I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Well, there's an unbelievable amount of stuff to cover here, which is pretty overwhelming to me. But I should say that my purpose and my sense of what I would like to do is basically just develop some acquaintance with this formative part of our lineage and talk about some of the ancestors, read some stories together and some koans together, and also to discuss amongst ourselves what questions come up, perhaps some

[01:08]

how it applies to what we're practicing with, but maybe in this particular case, not so much an emphasis on applied Zen as just getting acquainted with people. You know, when you meet somebody, you don't always think, What can this person do for me? Or how useful is he or she to my everyday life? And in the course of acquaintance, you find out there's a lot that you have to share. So that's kind of the way I feel about our lineage. So that's just by way of the briefest introduction. These words are from the Xin Xin Ming, which I gave out for the handout last week.

[02:16]

Do you still have that? No. It's in the back. It's the last thing in that. Anyway, I'd like to just read it, because this sort of sets the... it sets a context for I think this whole next period, and also it's a very good question. I mean, I said we weren't going to be useful, but I think it's actually a really good question for me and probably for many of us. The great way is not difficult for those who don't pick and choose. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart." And then at the end of the poem, we'll read the whole poem later when we get to Saint-Stanis, the fourth, the third ancestor, the end says, one thing or all things move among and intermingle without distinction.

[03:26]

To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind. Words The way is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today. It is a long poem. It's quite beautiful. And just to leap ahead a little, a commentary on that poem from the Blueprint record.

[04:28]

It's case two. Zhao Zhou, teaching the assembly, said, The ultimate path is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. As soon as there are words spoken, this is picking and choosing. This is clarity. This old monk does not abide within clarity. Do you still preserve anything or not? At that time, a certain monk asked, Since you do not abide within clarity, what do you preserve? Chow Chow replied, I don't know either. The monk said, Since you don't know, teacher, why do you nevertheless say that you do not abide within clarity? Jaojo said, it is enough to ask about the matter. Bow and withdraw. And the poem that goes along with this case goes like this.

[05:38]

The ultimate path is without difficulty. The speech is to the point. The words are to the point. In one there are many kinds. In two, there's no duality. On the horizon of the sky, the sun rises and the moon sets. Beyond the balustrade, the mountains deepen, the waters grow chill. When the skull's consciousness is exhausted, how can joy remain? In the dead tree, the dragon murmurs are not yet exhausted. Difficult, difficult. Picking and choosing, clarity you see for yourself. Now, I think we're just going to leave that out there and we'll come back to I don't know if we'll come back to that case, but we'll come back to the Xin Xin Ming and talk about it a little. So for the next three weeks, we're going to explore the Chinese roots of Chan or Zen Buddhism from about 500 AD to 900, which is a period that brackets the Tang Dynasty, the Golden Age of Zen.

[06:54]

And we will joyfully and reluctantly be bound to use words to do this exploration. And I hope they'll be helpful to you as you practice and not be too much of a hindrance. A late Tang Dynasty stanza which is attributed to Bodhidharma, although it probably wasn't written by him, or spoken by him, says about Zen, a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words and letters, by pointing directly to one's mind, it lets one see into one's own true nature and attain Buddhahood. So this gives you a sense of Chan, or Zen, that echoes the practice that we've inherited, the practice of just sitting, or wall-gazing, as it was called in Bodhidharma's time.

[07:58]

when I first called up here to ask about sitting, somebody answered the phone and said, I said, well, you know, I'd like to start sitting, what do I do? And the person who answered the phone, who, I don't think, it was either Ron or Tom Lomax, it was Tom, we figured, I think, said, well, just find a blank wall and stare at it. And I figured, oh, this must be the place for me. I couldn't believe that someone actually said this on the telephone. Someone calling out of the blue. So I often, I have, I think with affection about wall gazing. But it's also true that the legend of Bodhidharma has him carrying the Lankavatara Sutra, which we talked about, mainly talked about last week. He carried the Lankavatara Sutra, by legend, from India and passed it to his disciple Huike, along with the robe and the bowl.

[09:04]

So, coming from the work that we've been doing with Fran and Meili, it's important that, as with everything we see in Zen, where you have this quotation, a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words and letters, means that it's not a special transmission outside the scriptures also. So, it means we don't go out and burn the books, although there are stories of ancestors burning their commentaries and burning their sutras. There's one I was reading about Tokusan tearing up all his commentaries on the Diamond Sutra after meeting his match with a very wise woman at a sort of corner tea shop on his way up the mountain. And he was so, he was beaten by her and he just said, oh this is all garbage I've been carrying around these commentaries for years, get rid of them all.

