3.6: Koans and Meditation

20 Koans and Meditation

1. Joshu's Dog

A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?"

Joshu answered: "Mu." [Mu is the negative symbol in Chinese, meaning "No thing" or "Nay."]

Mumon's comment: To realize Zen one has to pass through the barrier of the patriarchs. Enlightenment always comes after the road of thinking is blocked. If you do not pass the barrier of the patriarchs or if your thinking road is not blocked, whatever you think, whatever you do, is like a tangling ghost. You may ask: What is a barrier of a patriarch? This one word, Mu, is it.

This is the barrier of Zen. If you pass through it you will see Joshu face to face. Then you can work hand in hand with the whole line of patriarchs. Is this not a pleasant thing to do?

If you want to pass this barrier, you must work through every bone in your body, through every pore of your skin, filled with this question: What is Mu? and carry it day and night. Do not believe it is the common negative symbol meaning nothing. It is not nothingness, the opposite of existence. If you really want to pass this barrier, you should feel like drinking a hot iron ball that you can neither swallow nor spit out.

Then your previous lesser knowledge disappears. As a fruit ripening in season, your subjectivity and objectivity naturally become one. It is like a dumb man who has had a dream. He knows about it but he cannot tell it.

When he enters this condition his ego-shell is crushed and he can shake the heaven and move the earth. He is like a great warrior with a sharp sword. If a Buddha stands in his way, he will cut him down; if a patriarch offers him any obstacle, he will kill him; and he will be free in his way of birth and death. He can enter any world as if it were his own playground. I will tell you how to do this with this koan:

Just concentrate your whole energy into this Mu, and do not allow any discontinuation. When you enter this Mu and there is no discontinuation, your attainment will be as a candle burning and illuminating the whole universe.

Has a dog Buddha-nature?
This is the most serious question of all.
If you say yes or no,
You lose your own Buddha-nature.

20. The Enlightened Man

Shogen asked: "Why does the enlightened man not stand on his feet and explain himself?" And he also said: "It is not necessary for speech to come from the tongue."

Mumon's comment: Shogen spoke plainly enough, but how many will understand? If anyone comprehends, he should come to my place and test out my big stick. Why, look here, to test real gold you must see it through fire.

If the feet of enlightenment moved, the great ocean would overflow;
If that head bowed, it would look down upon the heavens.
Such a body has no place to rest. . . .
Let another continue this poem.

25. Preaching from the Third Seat

In a dream Kyozan went to Maitreya's Pure Land. He recognized himself seated in the third seat in the abode of Maitreya. Someone announced: "Today the one who sits in the third seat will preach."

Kyozan arose and, hitting the gavel, said: "The truth of Mahayana teaching is transcendent, above words and thought. Do you understand?"

Mumon's comment: I want to ask you monks: Did he preach or did he not?

When he opens his mouth he is lost. When he seals his mouth he is lost. If he does not open it, if he does not seal it, he is 108,000 miles from truth.

In the light of day,
Yet in a dream he talks of a dream.
A monster among monsters,
He intended to deceive the whole crowd.

28. Blow Out the Candle

Tokusan was studying Zen under Ryutan. One night he came to Ryutan and asked many questions. The teacher said: "The night is getting old. Why don't you retire?"

So Tokusan bowed and opened the screen to go out, observing: "It is very dark outside."

Ryutan offered Tokusan a lighted candle to find his way. Just as Tokusan received it, Ryutan blew it out. At that moment the mind of Tokusan was opened.

"What have you attained?" asked Ryutan. "From now on," said Tokusan, "I will not doubt the teacher's words."

The next day Ryutan told the monks at his lecture: "I see one monk among you. His teeth are like the sword tree, his mouth is like the blood bowl. If you hit him hard with a big stick, he will not even so much as look back at you. Someday he will mount the highest peak and carry my teaching there."

On that day, in front of the lecture hall, Tokusan burned to ashes his commentaries on the sutras. He said: "However abstruse the teachings are, in comparison with this enlightenment they are like a single hair to the great sky. However profound the complicated knowledge of the world, compared to this enlightenment it is like one drop of water to the great ocean." Then he left that monastery.

