Oriana LaChance, Rev. Master

 

I have been thinking about the idea of ‘guest’ and ‘host’ in Buddhism and how it plays out in our daily lives. This is a concept I come across occasionally, and it hasn’t always been clear to me what is being pointed to, so I’ve explored it a bit.

The concept of host and guest is seen as early as the Surangama Sutra,¹ when the Buddha tells his disciples that beings have not become fully awake because they are confused by afflictions that are like visitors. He uses the metaphor of an inn where the visitor is the one who comes and goes and the innkeeper is the one who remains—the host.

Visitors are transient feelings, thoughts, ideas, opinions. The host is emptiness, essence, the nature of mind. Some visitors are invited and are kind, charming and a pleasure to have at the inn. Others are not invited and are disruptive and unruly and eat all the food. The 13th century poet, Rumi, writes of this in “The Guest House”.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.2

Our thoughts, opinions, feelings—these visitors—arise of themselves and don’t hinder Buddha nature—the host. How does this apply to our daily practice? Can we stay awake in the face of all the diverse visitors who come and go? This is our practice when we sit: to be awareness itself; to be both guest and host.

Dharmakaya, the original master, pure being, also translates as ‘host.’ The host is beyond conception, beyond knowing, undivided, and excludes nothing. Guests are anything understood in relation to something else: I and you, hot and cold, the observer and the observed. Guests stand in opposition to something else. When guests arrive, the opposites tag along. Ideas are guests, thoughts are guests, our opinions are guests. We should be cordial to them, but we don’t need to base our response to what is in front of us from the position of the guest. Guests come and go; the host, the original master, is beyond time, always present. Guest and host: form in emptiness, emptiness in form.

In this moment—what we call our experience—both guest and host are present. The I, the you, the tools ‘I’ work with are present, and the host is here, too. When we meditate, we are resting in this eternal presence. The Buddha’s enlightenment is not outside of, or separate from, the guests—our hesitancy, our pride, our fear, our love.

We can put a lot of emphasis on the origin of feeling and bodily sensation, and this can be helpful, but they, too, are guests. Asking “Why?” and “How?” are chasing after understanding. We can become a little more curious about the host. Who is host to all these guests?

In Ben Connelly’s lovely book, Inside the Grass Hut: Living Shitou’s Classic Zen Poem, Connelly writes:

The insight into the origin of the feeling and the experience of the emotions and bodily sensations of anger are helpful, but they are guests. We can let them go and come back to a little curiosity; who is it that is feeling and thinking these things? Who is host to all the guests? The host, you may recall, is associated with the absolute, with emptiness, with enlightenment. This is a host many of us would really like to entice. . . . If you are trying to entice the host to come and be your guest, it’s a guest. If enlightenment is a thing to be chased, it’s relative, an idea we’ve made up about something. Enlightenment, the host, is none of these.

Don’t try to entice guests. Ask, instead: who? If what I sense, feel, and understand are guests, if my sense of ‘I’ is a guest, then who is hosting? Who is the host to all these guests? Don’t ask with your mind, and don’t spend time on answers. Ask with your heart, ask with your posture, ask with bare awareness.” ³

*        *        *         *

Great Master Dōgen approaches the idea of guest and host in another way in his Guidelines for Studying the Way.

Dharma turns you and you turn dharma. When you turn dharma you are leading and dharma is following. On the other hand when dharma turns you, dharma is leading and you are following. Buddha-dharma originally has these two modes, but those who are not true heirs have never understood it; unless they are patch-robed monks, they scarcely have heard of it. Without knowing this key, you cannot judge how to study the way. How can you determine the correct from the mistaken? On the other hand, those practicing Zen and studying the way are always given this key.⁴

The key is the understanding that you are always both guest and host, both turning the Wheel of the Dharma and being turned by the Wheel of the Dharma. To believe that you only do one or the other is to not fully comprehend the true teaching.

Koun Franz of Thousand Harbours Zen expresses it like this:

In any moment, where are you in relation to the Dharma? If you are simply being led, if you have opened up your heart and mind and have become vulnerable enough for the Dharma to turn you, that’s significant, but there’s no life in that. On the other hand, if you take it upon yourself to turn the Dharma, to be the protagonist, without also being turned, you are very limited in what you can do. Dōgen is describing something very subtle. It is another way of talking about practice-realization, the idea that practice and enlightenment are one and the same.⁵

Huineng, the 6th ancestor, spoke of this when he said, “When the mind is deluded, it is turned by the Dharma blossom; when the mind is enlightened, it turns the Dharma blossom.” This turning of the Dharma Blossom is not at some time in the future when we become fully enlightened. It is in each moment as we walk the Buddha Way with all our imperfections. We—you—are turning the Dharma Blossom.