[10:10]

But we're not going to get rid of them all. Because the ancestors, even though they they talked about a special transmission outside the scriptures and kept pointing back to their mind were also very deeply rooted in the sutras and the scriptures, which is why they were able to set them aside. So our work is sort of cut out for us. But the poems and koans we'll read together When I was at Tassajara, Reb Anderson was going through some of the same lineage, and he called them our village songs. They're the stories that have lasted, and they've lasted now for some of these stories from for almost 1,500 years. So they represent kind of the deepest roots and the tallest trees of Zen. And one of the reasons that they're vital is that they cause big problems for us to understand them.

[11:18]

They're really difficult and our minds get sort of caught on them, sort of turning them over and over. And in a sense, that's a helpful way to work with them. And in another sense, I think of them as just... these stories of these old guys and, regrettably, not too many stories of the old girls, but I think that they're in there, practicing together. And some of us have been practicing together here five years or ten years, and I can remember words and actions and just small moments that made a big impact on me. And you can think of these stories that way. and think about what it might be like if we lived, if we all lived sort of year in and year out together in some kind of austere but reasonably comfortable setting like Green Gulch or Tassajara or Berkeley, just working together and studying together and sitting together and getting old and kind of mushy-minded together and letting our words and actions flow freely

[12:38]

and we would have stories like these, I think. So even if we don't understand this stuff right away and we'll be frustrated by how little time there is to study, we can try not to pick and choose. We can just trust the Dharma to reveal itself if we just give it a little nurturance and a place to grow. And meanwhile, What I would like is if people would... interrupt at any time with questions and we can stop and discuss them. Because even though there's an enormous amount of material to cover, it doesn't really matter a whole awful lot to me if we cover it as more important kind of what kind of exchange we have. Because I think that that's sort of the core of these stories for the most part.

[13:40]

So, we can discuss them. I really can't pretend to have the answers, but we can take some time to talk about them. So, let's talk about Bodhidharma a little. Did people get the handout from last week? Here's some more up there. I gave out a couple of handouts. One, which you can read, Actually, let's see if there are a couple there. It's just the one on... Ah, good. There's one. And this is the second pair. Anything else? The book is called The Transmission of Light.

[14:49]

The Transmission of Light, which is basically the lineage that we chant. You sit in the morning sometimes on Saturdays? We chant the Buddhas and Ancestors. This is that lineage, essentially. up through Dogen. And this book was written by Keizan, who was one of, I guess he was two ancestors after Dogen. So it was written in Japan, but it's based on all of these Chinese stories. There were lots of versions of transmission of the lighter, transmission of the lamp. And this is the Japanese version, but it's the Soto lineage, basically, the Soto Zen lineage, which is our lineage.

[15:57]

I should say, if we make it today, what I had thought about covering was Bodhidharma through Huineneng, but that's really a lot. Buddhism had been in China by the time Bodhidharma arrived. He arrived in the late 5th century AD. He's counted in the lineage that we chant patriarch, or the first patriarchal ancestor of Zen. And he's also known as the patriarch of Kung Fu. And there is a story that he is the originator of tea. That's a good story. Yeah. The first plants grew from his eyelids, which he plucked them out and threw them away so that he wouldn't sleep during meditation.

[17:23]

And where they landed, legend has the first tea plants grew up. But the details, of course, particularly of stories like that are very difficult to establish. And a lot of his story is shrouded in legend. What seems to be pretty common is that he was born to a Brahmin family in southern India. And he received, to a Buddhist family, he received the dharma teaching from his teacher Prajnatara, who we chant as Hanyatara. And when he was about 60 years old, he journeyed to via Sri Lanka and South China, via sea from Sri Lanka to South China, and arrived somewhere around 475 AD.

[18:29]

And shortly after he arrived, he had that famous dialogue with Emperor Wu. He came before the Emperor, who had heard that a new teacher of Buddhism of great renown had landed in the land. And they had this conversation. The Emperor asked, Since ascending to the throne, I have had temples built, sutras transcribed, and monks ordained. What merit have I gained? The master, Bodhidharma, replied, No merit at all. The emperor replied, Why no merit at all? The master said, All these are but impure motives for merit. They mature the paltry fruit of rebirth as a human being or as a god.

[19:30]

They are like shadows that follow the form, having no reality of their own. The emperor said, Then of what kind is true merit? Bodhidharma answered, it is pure knowing, wonderful and perfect. Its essence is emptiness. One cannot gain such merit by worldly means. Thereupon the emperor asked, what is the sacred truth's first principle? The master replied, vast emptiness, nothing sacred. The emperor said, so who is this that faces me? And Bodhidharma replied, I don't know. And then he went away. And then he left. And I think the story is the emperor's advisor said, do you know who that was? And the emperor said, no. He said, that was the embodiment of Avalokiteshvara.

