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The Blue Cliff Record

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The Blue Cliff Record tr. Thomas and J.C. Cleary Shambala, Boston and London 1992

I first encountered the classic of Ch'an literature known as The Blue Cliff Record nearly 20 years ago, in a review by my teacher Sangharakshita. He described it as 'a world in which Buddhism matters, is the only thing that matters, and in which people are prepared to go to any lengths in order to attain - and transmit - "the profound anti mysterious principle of Enlightenment".' I suggested, with naive enthusiasm, that he lead a seminar on The Blue Cliff Record. His response was a mischievous smile: `You would have to be ready for anything!'

The book looks harmless enough. In its English translation it has a nice, shiny. deep blue dust jacket with a bit of calligraphy - a classical design, nothing flashy. But if you begin to read it seriously and consistently, in the right kind of conditions, it shakes you to the very core. It looms up out of the mist like a mile-high cliff face. There are no handholds. It is cold, silent, and steep. Very steep.

It consists of 100 kung-an (koan) or 'public cases', originally compiled by a master named Hsueh Tou Ch'ung Hsien (980-1052), who wrote a verse on each case - a cryptic verse pointing the way for his disciples to contemplate. About 60 years after Hsueh Tou's death, another master, Yuan Wu, gave a series of talks elucidating each case and Hsueh Tou's verses. The cases, the verses, and the elucidations together comprise The Blue Cliff Record. so called after the Blue Cliff monastery on Mt. Chia in Hunan where Yuan Wu delivered his talks.

That sounds tidy - a book in which we can read stories about Enlightened masters and then read edifying poems and talks by other masters explaining them. But this is no trendy book about Zen, full of consoling platitudes about our being Buddhas already. If we are tempted to waffle about 'the light within', here is Master Yun Men's challenge: `"Everyone has a light: when you look at it, you don't see it and it's dark and dim. What is everybody's light?" Silence! He answers the question himself. "The kitchen pantry and the main gate".' The Blue Cliff Record is full of challenges. Last summer I read the entire book on a long retreat, on a mountain in Spain. After a day of meditation, ritual, and study, before sleeping, with cicadas for background music, I read until my eyes grew heavy, and then sank into dreams that shook me. Sometimes I woke with a phrase echoing through the cave of the mind. One morning it was: `Mahasattva Fu expounds the scripture.'

This was the title of the kung-an and commentary I had read the night before. Mahasattva Fu, an old mountain-dwelling hermit, came to town selling fish to support himself, and Emperor Wu, a great patron of Buddhism, summoned him to the court to expound the Diamond Sutra I see Mahasattva Fu in a patched robe and the court in their finery waiting for an edifying exposition of Buddhist philosophy. The old hermit slowly made his way to the front of the hall, mounted the teaching throne and shook the desk in front of him. I don't imagine he smiled. He just shook the desk and left. Another monk explained to the astonished Emperor that Mahasattva Fu had just expounded the Diamond Sutra ... thoroughly.

I felt as if Mahasattva Fu had been there in my troubled dreams, showing me that the Diamond Sutra was not a book to verbalise about, but diamond-hard reality itself, smashing my ideas about self, world, life... Buddhism: shaking those ideas to their foundations. Very disturbing!

'The Path has no byroads: one who stands upon it is solitary and dangerous. The truth is not seeing or hearing:

`words and thoughts are far removed from it. If you can penetrate through the forests of thorns and untie the bonds of Buddhahood and Patriarchy, you attain the land of inner peace, where all the gods have no way to offer flowers, where outsiders have no gate to spy through. Then you work all day without ever working, talk all day without ever talking; then you can unfold the device of "breaking in and breaking out" and use the double-edged sword that kills and brings to life, with freedom and independence.'

From 16th Case: Ching Ch'ing's 'Man in the Weeds'. Yet this is the realm that - on a good day - I aspire to reach. I want to wake up one morning and know for sure that I do not know anything, not because I have read the wrong information, but because reality has come and smashed all assumptions, all borrowed ideas. On a good day I court such devastation, for it is, I believe, the beginning of liberation.

