Bill Boyle, May 2024

Hakuin’s Jointed Bridge

Why don’t you build
A jointed bridge
With your free mind
For the people
Passing through the world?

This koan verse and the accompanying ink painting are wonderful examples of Hakuin Ekaku’s creativity during his lifetime that spanned from 1685-1768. It is known that at the age of fifteen, he became a Rinzai monk and traveled extensively to monasteries and various Zen teachers throughout Japan. Early on, he rehabilitated Shoin Monastery, an abandoned temple near Mt. Fuji where he had been ordained and, at the age of 33 became its abbot. Hakuin’s reputation as a strict, but remarkably innovative teacher spread as he focused on his painting, calligraphy and humorous songs as well as his many students. The koan “The sound of one hand” was his inspiration and became central to his teaching. Hakuin is known for having restored Rinzai Zen. 

Kazuaki Tanahashi (who many of you are familiar with) is the contemporary Japanese Zen artist who translated this verse, along with organizing Hakuin’s verses, koans, drawings and calligraphy. He describes a Jointed Bridge as “constructed of many flat boards laid across parallel poles.” Now let’s look at our copy of Hakuin’s drawing of a jointed bridge apparently reaching over a vast chasm…the slender poles sometimes humorously described as cedar chopsticks. And we see here at the middle of this bridge, a person apparently standing in high winds, with his head nodding forward, taking in a moment of shear vulnerability. It is this image of stepping along a simple bridge, a Path across a chasm, out in vast, open space that grips me and draws me into this koan.

For years, I have observed how we homo sapiens cling to the belief that we are in control, safe and secure in this world. Certainly, most of us lean heavily on scientific theory and religious ideology to appease our insecure minds. But existentially, do we really have any idea what is going on here? Let me propose a brief allegory of being on an airflight traveling typically at 6 or 7 miles above ground level. Most of us when taking a commercial flight avoid thinking about the reality of our situation. Yes, we distract ourselves with a movie or reading material on our pad, a conversation with a neighbor passenger, or a glass of wine with snacks. But on such a flight, have you ever allowed yourself to be quietly attentive to the sensations of your body perhaps bouncing around a bit from one moment to the next, settling into your breath, dropping all distractions, and relaxing into the realization of where you are, your altitude and your vulnerability…passing over a vast chasm in space. Perhaps you find your palms right now getting moist without even being on the flight but remembering what this is like. 

Just as Buddha taught how transitory our life is in this world and how each moment here is undefinable, unknowable and empty, Hakuin’s  man on the bridge and our passenger in airflight might also taste how transitory we are. It just takes the realization of the vastness that always exists around us as Sunyata, Suchness / Emptiness right here in our everyday lives, though our minds are usually distracted like the airline passenger avoiding the reality of our situation here, as we circle around our Sun as we prepare a sandwich in the kitchen. Sitting zazen is our opportunity to drop away distractions and realize our transitoriness, not as a concept or idea, but how truly empty and indefinableable is this moment of simply being here. This is our Path, our Practice of Zen as we are the people who Hakuin suggests are “passing through the world.” As Bodhidharma told the Emperor: “Vast emptiness, nothing holy.”

For what purpose then does Hakuin casually ask his question, “Why don’t you build a jointed bridge with your free mind for the people passing through the world? Something you might consider doing today? “Why don’t you”? he asks. This question carries with the wind…The narrator here, Hakuin, is asking a “free mind”, perhaps a realized Bodhisattva, to build this jointed bridge, to be a teacher for students, those people passing through the world willing to follow this Path across the abyss.

As suggested earlier, I selected this koan tonight for this talk, being drawn to the metaphor of Path here which plays out in several Buddhist stories. On Hakuin’s Jointed Bridge, we have all of the ingredients of Path, a Way across a Chasm, parallel to the Boatman crossing the depths of a river, a watery counterpart where practitioners pass from one shore to the other. In the Buddhist tradition, this metaphor of Path is also presented as Buddha’s uncovering of a hidden forest Trail leading to a long forgotten, overgrown city.
With each of these expressions of Buddha’s Path, we pass through great peril: a wide-open chasm, the danger of a deep river, or the wild, overgrown jungle path that Buddha clears open for us. Of course, we like to see ourselves safe and enlightened on the far side of the chasm, across the river or in the comforts of the golden city awaiting us.

But does this pathway across abyss reveal and open us to some permanent and secure heaven? Or is this Path simply about that person standing in high winds, with his head nodding forward, taking in a moment of shear vulnerability, just feeling more and more at ease with not knowing, with the inherent transitoriness and insecurity of our “passage though the world.” And yet of most importance here is the encouragement to build a bridge for the people, to guide Zen students across…so in the midst of such empty vastness, we find care and compassion for and from each of us sitting here, as we pass from zazen to kinhin, from zendo to home.