[20:34]

Is that right? I think that's right. And the emperor said, well, we better go get him back. And the advisor said, it's too late. And so he crossed over to, he crossed the Yangtze River on a reed boat and settled at Shaolin Monastery, which is near Luoyang. That's when he took up nine years of wall gazing. Excuse me, Alan. Is it Shaolin, the place where those peaks rise, those needle peaks there, with the convoluted surfaces? It's a very exotic landscape. I think it's a really wild landscape. No, Vulture Peak is in India.

[21:35]

Yeah, Vulture Peak is in India. Vulture Peak is probably in the Himalayas or something, or in the foothills. So, he took up wall gazing. Now, the word for wall gazing in Chinese is piquan, I think. refers, I guess it has the implication not just of wall gazing, but of also something very steep or abrupt, you know, of just some real strong energy to it. And he did that for nine years on, again, reputedly, sat so long that his legs fell off. Because there's other stories later on that create some question about that.

[22:42]

And had a big influence, even without having a lot of students, had a large influence. We were talking before about Buddhist, you were mentioning Buddhist wars or Buddhist there were an awful lot of court intrigues and jealousies. And Bodhidharma reputedly survived six poisonings and three invitations to the court, which he turned down, which was not something that you did. And then by the age of about 150, reputedly. He felt his work was done, and he allowed himself to be poisoned, and he passed away sitting up. And it's interesting that he was poisoned by another reputedly strong teacher, Bodhiruchi,

[23:53]

And I'll read you that story, actually. It's fairly troubling. About that period, the Emperor of Wei admired Bodhidharma greatly. The celebrated meditating monks were as thick as a forest. Among them, Bodhiruchi, a learned man in the canon, was especially titled with imperial rank. He was the best among the monks. and even as the celestial phoenix is the most superb among the birds. He watched Bodhidharma spreading Buddhism, but rejecting the formal teaching and merely pointing to the Buddha's mind. When he argued this with the master, questions of right and wrong buzzed like bees. Bodhidharma always revealed the very source of Buddhism and showered the rain of the noble teaching. But he had a narrow mind and could not bear his rivalry. He formed the malicious purpose of poisoning him.

[24:58]

At the sixth attempt, Bodhidharma knew that his mission in China was fulfilled, and that he had his successor there. So finally he did not save himself, but sitting calmly he passed away." It was the 5th of October, 536, in the 21st year of the Wei Dynasty. But, on the day that Bodhidharma died, Sung Yun, a lay official sent by the Empress Dowager in search of Buddhist works of the Northern Way, while on his way back to China, met Bodhidharma. who was returning to India. He met him in the Pamirs in sort of Central Asia. I think it's like Turkestan, something like that. Upon being asked what was to happen to his school in the future, Bodhidharma replied that after 40 years, a native Chinese would appear to spread his teaching.

[26:00]

When Sung Yong returned to China, he told Bodhidharma's disciples of his interview, when they opened the grave, they found that the body was no longer there. And there was only... Oh, when he met him in Asia, he was holding one sandal. Right. And when they opened his grave, they found his body was no longer there, and the other sandal was still in the grave. Which was hard for a person who had no feet. Well, that's what I said. There's some internal contradictions there. So, there's something really beautiful about that story to me. I really love that. I see there's pictures with Eka with one arm and Bodhidharma with one sandal on the staff over his shoulder. Right, right. I don't think there's any way it should be. It's also like, you know, Jesus rising from the dead.

[27:15]

I mean, he seems to be a sort of worldwide being. I had never heard that story about Bodhidharma. So it's interesting that that's in the Buddhist tradition as well. Yeah. Yeah, and there are all the bodies of Buddhas. I mean, it's sort of going back, I think, in a way to the historical Buddha, and then all the different So our imaginations are allowed to bloom. I think particularly with Bodhidharma because he's a figure that I mean, it's pretty clear that he's a historical figure. He's mentioned in almost contemporary accounts, and yet he's also somebody who's only like half emerging from the mists of legends. I mean, there's a lot of legends that that was generated around him, whereas even, you know, in the next few generations, you have people, there's stories about them, and they're obviously, you know, sort of miraculous, there are some miraculous stories and some fantastic stuff, but they're more historical, and you don't see so many, you won't get stories of them

[28:40]

being found on the day of their death, wandering around several thousand miles away. I mean, he's really this transitional figure, and so there's just a lot of power there. And that's why I think we have, you know, traditionally in the Zendo, that's Bodhidharma, by the way, In the Zendo, there's always a picture of Bodhidharma on the west wall that faces the altar. It sort of happened across that wall. I was reading it and I didn't realize. I knew I've always seen it in a Zendo, but I never knew why exactly it was there, but it's traditionally there. Are temples oriented that way? Often. Yes. Ours isn't. Ours isn't. Right. But, yeah, there's a particular geomantic way to set up a temple.

