![]() insects teeming amongst the seeds that were crushed along with them in the press.
In disgust and horror at the all-pervasiveness of suffering and death, they bade each
other farewell and each went their separate ways as renunciates.
Again and again in the suttas and such texts as the Theragatha and
Therigatha we find accounts of thousands of people confronted and completely
repulsed by the sickness, suffering, physical decay, and death that lies under the
make-up, jewellery, and polite conversations and social conventions of their lives
who then became wandering mendicants. Living in the nest of hearth and home,
denying death and impermanence by drawing loved ones near, and wrapping oneself
in padded cloth and jewellery was to be utterly abandoned for a radical lifestyle of
exposure to the elements. The Dharma Taught by Sakyamuni was only one of many
paths being presented at that time. All of northern India seems to have been torn by
a great social upheaval.
One of the other remarkable things that we see in stories such as this was
how thoroughly affected people such as Mahakasyapa were by an insight.
Wandering in the woods, Mahakasyapa came upon Sakyamuni sitting in the
shade near the road to Nalanda. Something about Sakyamuni Buddhas face and
presence moved him deeply and he prostrated before the Buddha and requested that
he accept him as his disciple. The Buddha accepted him with, Ehi bhikkhu, or
Welcome, monk. Mahakasyapa took off his outer robe and spread it on the ground
for the Buddha to sit on. The Buddha then taught him to look into the coming and
going of moments of experience and recognize impermanence. After a while, the
Buddha commented, Nice robe. You havent been a mendicant for long, have you?
Mahakasyapa looked at the greasy rags the Buddha was wearing and offered him his
new, clean robes, which the Buddha accepted. Throughout his lifetime, he always
treasured the robe given to him by the Buddha, a robe he himself had worn.
Keizan zenji tells of the meeting between Sakyamuni Buddha and
Mahakasyapa somewhat differently in Denkoroku Case 2:
He met the Generous One at the Tashi tower, the Shrine of Many Children.
The Generous One said, Welcome, monk, and Kasyapas beard and hair
[snaps fingers] just vanished and he appeared dressed in a kesa.
Mahakasyapa was inspired to practice the most extreme forms of asceticism
but the Buddha had to restrain him, finally allowing him to practice only the twelve
that Dogen zenji has listed. These are called the dhuta, which means shaking off.
The dhutas were generally popular amongst the various spiritual movements of the
time. The view behind it was basically that the spirit, soul, or mind was encased in
the material dross of the body. The body was to be disciplined and subjugated by the
endurance of hardships until the mind was no longer interested in any kind of
sensual or sensory experience but could turn in upon itself. This inversion and
extreme folding in and collapse of attention was understood to be an experience of a
higher or transcendent realm. The idea was that this would help in withdrawing the
mind or spirit from the body and the world like a sword drawn from its sheath so
that it could dwell in or find union with this transcendent realm.
Sakyamuni had investigated to great depths and mastered these systems of
thought and ascetic practices and knew them to be useless distractions on the path
to true freedom which was a matter of attending openly and deeply to the world as it
is. He found that a middle way between the indulgence and laxity of the usual
householders life and the fanatical ascetic abuse of bodymind was to be found in
doing only what was required to live so that ones days and nights were always open
to practising the Way. This meant that monks should depend upon laypeople to
provide sustenance and clothing and own only a few tools such as a bowl to beg for
food with, a needle to mend with, a staff to walk with, and so on. Shelter generally
wasnt necessary except from the glare of the sun and the falling rains and that
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