Three Pounds of Flax
Cinorjer
Veteran
One of my all time favorite Zen koans is Master Tozan's (also spelled Dongshan) answer when asked, "What is Buddha?" This koan is included in about every collection used by various Zen schools, and with minor variations, is simply this:
Tozan was asked by a monastic, “What is Buddha?” Tozan replied, “Three pounds of flax.” What did Tozan mean by this? How would you answer the question? What is Buddha?
Now, this being a koan, some people will say (and some schools of Zen teach) that the answer is meaningless. Tozan was asked an impossible question and replied with an equal bit of nonsense. Once you comprehend the question is empty, you can do the same. "What is Buddha? A Big Mac with Cheese." There, see how easy it is?
But it's not correct, because the question is not nonsense. Monks and other Zen Buddhists are told to find their Buddha-nature. We must penetrate what this is, before we can find it. Tozan in this instance gave a snarky, wonderful answer that pointed without words to a deep truth. But, you lack the cultural context to understand his answer, so the koan remains closed to you. Here is the secret to the koan, something Rev. Young passed on to me that opened it up. I hope it does the same for you.
Three pounds of flax is exactly how much flax it takes to spin a summer-weight Buddhist robe in ancient China.
Snarky Tozan was asked what is a Buddha, and told the monk it's what made the robe he was wearing. Now do you see how this opens up the koan? I can see the monk looking down at the patched summer robe he was wearing as the gears of his mind started spinning in circles.
"But wearing a robe doesn't make me a Buddha. He can't mean that. And he didn't say Buddha was a robe. Buddha is what makes a robe. So at what point does flax turn into a robe? I am wearing a robe, but it's just as true to say I'm wearing three pounds of flax! So when I put on the flax in the morning, I'm putting on Buddha? Oh...."
So what is a Buddha? For the monk, it was three pounds of flax. What is Buddha for you? Will you answer? There's no right, and no wrong answers. Just answers.
My own? Sure. Right now, Buddha is a nicked ear while shaving my head one morning.
Comments
To me Buddha is a migraine
Buddha is as Buddha does!
I recently added flax seed to my diet. Minga!
@vinlyn. Don't eat Buddha ..:hair:..no!
The way the koan is described in The Gateless Gate, it is not such an intellectual answer really.
It's more like Tozan doesn't enter the question al all (on an intellectual level) but also he doesn't talk nonsense; he keeps his mind on what he's doing at that time; weighing flax.
Yes, some versions have Tozan weighing flax when asked the question. Mumon treats the koan is an example of "just like this". And you're right, intellectualizing a koan is always a mistake. But understanding what is going on is still an important step. The way I was told it, you have to chew before you can swallow. Don't think you can skip the chewing step.
The monks in Japan who used the koan would have known why the monk was weighing flax, and therefore nobody bothered to include such an obvious detail in the koan as their robes were made of flax and they were busy making new summer robes at the time. Or maybe the Japanese monks didn't know. The Japanese islands didn't grow flax and their robes were cotton or silk, and I can find no reference to them spinning their own cloth. Their kasa were often donations from patrons.
I've wondered before, since these stories were collected in China and were ancient by the time they were imported and used in Japan, how much even the Zen schools there knew about the Chinese culture that produced them. The two nations never much liked each other. The Chinese gong-an was transformed into a distinctively Japanese Zen instrument by then.
Because early translators like Suzuki were heavy believers in the model of Zen as a breakthrough to a mystical experience called Satori and the koan as a tool designed to hammer the logical mind into submission, that image of enlightenment and thus the koan as something incomprehensible to ordinary minds became fixed in our minds. It's important to understand that throughout their history, the gong-on was not used like that and Zen was not always treated then or now as anti-intellectual.
The Masters would say the koan means what it means, and that's all there is to it. Can't argue with that, can we?
If he was eating pretzels he might have said "these pretzels are making me thirsty"
So a Buddha is just somebody who is mindful of the present? That sounds like setting the bar very low.
No. A BUddha is someone who knows and acknowledges nothing BUT the present.
So a Buddha doesn't know the past? Has no memory?
SN, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
No, a Buddha is not just someone focused on what they're doing without comment or thought. Although to be fair, that is exactly what Japanese Zen began teaching once the Samurai class adopted it as their practice. That also carried over to the unfortunate teaching in WWII from some Buddhist Zen temples that a warrior was still being a Buddha if he killed the enemy without passion or thought.
This is why people shouldn't uncritically accept what they read from the Japanese Zen Masters, or any Master for that matter. Even the Masters disagreed with each other but it's hard to keep the various teachings and sects separate when a thousand years of teaching is all lumped together as "Zen".
The koan in this case isn't actually trying to tell you what a Buddha is. It's making a comment about the question itself and our assumptions. One way Zen does this is to point to the immediate moment when asked such questions. In this case, the monk asking "What is a Buddha" is like a fish asking "What's this thing called water?" You can try to explain water, or blow a bubble at the other fish and swim away.
I feel in this form of communication, the question can not be asked or answered as a koan. So a more skilful question and answer might be:
Q: "What is three pounds of Zen?"
Q: "Wot Buddha?"
Answers to the usual cushion . . .
What is Buddha for you?
It's a statue/picture that reminds me to practice good things.
You know, this answer delights me. Thank you.
I think a Buddha for me is an ever widening heart
or an awakening from my own delusion
or the footsteps ahead of me showing the way towards suffering's cessation
or whatever has me bow.
Or what ever answer will send Zen koans off to bother some other student.
The Buddha is not 3 pounds of flax would be my answer to the koan. Would I get wacked?
So what is a Buddha?
What is Buddha for you?
. :rolleyes: .. "
Me" "Not me" ..."Anatta" . :om: ..My experience in koan-practice is modest; I never was very good at it. The koan was mostly something like a cane in meditation. A word like “mu” for instance was there. You got used to it. The urgency to “solve” it faded away pretty soon; for me anyways.
The best koan-like moments were spontaneous. When you read the comments in the written koan-collections they refer to answers in terms like “sparks struck from flint”.
In my humble opinion that’s the crucial thing about it. The answer is happening without “me” interfering in any way at all. It is as if someone hits a bell. The bell sounds when it is hit; no gap. No separation.
The format of koan-practice is misguiding. In Dokusan a student enters the room where the teacher is waiting. The teacher keeps silent. The student bows and says; my koan is A and my answer is B.
But that’s nothing, that’s meaningless. That’s just where it starts. During the following interaction the student completely lets go and is open and truthful and immediate like a bell that sounds when it is struck. That’s all there is to achieve.
The single most revealing moment for me was when I was waiting in a line for the crucial encounter with the teacher. I realized that I was preparing for a performance. I wanted to look good and leave part of me (my doubts and fears) outside the Dokusan-room. They were the larger part of me, and I tried to leave them outside. I never stood a chance of succeeding in doing that.
When I decided to bring my doubts and fears (and whatever secret I would want to hide) with me in the Dokusan-room, I was more confident and relaxed in there. The chance of a spontaneous and meaningful interaction with the teacher grows when you’re ready to be yourself.
And maybe there’s a subject for another thread: the importance of being who you are; not some imagined Buddha or some Tozan in a story, but you.
Just asking basic questions. Sometimes understanding what something isn't can point to what it is.
You'd probably be told to go back and meditate some more on it, I guess. Or the Master might ask, "Well, what is it, then?" and see what you say.
There is no "what".
Buddha is.