I love to chase the dreams of others, and I can't do it. I'd like to introduce Mark Alexander. Mark is an old friend of Bill's. They practiced together at Castle Park. And Mark is also the co-director of Greenbelt. Presently he's practicing with Beth Sandler's assistant. Good morning. Pat was at Greenculture when I was there. This morning I thought I would talk some about two different types of teachings in Zen Buddhism.

[01:01]

So-called gradual teaching and sudden teaching. The terms gradual and sudden teaching go back to the sixth ancestor in the lineage of Chinese Zen, Hui Neng. Actually go back before that. Anyway, at that time, it was at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, which is called the Golden Age of Zen. It was at the time when the first public proclamation of Zen was really occurring. And many of you probably know the story of Hui Neng.

[02:04]

The story was created, of course, after his life. And actually the later accounts we have of it, like most stories in Zen, the later the account, the more information we have. History in Buddhism is not just supposed to be some objective truth. I mean, it's supposed to be something that can be agreed upon, but it's also supposed to be teaching. And after all, the reason we pass on history is because we think it will be of use to people. So the history of Hui Neng, the story about him, he's supposed to... His father died when he was three, and he helped his mother.

[03:16]

They supported themselves by selling firewood. He was supposed to be completely illiterate. But one time when he was selling firewood, he heard one of his customers chanting from the Diamond Sutra. And he experienced an awakening with the lines from the Diamond Sutra that he heard. And he asked the customer where he had heard that and where he can study. And the customer directed him to the fifth ancestor in Chinese Zen, Hong Ren. So he, in good Chinese fashion, he arranged for support for his mother first. And then he left and went to see Hong Ren, who had a monastery with 500 disciples.

[04:25]

And when he arrived there, Hong Ren asked, where did you come from? And Hui Neng told the province in South China where he came from. Most of Chinese culture was in the north at that time. So Hong Ren said, you're a barbarian, or a southerner, you're a barbarian. And how can you attain Buddha nature? And Hui Neng said, amongst people there are northerners and southerners, but how can there be any north and south in Buddha nature? And Hong Ren was pleased with his reply and accepted him.

[05:32]

And Hui Neng worked in the community pounding rice. And he went to lectures and participated in the life of the community, but he was not a monk. He was not ordained. And when, I think he was there for eight months or nine months, something like that, and then Hong Ren wanted to find a, he was getting old, and wanted to find a successor. So he announced to his whole community that everyone should come up with some verse that manifests their understanding. And from that he would be able to find a successor.

[06:42]

And everyone thought that another, one of the monks, the head monk, who had studied an awful lot, and had been studying with Hong Ren for many years, would be the successor. And his name was Shen Shu. And Shen Shu maybe also thought he was going to be the successor. But the stories that we have are all from Hui Neng's successor. So they don't paint Shen Shu in the most attractive colors. The stories mostly come from the Platform Sutra. Sutra is supposed to be something from the words of Buddha.

[07:46]

In Hinayana Buddhism, from the historical Buddha. In Mahayana Buddhism, not necessarily from the historical Buddha, but from Buddha nonetheless. Anyway, in this case, the Platform Sutra doesn't pretend to be from Shakyamuni Buddha in the least. It's quite up front in saying that it's from Hui Neng. And it has the first sermon that Hui Neng gave after he began teaching. Anyway, from this sutra, which Hui Neng didn't write. He was still supposed to be a letterer. But a disciple, or maybe a disciple of a disciple of Hui Neng compiled it. In this sutra we have the story of what happened when Hong Ren was looking for a successor. And the story goes that Shen Shu, the head monk, wanted to show his understanding, but he wasn't sure.

[09:06]

He didn't have complete confidence in the verse that he came up with. So rather than bring it directly to Hong Ren, in the middle of the night, he wrote it on one of the walls in the monastery. He thought then he would see what Hong Ren's reaction was before he would say that he wrote it. So the verse that he wrote goes like this. It says, this body is the Bodhi tree. Bodhi is enlightenment. It's the Sanskrit word for enlightenment. This body is the tree of enlightenment. The mind mirror, or actually the mind is like a bright mirror or clear mirror stand.

[10:15]

Moment after moment, constantly wipe it diligently. And never let there be any dust. So this is the poem that he wrote on the wall. And when Hong Ren saw that, publicly he praised it. But in private he told Shen Shu that it wasn't complete yet and that he should work on another verse. Hui Ning, of course, didn't know about any of this because he couldn't read. But he heard some of the boys, young boys that were in the monastery, when they were outside the rice pounding hall, he heard them reciting the verse that was on the wall. And Hui Ning asked about it.

