Koan and its implementation in V. Pelevin's prose

Gun Anping Postgraduate student; Department of the History of Russian Literature; St. Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Universitetskaya nab., 7-9-11B gap0921liza@yandex.ru

Zen Buddhism is one of the branches of Chinese Buddhism that began with Bodhidharma, flourished under the sixth Patriarch Huineng and became the dominant trend of Buddhism in China in the middle and end of the Tang Dynasty. For hundreds of years after the sixth patriarch Huineng, Zen Buddhism gradually weakened. In order to preserve the vitality of Zen, the masters proposed an extreme method that could help monks in enlightenment — the use of koans. The original meaning of the word "koan" is a judicial document of the ancient Chinese government. Later, the term "koan" was borrowed by Zen Buddhism, and its content is usually a story about a Zen master, a dialogue between the master and his disciples, or questions and various hints from the master. The Koan has two remarkable properties: flexibility and irrationality. In other words, in the koan, Zen masters give explanations of various situations in the lives of their students, but their words and actions are illogical and incompatible with generally accepted ones.

The philosophy of Zen Buddhism occupies a very important place in V. Pelevin's prose. The novel "Chapaev and the Void" is a Zen Buddhist novel that tells about the complete process of enlightenment of the main character — Peter the Void. One koan in the ancient Chinese collection of koans "Wu day Hui Yuan" (1252) not only shows the three stages of Zen practice, but also becomes the main ideological basis in Pelevin's novel Chapaev and the Void: "Until you are familiar with the teachings of Zen, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers; when you study Zen, mountains cease to be mountains, and rivers are rivers; but after you have achieved enlightenment, mountains are mountains again, and rivers are rivers again" ^{[3, p. 105]}. This koan is a process of enlightenment described by Qingyuan Xingxi, a Zen master from the Song Dynasty. The first stage: before studying Zen, everything that people see is its appearance, and people believe that the world exists according to established rules. The second stage: after practice and meditation, the Zen master feels that everything in this physical world is an illusion. As it is said in the Diamond Sutra: "When there is an image, there is also a delusion" ^{[1, p. 125]}. The third stage: the Zen master maintains his own consciousness, in this stage reality is a product of personal consciousness.

In the novel Chapaev and the Void, Chapaev and the Black Baron are enlightened heroes who are in the revolutionary world of Moscow. They act as Zen masters, imitating or creating koans to inspire Peter. The first task of Zen masters is to make Peter realize the concept of "not-me" and abandon dualism. According to the idea of Zen, people mistakenly think that "I" is a completely independent entity, but if there is a "I", then there will be distracting thoughts, therefore the best method of spiritual improvement is to act without intentional efforts or goal—setting ^{[8, p. 382]}. When Peter comes into contact with Zen for the first time, Chapaev discusses the problem of "not-me" with him. Like traditional Zen masters, he does not answer questions directly. However, he takes the initiative to ask questions in order to direct Peter to reflect. But the traditional Zen master pays more attention to the activity of the students, so in koans, students usually ask questions to the teacher. The dialogue between Chapaev and Emptiness about individual consciousness looks like this:

"...After all, "we" is more complicated than "I", isn't it?

—It's true,— I said.

— What do you call "me"?

— Apparently, myself.

"Can you tell me who you are?"

— Peter the Void.

— That's your name. And who is the one who bears this name?

—Well," I said, "you could say that I am a psychic person. A set of habits, experience… Well, knowledge, tastes.

... — And what habits do habits have?" ^{[7, p. 153]}.