[29:46]

Well, these other great figures Right. Well, I think a lot of the key... Suzuki Roshi came to North America. Right. Well, a lot of them had a... There's always this big... There's always a sea voyage. That's right. With a boat. You know, although Suzuki Roshi probably flew. Not from India to China. Yes. Yeah, he went by sea. Sailed up to Cape Town. Yeah. The stories that I read, he went by sea. in three years. And there's also stories of Nagarjuna who was the founder, we talked a little last time about the Majamaka school, who also made a sea voyage and went down into the depths of the sea to bring up, you know, to retrieve these ancient Mahayana teachings that had been lost there.

[31:12]

So there's often this tremendous element, this sort of elemental transformation, I think, that's quite wonderful. And we're lucky, we live really close to the sea. If you go to Green Gulch, when you're meditating there, if the wind is right, you can hear the waves breaking on the beach. And sometimes in the morning, if you're sitting, you can hear the foghorn at the I wanted to come back to this question of merit.

[32:27]

It's an interesting question to me, particularly having just come back from Southeast Asia, where the notion of making merit is very much alive. That people, in a lot of ways monks, the sangha, it almost exists, on the one hand it exists for continuing the Dharma, on the other hand it exists as a vehicle for people to make offerings to so that they can make merit and affect their karma and have a more auspicious rebirth. And I'm just wondering what people, how people differently feel about merit. Coming from my particular background, I have trouble with the concept, which is one reason why the teachings of Zen appeal to me.

[33:35]

And yet, to me, there is and isn't some idea of merit. I wonder if people have thoughts. It is a very important aspect of living in my culture, Chinese, one really has to watch very carefully about what one does every day, almost like a boy scout, girl scout life. And they accumulate. These things When you have some grave illness, such as cancer, some terminal illness, that's usually seen as a reflection of what negative merit you have accumulated in ways that are unknown to you, that you're not aware of sometimes, however you've done so. Demerit.

[34:39]

things in my affairs. And my grandmother, I walk down the street and see a banana peel. She's a very devout Buddhist. And I inherently go out of my way to put it into someplace safe. My people would not walk on it and get hurt. In India, I know that it's customary to say thank you when you give something to the beggar. You thank him because he's giving you the opportunity to again accumulate, that's the key word, accumulate merit. And I remember the Tibetan teachers there, when something unfortunate happened to you, they called it the ripening of negative karma. And it was to be thought of as not a negative thing, but an opportunity to deal with this ripening karma.

[35:52]

me that it was sent away, that it didn't accumulate, that we weren't always scouts or girl scouts, accumulating merit badges, that you could pick up the manatee without accumulating anything. I think that that has to do with the sharpness of Bodhidharma's response to Emperor Wu. Emperor Wu wasn't giving anything away. He was creating all these things which were possibly helpful, but actually what he was creating for himself was not helpful. I grew up in a tradition where you didn't collect it, but you did default. The mitzvahs, I guess. If you visited the El, you know, somebody told you, oh, that was a mitzvah. Good thing to do. I know the Tibetans also, they dedicate the merit, like if you've had a puja or a service of some sort, you devote, you dedicate the merit of it to beings

[37:23]

Yeah, we did that on one of the people on our delegation was a very strongly practicing Tibetan Buddhist and she did that. She reminded us about doing that all the time, which was, it was important because we were constantly in circumstances where just by where we were born, we had things to give away. We had things that were useful to people. And she kept reminding us when we were doing that to dedicate that merit, you know, to just kind of send it back out, which was really helpful because Otherwise, you could feel very uncomfortable about the helping that you were doing.

[38:28]

It made it a little easier to actually give things away, if you weren't holding on to the supposed merit from giving it away. It's very interesting. make a mental gift of it to the thief, so then it's no longer a theft and you've just, in a sense, given away merit, but you've given away again. It sounds more though to the expiation of sin.

[39:37]

Well, I think it's, I think there's some similarities. But that's where you get back to a root of non-duality in Buddhism. Right, I mean, there's no absolution in this league. You know, because you're setting aside ideas of right and wrong. You have an idea of what's right, but you're also constantly setting aside ideas of right and wrong, and setting aside ideas of sin. But it's complex. The accumulation part, though, seems to be doing it for a purpose rather than simply doing it. Yes, if you're doing it for a purpose. It's an interesting thing.

[40:40]

in contrast to this lack of duality, but going back to some of the basic tenets of right living and right this, I mean, there is a judgment almost in the tenets of Buddhism in the very early stages of what's right and wrong. Well, it's true. I mean, it's one of the basic kinds of practices that you can do, is just sila practice, is just observing the precepts. I think how you observe them, with what attachment you observe them, what attachment to right and wrong, that's constantly an object for your meditation and your deep inquiry. Because as soon as you attach to this idea of right, or attach this idea of merit, then you're clinging to something.

