841Uif

78 f YASUTANI ' s coMMENTARY ON MU"If you carmot pass through the barrier, i.e., exhaust the arisingof thoughts, you are like a ghost, clinging to the trees and grass.''Ghosts do not appear openly in the daytime, but come out furtivelyafter dark, it is said, hugging the earth or clinging to willow trees.They are dependent upon these supports fo r their very existence. Ina sense human beings are also ghostlike, since most of us cannotfunction independent of money, social standing, honor, companionship,authority; or else we feel the need to identify ourselves with anorganization or an ideology. If you would be a man of true worthand not a phantom, you must be able to walk upright by yourself,dependent on nothing. When you harbor philosophical concepts orreligious beliefs or ideas or theories of one kind or another, you tooare a phantom, for inevitably you become bound to them. Onlywhen your mind is empty of such abstractions are you truly free andindependent.The next two sentences read: "What, then, is this barrier set up bythe Patriarchs? It is Mu, the one barrier of the supreme teaching."The supreme teaching is not a system of morality but that which liesat the root of all such systems, namely, Zen. Only that which is ofunalloyed purity, free from the superstitious or the supernatural, canbe called the root of all teachings and hence supreme. In BuddhismZen is the only teaching which is not to one degree or another taintedwith elements of the supernatural-thus Zen alone can truly be calledthe supreme teaching and Mu the one barrier of this supreme teaching.You can understand "one barrier" to mean the sole barrier or oneout of many. Ultimately there is no barrier."One who has passed through it cannot only see Joshu face toface . . . ." Since we are living in another age, of course we camwtactually see the physical Joshu. To "see Joshu face to face" means tounderstand his Mind. " . . . can walk hand in hand with the wholeline ofPatriarchs." The line of Patriarchs begins with Maha Kashyapa,who succeeded the Buddha, it goes on to Bodhidharma, the twentyeighth,and continues right up to the present. " . . . eyebrow to eyebrow...."is a figure of speech implying great intimacy. ". .. hearwith the same ears and see with the same eyes" connotes the abilityto look at things from the same viewpoint as the Buddha and Bodhidharma.It implies, of course, that we have clearly grasped the worldof enlightenment.