Mumon's comment: When Tokusan was in his own country he was not satisfied with Zen although he had heard about it. He thought: "Those Southern monks say they can teach Dharma outside of the sutras. They are all wrong. I must teach them." So he traveled south. He happened to stop near Ryutan's monastery for refreshments. An old woman who was there asked him: "What are you carrying so heavily?"

Tokusan replied: "This is a commentary I have made on the Diamond Sutra after many years of work."

The old woman said: "I read that sutra which says: 'The past mind cannot be held, the present mind cannot be held, the future mind cannot be held.' You wish some tea and refreshments. Which mind do you propose to use for them?"

Tokusan was as though dumb. Finally he asked the woman: "Do you know of any good teacher around here?"

The old woman referred him to Ryutan, not more than five miles away. So he went to Ryutan in all humility, quite different from when he had started his journey. Ryutan in turn was so kind he forgot his own dignity. It was like pouring muddy water over a drunken man to sober him. After all, it was an unnecessary comedy.

A hundred hearings cannot surpass one seeing,
But after you see the teacher, that one glance cannot surpass a hundred hearings.
His nose was very high
But he was blind after all.

30. This Mind Is Buddha

Daibai asked Baso: "What is Buddha?"

Baso said: "This mind is Buddha."

Mumon's comment: If anyone wholly understands this, he is wearing Buddha's clothing, he is eating Buddha's food, he is speaking Buddha's words, he is behaving as Buddha, he is Buddha. This anecdote, however, has given many a pupil the sickness of formality. If one truly understands, he will wash out his mouth for three days after saying the word Buddha, and he will close his ears and flee after hearing "This mind is Buddha."

Under blue sky, in bright sunlight,
One need not search around.
Asking what Buddha is
Is like hiding loot in one's pocket and declaring oneself innocent.

33. This Mind Is Not Buddha

A monk asked Baso: "What is Buddha?"

Baso said: "This mind is not Buddha."

Mumon's comment: If anyone understands this, he is a graduate of Zen.

If you meet a fencing-master on the road, you may give him your sword,
If you meet a poet, you may offer him your poem.
When you meet others, say only a part of what you intend.
Never give the whole thing at once.

32. A Philosopher Asks Buddha

A philosopher asked Buddha: "Without words, without the wordless, will you tell me truth?"

The Buddha kept silence.

The philosopher bowed and thanked the Buddha, saying: "With your loving kindness I have cleared away my delusions and entered the true path."

After the philosopher had gone, Ananda asked the Buddha what he had attained.

The Buddha replied: "A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip."

Mumon's comment: Ananda was the disciple of the Buddha. Even so, his opinion did not surpass that of outsiders. I want to ask you monks: How much difference is there between disciples and outsiders?

To tread the sharp edge of a sword,
To run on smooth-frozen ice,
One needs no footsteps to follow.
Walk over the cliffs with hands free.

This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful way.

Soon your sesshin will begin. The word sesshin is a compound sino-Japanese term made up of two ideographs, setsu and shin. Shin means mind. Setsu has several meanings - touch, receive, convey. Usually sesshin is literally translated to touch the mind, but it also means to receive the mind, to convey the mind. All of these meanings are included in that one expression, sesshin. It is a time to put everything aside, to forget everything and to focus all one's enquiring spirit through the medium of the practice, counting the breaths or koan work.

To touch the mind of course implies an individual action. To receive the mind and to convey the mind show how the action of realisation is not self-centred. In fact, you are simply the agent of realisation. If you enter sesshin with the spirit, "I must become realised", then you are setting up a conflict with the basic fact. Fundamentally, heaven and earth and I are of one spirit. All things and I are one. Dogen Zenji asked, "What is the mind? The mind is mountains, rivers and the great earth, the sun and the moon and the stars." And of course it is all people, all things, all plants, all animals. And particularly in this instance it is your brothers and sisters in the dojo. Your own individual effort is very important but unless it is effort with the spirit that you are the agent of realisation, it is self-centred.

Sometimes I hear people say after sesshin, "Well, I certainly worked through a lot of things during that sesshin," and I think to myself, "That wasn't such a good sesshin for you." Sesshin is not a time to work things through. Things may be worked through in your practice but if you set yourself toward working through things, that is to say, reviewing old traumas, then you are not using your time effectively.

Sesshin is a time to focus wholeheartedly on one thing, just that count, just that koan, nothing else. You must forget yourself in that practice and then things will be worked through.