[42:03]

Then you're assuming that there's something there and you're clinging to it. and, you know, creates a problem. I would like to ask Quan Lang, and if in your family, when people became, were so devoted to the idea of accumulating merits for their own benefit, was the judgment about other people, if somebody else was leading a kind of sloppy life, Would there be judgment about them or not to have them? No, no. It's like a saying comes to mind. Every family just sweep the snow off of one's own front porch. And that accumulation is not really for oneself so much. It's for one's lineage, offsprings as well. that the offsprings can benefit, can have a better life, a better start, a better constitution than to start with.

[43:14]

Does it go backwards too? No. Because I know in some Southeast Asian traditions you do certain things, you become ordained as a monk, for instance, when your mother dies, or father, to re-insure them of a better reincarnation you know actually this brings me to One of the central teachings that we have from Bodhidharma, that is supposed to have been written by him, is called the doctrine of two entrances and four ways. So there are two entrances to the Dharma, the path of truth. The first is the entrance of insight, and the second is the entrance of conduct.

[44:22]

And those are the two practices. The entrance of insight actually includes consulting the scriptures and meditating and integrating the principles of the Dharma. And then the entrance to conduct, that's where you have the four ways, and the four ways are requital of hatred, obedience to karma, and the third is not to seek anything, And the fourth is to be in accord with dharma or emptiness. But I think it's significant that the first one... I feel like with almost all lists in Buddhism, it's like very often the first one is the one that you really need to pay attention to, because the others are often sort of elaborations of the first one.

[45:32]

And the first principle, the first way of the entrance of conduct is requital of hatred. So, even with this teacher who wasn't going to even have any truck with Emperor Wu and his ideas of merit, his fundamental teaching included a practice of conduct, a practice of right conduct. That was basic and sort of co-equal to the practice of meditation. I was actually really surprised to find this because I didn't know about that. It's like almost all of the readings that I was doing about Bodhidharma kept coming back to this one sort of seminal work of his, which I think is one of the few that they feel was actually written by him.

[46:38]

So that was quite interesting to me. Um... what he's saying in this doctrine of two entrances. It's two entrances and four ways. And the two entrances to the Dharma are the entrance of insight, which is the entrance of meditation and study of the scriptures. And the other entrance, the second one, is the entrance of conduct. It's essentially the entrance of moral behavior.

[47:45]

And what I was saying is that that was something that I hadn't quite been aware of because we hear a lot about basically Bodhidharma's wall gazing as that being his gift and that being kind of the really special element of practice that we've inherited and we've carried on from him. But there was also this level of practice of sila, of morality, of conduct, that's very orthodox. I mean, it runs through all of the Buddhist schools. And Bodhidharma was not He was an original figure and a greatly creative figure, but he wasn't completely standing outside the orthodoxy.

[48:48]

But I wanted to move ahead here to Bodhidharma's disciple. He had four disciples, actually, one of whom, as I was coming through this, one of whom was a woman, was a nun, about whom nothing more is said. except in one of these stories when he was dying, he said, you have my skin, and you have my marrow, and you have my bones, and one of those was Tsongchi. But the main disciple that we read about in our lineage is Taiso Eka, or Huike, or Huiko. He was already a scholar of Buddhism when he came to Bodhidharma at the age of about 40, and followed Bodhidharma around for six years.

[50:04]

And I wanted to read something about him. Maybe I'm not going to read that. He's the ancestor who we know of as having stood in the snow and beseeched Bodhidharma to teach him the Dharma. He stood in the middle of a snowstorm and finally, in order to get his attention, cut his arm off. That's the way the story goes.

[51:11]

Another story is that he was actually, that his arm was cut off later by robbers. But as Charlie pointed out, they made an interesting pair, one with no legs and one with one arm. Say nothing to the eyelashes. Right, and say nothing to the eyelashes. And there's not much that is known about him either. There are a number of stories. He didn't begin preaching dharma. immediately after he left Bodhidharma, he basically hid himself in the lowest strata of society and did not want to be looked at as a high priest, as the carrier of the Dharma or as a patriarch, but he did keep

[52:24]

talking about the Dharma whenever he had an opportunity. And he was very quiet and unassuming and sort of refusing to show himself off. But again, there's one of these similar kinds of stories. One day, he was discoursing the law before a temple gate, and there was another sermon going on inside the temple by a resident priest who was learned and honored. The audience, however, left the reverend lecturer inside and gathered around this street monk who was probably clad in rags with no outward signs of ecclesiastical dignity. And the high priest got angry over the situation. He accused this monk to the authorities as promulgating a false doctrine, whereupon Wike was arrested and put to death. And he did not especially plead innocent and completely submitted.

