Dìzàng Planting the Fields: How Do You Pass Your Days?

Record of Going Easy, Case 12 In Brief

Photo by Maksym Ivashchenko

With The Record of Going Easy, Case 12: Dìzàng Planting the Fields, we all might sink in the muck together. Wànsōng, you see, ends his introduction to the kōan with a question that tempts us to do just that: “How do you pass your days?”

If you fall into a conceptual explanation of how you pass your days (or into melancholic regret), you will miss the vividly hopping-along mucky moment. So, right now, honored one, how do you pass your days?

Wànsōng responds to his own inquiry by saying, “Our patched-robe monk family takes it easy, looking after a white ox in the open fields without paying heed to rootless, auspicious grasses.”

We may not be patched-robed monks, and given the flurry of most people’s lives these days, we may not be taking it easy. One approach to that truth would be for me to try to convince you that your life as it is, is it. I might ask, “In the midst of flurry, can you take it easy?” Or, “Can you just be mindful of the flurry?”

Probably not.

Such a thing requires deep training. So I want to encourage you to train deeply and live simply so that you can take it easy in the midst of long periods of quiet. And when the muck hits the fan (because this is samsara and it will).

Then we might attend to the white ox—ordinary, pure buddhanature—without concern for whether we’re getting anywhere or not.

You will find more on this very point in my upcoming interview with Charlie Korin Pokorny. Charlie trained within the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) system and receive koan-teaching authorization from Daniel Terragno Roshi, a Diamond Sangha teacher. Charlie and his wife, Sarah Dojin Emerson, are now co-teachers at Brooklyn Zen Center.

In the interview, I mention to Charlie that several years ago, I saw one of the current abbots of SFZC comment on social media that his organization was “rabidly anti-kensho.” You can see Charlie’s response in “You Can't Get This With Thinking: An Interview with Charlie Korin Pokorny,” due out in a couple weeks.

Returning to the kōan, “Dìzàng Planting the Fields” is about just taking care of the essentials. Where are you coming from? And how’s the buddhadharma doing these days in these parts?

Take a look:

舉

Dìzàng asked master Xiūshān Zhǔ, “Where are you coming from?”
Xiūshān said, “Coming from the south.”
Dìzàng said, “How is the buddhadharma doing in the south these days?”
Xiūshān said, “Discussed extensively.”
Dìzàng said, “How does that compare to us farming and eating lots of rice?”
Xiūshān said, “How can one help the three worlds?”
Dìzàng said, “What do you call the three worlds?”

In addition to “Where are you coming from?” and “How’s the buddhadharma doing these days?” there is also the question about how sinking into the muck of conceptual cognition compares to Dìzàng sinking in the muck of the rice fields.

In terms of this kōan’s starring characters, Dìzàng (867-928) is a fourteenth-generation successor in China in the Xuánshā sub-branch of the Déshān branch of the Shítou (700-790) trunk lineage. Xiūshān (died 954) became a fifteenth-generation successor of Dìzàng.

In this case, Xiūshān seems to dismiss Dìzàng with a shrugging “whatcha gonna do?” kind of response (“How can one help the three worlds?”). The three worlds he mentions are the worlds (aka, “realms”) of desire, form, and formlessness. Before we get to Dìzàng’s last question, it’s necessary to unpack these three (they are not metaphors).

The first realm is the desire realm. This is what most of us call home and includes the six kinds of birth—as a hell dweller, a hungry ghost, an animal, a human, a titan, or a god (paraphrasing now from The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism). Beings in the desire realm are attached to pleasures derived from the five sense organs. The dominant force among beings born into the desire realm is sensuality.

The second realm is the form realm. “Form” implies that which is substantial and resistant. This is where one is free from the desires for physical gratification and where subtle form is experienced. The form realm is pictured as being above the desire realm and also contains bodies, places, and things. It can be accessed through the four form dhyanas (Pali, jhana) or absorptions. The first form dhyana has the factors of applied thought, sustained thought, physical rapture, mental ease, and one pointedness. The second form dhyana has physical rapture, mental ease, and one pointedness. The third form dhyana has mental ease and one pointedness. And in the fourth form dhyana, there is just one-pointedness.

The third realm is the formless realm. This is the most subtle realm of samsara where there are no bodies, places, things—at any rate none to which human terms would apply—but where the mind dwells in mystic contemplation. Its extent is indefinable, but it is conceived of in four stages, where one is increasingly free from material existence.¹

But when Dìzàng asks, “What do you call the three worlds?” he’s not asking for you to share a conceptual cognition about what the three worlds mean to you. If you started your response to Dìzàng by saying, “For me, I feel …,” Dìzàng would certainly shut you down. “That’s not relevant.”

Like Charlie said in the interview, “You can’t get it by thinking.”

Instead, Dìzàng’s asks, what is the living truth of this realm? Show me, don’t tell me.

If you’re wondering about this living truth, Tiāntóng is buried up to his chin in the muck of it. Take a look at what Tiāntóng has to say:

Verse

Mediocre common knowledge is forcefully exhausted.
Transmission from mouth to ear dissipates skillful means.
Planting fields, cooking rice - the matter of everyday life.
Not eating until full, you don’t know.
Only if you’ve eaten until full do you fully know that there’s nothing to seek.
In the end, Zǐfáng was indifferent to being made a marquis.
Free from worldly concerns, he returned the same as fish and birds.
Washing his feet in the misty Cānglàng autumn.

I’ll conclude my first run at this case with the above. I’ll next share my interview with Charlie Korin Pokorny and then offer you my translation of the full case.

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Recently at Vine of Obstacles Zen, open to all:

Dogen’s Private Notes from the Hokyo Era: Immediately Extinguish the Flames from Your Head

1. The previous three paragraphs are from Dogen’s Private Notes from the Hokyo Era: What Was Dogen Doing?