The topic of "not-me" is often discussed in koans. For example, in the first koan of the ancient Chinese collection "Sayings from the Azure Cliff", the Ruler of Wu-di asks Bodhidharma three questions: "I have built temples to worship the Buddha all my life and provided monks with food and amenities, what are my merits and virtues; what is the highest meaning of the sacred truth; who stands before my eyes" ^{[6, p. 559]}. The three questions of the Wu-di Ruler are actually one problem: the Wu-di Ruler still has obsessions. He built temples and entertained monks because he wanted either fame, wealth, or rewards. Master Bodhidharma gave him a negative answer: there is no supreme truth and there is no self. At that time, Ruler Wu-di and Peter the Void were people who did not understand the essence of Zen at all, they did not realize that "I" was just a code name, and they should not set any goals in their minds.

The main character of the novel "Chapaev and the Void", Peter the Void, is located simultaneously in two periods: in 1918-1919 and in the mid-1990s. In revolutionary Moscow, he was Chapaev's political advisor and a modernist poet from St. Petersburg, and in modern Russia he was a patient in a mental hospital. The author of the novel poses a question to Peter: which of these worlds is real? As Daisetsu Suzuki has repeatedly emphasized, "cultivating dualism is a fundamental mistake that must be eliminated at the very first stages of the path to a state of self—fulfillment" ^{[8, p. 107]}. After thinking about the problem of "not-me", Peter not only begins to doubt his own way of thinking, but also rethinks the working mechanism of the whole world: "One could say, I thought, that the world, on the one hand, exists in me, and, on the other hand, I exist in this world, and these are just the poles of one semantic magnet, but the trick was that there was nowhere to hang this magnet, this dialectical dyad" ^{[7, p. 162]}. By this point, Peter is already skeptical of dualism, but in fact does not abandon it.

From the words of the Black Baron in the seventh chapter, we can learn the following: Peter believes that the world of sleep (that is, the world where the psychiatric hospital is located) is less real than the space where he drinks with Chapaev in the bathhouse. To get rid of this dualistic idea, Chapaev quotes and adapts the Chinese Taoist philosophical story "The Butterfly's Dream". Chapaev says that he knew a Chinese communist named Jie Chuang, who always dreamed that he was a red butterfly flying among the grass. When Chuang Jie woke up, he didn't know if he was a butterfly or an underground worker. This Taoist story goes back to the book of the philosopher Chuang Tzu "Qi wu Lun": "One day I, Chuang Zhou, saw myself in a dream as a butterfly - a happy butterfly that fluttered among the flowers for its pleasure and did not know at all that she was Chuang Zhou. Suddenly I woke up and saw that I was Chuang Zhou. And I didn't know if I was Chuang Zhou, who dreamed that he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who dreamed that she was Chuang Zhou" ^{[10, p. 73]}. This story plays out the philosophical idea of the "unity of man with the cosmos" of Chinese Taoism. Chuang Tzu believes that the phenomenal world has no reality, and does not even know if he is living in a butterfly's dream. Pelevin used a parody technique to adapt a Taoist story to a koan spoken by a Zen master. His goal in creating this koan is to use it to explain to Peter what sleep and real awakening are. Pelevin wrote the ending for Chuang Tse's story: after being interrogated by the Black Baron, the latter woke up from being put against the wall and woken up, and then flew on ^{[7, p. 221]}. Perhaps Chuang Jie will just fall from one dream to another. The real awakening is happening exactly as Chapaev said: "But if you realize that absolutely everything that happens to you is just a dream, then it won't matter what you dream about" ^{[7, p. 222]}. Thus, the point of view that Chapaev wants to teach is: "Life is like a dream, the world is emptiness."

However, the philosophical allusion to the "Butterfly's Dream" did not cause Peter to have an epiphany, so Chapaev asked the Black Baron to take Peter with him so that he would at least once find himself in a place that has nothing to do with nightmares about the insane asylum or nightmares about Chapaev ^{[7, p. 236]}. In the koan, Zen masters can also answer students without words, they use practical actions as answers to their questions. The introduction of the role of Baron Jungern has two functions: 1) the baron gives Peter a practical understanding of the true structure of the universe, 2) the baron introduces the concept of "Inner Mongolia" and explains the ultimate goal of Peter's Zen practice. The palace of Baron Valhalla was for Peter the "third" world, when he left this world, he saw and felt the simple and stupid structure of the universe: "It was as if one set had been moved, and the other had not been immediately installed in its place, and for a whole second I looked into the gap between them" ^{[7, p. 242]}. Pelevin's method of showing the unreality of the world is too straightforward, but at the same time it is the simplest and most effective. Peter completely rejected dualism and recognized the unreality of the world. At this point, he left the first stage of Zen practice and moved on to the second.