The patch-robed Ch'an travelers of The Blue Cliff Record are not afraid of such devastation, like Huang Po, who 'understood Ch'an by nature': and the nun Iron Grindstone Liu. who had studied for a long time, and whose active edge was 'sharp and dangerous'. They never settle down in 'the nest of cliche". They keep pushing beyond the boundaries. They push not only themselves but each other. For this is also a world of intense communication, in which the teachers' only concern is to break through the shell of the students' ignorance and the students are intent on breaking out of that shell to reveal their 'true face'.

Padmavajra works in the ordination team at Padmaloka Retreat Centre

Cleary's version of the Blue Cliff Record (Chin. Pi Yen Lu. J. Hekiganroku)is the only translation giving the whole text, so it was surprising to find no review for it in the Amazon.com files. But then, the Blue Cliff Record' - undoubtedly the most sophisticated collection of Zen 'koan' (chin. kung-an) material, could hardly be reviewed in the linear sense at all, as one might approach ordinary literature. Those for whom such texts matter most in the West - viz. Buddhists using such material as part of their training, would hasten to add that minus Zen practice, the Blue Cliff Record is as good as a 'closed book.' Casual readers may find a certain itchy fascination in these pithy Zen sayings, but a true appreciation of them presupposes something akin to Zen practice. At any rate, to discover anything of value in this book, depends on what you bring to it. To take that position is not necessarily Zen 'snobbery.' That was how the authors of the Blue Cliff Record intended it to be 'savoured' - whether by monks or lay-Buddhists.

To peruse the contents of this text is more like picking at an onion, than surveying a flat surface, exploring several layers of meaning. Hence, it is at once simple - and complex, insofar as each of its individual cases (100 in all), with verses, commentaries etc., and meta-commentaries - are convoluted and inter-linked. What eventually became the 'Blue Cliff Record' had began life as Master Hsueh-t'ou's verses and comments. Yuan-wu, an eminent Sung master, eventually added introductory comments, verses and verse comments of his own. It is probably true to say that there is nothing else quite like it - in the rest of the world's literature.

Suzuki presented individual cases as a kind of 'taster.' As a pioneer, Shaw (1961) was daunted by the prospect of translating every layer of the text. Sekida's rendering (1971), presented along with the Mumonkan (Chin. Wu Men Kuan) omitted the final layer of verse/commentary, probably for fear of overwhelming the reader. Cleary has given us the complete text, with some fascinating supplementary material besides. This was a monumental achievement, which will probably remain the definitive version of this classic Zen text, for many long years to come.

It seems a vain undertaking, to try and summarise the Blue Cliff Record - in a book review. If you feel an affinity with the world of Zen - well, get a copy, let its paradoxical sayings, twists and turns penetrate your own being, and it will speak to you in its own, inimitable language. As Cleary notes, Hakuin Zenji stated that he still gained fresh insights from the Blue Cliff Record, even after lecturing on it for over thirty years.

Cleary provides a good introduction, touching on the background to the Ch'an/Zen tradition generally. Modestly (and thank goodness!), Cleary has not imposed himself upon the text proper. What you read is more or less what you find in the Chinese text, with the exception of minimalist notes,delicately added to explicate key terms, idioms etc, or clarify historical references, hinted at in the Chinese text. An interesting biographical section has been appended to the text, detailing the lives of eminent Ch'an/Zen Buddhists, whose words or sayings appear in the Blue Cliff Record.

