“Before you were born, what was your real face?”; but the hua
t’ou: “Who is repeating the Buddha’s name?” is widely in use
today [1953]. What is hua t’ou? (Literally ‘word‐head’). ‘Word’ is
the spoken word and ‘head’ is that which precedes the word.
For instance, when one says ‘Amitābha Buddha,’ this is a word.
Before it is said it is a hua t’ou (or ‘ante‐word’). That which is
called a hua t’ou is the moment before a thought arises. As soon
as a thought arises, it becomes a hua wei (lit. ‘word‐tail’). The
moment before a thought arises is called ‘the Unborn.’ That void
which is neither disturbed nor dull, and neither still nor onesided
is called ‘the Unending.’ The unremitting turning of the
light inwards on oneself, instant after instant, and exclusive of
all other things, is called ‘looking into the hua t’ou,’ or ‘taking
care of the hua t’ou’.” (From ‘Master Hsü Yün’s Discourses and
Dharma Words,’ translated by Charles Luk).
So, when the master gives a koān to the disciple for them
to work on, the words of the koān are ‘the tail’ and ‘the head’
— always the business end of things — is the realisation of
Truth that the student awakens to. The giving of such koāns to
each individual disciple is a very important part of spiritual
training in Rinzai Zen monasteries.
Other famous examples of koāns are: “What is the sound
of one hand?” “What is it?” and “Who am I?”
4. Page 328, “Where there is love, there is also suffering”…
There are several places in the Theravāda scriptures where this
insight of the Buddha appears. Firstly, in an incident where
Visākhā, a devoted disciple (and grandmother to four hundred
children!), comes to the Buddha in grief from losing one of her
beloved granddaughters. After he asks her: “Would you like to
have as many grandchildren as there are people in Sāvatthi?” —
she replies: “Oh yes, indeed.” He then points out that, had she
so many, not a day would pass without her having to attend a
funeral for one or another of them. The incident is recounted in
the Inspired Utterances: “Visākhā, those who have a hundred
dear ones, they have a hundred sorrows; those who have
ninety… eighty… fifty… twenty… ten… three… two… one dear
one, but one thing belovèd, they have but one sorrow; those who
have nothing belovèd, they have no sorrow — sorrowless are
they and passionless, serene are they, I declare.
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Whatever griefs and lamentations there are
And all kinds of sorrow in the world —
It is because of something dear that these exist;
If things aren’t dear, these don’t come into being.
Ud. 8.8
Some verses included in the Dhammapada also came from the
same incident:
Clinging to what is dear brings sorrow.
Clinging to what is dear brings fear.
To one who is entirely free from endearment
There is no sorrow or fear.
Sorrow springs from affection.
Fear springs from affection.
To loosen those bonds
Is to be free from sorrow and fear.
Dhp. 212‐3 (Ven. Ānanda Maitreya, trans.)
He follows a similar chain of reasoning, analysing the
effects of “desire, affection and longing”, in a conversation with
Bhadragaka, a village headman — at §11 in the Collection on
Headmen (S 42.11). The Buddha leads him inexorably to the
conclusion: “Whatsoever suffering arises within me — all that is
rooted in desire (chanda), joined to desire. Desire is indeed the
root of suffering.”
Lastly, in the Piyajātika Sutta (The Discourse on ‘Born
From Those Who Are Dear’) M 87, on meeting a distraught man
who had just lost his only son, the Buddha states: “Sorrow,
lamentation, pain, grief and despair are born from those who
are dear, arise from those who are dear.”
The man takes offence at this and retorts: “Venerable
Sir, happiness and joy are born from those who are dear, arise
from those who are dear.” The debate between these two points
of view eventually gets picked up by Queen Mallikā and King
Pasenadi, the former siding with the Buddha.
After much wrangling (“Mallikā, no matter what the
Samana Gotama says, you applaud it… Be off, Mallikā, away
with you!”) the King is finally brought round to the outlook of
the Buddha when he sees that any degeneration, sickness or
death amongst all the things that he loves — of his children,
wives, generals, his city, his kingdom — would bring sorrow,
lamentation, pain, grief and despair: the seeds of pain being in
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his attachment to and possessiveness of all that he loves.
K.G. also seems to have been influenced by the Greek
philosophers in approaching the theme of love; here is a brief
outline of the area from a somewhat different angle:
“According to Socrates, the divine madness of love is to be
honoured and praised, for it is love that can most powerfully
awaken the soul from its slumber in the bodily world. The lover’s
soul is stirred by the sensuous beauty of the beloved into
remembering, however faintly, the more pure, genuine, beauty
of the eternal, bodiless Ideas which it once knew. Thus reminded
of its own transcendent nature, the previously dormant soul
begins to sprout wings, and soon aspires to rise beyond this
world of ceaseless ‘becoming’ toward that changeless eternal
realm beyond the stars:
“‘It is there that the true being dwells, without colour or
shape, that cannot be touched; reason alone, soul’s pilot, can behold
it, an all true knowledge is knowledge thereof.’
‘Phaedrus,’ 247c (R. Hackforth trans.),
quoted by David Abram, in ‘The Spell of the Sensuous,’
pp 121–2, Vintage
5. Page 328, “Seek refuge in yourself, Vāsitthī; take refuge
in the Dharma…” This line is paraphrased from one of the
most famous quotations of the Buddha. It occurs in the ‘Discourse
on the Buddha’s Last Days,’ the Mahā‐parinibbāna Sutta, at D
16.2.26 (see Appendix 4): “Therefore, Ānanda, you should live
as islands, as lights unto yourselves, being your own refuge,
with no‐one else as your refuge; with the Dhamma as an island,
a light, with the Dhamma as your refuge, with no other refuge.”
6. Page 328, you are the very self of the disciples; you are the
living Dharma… These epithets, if not precisely rendered here,
are at least reminiscent of the exclamation made about the Buddha
by the enlightened Elder Kaccāna, in the Madhupindika Sutta
(‘The Sweet Morsel’) at M 18.12: “he is vision, he is knowledge,
he is the Dhamma, he is the holy one.”
7. Page 330, As soon as I had returned from my almsround
and had eaten my meal… This scenario is recounted
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