The Vomit of Insight - Guest blog by Rev. Mike Jinji Sunya Wood

Roughly thirteen hundred years ago, one Zen master showed us, through his vomit, how we create—and can overcome—birth and death. This is a rather extreme example of insight, yet Wonhyo, one of the great iconoclasts in Buddhist history, used this common experience we all share— as the spark for his awakening. That his story has made it to us today further shows its relevance, though it probably has also lasted due to its seemingly perverse nature. As with many Buddhist stories, though, the point is not whether or not the events actually took place, but with its message.

 In Korea, Wonhyo (617-666) was on his way to China, in the hopes of finding a master who would teach him Buddhism. While on his long walk, he became thirsty, but kept walking. By nightfall he was becoming dehydrated, and retreated into a cave. By luck, he found inside a bowl filled with water. He drank greedily and fell asleep. The next morning, in the light of day, he realized in quick succession that the cave was a tomb, the bowl was a skull, and the water inside it was fetid and filled with maggots. He threw up violently, at which point he was enlightened and saw no need to continue on to China.

A lesson that can be learned here is that we create the good and bad of a situation through our biases, knee-jerk reactions, and conventional understanding. Yet the lesson is also that any situation is a moment to realize liberation, and any challenging moment can be endured without making it any more dire or rosy than it ought. We can realize that we are already liberated by meeting any situation head-on, like Wonhyo, who in his disgust realized that it was only his perspective that caused him pain. Not that drinking maggot, gristle stew out of a skull is recommended—but the night before it had been some of the best water he ever drank. The primacy of personal experience and choice is clear.

The mind is a terrible thing to listen to, a wild jackass of fragments of memory, experience, lies, fears, hopes, dreams, songs, TV shows; we’ve talked to ourselves for long that we’ve churned all that mess into a semi-coherent narrative that we come to believe is true. This jackass becomes a thief, taking you away from a real experience of life with its powerful and seductive judgments and resemblance to a linear factual assessment of who you are.

We can use even the most harsh, sick, disgusting moments of our lives as vehicles for awakening, for breaking the spell of that inner tele-novella . As we can become aware that negative actions and thoughts are just energy, powerful energy that can in turn be redirected for beneficial use, we can also see times of illness or stress as times when there is useful energy present. All of life is our practice: if we are sick, we practice experiencing our sickness, without judgment; likewise with despair, rejection, insult, etc. This does not mean trying to convince ourselves that we don’t feel like shit, or that we are not afraid or grief-stricken. There are times when listening to what our minds are telling us about our bodies is critical to maintaining good health.

 It does mean realizing that, if any moment, this moment, is the moment to wake up, and if this is moment of discomfort, so be it. Wonhyo experienced through nausea—and its insight into life and death—an enlightenment moment. Literally puking out ignorance and fear, and realizing that discomfort and fear can be good news for practice, and sharp insight into the ephemeral nature of our emotions. He might have mentioned the hazards of laughing while vomiting, but we nevertheless  can be grateful to Wonhyo for his being able to carry this lesson onto the Bodhisattva path and pass on that insight for the benefit of others.

Though Wonhyo could be ambivalent about the necessity of a teacher in one’s awakening, he was a teachers, albeit of the primacy of individual experience. No one can puke out my illness for me; a good teacher, though, like these sages, could point out my sickness for you, and hold the bucket while I vomit out some more of my ignorance.