Tonight we're going to talk about the roots of Zen in earlier Buddhism up until the very beginning of the Zen, the beginning of Zen in China. Was one clear about who was going to sort of take care of the bookkeeping for our class, which is collecting a bunch of money. It's $20 for the class. There's a little basket there. And we'll, we appreciate it if you'll pay earlier on, which is going to be done after the class is over and done with. So it's kind of an honor system, but we also know it's very good. Please try to include it there. So that's the best it is there. And we'll take a break at 8.15 or so. Oh, and please feel free to ask questions.

[01:05]

I didn't point along. Keeping in mind that I'm going to be introducing a whole lot of things that would be like a year-long class just in themselves. So we're not going to be able to go down every flyway. Still, please let me know if something isn't clear. The first thing, I'm going to use this Roots of Zen diagram here. This is definitely my version, so don't publish it anywhere. Before Shakyamuni Buddha, had his enlightenment experience being a teacher, there was, he sort of rooted in the yogic practices that were prevalent in India at that time. And some people call Zen the yoga school of Buddhism. and yoga was kind of a decent... it was within Hinduism, but it was really kind of a decentralized body of sort of philosophy and exercises and practices, kind of like, almost like a thing like shamanism is, where there's no one person sponsoring it or one philosophy, but it's just this sort of set of practices and

[02:26]

It has to do with harmonizing body and mind. Our sense that if we settle our body, we'll settle our mind is kind of a yogic idea. They had the lotus posture, they used the lotus posture, they did meditation. I can even see a thread of this in the Vipassana community. it's more about noting, it's about what you're doing with your mind, whereas we just say, settle your body and you'll settle your mind. Everybody says a lot of different things, but you can see the thread of yoga in the way we do things as opposed to the prasangam community. So Shakyamuni Buddha studied with yogis and he sort of like found out, sought out the highest yogis of that time and mastered all their practices and their teachings and felt that something was missing and that's why he sort of like sat and I'm sure people who studied the Buddhism class already studied this I'm sure, but he had this big enlightenment experience and

[03:43]

kind of based on what the yogis were doing, wasn't really ending suffering, wasn't really addressing the fundamental issue that he, that was his issue. So then he had his enlightenment experience, his first students were the other yogis that he'd been, sort of highest level yogis, that he was kind of taking yoga as far as it could possibly go in a way. And he taught those people first, the yogis that he'd been practicing with, and then gradually over four years taught a wider and wider group of people, and established a monastic order. And then when he died, and all of this is before there was any written word, so his history is coming, kind of passed along by word of mouth, through generations of students. And then after he died, I don't have this totally nailed down, but there'd be these congresses, I think every hundred years or something, where all these people would get together and they'd recite, they'd have memorized, you know, past through generations memorized the sutras and we would recite them and sort of discuss what the Buddha really taught.

[05:07]

they developed a whole bunch of schools, and I put some of the names of them on here, the Theravada schools, Sarvastivad and Sutranikas, and I put Premahayana on here because some people think, and this teacher Red Pine, we had a class with him here, and he was saying, so these guys were all sort of arguing over what the Buddha really meant, kind of by emptiness or by no-self. And some people said there were these dharmas, there were the elements, like sights, sounds, smells, touches, but there weren't selves. And other people said, well, there weren't even the elements. So there was this kind of wrangling about the nature of self in the Buddha's teaching, what the Buddha really meant by no-self. So that was in that period, a couple hundred years after Buddha. Anyway, what I was going to say was, it seems like there was also some kind of, what probably what became the Mahayana understanding was among the things that was being presented there, even though there isn't a school passed down to us.

[06:24]

And Red Pine's theory was that maybe the lay followers of Buddha had this side sort of transmission of the teaching that was never part of these congresses, which were all the monastics. keeping kind of the form of it through the monastic order, but that the lay people were doing a similar kind of passing down, and that was sort of what, but that's just one, you know, one theory. I'll never know a problem. So, it seems like that there was this, out of this sort of tension that happened among these different schools about what the Buddha taught, then there was this rise of the Mahayana school. And the Mahayana is, it's sort of a bigger understanding but not just, The only way to become enlightened wasn't just that you had to become a monk and practice this really strict lifestyle and be reborn countless, countless times and gradually work your way up, but that it was something that was available to people.

[07:45]

And the idea of the Bodhisattva, which is a person who doesn't just go into the forest and meditate, on their own, but once they have sort of freed themselves or realized something, they're concerned about other people. And that's really what the Buddha did himself. Therefore, that's really what we should be doing as Buddhists. The Buddha didn't just seek annihilation. He turned, you know, he had this great realization and then he turned around and, yes, Jim? Well, I think that the Bodhisattva, the Buddha was considered like a Bodhisattva in his past lives. An enlightenment being, a being that was concerned about enlightenment. Go ahead, what Buddha said. Yeah, it's hard to stay.

