“Empty Tears, Emptied Cups”

            As I left the subway to get home from the Venerable’s talk this evening, I saw a man walking toward the south platform of Sheppard station. He looked like he was staggering and veering dangerously close to the yellow strip that demarcates the safe zone of standing before the subway. He then pulled out a cup of some unrecognizable liquid and threw it into the subway tracks. But since my mind was fairly relaxed and focused from the evening’s talk, it took some time for me to register a reaction. The first was disbelief (why is this happening?), followed by fear (who is doing this?), and then a feeling of disapproval (this shouldn’t happen). But going back to the Venerable’s talk tonight on the Platform Sutra, I began to wonder: what do any of these reactions have to do with the phenomena itself? If I were able to go back and see it for what it is, it would simply be water coming from a cup. And then it would be an empty cup. It was through this retelling of what I saw that I began to understand why the seasons are often used to describe experiences in Chan.

The seasons are a kind of metaphor often used to describe how phenomena arise and then give way to new yet unrelated phenomena. It is unlikely that anyone could ever causally link the seasons together, since they operate separately. They have separate qualities that simply yield to one another in a harmonic whole. It is only my mind that discriminates one season from the next, declaring that one is more natural than the other. Then I start to muddy the seasons. It is like trying to compare two kinds of dogs, one shaggy and one short-haired, and saying that the shaggy dog should be more like the short haired one, then vice versa. Why should they be alike? Engaging the previous thought, we try to compare it with the current thought. When a leaf falls to the ground, I compare it to the previous phenomena of a leaf being on a tree. Then I remark, “How terrible that the leaf should fall”. But the mistake I am making is seeing the current thought in light of a thought that has already passed. Falling leaf and unfallen leaf are not related occurrences. Who makes those distinctions? In reality, the fall is just the fall. Autumn can be fully enjoyed and fully experienced only when we put down the summer.

The Venerable often describes the metaphor of waves in an ocean. Trying to grasp or compare waves in a concurrent sequence, I forget the fact that the waves are all of one essence. Is there a need to compare something that is already essentially whole? Even a thought that appears to be defiled isn’t really defiled after all. I assign a value to the experience based on a comparison to something else, such as comparing the floors in two different rooms. Someone has to give it a value in order to have a value, and that someone is the ‘subject’ separate from the objects of the world. But are thoughts really like that? They are really like bubbles that come and go. When I meditate, I assign all kinds of thoughts to the experience of meditation (painful, blissful, boring, peaceful), but none remains even when I emerge from the sitting. I think this metaphor is useful because it lessens attachment to thoughts, and it loosens the tendency to add more to thoughts, and confuse unrelated thoughts.

                During the talk tonight, the Venerable introduced a beautiful expression that Shifu Master Sheng Yen used: “Tears and Laughter in Emptiness.” What does it mean? Shifu would often use emotions to create situations with his students, such as appearing angry to those who needed further motivation, or appearing gentle to those who were discouraged or stressed.  The point is, Sheng Yen treated the emotions as not himself. He could experience any number of emotions and recognize that none of them relate to a fixed sense of self as a subject. The emotions are just causes and conditions arising in mind. So there is no need to create a self through their arrival. If I attach a self to any emotion, then I start to resist them or crave them, depending on the meaning I assign to the experience. As soon as I remark, “I am bothered”, I have already created a motivation to push away the situation or the feeling. The feeling becomes “my problem”, when actually there is no real self that is linked to it at all. Again, I am reminded of the analogy of the incense stick twirling into a circle. The circle reminds me of the ‘self’. It is the tendency to create a generalization from these isolated causes and conditions happening at different moments in time. But if I go back to the analogy of the seasons: anger is just like the winter. It is an occurrence. It doesn’t have any staying ability in mind. It just is what it is. If I treat it that way (as having some place in mind), then there is no reaction to it. There is neither the need to like nor dislike the anger, because no self has been assigned to say “I am angry”.

                To go back to my experience on the subway, when the cup is empty, there is nothing more to do. Causes have ripened in that moment for water to spill from a staggering man’s cup to the subway floor. I may not be able to see the causes, but they must be all there for it to truly happen. So do I need to go back to when the cup was full and unspilled?