[11:20]

And when they explained the story, Hui Ning asked them to take him to that wall that he had a verse that he wanted the boys to write on the wall for him. So Hui Ning's verse went, this body or enlightenment is not a tree. That the bright mirror, bright mirror mind has no stand. That Buddha nature is forever clear and pure. And where can there be any place for any dust? So these two verses then are said to represent the teachings of the gradual school and the sudden school.

[12:22]

The gradual school is diligently, moment after moment, purifying our nature. Wiping it clean. And the sudden school is that it's already perfectly clean. How can there be any dust? Where would it be? What place can it be? Maybe one other historical thing I might mention. After, at the time of Hung Rim and of Hui Ning, Zen was just beginning to be known in China.

[13:27]

And after Hui Ning wrote that verse, supposedly Hung Rim called him to his room in the middle of the night. Gave him the robe and bowl from Bodhidharma and sent him away and told him to mature his practice before he began teaching. But that he was going to be his successor. And Hui Ning went to the mountains in South China. And for a long time, I don't know, 15 years, 17 years, something like that, before he began teaching. Chen Hsu, in the meantime, rather quickly became a quite prominent teacher in Northern China.

[14:33]

He went to the capital and he had thousands of students. And the emperor of China actually even studied under him. And there's another story that he also recommended to the emperor that Hui Ning be invited to the capital. And the emperor invited Hui Ning, but Hui Ning declined. But anyway, Hui Ning was not very well known at that time. Chen Hsu, however, was maybe the most prominent Buddhist monk in all of China. But Chen Hsu's lineage, his successors, his tradition didn't last.

[15:38]

Maybe seven or eight generations it was passed on and then completely died out. So all the stories we have today are from Hui Ning's lineage. And the story of the Platform Sutra was compiled by someone, one of Hui Ning's disciples, who wanted to promote Hui Ning as the legitimate successor in Zen lineage. Which was also maybe promoting himself. Because if Hui Ning is the sixth ancestor, he becomes the seventh. And he was also arguing against this teaching, this gradual method of teaching.

[16:43]

And proclaiming the sudden teaching as the way. But Hui Ning had a number of different disciples. Actually, the disciple that compiled the Platform Sutra, his lineage only lasted a couple of generations. But other disciples of Hui Ning, their lineages continue to this day. And the two main schools of Zen in Japan, Soto and Rinzai, both come from other disciples of Hui Ning. One of those, actually a disciple of one of his disciples, is named Sekido. And it's through Sekido that the Soto school comes. Sekido wrote a poem called the Sando Kai.

[17:47]

I don't know, do you chant that here? The Sando Kai... Some people say Sekido wrote the Sando Kai to try to dispel this fight between the southern and northern schools, the sudden school and the gradual school. I'll try to get into it in a moment from now. I don't know what all this stuff about sudden and gradual means. Sekido, in the Sando Kai, San means... literally means three, but it means many things, means all appearances, multitude. And Do means unity, oneness.

[18:52]

And Kai means... mutuality or together. Suzuki Roshi said it's all the appearances and unity, shaking hands with each other. And the first couple lines of the Sando Kai go, the mind of the great sage of India, great sage of India is Shakyamuni Buddha, the mind of the great sage of India... was transmitted from west to east, meaning from India to China. But always remained true to its source, a clear unsullied stream. But people discriminate between the quick and the slow.

[19:57]

The quick and the slow are... he means sudden teaching and gradual teaching. People discriminate between the quick and the slow. But the true way knows no ancestor from north or south. The ancestor in the north would be Chenshu and the south, Huine. Okay, so what's all this stuff about sudden and gradual? The sudden way is that there's nothing that we lack right now already. We're already Buddha. That realization happens at this moment.

[21:00]

It doesn't happen some other time. If it doesn't happen now, we're not awakened now, when will we be awakened? That's sudden teaching. So from the point of view of sudden teaching, each moment should be an occasion for awakening. So walking along the path, each step, each one of the purple petals on the path, each breath, whatever happens next, it's already complete. You don't have to add anything to it.