[09:13]

Well, the Jonica tales are pretty early, and I think he's referred... There's a sense that the Buddha was a Bodhisattva in all these previous lifetimes before he became a Buddha. So Mahayana means great vehicle and the people with the Mahayana understanding referred to these other schools, the Theravadas or Vastavadas, the Tranakas, as the Hinayana, the small vehicle. That was like the negative term by those people. So we try not to use that term at all. The idea that Bodhisattva is part of the Vajrayana vehicle and they are most likely to help the others first. So we feel really, a really strong bias in that if you look at Lloyd Sopkin being a lightening being, that for me applies also to the older school movement, that those people were concerned with waking up in the middle of summer, summer rain.

[10:21]

And this work is sort of the emphasis on helping others, but pushing it to yourself. So we're kind of like a current. Right, it seems like it was something that continued all along and these like the Theravadans They act like what we would think of as bodhisattvas in Southeast Asia. I mean, it's not like... Anyway. It doesn't play out so well in real life that there's a split in the people, the Bodhisattva, the Mahayana people are all the sort of like loving, generous, interested in taking care of people, people, and the Hinayanas, the Theravadas, are all selfishly sitting there trying to get like them.

[11:21]

It really isn't like that in real life, but there's just a lot of what this, the history of Zen is, is about these different flavors. and I think this is more like that, it's more of the flavor, but also there's a sense to me when you read about this wrangling about these, when you read, which you can do, you can study these different schools, there's a sense of just a little bit of a sidetrack or something, they just kind of And that, you know, I mean, it was sort of like I can imagine people looking at him and saying, well, I wouldn't want to be like that. You know, I mean, it just wasn't something that would draw you to it and make you want to practice what those people were doing, I think. Yes. Mahayana. Oh, that's a good question. There's a certain scoffing.

[12:24]

I mean, I think we have a friend who's a Tarahata monk, and I sense a little, there's a little call. You know, like maybe we made the road a little too wide or something. Like, almost anybody could recall what they're doing, you know, practicing or something. I think Orthodox Jews, Reformed Jews, I think Orthodox Jews feel like they're carrying on the tradition. And I think people look at Reformed Jews and Conservative Jews as heretics or something, but less than, you know, really following what they're about. Okay, any other questions about this part? So, I distinguished three different aspects, there's sort of like three different sets of Mahayana teachings that all feed into Zen in the end, but this would, if you want to pursue any of these, I gave you a little bit of the beginnings of things you could look up and pursue.

[13:25]

The first set of sutras is a huge body of sutras. It's called the Prajnaparamita literature. And there's really short ones. The Heart Sutra is the shortest one. The Diamond Sutra is another short one. There's one that's 25,000 lines. Prajnaparamita, 25,000 lines. I think the one in 8,000 lines was one of the earliest ones. And the 25,000 line one is one of the latest ones. And then there's the Vimalakirti Sutra is also considered part of the Prajnaparamita. And some of the ways that you see this, the elements, again, it would be very hard to start trying to teach something about Prajnaparamita in this class, but some of the elements are talking more about emptiness as being like the Bodhisattva has nowhere to stand, and in having nowhere to stand, you're completely at ease.

[14:33]

So, it's kind of looking at these other schools as trying to find something to hold on to, and saying there really isn't anything to hold on to, that's the whole point of what the Buddha was teaching. So, emptiness is a big, very completely delineated concept. Also, there's a use of paradox to kind of say, as a way of saying, we can't understand this with our thinking mind, we can't understand who is teaching conceptually. So, there's this use of paradox, like in the Diamond Sutra, it'll say something like giving a gift, gift is no giving, therefore we call it giving. And there's repeated that kind of framework. So it's like, it's a way of saying, you can't get your mind around this. And that's used a lot in different Prashamparamita Sutras. Also in the Vimalakirti Sutra, there's a passage where I think the Buddha asked everybody a question, everybody answers it, and the last person is Vimalakirti, who's like the star of that sutra, and he answers with silence.

[15:42]

He answers with silence and it's called the Thundering Silence and again that's a theme that comes up in Buddhism, I mean in Zen, a lot, which we'll see even tonight. So that was that set of sutras and that led to a school called the Madhyamaka School or the Middle Way School and one of the big components of that is in Nagarjuna. Again, it's a similar thing where he used paradox and dialectic to point to something that was beyond what you could understand, and kind of saying that things don't exist in any of the ways that we can conceptualize their existing. Things don't exist based on themselves, based on another, based on both themselves and another, or based on neither. So it's kind of like trying to like take every leg from the table out from under it so that you finally just break through somehow. And again, you'll see that kind of, we'll see that kind of thing, keeping is a thread that goes through the later Zen teachings.

