I vow to taste the juice of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Welcome to the first class in Aspects of Practice. Before we start, are there any announcements? Ko, did you have anything you wanted to tell people about this? Training? Saturday, after the schedule around 11.30. A week. November 6th.

[01:01]

Sojiro Roshi will be teaching Kokyo Doan Refresher. fresher course on Kokyo-ing and Doan-ing and just basic teaching on how we chant. And then a lot of the loose ends that we want to gather together again are kind of falling apart in our chanting, even though we have really wonderful chanting here. So even if you're not a Doan or Kokyo, you're invited to come. Yeah, yeah. It's a chanting train, too, as far as I know. And you never know if you're going to be a Kokyo or Doan, so might as well Thanks. Any other announcements? It's a busy weekend coming up here, just to say, on Sunday evening, we celebrate Sagaki, which is the feeding of the hungry ghosts, setting their spirits at rest.

[02:14]

It's a wonderful ceremony, and you're welcome to come in costume, bring children and friends, and enter into the spirit of this on Halloween evening, and then we'll have a little party. I think that begins, the ceremony's at 6.30, is that right? Laura? 630, yeah. So please come if you can. And tomorrow evening, there will be a talk in the Zendo by Sarah Weintraub, who's the daughter of the abbess of San Francisco Zen Center, Linda Ruth Cutts, and longtime Zen Center priest, Steve Weintraub, who is a disciple of Sojin Roshi's. And she's been, for more than a year, a volunteer in a village committed to nonviolence in rural Colombia. And she's back to tell about some of her experiences there and to get some support because she's going back. So that's tomorrow at 7.30, I believe. So come if you can.

[03:16]

Okay. So the theme of this aspects of practice is ancestral practice, our ancestral tradition, and how it applies to us in our lives and practice today. Tonight we're going to talk about the sixth ancestor or sixth patriarch, Wineng, who is a critical major figure in the Zen tradition. And I'm also going to talk a little bit about ancestors and ancestry. And along those lines, there's a passage from Dogen that would be good to share to sort of set the tone for this month of practice together.

[04:19]

It's from a writing of his called the Ehekosu Otsugamon. And in this he writes, Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we. We in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors. Revering Buddhas and ancestors, we are one Buddha and one ancestor. So that's wonderful sentiment, Buddhas and ancestors of old, as are we. And we in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors. It sort of sets a fairly high bar. But it's also very encouraging. I really enjoyed, been enjoying studying the Platform Sutra, which is the main text we have that's ascribed to to Wineng. Lori and I have been talking about the sutra for the last couple of weeks as I've been studying it, and it's really grabbed my interest.

[05:25]

And it's interesting for me to see that I don't think I've read it for about 10 years, and I find the text a whole lot more accessible than it was 10 years ago, which is also kind of an encouraging sign. Laurie points out we've been talking that Winning's life would make a great movie. And actually, most of what I'll do tonight, I think, is talk about his life. But it's just one of the great unfolding stories of Zen. And it's full of adventure and drama and kind of hidden identity and revealed identity. And it's pretty cool. You could make a great movie out of it. I'm not sure who would play Winning. I think Jackie Chan is too old. And I don't think we'll get Ben Kingsley for this one.

[06:31]

But we can look. Some of you. I know Ross, I'm not sure anyone else here went on the China trip. Was there anyone else went with Sojourner Russia to China? Did you see Wen Eng's mummy? Well, his mummy does exist, and you can find pictures of it on the web. I think they embalmed him in sitting position. And this is pretty old now. He died in 713. Anyhow, it's really a great story. And I also just want to acknowledge I've had helpful discussions in the last couple weeks with Sojin Roshi and with Eric Green, who's been studying Chinese Buddhism.

