The Circle of the Way by Barbara O'Brien

Author:Barbara O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2019-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

ZEN LEAVES CHINA: KOREA AND VIETNAM

SOMETIME in the seventh century two Buddhist monks from the Korean Peninsula set forth on a pilgrimage to China. They traveled on foot through rural villages and rugged forests toward a port on the Yellow Sea.

But one evening a hard rain came down relentlessly, and there was no shelter to be found. There was no moon, no stars, just rain and mud in a black night. Soaked and miserable, the monks stumbled on.

They found a simple structure—a shed, perhaps?—and crawled inside. Their shelter was damp, and they had no dry wood for a fire, but at least they weren’t being pelted by rain. They got some sleep. But in the morning the two monks realized they had spent the night in a tomb.

In a later version of the story, as they settled down in the pitch dark to sleep, one of the monks felt something—a gourd, partly filled with rainwater. He enjoyed a refreshing drink. But in the morning the monk realized he hadn’t found a gourd at all. He had found a skull, and the rainwater he had been drinking was roiling with maggots.

The monk, filled with revulsion, experienced a powerful insight into how mind creates what we think of as “reality.” The three worlds are only mind! he thought. All phenomena arise from mind. If all we can know is mind, why look for truth outside of mind? And why go to China?

The water-drinking monk was Wonhyo (617–86), whose commentary on Awakening of Faith would profoundly influence East Asian Buddhism. Wonhyo’s pilgrimage to China ended that day. The other monk, Uisang (625–702), continued to China, where he studied with the revered Huayan master Zhiyan (602–68) and was senior to the previously mentioned Fazang.

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