[22:03]

So gradual teaching is that... One other thing I should say about sudden teaching. From the point of view of sudden teaching, also there's no goal-seeking mind. As Sugiyoshi said, Sugiyoshi sometimes criticized some understanding of Zen as being stepladder Zen, that you think that you have some understanding now, and then later you'll have a better understanding, and then step by step, in stages, you'll progress. So... Comparatively, when we think comparatively, maybe that's so. But that wasn't Sugiyoshi's teaching.

[23:09]

Sugiyoshi's teaching was Zen mind, beginner's mind, always coming back to the beginning. And right in the beginning, Buddha nature is already there. From the point of view of gradual teaching, even though we can say Buddha nature is already there, if we don't see each appearance that comes up as Buddha nature, it doesn't do us much good. The sudden teaching may be right, but it doesn't help us. So, from the point of view of gradual teaching, from the point of view of our life,

[24:13]

we maybe have all kinds of problems. We have some type of pain in our body, and we have loved ones who maybe go away, or who die. We have the matter of our own death. And we have the outside world. We say outside world, but anyway, some other people say that we can't control. They don't treat us the way that we think they should sometimes. Or, not only outside world we can't control,

[25:19]

we can't control inside world either. Our own desires we can't control. So we have all these various types of problems. And from the point of view of gradual teaching, we have to find some way to still our mind. And that's why we sit satsang. We practice to become free from our desires. Dogen Zenji, Dogen was the founder of Soto Zen in Japan.

[26:23]

Dogen said that the non-duality of the sudden way and the gradual way, the non-duality of these two is the great foundation of the Buddha way. And when I read that I thought of a practice that Baker Roshi suggested in a lecture he gave a number of months ago in San Francisco. He said we should do what we intend and intend what we do. And I don't know if this is exactly what he meant or not, but today from the standpoint of looking at gradual teaching and sudden teaching,

[27:37]

I think we can say that to do what you intend is the gradual side. And to intend what you do is the sudden side. And that you have to do both, otherwise it's one-sided. To intend what you do means that whatever you're doing, you put your full body and mind into it. Intention in Buddhism is not just what we think. If we decide that we're going to get up at three o'clock in the morning and sit two hours of zazen,

[28:42]

we can have that type of intention. And then at three o'clock in the morning the alarm clock goes off and we decide to go back to sleep. What intention means in Buddhism is not just the decision that you're going to get up at three o'clock in the morning, but all the other aspects of your mind that go into manifesting what you actually do. All of that is intention. So from the point of view of the sudden teaching, Bekiroshi said we should bring all of our intention into what we do. So what we do is the manifestation of all of our intention, so we should know that. We should be there fully with our intention. So that's from the point of view of the sudden school.

[29:52]

And maybe if we find that we're not comfortable and we're doing something and we don't feel really comfortable and we feel that we can't bring our full intention into it, well, then maybe we shouldn't do that. So at first, if you take this practice very strictly, there's maybe not much that you can do. You'll find maybe that each time you try to put your full intention into it, into what you're doing, there's maybe something that's holding back. So in Zazen, we simplify our activity a great deal. We don't move around and we don't talk. We don't have to worry about saying something that someone else is going to interpret in a different way.

[30:58]

It's much simpler than our usual activity. And we can come back just to our breathing. And maybe our breathing is something that we can put our full intention into. So, when we're doing something, to put our full intention into it, to put our full body and mind into it, that's the sudden side. The gradual side is to decide what we're going to do and then do it. If you decide that you're going to get up at three o'clock in the morning and sit two hours of Zazen, if that's not so realistic, maybe you should decide something that's more realistic.

[32:07]

I'm going to sit five minutes every day before I go to bed. Or whatever, just something that you can do. So you decide that and then you do it. Actually do what you decide is the gradual side. Another example, dealing more with our desires, if you're at a party and someone's passing around cookies, you may decide at some point that I'm not going to take the third cookie. So that's some type of intention there.

[33:13]

But actually when the third cookie comes around, you may take it or you may not. There are various other things that are activating your body and mind. In addition to the object of your perception of your intention. But whether you take the third cookie or not, if you take the third cookie, while you take the third cookie, you can be totally present taking the third cookie. That's the sudden side. But in Buddhism we say we should become free from desires.

[34:21]

We should diligently, moment after moment, wipe our mind clear. That's the gradual side. But what it means to be free from desires is that we should see our desires. Our desires are there. But our desire for the third cookie is not the same as the third cookie. We see our desire and we see the cookie. And the link between them isn't necessary. So to be free from desires doesn't necessarily mean that there are no desires.