[07:42]

And as Laurie and I have been walking and talking, she observed that one thing that's great about Buddhism and about talking about the ancestors is that As we're talking about it, the scope of the discussion just keeps widening out. It gets ever wider. It doesn't narrow down to the point where you actually get it. It actually just widens and widens to take in the whole world. The more you study, the wider these questions get. The more one looks, the harder it is to pin down essences. And of course, this is not so surprising because there are no essences to be pinned down. And on the other hand, you could say, and that's the essence. And this is what one of the core teachings that Winning is talking about

[08:51]

very frequently is essence of mind and what does that mean. We'll come around to it. So tonight what I want to do is talk about the text and some of the context of its composition and then to tell Winang's story, sort of as a story for fun, and touch on just a couple of major doctrinal points that he contributes, and I'd just like to invite you to interrupt me, ask questions, or seek clarification, and if I can't help with it, maybe there's somebody else in the room who can. Okay, so the texts that I work from, there are several. The earliest ones were found in the Buddhist caves in Western China, the Dunhuang Caves, which were discovered, I think, in the 30s, and a huge cache of Buddhist materials, only a small portion of which has been translated to date.

[10:03]

But they did find a very early text of what was the Platform Sutra, and the translation I'm using is one from the library that's very interesting, particularly has great introductory materials, and it was done by Filip Jampolsky in the late 60s. And for background, it's really superb. The text that I'm mostly going to quote from is one that Sojin Roshi tends to use for his classes. You may have seen it. It's this little brown book which contains the Diamond Sutra and the Platform Sutra of Winang. It's from Shambhala. I'm not sure if it's still in print. It is, but it looks different. It looks different, yeah. And that translation is by Wong Mulan. It was made in the 30s. and revised a little, and it's from a later redaction of the text.

[11:10]

And so there's stuff. It's interesting when you have time, which I really didn't even have to do, have this time, to kind of A, B these earlier and later texts and see what kept getting added. He also used, I'll read you something from it, this, which is also in the library, the Sixth Patriarch Sutra, which was translated and commented on by Master, Shan Master Wa, who founded City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and Gold Mountain Monastery. He's a Chinese Zen teacher and his his commentary, the text he uses is also a later one and his commentary is very warm and kind of really interesting and funny. I'll read you something from that. So this text, the Sutra itself, Wen Eng lived from, I think, let's see, I have the exact dates, from 638 to 713, that's the common, that's the common,

[12:15]

dates that are ascribed to him, and he was a historical character. The sutra itself was composed probably about between 780 and 800, so considerably after he had lived. And a lot of the teaching is teaching that probably was not his but comes from later doctrinal divisions that kept developing. And it contained many stories, and in fact the later editions, the stories keep getting added to. So the historicity of the Platform Sutra itself is pretty doubtful and unclear. That it was actually his teaching or his words, it's very hard to know.

[13:29]

And the sutra itself seems that it was composed by a monk named Fa Hai, who was a disciple of one of Wen Ning's disciples, Shen Li. And there was at that time, not in Wen Ning's time, but as the Tang Dynasty kind of developed, there was this doctrinal struggle between what we call the Northern School and the Southern School. And it was a power struggle, and it was a struggle for defining who are the ancestors. So it comes back around to ancestors. So I see the sutra as a kind of political document, and yet it also functions as a myth or a folktale, something that embodies

[14:39]

truth that is kind of beyond time and historicity and beyond I don't know, I was thinking about it today in Zazen. I know we're not supposed to be doing this. I was reminded, reading this, I was reminded of, thinking of this, I was reminded of Moby Dick, which is this incredible story that probably didn't happen. It has sources, the whale ship Essex that was rammed and sunk by a whale, but the actual mythos level of the story of Moby Dick probably didn't happen that way. And yet, it has a truth. It contains truth about human nature and about ourselves that can't be denied. And it's also all mixed. I think Moby Dick is also interesting because if you've read the novel, it's all mixed in with these long treatises on whaling, you know, and on the technical nature of whaling and what you do and how you cut the blubber off the bones and melt it down and what the tri-works were like and all this stuff.

[15:55]

It's very technical. It's not literary. in the same way that within the truth of this story, you have all this technical dharma that's being transmitted and a whole lot of arguments and cases. Now, these are as you could say this is not necessarily Wei Ning's work in the same way that you could say that the technical material of Moby Dick is not Ishmael recounting this. This is somebody composed it and put it in someone's voice. And because they did that, it has truth to us. So these myths affect the very core of our minds, and they live in ways that we can't even grasp. Akinroshi has some really nice stuff to say about this, and commentary.

