The Sword Of Manjushri

Preface to The Sword of Manjushri

The Sword of Manjushri is a translation of a Chinese Buddhist text likely written late into the Southern Song period (960 AD – 1279 AD). The original Chinese scroll had come into the possession of D.J. Lin, who translated the work into English. Lin indicated that his father, an archaeologist, had found the work sometime in the mid-sixties, preserved in a nondescript cave that was part of a dig near the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou. The upheavals of the Cultural Revolution (dating from 1965 and into the 70’s), including Lin’s father’s death, prevented publication of the work, and it remained a forgotten treasure of the family until Lin, in the early 1980s, found it while going through his deceased father’s papers as a young man. His father had been readying the work for publication and had translated the work from the classical Chinese of the Song period to modern Chinese, adding annotations. In 1983, Lin came to the United States to study electrical engineering and met my brother, Bill Appletree. The two became close friends. Lin was much taken with The Sword of Manjushri and, according to a note to Bill that has also been preserved, Lin translated it into English as an intimate and profound gift for my brother, who at the time mentioned to me his deep appreciation of the work. By 1995, both men had passed away and The Sword of Manjushri was again forgotten. Recently, however, my brother’s widow presented me with some of my brother’s papers and the translation of The Sword of Manjushri was among them. Unfortunately, I do not know if the original work still exists, nor have I been able to locate any Chinese copies or versions or other translations.

In an accompanying note to Bill, Lin wrote that, according to his father’s scholarship, The Sword of Manjushri was written by an unknown author, who called himself, Kong Koudai (‘Empty Pockets’), likely in the Southern Song period. As best I can understand it, at this time the Chan (also called ‘Zen’) school of Buddhism had enjoyed a long period of ascendency, both in government and literati circles, but its influence had begun to wane. Different aspects of what was considered by all Chan lineages of monks to be proper practice were magnified as the lineages jockeyed for the favor of government officials and private patrons, with monks sometimes inventing lineage connections with venerated figures of the past to justify their own claims. Some even wrote works that reflected their practice standpoint and claimed that they were written by luminaries of the past. Lin wrote that his father did not know what the monk’s intentions were in writing The Sword of Manjushri – whether it was to advance the claims of his lineage over others or to heal the rift between them. But Lin’s father wrote that he believed the latter to be the case because the work attempts to present a way of practice that bares the fault line between what are called ‘koan introspection’ and ‘silent illumination’ methods as an artificial one. Given this standpoint, it is perhaps unnecessary to go into the details of sectarian disputation, especially as I am told that this ground has been well covered by others (See Morten Schlutter, How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan in Song-Dynasty China, Studies in East Asian Buddhism Book 22, University of Hawaii Press, 2010).

A final point. The Sword of Manjushri offers a concrete way of practice, and I hope that it may benefit many. In honor of Lin and Bill – and, of course, the monk called Empty Pockets – I therefore humbly offer The Sword of Manjushri to the public. (Please note that the manuscript contains a few annotations in brackets by Lin, based on his father’s scholarly work. Please also note that Chinese names have been transliterated using the Pinyin style.)

                                                                                                                   ms appletree

The Sword of Manjushri

                                                              Attributed to Kong Koudai (‘Empty Pockets’)

May all beings transparently realize the Way!

Ancestor Jianzhi Sengcan said: “To return to the root is to find the principle, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. At the moment of turning the light around, there is going beyond both appearances and emptiness.”

Ancestor Shitou Xiquan said: “Turn the light to shine within, then just return. The vast, inconceivable source can’t be faced or turned away from . . .. If you want to know the undying person in the hut, don’t separate from this skin bag here and now!”

This skin bag’s way is no different. Turn the light around to shine within. But too many waste precious days and years peering out of their eyes and flailing their arms to grasp after or push away appearances, constructing images of the world – and of themselves – that they take to be real, trying to make everything fit what they want. They only end up causing incalculable harm. Even many in Buddhist practice think they can pick and choose to manage things as they like, seeking ‘this’ and avoiding ‘that’ for their own purposes, worse than those who do not walk the Way at all.