[16:53]

Okay, so then there's the Lankavatara Sutra, which the only reason I mean, the Lankavatara Sutra is kind of the basis of the Yogacara school that, yeah, okay, so it introduces this concept of the consciousnesses, the eight consciousnesses, and the alaya-vijnana, which is the storehouse consciousness, and it's much more looking at psychological processes, and this is where you heard the thing about the seeds, that, you know, you plant the seeds in the storehouse consciousness and then you water the seeds that get watered are the ones that sprout. And so it's much more about how psychology works and how the sort of the psychology of becoming enlightened or having an enlightenment experience or being enlightened. Apidharma is actually before this, but it could be that you know, that could be a thread that comes to the Abhidharma. Abhidharma, I think, is like, is there a custom of Abhidharma?

[17:57]

They were based on the Abhidharma. Yeah. And the Satranika's name here. Like the Abhidharmakosha is like, you see, they'll refer to these different schools, they're like arguing. Abhidharma is the psychology that is formed by the practitioners versus the, or the Sutra which is attributed to the Abhidharma. Right. Right. That the so-called commoner and the practitioner put together this formula of how the mind works, how all comes together, and explain reality, which has a different flavor than the sutras, which is also explaining reality and things like that. I don't think we're going to make it. I'm going to call it. And the people who studied that sutra and studied that teaching, that led to a school called the Vijnanavada or Yogacara school.

[19:00]

Buddha is mind, the reality of things derives from mind. And as I said, this is where the eight consciousnesses and the seeds. And you'll see this coming up later, like there's a poem that says, does the newborn baby have the sixth consciousness? So people were studying Zen, the Zen that we see later are all people who are well-versed in all these things, studied these things, studied these sutras, studied these schools, the teachings of these schools, and Vasu Pandu was one of the big people who wrote about the Yogacara school. By the way, in our lineage chart, we chant, we say the name of Nagarjuna, we say the name of Vasubandhu. And I recommend this book, Thich Nhat Hanh's Transformation of the Buddhas, if you want to know more about the teaching of Yudhisthira school. It's a really good book. I found it really helpful. There's also two things that the Doshi bows at during the liturgy. So, you notice during the service, for example, the chanting, and the lineage, there's points where the Doshi is bowing, and they bow at certain persons in the lineage that are contributing to the tradition.

[20:17]

Nagarjuna? Yeah, Nagarjuna Vashvanthu, yeah. Nagarjuna. And then the Avatamsaka Sutras, which is I think three, a compendium of three sutras, that it's all about the inter-relatedness and inter-penetration of all the levels of reality. And one of the things that the Chinese really like the Avatamsaka Sutra, in fact, at the very bottom you'll see this Huayan Sutra, was a whole school Besides the Zen school, one of the other schools was the Hawaiian school, and that is like totally based on the Tabataka Sutra. One of the things that the Chinese really responded to about the Avatamsaka Sutra was that there's a lot more nature about it. Like in the very early Buddha Sutras, it's just not this thing about nature, which the Chinese really already had this aesthetic about nature, so they really responded to that.

[21:18]

Like there's a place in the Avatamsaka Sutra where it says, all the lands in the universe gather on the tip of one of Buddha's hairs. It's like that kind of thing, but it's using imagery and images from nature to express something, and the Chinese really responded to that. Okay, so these schools were, I mean, this Mahayana thing was like spreading out during this period around like, I guess, zero. The Mahayana starts in 200 BC and then it gets to China around 100. And monks and scholars brought the Buddha Dharma to China over a long period of time. because one of the, well there's a lot of reasons why it took hold as much as it did. It just seems like probably there was just an affinity with the religious sensibility that was already happening in China.

[22:20]

And Daoism was, you know, a movement, there's this movement called the Dark Learning Movement, which just, he just talks briefly about it in this book, but it was like the Daoism of the, kind of intelligentsia or the literati in China. They studied Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and kind of built their, wrote poetry. There was also the popular Taoism was more like kind of magical and shamanistic. But this was kind of an intelligentsia school of of Daoism and it ended up, they ended up using a lot of the terminology that that school used as they translated Buddhism. So it kind of streamlined its coming in because like the Dao, you know, the path is translated as the Dao and all these things were, were, concepts from Daoism were used to sort of smooth the way for Buddhism to come in.