Yasutani Haku'un Roshi used to caution us at the beginning of every sesshin that there are three basic rules for sesshin. These rules are not established for the sake of ritual or ceremony. They are rules that have been worked out empirically over many hundreds of years in the operation of Zen seclusions. The first of these rules is no talking, not even whispering. There is something about the human voice that is very distracting. Your ears prick up and your concentration is lost. Don't talk at all. During a work period you may have to ask, "Where do you keep the mop?". or maybe you don't have to ask for it. Maybe if you use some initiative, you can look around and find it yourself. If some emergency comes up, then you may speak to one of the leaders privately, succinctly in a soft voice. Remember that your leader has his or her own practice too. Too much complaint, too much emergency, will have a poor effect on the entire sesshin.

Please remember that personal crisis can be a great opportunity in zazen. The only emergency that can take you from sesshin comes when one gets a telegram that someone is gravely ill at home, or something of that kind. Other emergencies should be worked through. One becomes very sensitive during sesshin and convinced that a neighbour is wriggling just to distract me or the monitor is hitting me too hard or not hard enough, or the meals don't contain enough protein or they're too salty or not salty enough or I'm not getting enough sleep or my legs hurt too much and so on. Well, all of these things, except the latter one, can be just set to one side as delusion. If your legs hurt too much then you may sit in a chair. But remember that just like working out in a gym, you cannot stretch your legs to the point where you can sit comfortably unless there is a certain amount of pain. You cannot develop yourself unless you become a little tired or a little sore. So push yourself. Zen is the middle way and it is important not to get blown out so that you come to the point where you simply cannot ever do zazen again. So, find the middle way between extremes and sit in a chair if you must.

The second rule is no looking around. I want to tell you a story about that. The first Roshi in the United States was a man named Sasaki Shigetsu, also known as Sasaki Soku-an Roshi. He established the American Buddhist Society which later became the first Zen Institute of New York, and it was his wife, Ruth Fuller Sasaki who wrote Zen Dust with Miura Roshi. A man named Emanuel Sherman was a student of Sasaki Roshi. The Roshi gave him a zazen robe. The war came along, Sasaki Roshi was interned and he later died, and Sherman rather fell away from the practice of doing zazen. Then in l957 when my wife Anne and I were teaching in Ojai, California, Nakagawa Soen Roshi came to hold memorial sesshin after the death of his friend Sensaki Nyogen Sensai in Los Angeles. I persuaded Sherman, who was also living at Ojai at that time, to come with us to the sesshin, and he wore his robe. Roshi asked him before sesshin, "Where did you get that robe?" and Sherman told him, "It was given to me by Sasaki Shigetsu Roshi in New York when I studied with him before the war." He turned over the lapel of his robe where something was written in Chinese characters and said, "I've always wondered what this said." And Soen Roshi read the inscription and asked, "Did Sasaki Roshi write that?" Sherman said, "Yes, he did." Soen Roshi said, "What a great roshi he was." Sherman said, "What does it say, what does it say?" Soen Roshi said, "It says, 'don't look around'."

You see, if you are seeking to touch the mind, eye contact is very distracting from this practice. You are seeking fundamental communication and the distraction of ordinary social interaction can be destructive.

The third rule is "no social greetings". This follows naturally from the first two. The original Japanese says something like, "no social signals." In other words, if two people come to a door at the same time, there is no need for one person to gesture to the other to go first. One person goes first and another follows, like two drops of water in the stream, very naturally. You don't use social signals in a crowd of people but if you are walking through a crowd of people you can make your way without touching anybody, without any signals, without any word. People move aside naturally and you move aside naturally. That's the way it should be in sesshin. If you follow these three rules, no talking, no looking around and no social greetings, you will have a good sesshin.

Now I want to say a few words about the dojo. Dojo is a term that you are familiar with because it is used by people in akido, karate, judo and so on. It's even in the English dictionary. It is a sino-Japanese term made up of two ideographs. "Do" is the Japanese pronunciation of Tao, as in Tao-te-ching or Taoism. And Jo simply means place. The place of the Tao. Tao means "way". Arthur Whaley translates the Tao-te-Ching as the way and its power. But Tao does not mean only a way to - it does not simply mean a means. The opening words in the Tao-te-Ching are, "The way that can be followed is not the true way." So we should understand what Tao means.