[35:40]

The desire itself is an occasion for awakening. And the cookie itself is an occasion for awakening. Sometimes in Sashin, I don't know if you do it the same way here or not. Maybe you do. Sometime in the afternoon, when you're sitting all day, the surfer comes in with cookies and tea or some piece of fruit maybe, some refreshment. And in that context, when there's nothing else, in some ritual, the cookie can be fantastic. You never have a cookie so good. Even though it's the same cookie. Dogen Zenji, before he went to China, had what was going from teacher to teacher in Japan,

[37:19]

trying to resolve what he called a great doubt he had. And Dogen studied quite a lot as a young child. I think by the time he was seven, that he had read the entire Tripitaka, all of the Buddhist teachings in the Chinese, many, many volumes of scriptures. He had read the complete Tripitaka three times by the time he was seven. I think seven, some incredibly early age. So he knew, Dogen knew, Dogen was in the 12th century, 13th century, 1200s. Hui Neng was 600s.

[38:24]

Dogen knew stories about Hui Neng and he knew Sudden Teaching, which Hui Neng didn't invent. It goes back in Buddhism to Shakyamuni Buddha. So Dogen knew all these teachings very well. And he said, since everything has Buddha nature, since everything originally has Buddha nature, why is it necessary to practice? Practice and making effort is a gradual sign. And he couldn't resolve that question with his teachers in Japan.

[39:27]

So for that reason, he went to China. When he came back to Japan, after he studied with a number of teachers in China, one of the things he wrote is the Genjo Koan. And at the end of the Genjo Koan, he tells about a story about a Zen master by the name of Bao Zhe. And a monk asks Bao Zhe that since the nature of the wind is permanent and reaches everywhere, why is it necessary to fan yourself? I guess Bao Zhe is fanning himself on a hot day and the monk comes by and says,

[40:32]

uses that as an occasion to ask about Buddhism. Since the nature of the wind is permanent and reaches everywhere, since everything already is refreshed by Buddha nature, why is it necessary to fan yourself? Why is it necessary to make some effort? This is the same question that Dogen had. And Bao Zhe, the master, answers, you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent and reaches everywhere, but you don't understand what it means to fan yourself. And the monk says, what does it mean to fan yourself? And Bao Zhe just picks up the fan and fans himself. Katagiri Roshi, at my first practice period at Tassajara,

[41:54]

Katagiri Roshi, who now is the head of the Minneapolis Zen Center, was there and after a lecture one of the students asked him, does Dogen ever completely get free from delusion? Did Dogen completely free himself from delusion? And Katagiri Roshi's answer was, yes, he does every moment. Does anyone have any questions or things you'd like to say? A distinction between intention and decision.

[43:11]

For example, you gave it deciding to get up, intending to get up at 3 and not. Now with the decision to get up at 5, a kind of practical pragmatic adjustment, would that be a distinction? If you carried out your intention, then obviously the two would be together, the intention and the practice. But I thought that was an interesting distinction. Is that what you meant? In technical Buddhist terminology, the Abhidharma tradition, they talk about, most of you probably know the five skandhas, form, feeling, perception, impulses and consciousness.

[44:17]

These five skandhas are some very early Buddhist teaching and one of the ways it was used is to be able to describe all of our experience without recourse to some idea of self. Everything could be described in terms of form, feeling, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. Impulses is a very large category. Impulses means will, means intention. Literally, I think, impulse is the translation of samskara and I think literally samskara means together-makers. And there are lots of different... These together-makers are different aspects of our mind. And there are a number of different together-makers. There's anger and there's the absence of anger. There's lust, desire, absence of desire.

[45:27]

There's faith. There's initial application of mindfulness. There's sustained application of mindfulness. There's joy. There's equanimity. There's... I think there's 52 in the Theravada tradition they enumerate. Different things that function to impel us to do what we do. That are manifested then in our body, speech and thought. One of these... Actually, feeling and perception, the second and third skanda are also included in the fourth skanda. They're also impulses. Feeling is whether our take on...

[46:30]

We have some experience and with that experience do we like it or don't like it or have a neutral feeling. That's what they mean by feeling in that case. And perception is... Of all these various aspects in our mind there's one of them, there's some way that we label that moment of experience. So we might label it as joy or we might label it as pain or we might label it as anger or various... But that label then is what I meant by when we say we intend to not have the third cookie. That intention is something that we can focus on. It's something that our perception sees and labels.