My teacher, Hushuo Xi (‘Babbling Brook’), used Manjushri’s Sword to cut away the very root of these choking weeds. He’d say to all within hearing: “Manjushri is the bodhisattva [personification] of wisdom. The bodhisattva carries a mighty sword used to see through greed, ignorance and delusion. Seated, standing, moving or lying down, you are Manjushri. With empty hands at rest, still you wield the mighty sword. Where is it? Show me how you use it!”

Right now, attentive to the question, you are looking for the sword, aren’t you? What is it, you ask? Where is it?

Babbling Brook, you’d skin me alive for selling water by the river, but this one simply can’t stand the constant flailing: Look! Inquiry itself is the sword. Attentive awareness is the sword. Seeing through what comes is the sword. The sword turning back upon itself is the sword.

Forgive me, Babbling Brook, this old fool is giving away the store – as a result, no doubt to be reborn in the hell realm for infinite kalpas [eons of time]! Ha, very well then, might as well spill the beans for all!

Here’s the way of unified practice and realization of the ancestors.

The sword of Manjushri is what the ancients called wisdom or prajna. The function of prajna is not doing: not turning this into something, into anything at all. This is just as it is – not even one thing to hold onto or reject found anywhere. Not even some self that’s yours.

You may ask: Why not turn this into something else? Don’t we need to plan and make a better world? Well, there’s nothing wrong with making a shopping list, but how is it when the store does not have what you want? How are you then? How is it when your plan collapses or produces pain? How is it when you lose a job, a stranger takes advantage of you, or a loved one abandons you, or dies? How is it knowing that you will die? And your plans, are they undertaken out of self-interest and self-protection, producing some imbalance, or do they emerge from clarity? How do you respond to circumstances as they come?

Prajna: the function of not habitually reacting to the current mess of karmic entanglement – of not producing new selfish acts that cause more suffering. In this non-doing, past karmic entanglements begin to burn off of their own accord, this disclosed simply as this.

Prajna: a way of ‘seeing through’ the arising and passing of forms – including self-formations and self-images.

Prajna: not getting stuck on forms and not pushing them away.  

Now here’s how to go about practice that is itself continual realization [[both in the meanings of ‘realization’ as understanding and as a ‘bringing to life’]].

As Babbling Brook put it: “The bodhisattva carries a mighty sword used to see through greed, ignorance and delusion. Seated, standing, moving or lying down, you are Manjushri. With empty hands at rest, still you wield the mighty sword.” You are Manjushri wielding the sword that sees through greed, ignorance and delusion. You wield the sword that sees through all movements to turn this into something. You wield the sword that sees through self-formation, self-reflection, conceptual proliferation and endless self-reference – all leading to grasping-and-aversion and the self-contradiction of being where you stand while wanting to be somewhere else.

Take care, Manjushri! Many find their thoughts get in the way of wielding the sword and so they try to cut them off, battling them, often causing them to proliferate even more. These people are carried far away, often many years gone in the blink of an eye.  

A threshold way for thoughts to calm is for unified concentration to come to the fore – what the ancients called samatha. Samatha is the underlying indivisibility of all beings and phenomena coming to the fore as you. One way for samatha to come to the fore is to center attention through the breath, or through the feeling-sensations of the body. There are many ways to undertake this body-centering. Try some different methods to get out of your head and to come to rest in the body. Do not hurry. Just find one that you have an affinity for and, with easeful diligence, rest in it. No need to cut off thoughts. Simply rest in mindfulness of breath-body no matter what comes and goes. Nothing excluded, not even thoughts arising.

Now see how spacious! Unhindered, indivisible, each all as it is, unobstructed. Just clear sky untouched as birds and clouds fly through. Just a mirror reflecting what comes and goes without a trace. No boundary between inside and out. But take care – this is just a state of mind that will come and go, and there is still one who notices it coming and going, saying ah when it’s ‘right’ and oh when it’s gone.