[53:26]

In other words, he didn't pick and choose. And he said that he had, according to the law of karma, an old debt to pay. And this took place in about 593. And he was 107 years old, reputedly, at the time. And there are a number of different versions of this story. Another version is, at that time there was a Buddhist teacher, Tao Ho. He had studied the doctrine of learning through Samadhi, and his teaching was predominant in the province of Gyo. His followers numbered about a thousand. Having heard Eka's preaching of the Dharma, he thought it had no foundation. These are evil words, he said. Whereupon he sent for those persons among his followers who were well-versed in Buddhism and dispatched them to destroy Eka's sect.

[54:33]

But when they came and heard Eka's teaching, they became speechless and surrendered themselves to it. They were filled with sorrow and regret and did not have the heart to return to report. Tao Ho asked them repeatedly to come back, but they did not obey his orders. Of the many messengers he sent, not one returned to him. Later they met Tao Ho, and he said to him, I planted a device and opened your eyes. For what reason were you all such messengers? They answered, the original eye is perfect by itself. Because of you, it became corrupted. so on. So there was a tremendous amount of jealousy in these teachings, and it's somewhat troubling to me to find that. The more I was studying about this, the more I was finding these kinds of stories, particularly in the early lineage.

[55:39]

I don't exactly know what to make of it, but again and again, I mean, even in the death of the Buddha, there is the implication that he ate some food that was tainted, which was possibly poison. And you have these people who are willing to accept the karma that is that falls to their lot. They are great teachers and they are teachers for us, their stories are still alive, their teaching is still alive. And I know for myself, one of the hardest things to deal with is the notion of being unjustly accused. When I'm unjustly accused, I want to I want to try to set it right.

[56:42]

And it seems in each of these stories there's really no effort to set it right. There's just a kind of an acceptance of the circumstances as they are. And there's no effort to pick and choose, there's no effort to either to grasp or to push away. There's just this kind of level of deep acceptance, which is very provocative. By the time you're a hundred and seven, you probably accept everything. Right. Maybe it's a lunar calendar. The jealousy and the rivalry for me is a little bit of an inspiration Well, Al, do you know how they lived?

[57:58]

I mean, were these monasteries or were these itinerant communities of monks that went from village to village? See, at this point in the lineage, there were not very many monasteries. There were monasteries, there were pure land monasteries and monasteries of different schools, but there were not Zen monasteries, the monastic system. And I think even the monastic system for some of the other sects was not firmly established. I think in a lot of ways it was the Zen school that established the system of monasticism. But it wasn't... that really became more established in... by the fourth and fifth ancestors. For the moment they were pretty itinerant. No, I don't think it was an overlay of monastic politics, but I think there was an overlay.

[59:06]

I think there were different power struggles. There wasn't so much a monasticism, but the accumulation... But they have to be supported, and people have to support them. Right, but they could be supported by a feudal system. Right. Without having a monastery. But is there enough for two systems? I don't know. What about the resources involved? That gave rise to a lot of this poisoning and driving out of a teacher of whom people were jealous. Well, I think that what's suggested to me Just because a factor in a number of these stories is that there are teachers who had affiliations with the royal families.

[60:14]

So probably there was a lot of prestige and privilege that was possible if you were into that kind of thing. If you were into having that kind of recognition, that was probably a possibility. And it was based on, you know, at least to some degree, it was based on how cogent your teachings were, you know, how you reached people. And so if you had somebody like Bodhidharma or somebody like Huike, then You know, they were very strong teachers who really had an ability to connect very directly. And in the next ancestor, in Sengstan, or Kanchi Sosan, who wrote the Xinxin Ming, in that generation, after he received Dharma transmission, he was the only, I think he was the only

[61:25]

Dharma heir of Huike, but he immediately went into hiding because, in fact, there was a persecution. One of the things that was going on, there was a power struggle between Confucianism and Buddhism, or between, well, Confucianism and Daoism and Buddhism. There was a struggle for which was going to be the officially recognized religion. And that kind of struggle is echoed several centuries later in Japan. And I suspect something like that may have happened in India. I don't know much about the history of Indian Buddhism. But there were, depending on what the leanings of the feudal After he received transmission, he feigned madness and lived in the wilds, lived in the woods for ten years, without preaching, without coming out, without teaching, just waiting for, sort of biding his time while this particular wave of persecution passed.

