If you want to learn supreme enlightenment, don’t slight beginners.
-- Huineng, The Platform Sutra
We sometimes speak of warrior or samurai Zen versus farmer Zen — as though they were different. It’s part of the old debate going back at least as far as Huineng in the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch about the difference between sudden enlightenment and gradual enlightenment, the Northern School versus the Southern School. Later it will take shape as Rinzai versus Soto. And so on and so forth.
These comparisons have only to do with our delusions. Comparisons between social classes or sexes are useless when it comes to Zen practice. Nor is it a matter of personality types. And we certainly don’t want to validate any doctrinal differences between geographical centers of practice.
As the cheeky young Huineng tells his master, the Fifth Patriarch, “Buddha-nature originally knows no North or South.”
Here at the New Orleans Zen Temple, we practice Soto Zen. It is called “farmer Zen” because we have to be patient. We plant a seed or transplant a seedling and watch it grow. Yes, we nurture it by watering it when the rain won’t come, teaching it how to breathe, or propping it up when its posture sags, but basically we plant it on a zafu and watch it grow over time, to put down roots, allowing it to stretch and strengthen its stalk, head pressing the sky, to spread its leaves and blossom. We watch how the plant transpires in every meaning of that word.
Then we send it out into the world where it will be battered and nourished with rain and sun, trodden on by the world’s business where it suffers and thrives. And if the practice is consistent, by which I mean strong, and strong, by which I mean consistent, then the plant will grow. Unconsciously, automatically, spontaneously, naturally.
As Daichi Zenji says in the bodhisattva ordination of the samurai Kikushi, “With long experience, and thanks to the infinite grace of zazen, you will understand all this unconsciously. On a journey, it’s the long and dangerous road that reveals a horse’s strength and courage. And it isn’t overnight that we see and feel the goodness of the persons we live with.*
There is no sudden enlightenment; there is no gradual enlightenment. To make that distinction is not to understand the first thing about enlightenment. Rinzai or Soto. Samurai or Farmer. Male or Female. Buddha-nature knows no such distinctions.
— Richard Collins