[23:22]

Okay, so that gets us to around 200. And then there was a big translator who... It's kind of like, the sense I have is like there were these waves, you know, a wave, the first wave of the Buddha Dharma coming, and it was... I think you got the Mahayana and you got all the Vinaya schools, you got everything was coming, it wasn't just the Mahayana. And it got to be sort of these three big centers, Chang'an, Mount Lu or Lushan, and Qingkong. And like you'll even see sometimes, I think that there's a koan that goes like, I hear you're from Chang'an, you know, what's it like there? And it's like there's all these little, all the Zen literature is like riddled with these references to these earlier times and these earlier people's clothes and stuff. That's part of why, you know, until you, we don't know what they all were.

[24:27]

So, but it's just, it's important to know that that's how they have all these, this meaning. And Chang'an, Mount Lu and Chieng Kong are places. Kumar Jiva was this big translator that translated a whole, everything, just tons of stuff. And he was a, he was a middle, he was a Madhyamaka master. And he was just a major figure during this period. And he had students, and two of his students... Oh, I meant to tell you something else, I forgot. Back here in the Vijnanavada school, in the Loka Vittara Sutra, there's already this issue of the sudden and gradual. There's a question where they ask the Buddha, Because what this thing about the seeds and the consciousness is about is that you have some kind of, it's called a revolution in your 8th consciousness, Parvrtti or something of the 8th consciousness, and it's like this transformation that's kind of like underneath all your psychological processes up here.

[25:28]

You have this kind of big transformation at the base. which is why Thich Nhat Hanh calls it that. And there's a question, does this Parvati revolution thing happen gradually or suddenly? And I think that, again, that's a thread that's going to keep recurring through the Zen school. And in fact, these two students of Kumarjiva, one of them sponsored the gradual, the understanding that it happens gradually, and this other guy, Tao Sheng, he was kind of radical and revolutionary, and that he proposed that it was sudden. And again, these are still not, we're not to Zen yet. These are not considered the Zen ancestors yet. But when you get to the Koan collections, they reference things that these people said. Yeah? That's a good question.

[26:30]

These two guys here? Yeah. Well, they, um, I don't think it was intellectual. I think they were teaching that. They were teaching that you have a sudden, that you're striving for a sudden enlightenment if you're this, these guys. Well, theoretically, yeah. We, we think that they did, yeah. Theoretically? Let me just take a quick minute and just see what I didn't... Because of this doctrine of sudden alignment, Tao Sheng, another of the followers of Tao Te Ching that has been called the actual founder of Chan, a modification of his claim as if that ideologically speaking the origin of the chance goes back These guys were like planning the roots of Buddhism in China.

[27:44]

They were like the translators. They were practicing it themselves. They had these big centers of learning. They were arguing with each other. And this is sort of like, when you get to this point, it's like the stage is set. The drama is about to begin. Anybody have any more questions about this? But Dunhuang, that's another one of those things. It's kind of like now, right? The Japanese first, it was the traitors first, and then the religious people sort of like piggyback onto the traitors.

[28:53]

Well, there was that too. No, I think it was Missionaries' Eel. But the traitors kind of made the a form or a channel or something, right? They made it physically possible because they had the money to build the road or whatever it is. Yeah. And they said that Kublai Khan kind of dabbled in Buddhism but he ended up in Zen. But he actually ended up choosing Tibetan Buddhism because he was Mongolian and that had more akin to the Mongolian outlook or something. You know, they're never that disparate and that's another interesting thing. It's very different than Christianity where there's a kind of splitting and a bickering. These guys were all like in maybe one monastery together practicing and someone would be studying one, someone would be studying the other, different teachers, and there'd be like in China, and of course this is after Zen, but if you go to like City of Ten Thousand Blues, Alan just found this out, they like have an hour for the Vinayas, the Vinaya teaching an hour for the Abhidharma, and there's a real kind of coziness about the whole thing.

[30:23]

And there isn't a sense of, there isn't a sense that they're that separate. even before in China. I wonder how you chose, I mean that's what I was thinking about, or could you, it sounds like people didn't exactly switch, or maybe they did, I mean. Maybe they didn't think it wasn't that big of a deal. You connect with a teacher, perhaps, and that's the person, you know, you would go by when they were teaching. But you'd be talking and debating and discussing with the other folks all the time. And it's not so different from here where we interact with the Insight Meditation community. One of the great things that I loved about studying this and it really makes me want to feel like this is my family history. It's not about wars and people conquering each other and making other people follow their religion.

[31:38]

It's really very much about people wanting to help others the way they got help themselves and passing it on that way. Being very selfless, struggling selflessly to do these translations laboriously and copy them over and over and carry it forth. Should we have one more person? I had a thought about Jake, you raised a question about these two gentlemen and their styles and what was their experience. I haven't studied them, but what came to mind to me was that they were perhaps different styles. of practicing and what they emphasize even today. We have people who sort of emphasize the sort of really pushy part of trying to get some kind of experience in other more gradual, more subtle styles of practice. And so an insider kind of like the New York Times has those two ways of practicing.