[62:50]

Well, that shows some discrimination. You picked and chose, right? Yeah, I think there is some. It's not that there isn't discrimination. How does one choose? I don't know. That's what you have to keep asking yourself. I keep wondering, though. I mean, if you look at the Japanese feudal system at least, I mean, there was so much So little power. I mean, there was so much power and so little power for the commoner or the person who was wandering around. I mean, is it a matter really of non-discrimination or a matter of accepting the inevitable when you don't contest, you've been accused, but, you know, before the powers that be, you just say, Well, I think also, you know, the stories of Bodhidharma and of Wike, they accepted the inevitable when they felt they had done their work.

[64:23]

They had transmitted the Dharma, they had done what they wanted to do, what they feel they had to accomplish in their lifetime. With Sengsthan, he was just at the start. And so, and the same thing is true in the story when we get to Huining, he also went into, he was urged to go into hiding. And for a number of years he did that before he came out and taught. Excuse me, Huike is different from Huikou? Huikou, Huike, same, sorry. Oh, okay. I wanted to read you the three transmission stories, just to read briefly, of the three, Bodhidharma to Huike, Huike to Sengsthan, and then Sengsthan to Daozen, because I think they come back, they're really parallel stories and they come back to what, some of what Meili was talking about last week.

[65:34]

What was the fourth? Taosin? So Bodhi... Huike came to Bodhidharma and said, my mind has not found peace. I beg you, Master, to pacify it for me. And then Bodhidharma said, well, bring forth your mind to me and I will pacify it for you." After a long silence, Huike told his master that he had searched for the mind, but could not find it. Thereupon the master said, Behold, I have already pacified the mind for you." And then Huike to Sengsthan, if I can find that. Sang San was ill.

[66:51]

He was probably a leper. So he went to Huike and said, I'm riddled with sickness. Please absolve me of my sin. Huike said, bring me your sin and I will absolve you. After a long pause, Sang San said, when I look for my sin, I cannot find it. Huike said, I've absolved you. You should live by the Buddha, the teaching, and the community. And then, I'll find the other one, but it's along the same lines. So what do they mean by sin? Is that what I think of as sin?

[67:55]

It might be. I mean I don't know but no I don't think it's probably not what you mean by sin but probably the notion of this is the karma my sickness is the karma that I've inherited from my from my history, my birth, my unworthiness in the past and my unworthiness in the present. I don't know how different that is from Catholic sin. A lot is pretty different. Yeah, I think it's a lot. It seems different than Jewish sin. Well, I don't have that fourth story right here. But the fact is, I thought it was quite interesting that basically in these first three Zen transmission stories, again and again they keep pointing back to the same process, to the same process of looking for something

[69:14]

you know, feeling like there's something there, there's sin or there's trouble in your mind and then the teacher says, well bring me your mind bring me this thing that you think is your mind, bring me this thing that you think is your trouble and they go back and they examine and examine and they can't find it because there's emptiness there and in the act of in the act of looking, making that inquiry, their mind is calm. And it seems like that is the process of Zazen. That's the process of what we do. We're just sitting. It brings us actually to, I guess we'll start on Huining, and it brings us to this question of sudden and gradual.

[70:36]

Is it sudden or is it gradual? And just historically, Huining is the sixth ancestor in our lineage. But actually, the sixth ancestor in many of the other lineages was Shenshu. They were both students of Hengjian, who was the fifth. And it was about that point, with the fourth ancestor and the fifth ancestor, you started having real monasteries. you started having a monastic system with many students and with sort of a self-supporting monasticism where they had some kind of agricultural base and were probably performing ceremonies for the people in the surrounding area.

[71:42]

and Buddhism became much more institutionalized. You still had monks who were wandering around, but many of them would wander around from one monastery, from one place to another, rather than just through the wilds. you had more and more of a kind of institutionalization. And this is really where the age of Zen has a tremendous influence in Chinese culture begins. These were Zen monasteries. I thought they had plenty of monasteries before. They just weren't particularly devoted to Zen practice. Well, I think they had monasteries, but I don't know to what extent they were I'm not clear on how institutionalized they were. I know they had centers, but my impression was that it was really with the growth of Zen that you began to have really self-supporting monasteries, ones that were economically sufficient.

[72:49]

And that, in fact, I think it was with the growth of Zen that you started having major really major persecutions of Buddhism because those monasteries began to be seen as independent of the feudal system. They were sort of apart from the feudal system. That's my impression. I'm not totally clear on that. Well, actually, one aspect of it is that the Zen monasteries escaped a lot of the persecution that the other sects underwent. because they were self-sufficient. Right, yeah. I think that's right. And they were also kind of very rural. Right, and they put them, they were way back in the mountains. And that's probably why it became the dominant form for at least a couple hundred years. When did this become, I mean Bodhidharma wasn't yet

[73:58]

identified as a separate sector. When did it really gel into something that was separate? And what does Zen mean, and the word Zen? That's the Japanese word, right? Oh, yeah. That's the Japanese word for the Chinese word, which is Chan, which is Chinese for the Indian word, Jhana. which means concentration or meditation, essentially. Actually, let me give you this. Did you want Actually, this would be a great place. I actually would like not to go into Huidian. It's too much. But if you wanted to show the character for Zen, that would be great. We took it just by the sound of it, from India. The word itself has no meaning. It's just the sound of it. But the character does, right? No, I don't think so. I'll write it anyway.

