this moment to reflect on our own sensitivity and awareness of pain and suffering. We might wonder, how Guanyin can bear such acute sensitivity. But, Yunyan asks how she uses it. Perhaps Yunyan is asking, “What should I do. How do I endeavor to live my Bodhisattva vows?”
Daowu gives an unexpected response. That’s what makes this story a koan—a prompt, an opportunity to shift out of our habitual patterns of thought (or shift out of thought altogether). Daowu doesn’t talk about the many forms of helping, aiding, or volunteering, that Guanyin uses—that would be an infinite, inexhaustible recitation of activity. Instead he replies, ‘It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind their head for the pillow.’ That’s how she uses her perception of suffering; that’s how she responds. The ‘how’ is the Bodhisattva’s state of being. Guanyin doesn’t save the many beings or even help them—because there is no separation—so intimately interwoven with all beings and all phenomena, that there is no self-reflective sense that “I” am doing anything. ‘It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind their head for the pillow.’
Yunyan said, ‘I understand.’ Daowu asked, ‘How do you understand it?’ Yunyan said, ‘All over the body are hands and eyes.’ Each of us, here in this room today, is equipped with the sensitivity of a Bodhisattva, and a natural inborn urge to respond. “All over the body,” exquisitely attuned.
Yunyan is likely well along the path of Buddhist practice, having dropped the defenses and resistances that he might have acquired through his own suffering. He has likely opened up considerably. “I understand,” he says. But Daowu presses further—that’s only 80% of it: ‘Throughout the body are hands and eyes.’ Here is another opportunity to shift perspectives. From Daowu’s perspective, what is the body? The limitations of our human sensory apparatus coupled with our habitual modes of cognition make it easy to assume that my body is contained within this envelope of skin. And that’s a useful perspective, at least some of the time. It is also a limiting perspective, when we over-identify with it. “I” am here. “You” are there. Disconnected. Compassion might be an ideal or an attitude, but it’ s my attitude or yours.
At this very moment. Breathing in, breathing out. As are the trees and grasses. As are the rivers, clouds, Mt. Wantastiquet. The Great Earth—one living being. One. This is the body. Alive, perceptive, responsive in ultimate reciprocity. "Throughout the body hands and eyes.”
Is this getting too lofty? Out of reach for us mere mortals living amidst the catastrophes of 21st Century craziness? Here’s the question I want to ask of us today: Do we trust ourselves to respond to our lives, and the lives of others, with our own unique resources and inclinations, dropping our acquired defenses, opening up to the world, as our selves, as it is? Can we trust that our responding might be as natural and spontaneous as, ‘someone in the middle of the night reaching behind their head for the pillow.’? This question can’t be answered philosophically, or even poetically. In the Zen tradition, is answered, by sitting still, letting go, opening up; and by getting up, responding to each moment of our lives, whole-heartedly. And please, drop notions of perfection in this process. As Leonard Cohen (who was a serious Zen student, by the way) as Leonard sang: Just ring the bell that you can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
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