[47:35]

But in addition to that we have these other mental aspects. Intention, in this technical terminology, is one of these 52 elements of mind. And how intention is described, what it is, it's the total configuration of all of the other 51 aspects of our mind. Not all 51 are present in any given moment. In different moments different ones are present. You don't have anger and not anger at the same moment. But in any moment there's some number, maybe 16 or 34. They got into exactly which moments you had which elements of mind and how they related to other moments. It's all very well worked out. But at any given moment you have a certain number

[48:40]

and so the captain of that team, which is just the configuration of all of the members, that's intention or will. So the way I, or the window I'm entering Baker O'Shea's suggestion of intending what you do and doing what you intend is that what you say you're going to do is the object of your perception. If you say that you're going to do that, then okay.

[49:41]

Bring all of these other 51 elements into that. Do that. If you bring the other 51 elements in it, then that's what you do. But if you have other ones that are linking outside and want to do something else, then maybe you still do that with some divided mind or maybe you do something else. But anyway, what Baker O'Shea is saying is to do it fully. If you say you do it, do it. And if you do it, do it fully. Bring all of, whatever it is that you do, whether you do what you say you're going to do or you do something else. Bring everything to it. I wonder if you could say that from a Zen point of view you should never make an intention or a vow that you won't be willing to break,

[50:45]

such as the intention not to eat the third cookie. Supposing you intend with all you've got that you're not going to eat the third cookie, but then the opportunity comes and you check with all of yourself and you find you can take the cookie. So it would seem to me that according to Zen there's no vow or no intention that when the moment comes you might not break. What will give you a focus as to deciding

[51:49]

whether at that specific moment to take the cookie or not? So in Zazen we always come back to our breath. These 51 elements of mine or 52 elements of mine are jumping all around maybe, but we can see them better by having something that we come back to. So Zazen is intention in that way. It's an effort. But it's an effort to break our habits. Since we do have habits already we have to make effort to break them. It's the gradual side. It seems like the problem with all these things we decide to get up at three in the morning

[52:52]

or whether or not to have cookies is so often our decision, our intention is really some ego function. We're doing this with our ego. And the things we decide with our ego if they don't match something deeper don't work ultimately. And that when Suzuki Roshi talked about inmost request that's really what we're talking about is trying to get the rest of our life to conform to this inmost request. But in some sense why do we do all this? We're already enlightened. It's maybe because we don't have any choice. We have some inmost request. So our inmost request then is what we can do that includes everything. We can be completely comfortable

[54:00]

and confident. I don't know. Both teachings are used in both schools. Maybe you could say something more about why you think of one as one and one as the other. But Rinzai's more explicit.

[55:01]

It's just my impression that when I'm sitting she's enlightened. I mean, I suppose there are no words that have the enlightenment experience. I don't know. I said what you were talking about. I said it was more gradual. But you have to say that they both developed out of the seven schools. They both developed out of the seven schools. And they also both teach that a gradual practice is the same as a sudden practice.

[56:10]

That in trying to that you're trying to wipe the mirror clean is the same as I mean, you're wiping it is is originally pure and the mirror is originally pure. And both sides include each other. But they may emphasize more one than the other. I don't know so much Soto and Rinzai. They become defined in certain ways in Japan. I've never been to Japan. It's, I think, somewhat different for us here in America those two lineages. And, of course, in China, when they developed there was a lot of intermarriage between them.

[57:11]

Perhaps you answered this question when you were talking about the labeling intention and finding in the 52 elements what intention is. But I wonder if you could say something about what the role of effort could be in a sudden way. Not effective. Complete. Whether you make an effort or not. When you make an effort, that's complete. When you don't make an effort, that's not. The problem is that if

[58:15]

if we don't make an effort, then usually we operate out of habits. And if we operate out of habits it's we don't usually put our full attention to what we're doing. We just sort of go ahead and do it. We don't even know what we're doing sometimes. So maybe we could say that's the problem with the sudden teaching. The problem with the gradual teaching is if if if you're trying to always adjust things and correct things you

[59:16]

you never settle into what what you really are. So like in Sazen, in the beginning of the period we make some adjustments. That's sort of the gradual side. But at some point during the period just whatever posture, whatever breath we have we just we just accept that and settle into it. Okay, thank you very much.

[60:04]

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