A final word. Some readers may find it helpful to read this book alongside Sekida's 'Zen Training:Methods and Philosophy' or Miura/Fuller-Sasaki 'The Zen Koan' - which outline something of the practice associated with this material. I might add that Cleary's translation of highly relevant commentary-material,
- titled 'Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record' - comprising comments by Hakuin Zenji (1685-1768) and Tenkei Denson (1653-1726) is currently being offered at discount through Amazon. Tenkei Denson was a member of the Soto school, so it is fascinating to see how a Soto master approaches the B.C.R. Hakuin is known well enough today, but some of his descendants seem only too willing to attribute arbitrary study programmes to the Tokugawa master, which merely mislead Zen students and snare them in literary pretensions. Cleary's supplementary material - noted above, should clear away much of the confusion on this point. Taizan Maezumi Roshi has said of Cleary's work: " I firmly believe this translation is a milestone and will immensely benefit those who are sincerely engaged in the practice and the enlightenment of the Buddha way. "

I've dicovered that a LOT of people get downright angry when you start to elucidate Zen to be anything beyond "do-your-own-thing". I hope you're not going to be one of those people...

I've owned this book for something like 10 years now and it is still enigmatic and at times unfriendly to me, but that is the nature of kung-an practice. There is a stubbornness to the Ancient kung-an that does not change readily, but does yield with time, though I think there is no real way to "rush" their clarification, and it is probably unwise to try to.

The gong-an themselves are ample proof that intellect alone falls short when confronted with the patriarchs of the Ch'an path. Chinese Ch'an Master Sheng Yen says that to have good practice, realization and heart must go hand-in-hand. Having just the realization-hold-the-compassion won't produce the highest realization. If you think Zen is atheistic intellectualism, you're dead wrong. You're supposed to feel your heart when you have a Zen realization.

Case:
"A monk asked Yun Men, "What is every atom samadhi?" Men said, "Food in the bowl, water in the bucket."

Poetry succeeds where explanation fails. This is an appeal to the physical poetry of the immediate, while intimating that there is way more to the everyday immediate than was previously assumed in what Heidegger calls the "Average Everydayness" or mind-numbed, over-conditioned state of how we ordinarily tend to relate to the world. This is the key--the 20-ton key--to Ch'an that the intellect alone is too weak to wield.

Case:
"Yun Men showed his staff to the assembly and said, "The staff has changed into a dragon and swallowed the universe. Mountains, rivers, the great earth--where are they to be found?"

This gong-an actually pertains to the 4th of 5 levels of Samadhi in Ch'an, as explained by contemporary Ch'an Master Sheng Yen. This level is the all-wisdom phase where the world passes away from the mind as no longer real whatsoever. But there is still another level left to be explored, that of seeing the delusion of the world as enlightenment-waiting-to-be-transformed, and for this reason, one might suspect that these kung-an tend to be targeting different levels of Samadhi, since they obviously do not tend to address every level at once, except in the case that some of them address the last, arguably. Different gong-an are simply meant for different folks at different levels, some are keys for many levels at once. If you can accept this premise, there is a sudden cohesion in the collection and it's a worthwhile practice tool in this sense. If you expect every gong-an to make sense in terms of where you happen to be right now, then you are lost very quickly. "Take what works for you" is, roughly speaking, the essence of Zen and the essence of gong-an practice.

Thomas Cleary is a phenomenon. Just to translate the vast "Garland Sutra" or the "Blue Cliff Record" would be a lifetime's work for many scholars, yet he has managed to do both, and a shelf of Buddhist and Taoist works as well.

D.T. Suzuki thought this book would only ever be accessible to a handful of scholarly Zen monks able to penetrate its unique and bizarre Chinese. About fifty years ago a translation was made that is charming but hopeless: it leaves out most of Yüan-wu's vital commentaries and adds "interpretations" that would have the ancient Masters rolling about with laughter in Nirvana.

This version is incomparably better, although not perfect. The original Chinese is notoriously arcane and Gothic, full of Sung colloquialisms, technical terms and words of uncertain meaning. Matter-of-opinion interpretations abound. Cleary translates Ma-tsu's famous answer (when he was asked about his health in old age) as "Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha", while Lu K'uan Yu has him say: "Every day I face Buddha, every month I face Buddha." That gives some idea of the variety of English that can be drawn out of the Chinese.