[32:44]

But even within our own temple, we have people who come to sushis and are really into like sushi practice. And we have people who never do sushis, but come to daily sadhana and maybe just a set of programs. And there are different ways of, or styles of practicing, but we can't really say if someone's going to wake up, or they're going to go to the boudha, or they can't really feel what really speaks to a person's honest seeking to wake up. They actually talk to he has a good chunk of like a page or a page and a half about each of these guys. I couldn't really get anything out of it. So please it's I can tell you what page it's on. Maybe so. Tsing Chao starts on 70.

[33:47]

Oh, it's long. It's like been 74 dao shen. And then there's probably notes here that you can reference if this is the thing you want to explore. So should we? Five minutes? Yeah, don't make us done you please. No one, it's not fun. It's not a fun thing to do. Yeah, I mean I think if you're interested in this stuff, Yeah, it was pretty good. It wasn't... I think there's so many different... I love the Roaring Stream myself, and I would read this before, but it doesn't go back as far as these guys do.

[34:52]

This one goes... This is the good one if you want to go to the early. But also, I mean, this is kind of just the setting of the stage, and there'll be... I want you to notice that there's no arrow from this Kumarji, but no, there is definitely no arrow there because with Bodhidharma we're talking, this is like, now that was that story and now we've got a completely different story of the history. And when you start to read this story, did I spell it wrong again? No, it looks right. You get the feeling for something that was really passed from warm hand to warm hand. And there's a book, which we forgot to put on our bibliography, so I'd like you to add it.

[35:54]

It's just one translation of it. It's called Transition of the Light. I don't know what the other... if there's other names to the other translations. This is translated by Thomas Cleary. There's a Francis Cook one. Anyway. We'll try to... Yeah. And... Huh? This one... No, that's the Japanese name for the book. There's many translations that might use a different English title. Exactly, right. And they're all translations of the Denko Roku. The Denko Roku, if you look at the list of ancestors we chant, it tells a story about every single one of those guys. And obviously some of them are made up stories. But the idea is the Buddha, held up a flower and Maha Kasyapa became enlightened.

[36:59]

And that moment, when the teacher does something and the student becomes enlightened, they fear, I mean, they made up a story to make it so that that was a continuous chain from teacher to student. And they told, they made up these stories to prove it. And... So it's got to be just like that. It happened that way. Right, and I think that's kind of what this is. It's like that. It's mythology. It's like... It's more true than what really happened. So, there was this... And there was this... I think in a sense that's what the whole class is going to be about. So at the end we should have a moment where we decide, you know, which is the true history.

[38:00]

But don't you just think in practice, it's like whether this person existed or not isn't as important as are the teachings true, or were they... They made the lineage up kind of to substantiate their school. But the true part of it is that you can't just pick up a sutra and really be sure you understand what the Buddha taught. That's why you need someone who's embodying it to see what they're doing and they transmit it to you by embodying it.

[39:04]

And that's sort of the deeper meaning of this. So just briefly, there was this There was this teacher, Punyamitra, he was a Buddhist master, and he... I already forgot it, I tried to read it again this morning. Anyway, he's going around with the king and he sees this orphan who was like kind of like the village, not the village idiot, but this poor orphan kid that everybody knew of as this like someone who always had a kind word for everybody kind of person. And that was Prajnatara. And he, this guy Punyamitra, supposedly looked at him and said, he's going to be the next, he's going to be a great Buddhist master. with two fabulous disciples, one will go teach in China. So, supposedly, I mean, you know, this is, again, the story is he predicted the whole thing, looking at this one guy, seeing him on the street.

[40:08]

And then there's no story about how Prajñātārī gets to be a Buddhist master, but when he is... goes to this king who has these three sons, he's like a warrior caste king, And the third son is Bodhidharma, supposedly, except he has a different name. And he asks them to... he shows them this jewel that their father, the king, has given him, given Prashantara, and he says, is this the most precious... something about it, is this the most precious thing? And the two... older sons say yes there can't be anything more precious than you that's why the king has given it to you the great Buddhist master and third son Bodhidharma says i gotta read it to you This is a worldly jewel and cannot be considered of the highest order.