When Kumara-jiva and other great translators set about rendering Buddhist Sanskrit into Chinese they had to find Chinese words that were equivalent to particular Sanskrit expressions. They used the word Tao to mean not only path but also realisation. They used Tao to translate Bodhi. So Tao is not only the path to realisation, it is realisation itself. Actually Dojo is a translation of the Sanskrit word Bodhi Manda. Bodhi is enlightenment, Manda is spot or place, the place or spot of enlightenment and it refers to the spot under the Bodhi tree where the Buddha sat when he saw the morning star and had his great realisation.

So, your meditation hall, your dojo, is your sacred place. Your cushions are your own personal dojo, your own personal Bodhi Manda, your own personal spot of realisation. Thus it is very important to keep the dojo as a sacred place of realisation. It must be spotlessly clean, it must be in regular order with a figure as the focal point of devotion - a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. Before the Buddha or Bodhisattva, you should have incense, flowers and a candle. The candle represents enlightenment, the flowers represent compassion, the two sides of any genuine religious experience. The incense is an offering to the Buddha, as of course candle and flowers are as well.

In front of every Rinzai Zen monastery in Japan there is a sign that carries the name of the temple, the name of the mountain, for all temples have a mountain name as well as a building name. There is also the name of the sect, the Rinzai sect and the name of the Branch, like the Myoshinji Branch and then the words Semon Dojo. Semon means "special". So it is a special place of enlightenment. When I hear people say, "I don't need a special place of enlightenment, I can do zazen anywhere," I feel they are not ready to do zazen. The mind is just too tricky and if you say you are doing zazen all day long, that means you are not doing zazen at any time. You need a special corner, if only in your own bedroom, to make sacred. The process of religious practice is one of sharp incisive focus. It is one of all-out devotion. This doesn't mean that you go around all day long in your everyday life with a long face but it means that when you practice, you only practice. You include things in that practice which are conducive to the practice, and you exclude other things. In this way you cultivate your own Semon Dojo.

Now about practising without a teacher. This is extremely difficult, so please keep yourself within bounds and follow the directions in the orientation as closely as you can. When you first sit down, please take a couple of deep breaths, all the way in and hold it and then all the way out and hold it. You may do this through your mouth, although this is the only time when you should breathe through your mouth. Then when you've taken these one or two deep breaths, rock back and forth, first widely and then in decreasing arcs until you are erect. And then lean far forward and thrust your rear end back and then sit up. Now you are ready for your breath counting. Unless you have already worked with a Roshi, I would think that you should stay with breath counting. If you have taken the koan Mu for yourself and worked on it for some time, then that will be all right. But please don't switch around and experiment now with breath counting, now with Mu, now with the Sound of One Hand, now with the Original Face before your Parents were Born. It becomes too diffused.

So if you are counting your breaths, just count your breaths. But if you have taken up Mu, then count your breaths for one or two sequences and then begin with your Mu practice. Key Mu to your breaths in the same way that you key your count to your breathing. There comes a time when you can forget about breathing and just face Mu. Your breath at that time will be very small.

Your practice is not merely to focus on something. You must become that thing itself. If you are counting your breaths, then count "one" for the inhalation, "two" for the exhalation and so on but let the count do the counting. In other words, let that point one count one, let that point two count two, let that point three count three and so on up to ten and then repeat. It's like the musician seeks to let the music play the music but he or she must practice a long time before that can happen. So you must practice letting the count do the counting.

Mumon said about the koan Mu, "Carry it with you day and night." What does this mean in practical terms for the student at sesshin? It means that you should be doing Mu or counting your breaths, from morning to night and that you should put yourself to sleep with it. If you're chopping vegetables, you need to concentrate only on chopping. You can't think about counting your breaths at such a time or you'll be cutting off your thumb. In any very demanding work, please focus on that. You can't focus on Mu while you're explaining irregular French verbs. You can't concentrate on counting your breaths, really concentrate, if you're driving a car. So focus entirely on what you are doing if the task is very demanding but there aren't so many demanding tasks at sesshin. Chopping vegetables and cooking may be the most demanding of those tasks. So keep yourself with your breath counting or with your Mu at all times and then when you go to bed, lie down and hold Mu lightly, or hold your breath-counting lightly and put yourself to sleep in this way and your zazen will continue in some fashion during your sleep.