Returning to the world of revolutionary Moscow, Peter began to think about the possibility of what he had experienced and began to ask Chapaev questions about eternity. Chapaev replied: "This moment, Petka, is eternity." These events, personally experienced by Peter, may seem mystical, but the meaning of the third stage of Zen practice is precisely to explain them. For a better understanding of the third stage, Baron Jungren for the first time proposes the concept of "collective visualization": "When a lot of believers begin to pray to some god, he really appears, and in exactly the form in which he is represented ... The world where we live is just a collective visualization, which we are trained to do from birth" ^{[7, p. 251]}. The concept of "collective visualization" comes from the theory of the "collective unconscious", proposed by the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung. According to Jung, the collective unconscious is an innate deep layer of the unconscious, while the content of the collective unconscious is made up of so—called archetypes. The main expressions of the archetype are myths, fairy tales, and religious teachings ^{[11, pp. 158-161]}. The "collective unconscious" or "collective visualization" allows the world, culture, and society to continue and maintain sameness in an unconscious way. However, in Zen Buddhism, it is believed that people are always limited by logic and language and cannot penetrate the truth.

"Having nothing in my hands, I'm holding a shovel.

I walk and I ride a water buffalo" ^{[12, p. 58]} —

These two lines of Master Shanhui's poem seem to defy logic and common sense. Daisetsu Suzuki believes that it is necessary to discard words and return to facts, and that seemingly unreasonable things also have their own logic. Zen masters may have the power of words: for example, a shovel may not be called a hoe. So, the third stage of Zen practice is to focus the meditator on his consciousness, and not on logic, words, prejudices and appearances that collective visualization gives. And reality is nothing but a reflection of personal consciousness, as Baron Jungren said: "what would exist, as they say, in reality. It all depends on who's watching it.… But no matter what forms the past has prescribed for us, each of us still sees in life only a reflection of his own spirit" ^{[7, p. 251]}. Therefore, all experiences, the whole world are products of Peter's consciousness, it is possible that dreams that occur in an instant are also a product of Peter's meditation. The third and final stage of Zen practice is called "Inner Mongolia" by Baron Jungren and Chapaev.

After Peter went to the palace of Baron Valhalla and successfully advanced one more step towards enlightenment, the implementation of the koans in the novel follows the following structure: the story of the koan is accompanied by its experience in practice. A combination of koan and practice can help Peter achieve the ultimate Zen goal quickly. For example, Chapaev used a clay machine gun to turn everything into nothingness, and then told Peter koan "Anagama Buddha and a clay machine gun." Long before Buddha Dipankara and Buddha Shakyamuni came into the world, there lived Buddha Anagama. Anagama simply pointed at things with the little finger of his left hand, and immediately after that their true nature was revealed. When he pointed at the mountain and the river, they disappeared, and finally this little finger pointed at himself, since then he has disappeared. The clay machine gun is this piece of clay with the little finger of Buddha Anagama ^{[7, pp. 321-322]}. The ideas of Zen Buddhism expressed in this koan are close to the ideas of the Linji school. The Linji School was formed during the late Tang Dynasty, and its Zen style is renowned for its directness and intensity. One koan, written by Linji Yixuan's mentor, the founder of the Linji School, is not only considered a classic by many Japanese samurai and writers, but is also the ideological basis of the koan "Anagama and the Clay Machine Gun" in Pelevin's novel. The central idea of this koan is as follows: "Followers of the Tao! If you want to find a view that corresponds to the Dharma, then do not give in to the delusions of others. Whatever you encounter inside or outside, kill it. Meet a Buddha — kill a Buddha, meet a Patriarch — kill a Patriarch, meet an arhat — kill an arhat, meet parents — kill parents, meet relatives — kill relatives. Only then will you find liberation from bondage" ^{[4, p. 125]}.