[41:18]

Among all jewels, the jewel of truth is supreme." So, Prajnatara knew that he was the incarnated sage and perceived that the prince would be his spiritual successor. But yet he knew that the time was not yet right. So, they go on hanging out in the same town, I guess, for many years. Bodhidharma's father dies, and Bodhidharma, whose name at that point was Bodhitara, went to Prajnatara and asked to be ordained as a monk. And then he ordained him, and he gave him instruction in the subtle principles of meditation. Hearing these instructions, Bodhitara developed unsurpassed wisdom. Bodhidharma asked him what he should do, and he says, go to China. Teach those with great potential.

[42:18]

But wait for 67 years. After I die, wait 67 years, and then go to China. And Prajnathara says this poem to Bodhidharma, kind of predicting what's going to happen. Traveling the road, crossing the water, you will meet a sheep. Going alone, without rest, you will cross the river in the dark. Under the sun, a nice pair, elephant and horse. Two young cinnamon trees will flourish forever." So Bodhidharma supposedly stayed with him for another 40 years, and then he died, and he still stayed in there for a long time while they sort of consolidated the and his other students. And then Bodhidharma knew that the conditions were right for China, so he went and asked his sister, Raja, which probably was his elder brother, tells him he's going to China.

[43:27]

It takes him three years to get there. Pardon me? He's like 150 years old. He lives to be 150, supposedly. Now, Bodhidharma, again, it seems like there really was somebody named Bodhidharma who came from India, but not very much else can really be established historically about him. There is this... The thing he wrote, which seems to be, they seem to say this is one of the few things that you can be sure of. He wrote this thing called The Two Entrances and the Four Practices, which you can read. But his big thing was Pequan, Pequan, is that how you say it? Wall gazing. It's his big thing. Yeah, yeah. That was, I think it's in this... Pequan, literally wall contemplation, which might mean gazing at a wall or it might mean meditating like a wall, some people say.

[44:48]

So that was his big thing, his meditating. And he went to China, And I'm just going to read the stories because they're so great. And I know a lot of you have heard them all, but hopefully some people haven't. Let's see. So the first thing is he goes to China and he goes to the emperor. Goes to the emperor and he says, and the emperor says, I've done all these great things for Buddhism, I've done all these temples, and what kind of merit does it do I have? And Bodhidharma says, what's the highest merit of the holy truth? And Bodhidharma says, vast emptiness, no holiness. And Guru says, who are you facing? And Bodhidharma says, I don't know.

[45:54]

And the emperor didn't understand, and so Bodhidharma Now, where's the explanation of that little tall... Sorry, guys. This was so... This stuff is so great, I... Anyway, so, there he is, sitting for nine years. He goes to a Shaolin temple. He sits for nine years. And he had this one student Wake up. Yeah, we're getting there. He thought to himself, men of old sought the way by smashing, this is the student, Bodhidharma's student, smashing their bones, take out the marrow, slashing their veins to feed hungry animals, spreading their hair to cover the muddy road in order to let a spiritual man pass through safely, or leaping up a cliff to feed a hungry tyrant. All through the ages, people have behaved like this.

[46:58]

Who am I not to do so? So he goes there. I mean, he has already, like, and begged and begged and begged Bodhidharma countless times and studied, you know, he's studied everything about Buddhism to find. And he goes there on a snowy night, December 9th, and stands without moving all through the night to the next day, and the snow was up to his knees the next morning. And Bodhidharma took pity on him and asked, What are you seeking standing in the snow for so long? And Shengfang, that's his name before he became a Toyka, in tears begged him, please master, have mercy, open the gate of nectar, deliver the message that liberates such beings. The master said, the supreme and equal spiritual way of the Buddhas is accessible only after vast eons of striving to overcome the impossible and to bear the unbearable. How could a man of small virtue, little wisdom, slight interest and slow mind attain the true vehicle?

[48:00]

Striving for it would be a vain effort. After listening to this exhortation from the Master, Shakyamuni secretly took a sharp knife and cut off his own left arm, placing it in front of the Master. Realizing that he was a good vessel for the Dharma, the Master said, All Buddhas in search of the Way have begun by ignoring their bodies for the sake of the Dharma. Now you have cut off your arm in front of me. You may have the right disposition. The master then renamed him Hué Kó. And then there's another great, there's just a succession of great stories. Hué Kó asks, May I hear about the Dharma seal of the Buddha? And the master says, The Dharma seal is not something that can be heard about from others. Hué Kó says, My mind is not yet at peace. Pray set it at peace for me, master. And the master says, Bring me your mind and I will set it at peace for you. Hueco answers, I've searched for it, but in the end it is unobtainable.

[49:01]

And the master said, your mind has been set at peace. So that was Hueco's enlightenment story. And then That's the first reference I can think of where self-admission and the supplication of the teaching as merited to be very effective in the monastery is to be at the gate for five days, sitting still. Makes sense, yeah. I mean, so one of the main reasons why Bodhidharma is considered the founder is because the guys who came later pointed back and said he was the guy. Right? Instead of it being sort of like, well, he graduated first and then the other.