Cleary opts for a uniform, slightly artificial American patois that leads to odd-sounding catch-phrases and at times, frustrating vagueness. Besides, the text is dense with allusions, so you'd expect a forest of footnotes, yet few are given. Footnotes are annoying, but it's a choice between that and missing out on much of the background meaning.

Still, this is the greatest of all koan anthologies, the Everest of Zen writing, as profound as the Great Void and as brain-bending as quantum physics. Having a readable, viable modern English translation is a marvel and a blessing. Thank you Thomas and J.C. Cleary.

I recently purchased "The Blue Cliff Record", a collection of koans and commentaries, more out of curiosity than anything else. Koans are paradoxical stories or riddles meant to illustrate flaws in logic and what it means to follow Zen precepts. I have read Reps's "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" over the years and felt ready to graduate to a more complex work. "The Blue Cliff Record" is certainly complex. With its pointers, cases, notes, commentary and verses and follow-up commentary, TBCR is structured much like the I Ching. And like the I Ching, TBCR does not lend itself to contintuous reading. It is to be dipped into, pondered, returned to for further small nibbles. This book is definitely not for the casual reader hoping for an introduction to Zen. (Going to this work for an overview of Zen would be like reading "Finnegans Wake" to learn about Irish bricklayers.) For fine intros to Zen, see the Reps work or Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind". That said, for the explorer of Zen ready for a senior level course, TBCR would be a worthy selection

I have been thinning out my library and have been reducing it from 120 boxes down to about 20 boxes of keepers. The BLUE CLIFF RECORD translated by Cleary is one of my top 100 favorites of all time. What I like about it is that everything is a koan. The 100 cases are koans, the commentary is a koan, and poems are koans. When I first read it, it felt like a mental house cleaning, with all kinds of subtle concepts blowing up in my mind and leaving a serene peace in its place. Zen has a clarity about how conceptual thinking knots us up and the koans are ways to cut through it, returning us to our experience, and our experience returning us to luminous emptiness. This book is almost enough to get you there without having to sit in meditation, if you study deep enough to let the book work on you. But as a support for Zen meditation, I deeply cherish it and will have to say that it does its job. There are 100 koan cases in the book. Although koan are taken as puzzles, the root meaning is something like a "public record", a demonstration of enlightened mind pointing to enlightened mind, to bring about awakening. Enlightenment is close enough to make this work. One will get little glimpses, flashes of a radiant silent mind, and then meditation deepen this. My guess is that many will feel this happen to them before case number three.

One my favorite poems is in this book:

The chick breaks out, the mother hen breaks in --
When the chick awakens, there is no shell
Chick and hen are both forgotten,
Response to circumstance is unerring.
On the same path, chanting in harmony,
Through the marvelous mystery, walking alone.

I first stumbled into this book many years ago, and have read it and scribbled margin notes uncountable times. I have tried many of Cleary's translations, and find a lot of them rather too academic and distant for my taste, but he (well, both authors) hits the spot with this. It cut right through and resonated very deeply. It has helped me profoundly in my practice, and I recommend it to anyone.

(The smile in the title, by the way, is one to acknowledge an irony.)

The Two Plain...

Two plain souls, the Crickets, lived in a meadow.
One fine day speaking plainly Mr Cricket said to Mrs Cricket:

Mr."Dont you know that everyone is a buddha?"

Mrs."Shhh!!! yes, of course", whispered Mrs Cricket, "but, not so loud!"

Mr."...but they dont all know they are."

Mrs."yes, yes! why do you have to be so philosophical?!"

Mr."Some will hear and disbelieve, some will be uncertain, and the rare one will be hit by a sledge hammer (enlightenment)! He will know!

Mrs."yes, answered Mrs Cricket... always dreaming, my dear one! Careful not to drop that bucket now! You will soak the carpet (moss)."

Mr."Theres 'nothing' to it! said Mr Cricket.

Mrs."Oh yes there is" retorted the Mrs... Faith in oneself my dear old Buddha".

[Story from the Plain Buddha School of Direct Transmission, AKA. School of the Fat One]

With love from, Snow-flake. xxx