The murder in the Linji koan does not refer to actual murder, but to the abandonment of authority and emotion in the process of practice. The suicide of an authoritative Buddha is set forth in the Anagama Buddha koan, which represents the most important thought of Linji sect Zen Buddhism: do not worship classics and authority, there is no Buddha outside the practitioner's consciousness. The clay machine gun is the sharira of the Anagama Buddha, that is, the result of the Buddha's practice. Sharira can refer to the practice and merits of a Buddha or prominent monks, as well as to material or immaterial bodies. Pelevin combines these two interpretations: when Anna fired a clay machine gun, Chapaev shouted: "Fire! Water! Earth! Space! Air!" ^{[7, p. 321]}. Using a clay machine gun does not require spells, Chapaev explained the essence of a clay machine gun. So, since ancient times, the Indians have considered the human body as a microcosm, repeating in miniature the universe formed by five elements. His bones are made of earth, his breath is made of wind, phlegm and other humors are made of water, heat is made of fire, his heart, stomach and auricles are filled with akasha (ether, space) ^[5]. Thus, the clay machine gun, which is a microcosm of the universe consisting of five elements, can reveal the true nature of things. And every thing he points to disappears, reflecting another phrase of Chapaev: "Any form is emptiness. Emptiness is any form" ^{[7, p. 324]}. There is a similar expression in the Heart Sutra: "Sensually perceived is emptiness. Emptiness is what is sensually perceived" ^{[2, pp. 252-267]}. The Koan "Anagama Buddha and the Clay Machine Gun" combines the ideas of the Linji School, the "Sutras of the Heart" and the concept of sharira; it appears in the novel in two ways: linguistically and by describing the practice.

In the novel Chapaev and the Void, the koan is used not only as a means of enlightenment, but also as the root cause of the formation of the complex structure of the novel's space. Peter's path to enlightenment is completely passive, his Zen practice is closer to a program or a computer game, and the key to whether he can pass the level is his consciousness. The two narrative spaces in which Peter lives are installations of the "dualism" level, and if his consciousness gets rid of dualism, then these spaces will connect. Each progress of the plot is a test of understanding of the koan: Peter acts as a player in this Zen game, while Zen master Chapaev and the black baron are non—player characters. The parallels with the game are especially clear when Peter enters the third stage of Zen. After the clay machine gun turned everything into oblivion, Chapaev opened the next level. After talking about the idea of Zen Buddhism about "emptiness", Chapaev asked Peter to close his eyes and then open them to see the Ural River. The rule of this level of the game is to understand the meaning of the koan "Clay Machine Gun" and the idea of "Any form is emptiness". Only then will you be able to cross the Ural River, which symbolizes the third stage of Zen practice. But Peter was not ready, so he failed to pass this level. In other words, understanding the koan is the rule of the Zen game, but setting the game level itself also constitutes the koan.

So, in the novel Chapaev and the Void by V. Pelevin, the koan is a tool used to express the ideas of Zen Buddhism. The novel quotes existing ancient Chinese koans, creates new ones, and even texts from other philosophical schools are also transformed into koans. These koans are realized in the text through the dialogue and behavior of the characters, there are several ways to implement them: the characters tell the koan; the dialogue of the heroes makes up the koan; the behavior of the heroes replaces the answer, forming a koan. In addition, the plot of the novel follows the sequence of the enlightenment process in the koan of Zen master Qingyuan Xingxi. The Zen practice experience of the main character Peter the Void is a constantly improving game, and the standard of evaluation in the game is the degree of understanding of the koan.