[50:03]

I mean, it's like everybody looked back and they tried to name the time when Zen was born. And that's what they said back there. He did it. OK, I'm going to read you one more story. After nine years, the master wished to return to India. He said to his disciples, the time has come for me to go back home. I want each of you to show your understanding. One disciple, Tao Fu, answered, according to what I understand, the function of the Tao cannot be grasped through literal knowledge, nor is it apart from his literal knowledge. The master remarked, you have gained my skin. A nun, Sung Chi, said, what I understand now is like a nun's glimpse of the realm of Akshobhya Buddha. It may be seen in oneness, but never in duality. The master said, you have gained my flesh. Tao Yu said, the four great elements are originally empty, the five aggregates, do not exist, and in my comprehension there is not a single thing to be found.

[51:05]

The Master declared, you have gained my bone. Finally, Kwe Ko bowed and remained standing in his seat. The Master said, you have gained my marrow. Marrow. So, And supposedly here's this goodbye poem from Bodhidharma. Originally I came to this land to rescue deluded people by transmitting the Dharma. One flower will open with five petals and the fruit will ripen by itself. So, does anybody have any comments or questions or things they wish to be covered tonight? Oh, right. Well, the reason why I... Yeah, I was going to... You're right. I forgot about that. I was going to go up to Seng San because Seng San was clearly a student of Hui Ko, but there's a little gap there between the third and the fourth Zen ancestor.

[52:18]

So... So Hui Ko was the third? The second. Seng San was the third. And these guys are still pretty apocryphal. In fact, there's very little known about Tseng San except this one poem he wrote, which is really famous, called the Xin Xin Ming, which is the one where, again, these things, they prop up, references to them prop up all the way down through the ages. And that's the one that says, the great way is without difficulty for those who have no preferences. setting aside what you like against what you dislike as a decision for the mind. And there's a lot of places you can find the Shichin Ming. It's written, it's short enough so I think it's, the whole thing is in, both in the Roaring Stream and in here. Um, one thing that I, that I read, I think, I think it's Nelson Foster said, about this book, The Transmission of the Light, but the feeling, the reason why they put this, they put together the lineage to kind of make it legitimate in China.

[53:26]

It was something Chinese people could relate to, the ancestors and all that. But in Japan, they wrote this book, The Transmission of the Light, where they told the story where the Enlightenment is passed from one teacher to another. as a kind of shaming thing. It's kind of weird, but it's like, you read these stories, it's like, it makes you feel like you could never get there. But not, I mean, that, for us, that's like, well, forget it then. But like in Japan, that was like made you practice more diligently and throw yourself into the practice. And you know, it's about the sudden enlightenment. But these guys studied with their teacher 40 years, literally, 40, 50, 60 years, And then they had this significant encounter where they had this deep enlightenment experience, but after they'd had these probably medium, shallow and medium enlightenment experiences. So it's not like you hear people go to a Boonsight workshop and they have this kinship.

[54:29]

It's not like, I mean, that's probably a good thing to have, but I mean, you read the story, it's like they really they really put these people up there and say how much they studied. They thoroughly exhausted, you know, the 70 teachers of their time before they found this one guy that gave them the transmission. So I think it's, uh, this thing about the sudden and gradual is there's a lot of, even for the sudden people, there's a lot of gradual before you get the sudden. I had this image, it's kind of like when you run to catch a train, it's like you run slowly, slowly, slowly, speed up, and then you jump on suddenly. But, you know, you've had to do this whole thing before. Yes? Well, not yet. Well, that was, I forgot that one of those was in one.

[55:31]

I totally forgot that. One of those four, you know, he said, I have you of my skin. The one who had the flesh was a woman. Yeah, that's probably the first story. There's plenty of stories in... There's plenty, there's the stories of the Acharyas in the Zen. No, and you don't. And those are all the first generation, all pretty much contemporary with the Buddha. Well then, in the Zen there are some later, but you know, it doesn't mean that, we all know, it doesn't mean they weren't there. Most of us know, except for Eric. Everybody but Eric knows.

[56:34]

Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, well, so then what happened to the line that was outshining those people? Well, again, that wasn't... They... Who knows? See, the survivors are the ones who get to say. That's why it's really important to find a disciple. This is true. I mean, it's a big project for a teacher to find a disciple. Because that's the only way you get carried on and your name survives. Because the people later pointed back and said, he was the guy or she was the gal. It's good to know that the teachers wouldn't have been certain about that. Well, I guess you could look at it that way, but you could also look at it that they want, you know, they felt they wanted to save all beings and animals.

