The word ‘thing’ holds a special place in Zen practice. What is ‘thing’? Whether it is something (some-thing) or nothing (no-thing) it conveys the sense of, well, of “thingness”. When we say “please pick up that thing” to someone, they see where we are pointing, they know what “that thing” is and they pick it up. If we said “please pick up that spoon”, the word spoon conveys the thingness of the object. We know what thing the spoon is.
Buddhism has lots of terms which intersect, overlap, even intentionally obfuscate, with the concept of thing. One such term is the Sanskrit word lakshana, translated into English as “mark”, or “sign”. Conventionally, a thing is known by its mark, its sign. But is the sign the thing?
If we look up and see a door in front of us, we know it is a door because it has the signs of being a door. What are these signs? Clearly glass doors, hinged doors, sliding doors, open doors, closed doors, all have the sign of being a door-thing. What is that sign? In the oval office of the US White House there is a side door which is almost invisible, its outline, hinges, even handle, almost entirely hidden from view by clever artisanship. For all intents and purposes, you can’t identify (make the identity of) the door. Its signs are all obscured, gone from the realm of our perception. But not its door-ness.
So, is there some-thing that remains when all the signs, all the marks, all the identifiers (the identity-markers/identity-makers) are apparently absent? Or is there really no-thing?
One of Buddhism’s many examinations of this question falls into the category of “name and form”. Are name and form the same? In the Western World view form precedes name. A door is a door, identified as being a door by its form, and therefore it is called a door. But from one yogic view, a view which sometimes Zen shares, name precedes form. A door is not a door until it is named a door. This is actually quite revolutionary; no thing exists until it is named!
Zentatsu Baker Roshi for decades has talked about “taking the clothes off the sound of a passing airplane”. What is he talking about? The practice of taking the signs off of things, of not naming things. Noticing sound and intentionally stopping the mental formation at the sensation of sound. Just for a bit, maybe seconds, not going on to airplane, direction, destination, passengers…none of it. Even stopping before liking or disliking the sound. Just noticing sensation, the appearance/disappearance of sensation.
This is one practice of “name and form”. Zen Buddhism offers many others: the Relative and the Absolute, the Five Skandhas, the Five Ranks, others. It even holds a mind-teaser/twister from Early Buddhism, “a door is not a door, therefore we call it a door”.
But here and now our opening the Dharma-door of thing, of name and form, is ‘just enough’.