Now, as samatha embodied, you are best readied to function as Manjushri wielding the prajna sword. Not chasing judgments of ah and oh, while sitting, standing, moving or lying down, wield the sword that sees through every ‘something’. Without concentrating on anything in particular, whatever in its time comes to the fore – to attentive awareness – is not turned into anything else at all. Finding stability in this seeing-through formation, go on. See how there still seems to be someone ‘doing’ this practice, who feels ah and oh even if not held onto or pushed away. Look – there is still Manjushri who wields the prajna sword.

So turn the sword on Manjushri. Turn the prajna light back upon the source. See through Manjushri’s face. See through your face. See through your face now, and as you were as a child. See through all your roles and identities, all the somethings that claim you, not resting in any of them. None of them, nor all of them, coming and going as they do, are your unshakeable ground, your bottomlessness. Follow each and every thing come to the fore, phenomena outside and in – beings, things, events ‘outside’, and sensations, thoughts, and feelings ‘inside’, back to its source.

Now it is samatha – indivisibility itself – seeing through. Too, this seeing-through is not turned into something, not into anything at all. It is like the shifting patterns seen through a kaleidoscope, or like the intertwining patterns of ripples upon the surface of a lake taken back to the origin.

There’s no gain or loss in the shiftings that comprise each time being. So there’s nothing to hold onto or push away. Keep going, turning the light back back inward downward, to your originality, everyone’s, everything’s, no-where.

All is frozen, brought to a halt. Stopped. Not even an old fool left to notice it.

And an occasion – a sight, sound or smell, perhaps – may arise in which it is clear that your true face is no-face. You are what can neither be grasped nor avoided. Body-mind cast off, you are the empty center as the indivisible world surges back in vibrance, each being and thing just as it is, confirming you, each one as well an empty center of all things. Ha, Manjushri’s now Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, in clarity opening to see through with all others inseparable.

Yes, an occasion may arise where it’s clear that your true face is no-face. Still, faces will abound. You too will continue to wear many, and some will still try to claim you. As this occurs, you do not take the bait, but continue to practice-realize on and on, no-face turning the light back to no-face, no-face freely making faces to creatively accord with circumstances. And when you screw up, see through unskillfulness, red face gulping itself down into repentance emerging for harm caused and engendering skillful correction where possible. And when others lash out at you, it’s their suffering that comes to the fore. No matter what, the prajna sword continues its work of not turning this into something, of not divvying up the indivisible.

Some will truly have no thought of self and other and their actions will accord with the Way, producing no harm, without their reflection or the least bit of trying. For the rest of us, it is wise to envision the Way so that we may walk it as best we can.  

So this grizzled one asks, realizing all beings and phenomena – unable to stand alone each on their own – are each a time being of one wholeness, how do you live in the world of differentiation and distinctions; since no one and no thing is excluded or apart, how to live in a world of endless seeming separations and resultant suffering, in a world of shared blindnesses thus also our very own?

This old fool puts it this way. Enter into delusion in the only way that accords with wholeness: with a thousand eyes and hands, embrace all those suffering with compassion, vowing to save all beings before you are released from the delusion that there is even one who needs saving. This is called practicing and realizing Wondrous Delusion. Yes, a fool’s practice!

And fools may practice together. No-face encountering no-face. Together realizing indivisibility in accord with unfolding circumstances. Exchanges are true, as an arrow flies true, when they are im-mediate – that is, not mediated by self-image or self-interest. Exchanges are true when silence speaks. Exchanges are true when what seems divided and opposed realizes indivisibility. Exchanges are true when they bring to awareness, and see through, the blindnesses that are our karmic lot. In this way, no-face – neither one nor two – practices and realizes the virtuosity of non-harm. No-face enacts love.

But these are mere pictures of a rice cake. Better to taste the real thing for yourself. Wielding Manjushri’s sword without pause – no one and no thing is spared! And everywhere is home.      

May all beings transparently realize the Way!