[57:39]

They were celibate. Like their fathers before you have a son. Right. Yeah. They were celibate. They were pretty much ascetic, denial following. That's a wall gaze, guys. I don't know about the official, but... That was just a tiny bit later, right? I mean, that was more like... Around the 7-800, I think. That's what we're going to be talking about next week. The five petals. The first part of the five petals.

[58:40]

Of the five schools of plants, especially. The plant, first part of the five petals, those are the five schools of plants that we get to. It's called five plants. There's books, Chinese books, called five plants. Study that. Tell us next week. If you guys don't have more questions, we're going to have to read the Shincheng Ming. Oh, no, don't. Yes? We have to leave it to the next generation to decide? But I think that's a very often thought about.

[60:01]

It's not often said. You can't say that you're a student if you really don't care. But he has given transmission to a lot of people on the other hand. He doesn't care. Watch what they do, not what they say. It's for the next generation to decide. At her temple in Arcata, they chant the full lineage down. Her name would be recited. But we don't do that. No, we don't. They do it less there than they do there formally. We know we have to pass away and that his name would be recited because it's also hard to change the relationship with Bruce because it's real short and it stops. women and women of color, you know, but what about somebody who's young and hot, you know?

[61:06]

Yeah, uh-huh. Although I take heart, personally, that there were that many in one generation. There were all those women were in one generation. So, if you just extrapolate from there, it wasn't just like one woman back there. There was only one guy, right? So there was a lot of women, and just this one guy. So really, there were more women than men. My grandfather was the only male ancestor in the library. It was time for the art to be resettled. Well, no, Ananda wasn't. Ananda had two, only three. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that for a fact. But of course, we're talking African-Americans here, right? Because there was a lot of men that existed like those women. In other words, contemporaneous with the Buddha, but the R, the whatever, the 11 R-factor of those guys, Mowgul, [...]

[62:22]

Anything else, guys? Well, I'm just still trying to get a sense of how the practice is, you know, changing and getting to China. Well, there was Taoist meditation, so there was people already meditating, but somehow there's a sense that what Bodhidharma, this wall-gazing thing, was like different than what was going on. People were just studying and learning. Well, even the meditation, like one thing, I think this kind of comes later, but in China they began at some point, they did daily activity and they did meditation. So, in India the idea was you'd go on this raising retreat, you'd go meditate all day every day for like three months as much as you could, you'd beg one meal, and you'd enter into states of meditation that went over days, you know. And in China there was more of a, It didn't work to beg and so they had to earn a living.

[63:29]

So there was more of an interplay with how do you act from this enlightened mind in your everyday life, interacting with your friends. But also there was something about, and you can't even really say what, that's really hard to say what it is, about his meditation, but it was like outside now, outside now sighing and coughing or something. Yeah. Oh, that's, that's good. Object first.

[64:32]

There is a state of consciousness arising around the mind, and it is self-development, [...] You turn from the false to the true, dwelling steadily in walled contemplation. There is no self or other, and the ordinary people and sages are one and the same. You abide unmoving and unwavering, ever again confused by the teachings. Complete ineffable, abhorred with the principle, is without discrimination still effortless. This is called entry through the principle. I think that's right.

[65:49]

You know, at first, if everybody could look and find cracks in the wall, or a spider, or whatever, basically, it's just like this. There's nothing there. There's a center, and then there's the whole world. And you can still find a quiet place of consciousness in the basement center, where there's a place to go. But for me, it's always been a case of, well, this is... I mean, for the management of a country like this, it's been the law. And actually, it wasn't typical to sit facing the wall.

[67:06]

He'd sit in the Shaolin Temple and everybody looked at him. What's he doing? What's he doing? He just sat facing them all the time. But I mean, we have to assume that there was some quality about him that made people want to know what he was doing, because it had some appeal. experience yourself. And the thing that's going on, whenever anyone approached, I can't even pronounce, maybe the Japanese, maybe the Spokesman, or whatever, so whenever anybody approached him for a teaching contract, face the wall, which of course, you don't want to break down. I mean, think about it. If you don't do it sometimes, if you have cool engines, and you try to face the wall, you're kind of left to your own devices. You can't figure it out. And figuratively speaking, I think Mel faces the wall when he asks a question, and he kind of gives it back to you as a mirror, and you're still left to your own kind of, you know, what's going on there, and how it's going to work.

[68:18]

And it may appear that our teacher here is responding to our question, which he is, but it doesn't seem to have worked as well. There are some qualities to that. Just kind of there, in representing Buddha in the lineage, and in there, in the song, is love, and compassion, and it's a whole person. Okay.

[69:01]

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