[75:00]

You can hold that back. That's Chan. Well, can you tell us what it's composed of? This one, on the right side is Singularity. And this side is Clothing. So we got it really from the sound of it. Not the meaning in itself. I looked it up in the dictionary. There's no roots in it, no etymology. I couldn't look up anything behind that.

[76:01]

It's just from the Indian, it's a Sanskrit word. So why would the sound come out having to do with clothing and singularity? That's just how this word came about. There are different kinds of words in Chinese, some pictorial, some from the sound. So there are all different types, and this one, I don't know why it sounds the way it does. It's not from this word, it's not from that. It's just a sound. Well, what about Buddhism? Use a pen that can... Let's see if I find it. There's a pen in there. I said, honey, it's like this, somehow, with two lines.

[77:10]

It's almost like a dollar sign. Is that right, John? Well, he would make it decussive. That was it. I mean, it wasn't just a single one. You have two of them. I think we used one. Yeah, that's right. Double. Double? Right here? It's right through here? Don't you have that dress in your office? Yeah, I was going to say that. Well, wait a minute. Can you tell us about the components of that? I think that one is silly. I'll look it up again tonight. I'll look it up tonight. Oh, both words again. Let's see. Look in Rebecca's ruckus suit. She's got the name with Sam in it. Yeah. It's the same. It's upside down. Right. Yeah. But no, the radical on the left is different.

[78:17]

See this one? See? No, no, no. She has one. Where is it? See that? This one. Put linguistic analysis here. No, no, no, no. That's what it is. Oh, I see. I saw it different. Also, this part, doesn't it also mean like service and ritual? Aha, yes. I think that. Service, ritual, clothing, nature. If it's more, then I know. Well, jhana itself is actually a very technical, it's a technical word, d-h-y-a-n-a. And as in this dictionary it says, Jhana designates particularly the four stages of absorption of the world of form, the condition for which is the removal of the five hindrances. These four absorptions make possible the attainment of supernatural powers.

[79:19]

They prepare the way for knowledge of previous births and of the arising and passing away of beings and for the elimination of the defilements. This is tantamount to liberation. Practice of each of the four jhanas also affects rebirth in the corresponding heaven. And then I could go into what these four jhanas are. But in Chinese Buddhism, jhana has a much kind of broader application. I mean, it just, it's not, it's Chinese, it's not Indian. I mean, Indian is so highly technical. It's a very, it's a very technical language and a very technical way of thinking about things. The Chinese was much more, sort of, closer to the ground. And so it, Jhana, which became Chan, really meant

[80:20]

it meant absorption in meditation. But I think that behind that, as they were studying the scriptures, there still was an understanding of the path of absorption. That maybe you didn't have to do that just to do the meditation, but if you were studying it, you might understand something about it. So it's constantly this dialectic between this body of complex knowledge and just the simple act of sitting, of putting your body in this position in which enlightenment is manifest. So that might be a good place to stop for tonight. Now, I have more handouts.

[81:30]

This is going to be the last one for me. I thought that people might like to have... We're going to be reading some koans. So here's a collection that I put together basically of stories that involve the people in the lineage that we're going to be looking at. So it'll be, it'll be Huining, and then Seigen Yoshi, Sekido Kisen, Yakusan Igen, Ungan Danjo, Tozan Ryokai, just as we chant in the morning. And so these are stories that, in which they figure, mostly taken from the Blue Cliff Record, a couple from the Book of Serenity. So why don't we pass these this way. And what I suggest you do with these, this is sort of heavy going, and what I suggest is, just as a start, if you find it daunting, in each one of these stories there's something that's called the case, and then there's something else that's called the verse.

[82:42]

And just by way of starting, just read the case and the verse. You don't have to get caught up in the commentary unless you have some hunger for it. That the commentary, in fact, all came afterwards. And the commentary is meant to help, and if you have that appetite for it, it's helpful. But if you just want to get a flavor for knowing something, having a feeling for these people, then you can just read the case and the verse. And we'll talk more about how poems are structured, but we can continue next week. If you have any questions, you can see me afterwards. If you haven't paid, it's 30 bucks per class. And the Xerox thing was a $2 additional charge. Which is a bargain. Which is a bargain. Really. P-I-Q-W-A-M-N is the word that Okay.

[84:01]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