BASO'S ILLNESS
by Sensei Robert Joshin Althouse (c) 2008

"Attention! Great Master Baso was ill. The temple priest asked, 'Osho, how is your heatlh these days?' Baso replied, 'Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha.' "
from Shoyoroku, Case 36

Sometimes you can take up a koan you worked on years ago, and it continues to speak to you in fresh and surprising ways. This is such a koan for me.

Master Baso (Mazu Daoyi) was a great Zen master of the late Tang Dynasty. He was an imposing individual who used drastic, shock tactics to bring his listeners to awakening.  

When one of his listeners asked him why Bodhidarma came from the West, he kicked him in the chest. The man fell down and had a great awakening. He jumped up clapping and laughing.

Baso lived in one of the most catastrophic times in all of history, during the An Lushan Rebellion when 36 million Chinese died (two-thirds of their entire population) from wars, starvation, famine and disease. What's remarkable about Baso is that he felt the urgency of developing a Zen practice that was able to respond skillfully to such rapidly changing world conditions with skill and compassion. We have him to thank for the potent Rinzai line that flowed from his teachings.

As we grow older, many of us are coming face to face with death. We all get sick from time to time. So this koan can help us understand how to practice with sickness and with death.

In this case, Baso has fallen ill, and a monk asks him how he's feeling. In a scripture called the Butsu Myoko, which means "Names of the Buddha Sutra", there are 1,193 names listed for the Buddha. Two of these are Sun-faced Buddha and Moon-faced Buddha. The Sun-faced Buddha is said to live for 1800 years, and the Moon-faced Buddha for just a single day and night. Yet both are Buddha.

In the Vimalakirti Sutra, Vimalakirti addresses this subject as follows: "Stupidity leads to love which is the origin of my illness. Because   all living beings are subject to illness, I am ill as well. When all living beings are no longer ill, my illness will come to an end."

In his commentary on this case, Gerry Shishin Wick Roshi says, "Is that the sickness Baso is referring to?"

We can obsess and worry about each affliction. But in this case, Baso doesn't do this at all. He seems to be free of this bag of skin. And he approaches his life fearlessly, without hesitation.

Suzuki Roshi would share Baso's sensibilities. Towards the end of his life he told his students, "We may believe that zazen will make us physically strong, and fundamentally healthy, but a healthy mind is not just a healthy mind in the usual sense, and a weak body is not just a weak body. Even though I die, it's all right with me. This is Buddha. If I suffer when I die, that's all right. That's Suffering Buddha. No confusion in it. We should be grateful to have a limited body, like mine or yours."

We can also appreciate this koan in relationship to our understanding and experience of time. Though time is perhaps our most fundamental experience as humans, we don't really question it or inquire into it's nature very much. In the last line of the "Mind of Absolute Trust" it says, "The mind of absolute trust is beyond all thought, all striving, is perfectly at peace, for in it there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow."

We imagine that time is coming and going, that it is a linear progression of events flowing from past to future, and that we ourselves are in some way, separate from it. But in Dogen's chapter called "Uji" or "Being-Time" from the Shobogenzo he says that we are being-time. Dogen says, "The immediate now neither flows nor stands; it dwells."

So time is a cultural construct and unless we are able to deconstruct this, we are afflicted with time's passing.

And here Dogen makes the same point as Baso and Suzuki Roshi. "Therefore we find this verse [in the Lotus Sutra]: 'the duration of my life since I began practicing the Way of a Bodhisattva is even now not exhausted, and is of incalculable length.' Know that the duration of a Bodhisattva's life is not bound to the present and not exhausted in the past."

There is another way this koan can work on us. Another koan from the Shoyoroku, case 91 called "Nansen's Peony" can help us. "Attention! Riko Taifu on one occasion asked Master Nansen, 'Dharma Master Jo is exceedingly wonderful. He said, 'Heaven and earth have the same root. The ten thousand things are one body.'' Nansen, pointing to the peony in the garden, said, 'Taifu, people nowadays see these flowers as if in a dream.'"

What is real? What do we mean by that? Sri Ramana Maharshi said, "That which is not present in deep dreamless sleep is not real." But what is present in deep dreamless sleep? Nothing at all. Ramana is saying that what is real is not what pops into our consciousness. Rather, what is real is constant, eternal, timeless, present.

But if we believe our Buddha nature is real or true, and our everyday life experience is somehow less so, then we imagine our ordinary experience is an obstacle that must be seen through. But what if, with Baso, we don't create these kind of separations between reality, delusion, and dreams? Then the dreamlike nature of life would simply be as it is. To understand this is to experience the mystery at the heart of things. We can learn to remain open to uncertainty. And as Rilke said, if we are wise enough to remain with the questions life hands us, we may find ourselves eventually living our way into the answers.  

Do you remember the song we sang as children?"Row row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream." Merry comes from the root meaning "pleasing" and "of short duration."

We've all been disappointed, and death is the ultimate disappointment. But nothing really needs fixing. We can learn to hold our afflictions lightly, with a largeness of heart that generously opens to whatever presents itself. No problem. No confusion. No hesitation. Each action is full and complete. Sit with the sickness of all Sentient Beings, until there is no sickness left to liberate.

Sun-faced Buddha. Moon-faced Buddha.  

Many years ago, I was fortunate to be a part of Maezumi Roshi's dream. Now some of you may be a part of mine. Perhaps we are dreaming this dream together or the dream is dreaming us.

So when we are sick, let the one who isn't sick take care of the one who is.