Dōgen adds to Huineng,

When you see a speck of dust [emptiness], it is not that you do not see the world of phenomena. When you realize the world of phenomena, it is not that you do not realize a speck of dust. When buddhas realize the world of phenomena, they do not keep you from realization. Wholesomeness is manifest in the beginning, middle, and end . . . If you fully practice this, Dharma blossom turns Dharma blossom.⁶

There is no host and no guest, there is just turning.

What does all this mean to us? Buddha is always present so we have endless opportunities to awaken to it. We are all already safe, here. The road to liberation runs through our mundane, bursting-with-guests life whether we know it or not. This is happening no matter how obstructed we see our lives as being. When we lose track of that, the Dharma is continuing to turn. When we occupy our bodies, our lives, our circumstances, we are turning the Dharma.  We can see the whole and the particular and the connection of all things, and we are turning the Dharma. It is only in the every-day-ness of our lives that we can wake up and see this.

If the Dharma is turning even when we are in delusion, confused, aware of nothing at all, then we are never outside the Dharma. We cannot walk away from delusion, and the flower of Dharma turns at all times. How do we awaken to this consciously? Look in the middle of your confusion and see the Dharma turning. This is sometimes described as an endless moving stream, residing in an endless moving stream. Guest and host: both are our life, both turned by the Dharma and turning the Dharma.

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Zen teacher, Linji (Rinzai, in Japanese) of China challenges us with this:

There are Zen students who are in chains when they go to a teacher, and the teacher adds another chain. The students are delighted, unable to discern one thing from another. This is called ‘a guest looking at a guest.’⁷

We want teachers who will give us something we can grasp, sink our teeth into, who will help catapult us into enlightenment. But that thing we believe we are given is another guest. The host cannot be given to you, as you already are it.

Steve Hagen says this very well in Buddhism Is Not What You Think, in an essay entitled, “The Host within the Host.”

If you feel like you’re getting something out of Zen, this is ordinary stuff. It’s bondage, not freedom. There’s nothing to get. You’re just acquiring one more chain, one more item that keeps you bound, keeps you dissatisfied and looking around for the next goody. It’s what you’ve always suffered; it’s nothing new. . . .

Zen—that is meditation—is simply coming back to just this—being present, noticing that we babble to ourselves, that we tell stories to ourselves, that we try to explain everything. Zen will never say anything to you. If it does, it’s only because you’re making it up. If you tell yourself, “Oh, that was a good meditation. I really got into something deep there,” it’s nonsense. Pure delusion. And if you think, “Oh, my meditation was off, my mind was really disturbed,” it’s more delusion. Or if you try to justify your meditation practice by saying, “My day goes so much better when it begins with meditation,” it’s all delusion. I never once heard my teacher talk like this. This is just our spinning minds jabbering to themselves.

Linji said, “This is called a guest looking at a guest.” In other words, we attend not to what we experience directly, but to what we make of it. [boldface added] Thus we ignore what in Zen we call the host—the actual experience of this moment. We ignore that there’s no separation between Reality and ourselves.⁸

When we want something from our meditation, our Buddhist teachers, our sangha, we are inviting in more guests. Fair enough. Sometimes guests have something to offer. But what about the host? Can we rest in the host and see that it is not only sufficient, but contains everything?

Notes

1. See website: Buddhism Now (digital journal): https://buddhismnow.com/2018/09/28/the-host-and-guest-from-the-surangama-sutra/
2. Barks, Coleman. The Essential Rumi. HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers: 1995, p. 109.
3. Connelly, Ben. Inside the Grass Hut: Living Shitou’s Classic Zen Poem. Wisdom Publications, 2014, pp. 134-35.
4. Tanahashi, ed. Moon in a Dewdrop. North Point Press: 1985, p. 40.
5. Franz, Koun. “Do Not Practice with the Idea of Gain”. Thousand Harbours Zen Podcast, Talk 103: Oct. 17, 2018.
6. Tanahashi, ed., Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Shambhala: May 14, 2013: pp. 186, 190.
7. Hagen, Steve. Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs. HarperCollins Publishers: 1996, p. 88.
8. , pp. 89-90.