There are two ways to get through a sesshin. One is to concentrate on survivaland the second is to focus on each moment as it comes up. Either way will get you through the sesshin. But only the second way will give you an effective sesshin. If you focus on survival then you will be disappointed after your sesshin, because you will know that you have wasted your time just thinking about getting through it. Forget about getting through it, just focus on that one, on that two, on that three, that's all - nothing else. Have a good sesshin!

The physical characteristics of the Buddha refers to the general appearance and characteristics of Gautama Buddha's physical body. There are no extant representations of the Buddha represented in artistic form until roughly the 2nd century CE, partly due to the prominence of aniconism in the earliest extant period of Buddhist devotional statuary and bas reliefs. A number of early discourses describe the appearance of the Buddha, and are believed to have served as a model for early depictions. In particular, the "32 signs of a Great Man" are described throughout the Pali Canon, and these are believed to have formed the basis for early representations of the Buddha. These 32 major characteristics are also supplemented by another 80 secondary characteristics (Pali:Anubyanjana).

In Mahāyāna Buddhism, including the traditions of Esoteric Buddhism, the 32 major characteristics and 80 minor characteristics are understood to be present in a buddha's sambhogakāya, or reward-body. In contrast, a buddha's physical form is understood to be a nirmāṇakāya, or transformation-body.

Early history

The earliest phase of Buddhism was generally aniconic, with the Buddha being represented as symbols such as a footprint, an empty chair, a riderless horse, or an umbrella. Later, iconic sculptural traditions were established, with two of the most important being in the regions of Gandhara and Mathura.

The first statues and busts of the Buddha were made in the Gandhara (now Kandahar) region of modern-day Afghanistan. Many statues and busts exist where the Buddha and other bodhisattvas have a mustache.

In the Pali Canon a paragraph appears many times recording the Buddha describing how he began his quest for enlightenment, saying:

So, at a later time, while still young, a black-haired young man endowed with the blessings of youth in the first stage of life—and while my parents, unwilling, were crying with tears streaming down their faces—I shaved off my hair & beard, put on the ochre robe and went forth from the home life into homelessness.

— Ariyapariyesana Sutta

After examining the cult of the Buddha image in India, Gregory Schopen concludes that followers of Mahāyāna at this time played little to no role in introducing statuary and other physical depictions of the Buddha. Mahāyāna sūtras from this period such as the Maitreyasiṃhanāda Sūtra, only address the image cult as an object of criticism, if it is mentioned at all. Schopen states that followers of Mahāyāna were generally uninterested in worshipping buddhas, but rather in becoming buddhas, and their outlook toward Buddhist practice was "profoundly conservative."

The 32 Signs of a Great Man

The Buddha is traditionally regarded as having the Thirty-two Characteristics of a Great Man (Skt. mahāpuruṣa lakṣaṇa). These thirty-two characteristics are also regarded as being present in cakravartin kings as well.

The Digha Nikaya, in the "Discourse of the Marks" (Pali: Lakkhaṇa Sutta) (DN 30) enumerates and explains the 32 characteristics. These are also enumerated in the Brahmāyu Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya (MN 91).

The 32 major characteristics are:

1. Level feet
2. Thousand-spoked wheel sign on feet
3. Long, slender fingers
4. Pliant hands and feet
5. Toes and fingers finely webbed
6. Full-sized heels
7. Arched insteps
8. Thighs like a royal stag
9. Hands reaching below the knees
10. Well-retracted male organ
11. Height and stretch of arms equal
12. Every hair-root dark colored
13. Body hair graceful and curly
14. Golden-hued body
15. Ten-foot aura around him
16. Soft, smooth skin
17. Soles, palms, shoulders, and crown of head well-rounded
18. Area below armpits well-filled
19. Lion-shaped body
20. Body erect and upright
21. Full, round shoulders
22. Forty teeth
23. Teeth white, even, and close
24. Four canine teeth pure white
25. Jaw like a lion
26. Saliva that improves the taste of all food
27. Tongue long and broad
28. Voice deep and resonant
29. Eyes deep blue
30. Eyelashes like a royal bull
31. White ūrṇā curl that emits light between eyebrows
32. Fleshy protuberance on the crown of the head

