i studied the householder sutra for a long time before i realized, in what the alcoholics call a moment of clarity, that the householder, as constructed, was a piss ant, and that’s not real, he wouldn’t have been that way.
the set-up for the sutra is that the householder is under the weather, manifesting illness, and the buddha asks his entourage, one by one, to go visit him to pay their respects. one by one they beg off, each telling a story about how, in past encounters, the householder had upbraided them for not getting the teaching quite right. the buddha dharma is the message of the buddha; if you’re not getting the teaching quite right, really, you need to do better, but being bitch-slapped back to reality is not going to get you there.
part of the rep on the householder is that he is foremost in everything, he mixes with all crowds, and whatever crowd he is with, he is foremost in that crowd: businessmen, landlords, warriors, aristocrats, government types, gamblers, sports fans, talking heads, party people, drug users. he was down with people on the street because he appreciated the excellence of ordinary merits. sounds cool.
the sutra says: he had penetrated the profound way of the dharma, and was liberated through the transcendence of wisdom. having integrated his realization with skill in means, he could get down with anybody, and could teach the dharma appropriately to each.
and yet each member of the buddha’s entourage says the same thing: boss, i am indeed reluctant to go ask the householder about his illness. why? because he’s no fun. you put your best foot forward, and all he says is, let me straighten you out about that. even though you know he’s right, you come out of the encounter feeling diminished. what’s up with that?
i taught quant analysis as a contract prof for a little over a decade. in grad school i had met a young guy who had survived a life-threatening illness. from experience, not conceptualization, his mantra was, we’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time, and that became my philosophy of the classroom, none of this, i am the teacher, you are the students bullshit.
my claim to fame was that i could get anyone from any background into high performance in statistics, in applied data analysis, you didn’t even have to know what numbers were. but in the end, the dean said, you have to grade on the curve, it’s an institutional thing. and i said dean, as you know, the bell curve was constructed by a eugenicist, i go the other way, with every inbreath, with every outbreath, that’s why you hired me.
the goddess in the householder sutra is a pip, a thousand times realer than the householder. she is ascerbic, not astrigent. the householder teaches a liberation called ‘inconceivable.’ he says, a bodhisattva who lives in the inconceivable liberation can transform any kind of living being into a universal monarch, a disciple, a solitary sage, a bodhisattva, a buddha.
but the premise on which the householder bases his teachings is that humans are undisciplined. in the whole enchilada, the world of humans on this earth is called the saha universe, the world of endurance. the sutra constructs a contrast between our world and others, where endurance and suffering do not exist. the householder constructs a scale reflecting how long it takes a human to become disciplined, and says that a bodhisattva living in the inconceivable liberation, for the sake of disciplining human beings, can make the passing of a week seem like the passing of an eon, for those who require immeasurable periods of time to become disciplined, and can make the passing of an eon seem like the passing of a week for those who are disciplined in the blink of an eye.
the buddha doesn’t say anything, in any of the sutras, about infrastructure, or warlords, in relation to the construction of human beings as needing discipline to overcome endurance. he doesn’t say anything about the eons of human experience before infrastructure, before torture, before disciplined and undisciplined were constructed as a dualism.
the goddess says, evil spirits have power over fearful men but cannot disturb the fearless. similarly, those intimidated by fear of the world are in the power of forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, which do not disturb those who are free from fear of the passions inherent in the constructed world.
the buddha’s unenlightened disciple, sariputra, who is nonetheless called foremost of the wise, asks her: goddess, is not liberation the freedom from desire, hatred and folly? to which she replies: ‘liberation as freedom from desire, hatred and folly’ is the teaching directed to the excessively proud. those free of pride are taught that the very nature of desire, hatred and folly is itself liberation.
sariputra gets excited and exclaims, excellent! excellent, goddess. pray, what have you attained, what have you realized, that you have such eloquence?
and the goddess replies: i have attained nothing, reverend sariputra. i have no realization. therefore i have such eloquence. whoever thinks, i have attained! i have realized! is overly proud in the discipline of the well-taught dharma.
the word buddha is an adjective, not a noun, it means awake, in the sense of hip, like, hip to reality.
the buddha dharma, as a set of teachings, translates as, how to be hip to reality.
yun men was not the same as others. when he was asked, what is the pure body of reality? he replied, a flowering hedge.
this is a household affair. do not try to figure it out from outside.
householder zen 