Tricycle | Awake in the World

WHEN BUDDHA WAS on Vulture Peak he twirled a flower before the assembly. Everyone was silent. Only Mahakashyapa smiled. Buddha said: "I have the eye treasury of the true teaching, the heart of nirvana, the true form of non-form, and the ineffable gate of dharma. It is a special transmission outside the teaching. I now entrust it to Mahakashyapa."

This account of Shakyamuni Buddha's first authentic, heart-mind transmission of his teaching is found in a thirteenth-century Chinese koan collection, the Wumenguan. It is not historically true, but it isn't exactly made up either. Over the years I've come to appreciate that the story expresses something spiritually accurate about the Zen tradition from which it comes. We are trying to practice in accord with and to convey to others the essential wisdom of the Buddha, the kernel of truth within the details and doctrines that have been built up over the generations. The Buddha's insight, his understanding and way of life, is very simple and straightforward, though it may seem paradoxical or ineffable when we examine it in the context of our normal lives of lunacy. If it seems hard to explain, it's because the explanations become distorted by our own craziness. But when you have a personal, living feeling for the Buddha's essential spiritual point, it's not hard to understand—or to explain. So when someone holds up a flower, a beautiful, delicate, very temporary—and beautiful because temporary—flower, you understand right away, and you smile at the elegance of the explanation.

There is no mention of this story in any of the sutras. But the sutras do refer to Mahakashyapa as one of the Buddha's main disciples, and Vulture Peak was the setting of some of the Buddha's most important teachings. I visited Vulture Peak a few years ago, and I was surprised at how small it is, a rather small rounded peak surrounded by other smallish peaks. If a lot of disciples congregated there to hear the Buddha's teachings, they must have been spread out below, or on the other peaks, so they must have had some trouble hearing him. It reminded me of Monte Python's Life of Brian, in which the people in the back, hearing the Sermon on the Mount, thought Jesus had said, "Blessed are the cheesemakers" and "Blessed are the Greeks." It must have been quite easy to misunderstand spiritual teachers in ancient times, without microphones or accurate recording systems. So written scriptures based on these hearings may not be so reliable. In any case, anything written is always incorrect because writing is, by its nature, abstract and out of time, whereas life is always very particular and in time. So even if the scriptures record exactly the words of Buddha, which is highly doubtful, sound system problems aside, these words would still not be quite what we need. Zen describes itself as a "special transmission outside the scriptures," but I think this applies to all real spiritual truth. There's nothing special about Zen. Probably all spiritual teachings are essentially "outside the scriptures."

In texts like the Parinirvana Sutra and the Kalama Sutra, we find the Buddha encouraging his disciples to find their own way to the teachings, not to trust charismatic teachers, tradition, or custom unless what is presented has been verified by personal experience. In the Parinirvana Sutra, the Buddha famously advises his disciples to rely on their own practice and discernment. This is one of the aspects of the Buddha's teaching that many of us find most attractive and that fits well with our Western culture of critical and independent thinking. Clearly, though, there is more to be said here, because we have been trusting our own experience and intelligence all along and we are still in a mess. It's not that we need to trust something outside our experience or intelligence. Rather, we need another way, another access point. The story of the Buddha twirling a flower speaks to this alternative access point. To talk about it I will back up a little bit.