Real Life with Ryuei

Catching Rabbits

From a footnote to the translation of the Blue Cliff Record by Thomas and J.C. Cleary:

[There is] "a story of a man who saw a running rabbit happen to collide with a tree stump and die; the man took the rabbit for food, and, thinking to obtain another rabbit; he foolishly stood by the stump, waiting for it to 'catch' another rabbit for him. This is used to describe those who cling to words or images, thinking them to be a source of enlightenment." (p. 52)

I had heard that story before, but I particularly like this presentation of it. All too often in religion, people have an eye-opening experience due to hearing just the right phrase at the right time. Augustine reports hearing the words, "take it up and read" and then he picked up the Bible which was in front of him and read just the right passage to cause him to abandon his selfish ways and give himself over to God. A Buddhist monk despairing of understanding the Dharma retires to the mountains and awakens upon hearing the sound of a stone he had swept from his path hitting the bamboo. There are many cases like this wherein something significant touches off a deep inner change. All too often the people this happens to then universalize their experience and come to believe that only the thing which touched them can touch others in the same way, or that if it touched them in such a way it must touch others in the same way. Even more often, those inspired by the experience of a spiritual predecessor than become determined to awaken or be saved in the very same way. "What other way could there be?" they figure. If they do not awaken or do not feel saved, then it must be because they hadn't really duplicated the experience correctly. They lacked faith, or didn't get the word right (maybe it should be Namu rather than Nam?) or didn't have the right theological belief system in place before undertaking whatever method or nonmethod has been proscribed. In other words, the ingredients, whether internal beliefs or faith or external words and signs weren't all right. Back to the drawing board.

Perhaps all of this is just sitting by the stump. Waiting for the rabbit, waiting for Godot, waiting for something but missing out in any case on our right moment. And what is that right moment? Will it be hearing just the correct interpretating? Subscribing to the right doctrine? Getting just the right magico-mystical incantation right?

Perhaps the right thing will be whatever it is that kicks us awake and presents us to ourselves and the life we are living? It may be a word or sign from the past, or it may not. Even if it is something handed down from the past, we will have to make it ours - a brand new stump, a brand new rabbit. Hopefully, if and when it happens, we will know enough not to then spend the rest of our lives at that stump, whiling away the years eating an ever gamier rabbit. Hopefully we will not try to entice others to sit with and believe that we have the only rabbit in the forest.

Maybe this is my stump and my rabbit, but I somehow suspect that genuine awakening is a fresh pot of rabbit stew every moment, caught in innumerable ways as the moment allows.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo means Happy Hunting!
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at February 18, 2005 05:07 PM