One Time, One Meeting

As a wedding gift eighteen years ago, two of our friends gave my wife and me a wind bell. Tall, pyramidical, and unadorned, it has hung from the branch of a spruce tree for nearly two decades. Its three steel sides and the triangular plate suspended from its clapper are rusted now, and the tree has long since died. But whenever the wind comes up with sufficient force, we are summoned by a distant, resonant clang, clang, clang—a reminder at once of continuity and change.

Wind bells have been around for millennia. In the late twelfth century Tendō Nyojō, a revered Zen master and the teacher of Eihei Dōgen, wrote a poem about his own:

The whole body a mouth hanging in emptiness

 Not caring which way the wind blows

 East, west, north, south.

 All day long, it sings Prajna Paramita

 For all beings.

 Ting-tong, ting tong.

From this description I would surmise that Nyojō’s wind bell was smaller and more musical than ours, but its dual function was the same. On the one hand, it registered the dynamic presence of a natural force. On the other, it produced, simultaneously, an audible response.

Nyojō’s poem is relatively straightforward, but several of its references invite a closer look. In portraying the wind bell as “hanging in emptiness,” Nyojō is referring to more than empty air. He is also placing the object squarely within the Zen tradition. According to Zen teachings, to hang in “emptiness” (sunyata) is to lack an independent, intrinsic, and permanent existence: to be “empty” of a separate self. The bell is made up of, and supported by, “non-bell” elements: by components other than itself, including the work of the artisans who made it and the metals of which it was made. Without those supporting elements, the bell could not exist. Likewise, its apparently permanent status is subject to impermanent conditions: to winds from the east, west, north, and south.

The bell does not seem to mind. On the contrary, Nyojō depicts it as “not caring which way the wind blows.” Once again, his portrayal locates the wind bell within the context of Zen teachings, specifically the teaching of “non-attachment.” Rather than be attached, by preference or longstanding habit, to wind from a particular direction, the bell is open to winds from all four. Taking their cue from the Diamond Sutra, a cornerstone of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, Zen teachings urge the practitioner to cultivate a “mind that abides nowhere,” which is to say, a mind free of obsessions, fixed ideas, and self-restricting preferences. The bell embodies that liberating attitude.

If the foregoing elements of the poem ground it in Zen teachings, Nyojō’s reference to Prajna Paramita, the song the bell sings all day to all beings, aligns it with the Heart Sutra, another core text of the Zen tradition. “Prajna Paramita” is commonly translated as “Perfect Wisdom,” or compassionate wisdom, the highest aim of Mahayana Buddhist practice. The Heart Sutra opens with the line “Maha prajna paramita hridaya sutra” (“Great Perfect Wisdom Heart Sutra”), and the sutra’s central theme is embodied in the apothegm “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” In its concrete form, which is that of an object existing in time and space, the wind bell is undeniably present and substantial. But ultimately, in the absolute dimension of experience, it is also “empty,” in the ways described above.

Just as Nyojō’s depiction of his wind bell transforms it into a fitting emblem of Zen practice, his characterization of the bell’s response to external conditions elevates this humble object into a guide for humane and effective action. In his astute commentary on the poem, the American Zen priest Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi notes that the wind bell “responds appropriately to the conditions at hand. At times, it offers sounds to signal the appropriate response. If the wind blows from the east, the bell moves west. It moves just the right amount given its weight, the earth’s gravity, the strength of the wind, the temperature and humidity around it. . . .  It has no fixed position, and because of that, it always responds appropriately to the given situation.” In offering this interpretation, Tenshin Roshi is alluding to an ancient Zen admonition, that of the Zen master Ummon (864-949), who viewed Zen practice as chiefly concerned with cultivating “an appropriate response” to the shifting conditions of our lives.

Ancient though it be, Ummon’s advice is timely and on the mark. Be a wind bell, we might enjoin ourselves. Recognize our impermanence and our interconnectedness with all beings. Set aside our fixed ideas. And whatever circumstances might arise, endeavor to render an appropriate response.

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Tenshin Reb Anderson, Entering the Mind of Buddha: Zen and the Six Heroic Practices of Bodhisattvas (Shambhla, 2019), 119.

The translation of Tendō Nyojō’s poem is by Tenshin Reb Anderson.