The 80 secondary characteristics

The 80 minor characteristics of the Buddha are known to be enumerated a number of times in the extant Āgamas of the Chinese Buddhist canon. According to Guang Xing, the 80 minor marks are related to the 32 major marks, and are merely a more detailed description of the Buddha's bodily features. In the Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma Mahāvibhāṣa Śāstra, the question is posed about the relationship between the major and minor marks, and it is said that the minor marks are among the major marks, but not mixed with them, just as flowers in the forest make the trees distinctive. These 80 minor characteristics became significant as well, as were adopted by Buddhist traditions including both Mahāyāna and Theravāda traditions. In Pali literature, the 80 minor characteristics are found in the Apadāna and the Milindapañha. Some scholars believe the 80 minor characteristics were an early development in the Buddhist tradition, but held as important mostly by the Sarvāstivāda school.

The eighty minor characteristics are:

1. He has beautiful fingers and toes.
2. He has well-proportioned fingers and toes.
3. He has tube-shaped fingers and toes.
4. His fingernails and toenails have a rosy tint.
5. His fingernails and toenails are slightly upturned at the tip.
6. His fingernails and toenails are smooth and rounded without ridges.
7. His ankles and wrists are rounded and undented.
8. His feet are of equal length.
9. He has a beautiful gait, like that of a king-elephant.
10. He has a stately gait, like that of a king-lion.
11. He has a beautiful gait, like that of a swan.
12. He has a majestic gait, like that of a royal ox.
13. His right foot leads when walking.
14. His knees have no protruding kneecaps.
15. He has the demeanor of a great man.
16. His navel is without blemish.
17. He has a deep-shaped abdomen.
18. He has clockwise marks on the abdomen.
19. His thighs are rounded like banana sheaves.
20. His two arms are shaped like an elephant's trunk.
21. The lines on the palms of his hands have a rosy tint.
22. His skin is thick or thin as it should be.
23. His skin is unwrinkled.
24. His body is spotless and without lumps.
25. His body is unblemished above and below.
26. His body is absolutely free of impurities.
27. He has the strength of 1,000 crore elephants or 100,000 crore men.
28. He has a protruding nose.
29. His nose is well proportioned.
30. His upper and lower lips are equal in size and have a rosy tint.
31. His teeth are unblemished and with no plaque.
32. His teeth are long like polished conches.
33. His teeth are smooth and without ridges.
34. His five sense-organs are unblemished.
35. His four canine teeth are crystal and rounded.
36. His face is long and beautiful.
37. His cheeks are radiant.
38. The lines on his palms are deep.
39. The lines on his palms are long.
40. The lines on his palms are straight.
41. The lines on his palms have a rosy tint.
42. His body emanates a halo of light extending around him for two meters.
43. His cheek cavities are fully rounded and smooth.
44. His eyelids are well proportioned.
45. The five nerves of his eyes are unblemished.
46. The tips of his bodily hair are neither curved nor bent.
47. He has a rounded tongue.
48. His tongue is soft and has a rosy-tint.
49. His ears are long like lotus petals.
50. His earholes are beautifully rounded.
51. His sinews and tendons don't stick out.
52. His sinews and tendons are deeply embedded in the flesh.
53. His topknot is like a crown.
54. His forehead is well-proportioned in length and breadth.
55. His forehead is rounded and beautiful.
56. His eyebrows are arched like a bow.
57. The hair of his eyebrows is fine.
58. The hair of his eyebrows lies flat.
59. He has large brows.
60. His brows reach the outward corner of his eyes.
61. His skin is fine throughout his body.
62. His whole body has abundant signs of good fortune.
63. His body is always radiant.
64. His body is always refreshed like a lotus flower.
65. His body is exquisitely sensitive to touch.
66. His body has the scent of sandalwood.
67. His body hair is consistent in length.
68. He has fine bodily hair.
69. His breath is always fine.
70. His mouth always has a beautiful smile.
71. His mouth has the scent of a lotus flower.
72. His hair has the colour of a dark shadow.
73. His hair is strongly scented.
74. His hair has the scent of a white lotus.
75. He has curled hair.
76. His hair does not turn grey.
77. He has fine hair.
78. His hair is untangled.
79. His hair has long curls.
80. He has a topknot as if crowned with a royal flower garland.