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Monkey
in the House
of
Six Windows
teisho
by Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi
Zazen-ji, June 10, 1990
Sun and clouds and rain. Thoughts and
feelings and sights and sounds. Self and other. This and that. Experiences arise and
present themselves, always shifting and changing. A blade of grass with a drop of rain
dangling from its tip. The sun seen burning through a mass of grey clouds. Waking up in
the morning feeling like shit, wandering around throughout the day, bumping into things,
grasping at things, pushing things away, coming and going.
The Nirvana Sutra says that usual mind is like a monkey in a house with six
windows. There's seeing and hearing, touching and tasting, smelling and consciousness.
Through these six windows the world can be seen coming and going. The monkey sometimes
thinks that it owns the house and so it just sits in the middle of the floor, waiting for
something to enter into its territory, something to come and try to take its house away
from it. Sometimes it thinks it senses something so it leaps up off its haunches and lands
on a windowsill and peers out to see what's going on out there. Then it hears something
and so it leaps off and hangs peering through the window of hearing. Then it smells
something, it tastes something, it thinks something; it jumps around back and forth,
bouncing madly from wall to wall until it becomes so exhausted it collapses into the
middle of the floor again, where it can see through each of the windows, but it can't see
anything clearly. It is so exhausted that it goes to sleep for a while; and then something
stirs and it's up leaping again from window to window.
Attention crouches inside the bodymind, leaping from sense to sense, grasping at this,
grasping at that. In zazen, the bodymind sits; the house sits. The monkey thinks it owns
the house and it is still jumping around but at least the house is where it is. From the
house's point of view there's this thing inside of it, clawing, jumping, shrieking. Can
you feel how seriously it takes itself?
A thought comes up. It is a thought about how the world is; the world is a hateful place,
it's a bad place. There's a beautiful flower! I'm itchy. What's that sound? It sounds like
a bird. My knee hurts.
The house can sit and allow its windows to be completely open to the world; instead of
glass, instead of walls, the house then begins to see the world and realizes that the
world is not something outside of it but that the house is arising within the world. We
don't need to get rid of the monkey, we don't need to even tame the monkey. We simply need
to take the walls of the house down. Then the monkey has nowhere to leap to, has no
purpose, it is no longer enclosed. The monkey then realizes that it too is arising in the
world.
Moment after moment, out of habit or pattern, attention pulls itself away from this moment
of experiencing and leaps into a past moment, or pushes itself into a future moment of
expectation, or grabs and clutches at only the smallest part of this moment, perhaps that
which is seen, perhaps that which is heard, perhaps that which is thought.
Just leave the monkey alone! Let the monkey do whatever it wants to do. Practise like the
house. The house always has its six windows. Can we slide the windows open, allow a fresh
breeze to circulate through our rooms? Can we begin to ventilate the musty attic, sweep
out the dusty basement? Can we see the ways in which the walls of the house are attempting
to keep the world out and trying to keep something in? What's outside and what's inside?
Well sure, there might be that monkey jumping around, but there's also a great deal of
space; there's air, there's room. The fundamental quality of a room, beyond its four
walls, ceiling and floor is that it's full of space. There's a vastness.
The air in front of your face, behind your back, and resting on top of your head is the
same air that passes in and out of your lungs, the same air that stretches over mountain
and valley, over the sea. It circles the earth, it embraces the blue of the sky and the
shifting of the clouds. There is this bodymind; what is it that is inside the bodymind?
What is it that is outside? Outside right now? There's a wall, and there are sounds, the
feeling of the hands, and the hokkai-in, the dharmadatu mudra of things as
they are, resting in the lap. Is that inside or outside? Feel the thumbs touching lightly,
fingers resting on top of each other like the petals of a flower. Are the hands inside or
outside? There's the wall. You see the wall. Is that inside or outside? You see the wall
with your mind, you feel the hands with your mind. What is the mind? Is the mind this
succession of thoughts and feelings, or is it also seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and
smelling? That which is being seen, that which is being heard; is that inside or is that
outside? Does this skin of the body enclose something, or does it simply arise, the same
way that a sound arises? Is it simply being felt, being experienced, the way that a
thought is experienced, the way that a song is experienced, the way that the world is
experienced? In experiencing, is there an inside, is there an outside?
The windows, the walls, the house and the monkey all arise within this world. All of the
things of your life arise within this living. What is this life? Is there an inside and an
outside to life? Even death arises within life. Death is what life does. We breathe in and
breathe out. Thirty ants dismantle a caterpillar. The flowers and leaves eat the sunlight.
Even death is not outside of life; death is the activity of this living, being born is the
activity of this living. But what is it that is born, what is it that dies? Is it separate
from this living? What is it that is living each and every one of you? What is it that you
are experiencing when you experience something? Whether it's your hand or someone's else's
hand, whether it is standing up or sitting down, whether it is waking, sleeping or
dreaming, whether it feels good or bad: what is it that you are experiencing? Is it
possible for you to experience something outside of experiencing? Is it possible for you
to know something without knowing it? Is there ever anything going on but this knowing,
this space, this life?
In our practice we might try to do all kinds of things to the monkey; we might try to tame
the monkey, we might try to teach it tricks, teach it how to put on a little suit, a funny
little hat, learn how to do calculations. We might try to make the monkey chant the Heart
Sutra. We might ask ourselves, "How did the monkey get in the house?" Or we
might just simply open the doors, open the windows, take down the walls and let the monkey
go free.
Zen is this life. Zen is facing yourself as you are. It is seeing how you are moment after
moment, so that you can unfold for yourself, directly, who you are. Zen is meeting
yourself face to face. Zen is the direct pointing to the nature of experiencing itself, to
the nature of Awareness itself. When you meet the teachings you meet the practice; when
you meet the practice you meet yourself. You encounter the teachings through words like
this, through coming face to face with the teacher in the dokusan room. Can you meet the
teacher as he or she is? Can you recognize that the teacher is just Awareness itself,
presenting itself? Can you recognize that you are just Awareness itself, presenting
itself? Can you meet the teacher as you are and as he is, so that there is only Awareness
itself? This is Zen.
We speak of a direct transmission. The teachings and the teacher might point, but it is up
to us to look. When we look, when we see, is there anything other than this looking, this
seeing? Is there someone to receive transmission? Is there someone to offer it? Moment by
moment, this moment expresses itself. What is it that you are aware of? What is it that is
aware? Is there an inside or an outside to your experiencing?
The mind seems like a space with shifting surfaces of thoughts and feelings coming and
going in it. Somehow a thought or a feeling can appear to be quite solid and if we attend
to it, it seems to have a direction, it seems to locate itself some place. There is this
space of mind, the spaces within the body, the space of the room in which this body is
arising. Are these spaces separated from each other or is space just space? We tend to
believe that space is that which is between objects, but what is the object? If we look
very closely, perhaps we will see that it is space presenting itself as the object. If we
look very closely here, very intimately, touch without barrier, perhaps we will find that
all forms are formless forms. The Heart Sutra says "SHIKI SOKU ZE
KU": form, in other words emptiness; "KU SOKU ZE SHIKI": emptiness, in
other words, form. It depends on how you look at it, of course, but what is it that's
looking? What is it that's experiencing?
I leave you with this experience. This moment of experiencing is completely open. The door
stands so far ajar it comes off its hinges. Will you enter? Welcome.
 
©
1999-2004 White Wind Zen Community. All rights reserved.
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