Tonight, I want to talk about Case 3 of the Mumonkan, which is about a Zen master called Gutei and his attendant.
Let me read it to you first.
Whenever master Gutei was asked about Zen, he simply raised his finger. Once a visitor asked Gutei’s boy attendant, “What does your mast teach?” The boy too raised his finger. Hearing of this, Gutei cut off the boy’s finger with a knife. The boy, screaming with pain, began run away. Gutei called to him, and when he turned around, Gutei raised l finger. The boy suddenly became enlightened. When Gutei was about to pass away, he said to his assembled monks “I obtained one-finger Zen from Tenryu and used it all my life but I did not exhaust it.” When he had finished saying this, he entered in eternal Nirvana.
The peculiarity of Gutei’s teaching was that whenever he was asked a question about Zen, he would simply raise one finger.
That’s it.
No explanation. No commentary. Just one finger.
At some point, his young attendant began imitating him. When someone asked about Zen, or about Gutei’s teaching, the boy would also raise one finger.
Gutei heard about this, called the boy over and cut off his finger.
Harsh.
The attendant ran away, presumably in pain. Gutei called him back. The boy turned around.
Gutei raised one finger.
At that moment, the attendant was awakened.
What is going on here?
A boy imitates his teacher and gets his finger chopped off. These days Gutei might have some explaining to do.
But rather than trying immediately to decide what the story means, perhaps we can stay with it for a moment.
Gutei raises a finger.
The boy raises a finger.
They look like the same gesture.
Are they?
I recently happened to do some long solo cycling rides in the early hours of the morning, and I spent some time with this kōan.
I think many of us have experienced Zen as something we need to understand. Something to grasp, perhaps even something to achieve.
I certainly have.
We hear something, read something or see somebody doing something and think: Ah, that’s it.
Then perhaps we try to reproduce it.
The boy had probably seen Gutei raise his finger hundreds of times. He knew exactly what Gutei did.
Someone asks about Zen.
Finger goes up.
Easy.
Except apparently it wasn’t.
This is something I recognise in my own practice. We have plenty of words and phrases available to us: just this, don’t-know mind, Mu, no-self. We learn how to sit. We learn how to chant. We hear teachers speak and perhaps begin to speak a little like them.
There is nothing necessarily wrong with any of that.
But is repeating something the same as seeing it for ourselves?
This is where cycling kept coming into the kōan for me.
The cold mornings. The long rides. The climbs. The tired legs. The apparent solitude.
I can’t imitate the previous ride.
I can’t imitate the previous kilometre.
I can’t imitate another cyclist.
I can’t make a cold morning warm or turn an uphill road into a descent.
Whatever is happening, this is the ride I am riding.
Tomorrow will be another one.
And perhaps that is why Gutei’s finger kept appearing somewhere between one pedal stroke and the next.
What was the boy copying?
What are we copying?
Think about the things we repeat, not only in Zen practice but in everyday life.
How do we sit?
How do we chant?
How do we speak?
How do we breathe?
Are we actually here?
I don’t think there is a technique for answering those questions.
Even saying, “Don’t imitate — just be yourself,” can very quickly become another thing to imitate.
Another finger.
Gutei raises his finger.
What happens?
I can explain cycling for hours. I can talk about bike geometry, cadence, power, climbing, fatigue and why I desperately need another bicycle despite already owning one.
But none of that is riding a bicycle.
At some point, the wheels have to turn.
And perhaps kōans are a little like that.
We can analyse Gutei’s finger. We can decide what it represents. We can explain why the boy imitated it and what happened when he turned around.
But Gutei is still standing there with his finger in the air.
What do we do with that?
Cycling offers me no final answer either.
I can’t ride tomorrow’s ride today.
I can’t climb the next hill while I am still descending this one.
There is this road.
This bicycle.
These legs.
And then the road changes.
Perhaps practice is not so different.
Gutei raises one finger.
The boy raises one finger.
Gutei cuts his off.
The boy turns around.
Gutei raises his finger again.
What happened?
I don’t know.
And perhaps, for once, we can leave Gutei’s finger exactly where it is.
Thanks for listening.
