Here are a couple of examples of Dharma Combat from the Zen tradition as well as our interpretations of them.<\/p>\n 1 “Master Zhaozhou went to visit Master Touzi. On the path to Touzi’s home, Zhaozhou met Touzi and asked, ‘Aren’t you Touzi?’ Instead of replying, Touzi demanded: ‘Give me some money to buy oil.’ Then he continued on his way to town. Zhaozhou proceeded down the road and reached the hut before its owner had completed his errands. There he waited. When Touzi returned, he was carrying a pitcher of oil.\u00a0‘I’d heard so much about the great Master Touzi,’ Zhaozhou remarked.\u00a0‘But all I see is an old peddler of oil.’ – ‘You see the peddler, but not Touzi,’ the other replied.\u00a0‘Where is Touzi then?’ Zhaozhou asked.\u00a0‘Oil for sale! Oil for sale!’ Touzi called out.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n First, when Touzi does not answer Zhaozhou’s initial question, he is refusing to allow himself to be distracted from his present errand (that of buying oil). In doing so,\u00a0Touzi is keeping with the Zen teaching of remaining in single-pointed concentration throughout one’s doings, even when it comes to ordinary chores. When Touzi returns from the market, Zhaozhou issues a challenge: \u00a0“I’d heard so much about the great Master Touzi” (i.e. “It seems you are not a\u00a0great Zen adept after all”), Zhaozhou says in an attempt to get\u00a0Touzi to engage. When\u00a0Touzi replies, “You see the peddler, but not Touzi,” he is really saying that Zhaozhou only sees his own prejudice – he sees a lowly peddler of oil, but not the great Zen master who is fully committed\u00a0to the simple chore that he is undertaking. But Touzi could not say, “I am<\/em> a great Zen master, just undertaking a lowly task,” because the moment he said that, he would himself be clinging to the notion of being a great Zen master. And if Touzi\u00a0did that, he would no longer be free to concentrate on the\u00a0present\u00a0business of selling oil. Then he would start having thoughts along the lines of, “I am really a great Zen master, posing as someone who undertakes a lowly task.” In such a case, he would no longer be truly undivided in his mind, but would have started differentiating reality into dualisms such as good and bad, high and low, better and worse. And if he did that, he would no longer be manifesting\u00a0Zen insight.<\/p>\n In a way, the Zen mindset that Touzi is demonstrating in this story is not so different from the one expressed by Heraclitus when he says: “The\u00a0wise is both willing and unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus.” (B32): If the wise man is willing to be called by the name of “Master” or Zeus, then he has set himself apart from the totality of the real:\u00a0He has introduced distinctions into reality and is therefore no longer wise or a master in terms of meditative insight.<\/p>\n Therefore, when Zhaozhou asks, “Where is Touzi then?” (i.e. “Where is the great Zen Master then?”), he has not understood what Touzi is trying to tell him. Seeing this, Touzi doubles down and shouts:\u00a0“Oil for sale! Oil for sale!” In doing so, he is again demonstrating that the true master is completely immersed in the task\u00a0at hand, is expressing each\u00a0now to its fullest (“You stand before me, saying that I am a lowly peddler, then by all means, let me be a lowly peddler”), and that he had let go of all clinging to\u00a0ego<\/a> (“You say that I am not a\u00a0great Zen master after all, then by all means, let it be so”).<\/p>\n 2<\/b> “Nan Chuan, Kuei Tsung, and Ma Ku were travelling together to pay their respects to grand\u00a0teacher Chung. When they got halfway there, Nan Chuan drew a circle on the ground and said, ‘If you can speak, then let’s go on.’ Kuei Tsung sat down inside the circle. Then Ma Ku bowed. Nan Chuan said, ‘Then let’s not go on.'”<\/p>\n As we said, the circle signifies truth. So in drawing the circle,\u00a0Nan Chuan was challenging his compatriots to say something about truth. But since Zen subscribes to\u00a0Nagarjuna’s dialectics of emptiness<\/a>, the truth is an absolute that is transcendent to properties.<\/a>\u00a0From a Zen perspective, it is therefore impossible to say something\u00a0about truth. But on the other hand, if Zen monks never said anything, there would be no\u00a0Zen in the first place. So\u00a0the challenge of\u00a0communicating\u00a0something meaningful about truth is worthwhile, even though, according to Zen, it is also impossible.<\/p>\n In Zen, the real\u00a0is beyond all concepts, definitions, properties, and ideas. So from a Zen perspective, as soon as you try to say something, you have immediately become\u00a0entangled in\u00a0falsehoods and you are no longer speaking about\u00a0truth. This is why, when\u00a0Nan Chuan drew the circle and asked his fellow monks\u00a0to say something about it,\u00a0Kuei Tsung merely sat down in the circle and did not speak a word. In sitting down to\u00a0meditate, he was returning to a state that was devoid of speech and beyond dualisms and oppositions.<\/p>\n Ma Ku\u00a0then bowed to\u00a0Kuei Tsung. In doing so, he was expressing his approval of\u00a0Kuei Tsung’s gesture. Responding to action with action, Kuei Tsung made plain that there is nothing to say and no place for discussions and words when it comes to matters of truth.<\/p>\n Seeing their actions,\u00a0Nan Chuan replied, “Then let’s not go on.” What is the meaning of this utterance? Nan Chuan understood that there is nothing to discuss and no truth to be attained through discussion. Since all three of the monks\u00a0had understood this, there was\u00a0no reason\u00a0to visit grand\u00a0teacher Chung.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Image in the article especially commissioned for this publication from artist Georgios Magkakis.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “A lecture on Zen is always something in the nature of a hoax because it really does deal with a domain of experience that cannot be talked about.” – Alan Watts “Many of the Zen anecdotes\u00a0…\u00a0not only border on the grotesque but are right there in the middle of it, and sound like the most\u00a0crashing[\u2026] Continue Reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5778"}],"version-history":[{"count":77,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5868,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions\/5868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"monk\"](\"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/monk-e1421221513757.png\")
<\/a>In Zen\u00a0we find the tradition of “Dharma Combat” – encounters between Zen practitioners\u00a0to test\u00a0the depth of each other’s understanding.\u00a0The Zen mindset has to be carefully cultivated in\u00a0meditation<\/a>\u00a0and so even the most devoted adherents of Zen are always in\u00a0danger of lapsing back into the “default,” dualistic\u00a0view of reality, which in Zen\u00a0is identified with a lack of insight into its\u00a0teachings. Hence Dharma Combat tests the\u00a0adepts’ ability to manifest Zen insight, at any time, on the spot, and on any topic. To be successful, one must act with genuine spontaneity, meaning that nothing – not even Zen or the Buddha – is to be regarded as sacred. Only the genuine, non-clinging expression of each\u00a0moment is awarded points, which is one reason why Zen is so paradoxical and elusive.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>First,\u00a0an encounter between two masters:<\/p>\n
\nNext, three adepts are traveling together. In this story,\u00a0the circle signifies\u00a0truth:<\/p>\n