[16:56]

There are a couple of cases in the Mumonkan that are ascribed, case 23 and case 29, which are ascribed to, they're about or about some of the things that I'll tell you about, but Akinroshi writes, is this a true story? From very early times, Buddhist history has been retold to present archetypal themes clearly. On examining the internal evidence, most scholars believe that Huining could not have been illiterate. In fact, the historical validity of the entire Sutra of Huining is doubtful. Never mind. Scholars seek historical facts. Zen students seek religious themes. My own view is that where scholarship helps to clarify the themes, it can be very useful. The rest can distract the student of religion from resolving life and death questions. Such chronicles as this should be read for their values as folk stories. And from that perspective, what a fine story it is.

[17:57]

It is especially important for us to see the mythic import of Wineng's illiteracy, his lay status, and the defeat of Shenshu. These elements teach us that the Tao is not established on words, that it is transmitted outside tradition, and that it is not concerned only with wiping away dusty thoughts. So I really like that a lot. It's interesting, in the Mahayana literature and Chinese literature, the Platform Sutra occupies this unique place of being the only text that we call a sutra that comes from China. And correspondingly, it's the only Buddhist text that's included in the recognized body of Chinese literary classics. So there's a truth to this story and its teachings that I think, despite the scholarly questions, have a lot to do with our practice here.

[19:00]

And I wanted to say something about ancestors. So ancestor means one who has gone before. And also it carries the implication of that the one who has gone before has a kind of living power. living power coming from the past to affect the present and future. I think, in fact, we tend to create our ancestors to bolster the present, and that's actually what was happening in the time in the early Tang Dynasty. And in a lot of ways, they were creating a lineage, you could say, in respect for their ancestors. But in creating a lineage, they're also validating or rooting the authority that we have, say, in the present.

[20:13]

We could say Sojin Roshi's authority comes from the fact that he was Suzuki Roshi student and on back. And we like to, we look back to our ancestors. We look to Dogen and we like to think that we tend to say, oh, we do Dogen's practice. And of course, nobody knows what Dogen's practice was. We have the slightest idea what it was like back there, even though we have a lot of texts. And I doubt that it would look very much like us sitting around this room today. And yet we use that sense of ancestors to authenticate or authorize what we do in the present. So there's this interesting play in time that goes back and forth between past and present. And I think this has a lot to do with the making of the Platform Sutra.

[21:19]

Ancestral practice, there are a lot of sides to it, which I hope we'll get a chance to talk about some tonight and some in discussions that we have during this month. Ancestral practice kind of ensures a kind of stability and steadiness, and it has some It has some downsides too. Rigidity. It can create a base where you can say, well, this is the way to do it because the ancestors did it. Ancestral practice tends to be patriarchal. It's a patriarchal model. In fact, really, it's a Confucian model. at least as it was handed down to the Zen tradition. They didn't talk about it a whole lot in India and South Asia.

[22:23]

So I feel like the interesting thing is that this ancestral practice always has us looking backwards and we have to be vigilant that we're looking backwards to support a practice that's vital in the present rather than one that's shut down by the past. I think that's some of the hazards of it. In the Confucian values of filial piety, is an important characteristic of the Zen tradition. I think we're trying to change it so it's not as narrowly gender-biased as it has been in the past, but those were also patriarchal cultures that it came from, and hopefully that's not something that we're going to replicate, but we always have to be on guard.

[23:32]

And it's also interesting that this Platform Sutra, not long before Winang emerged, there was a big sit-down meeting called by the emperor in, I think it was 574 or 575, where he wanted to have it out, decide which was gonna be the state religious doctrine, was it going to be Buddhism, Taoism, or Confucianism, which wasn't exactly religion, but which were gonna be sort of the foundational values. And Buddhism lost, big time. Buddhism and Taoism lost, but there was a tremendous Buddhist repression then, not long before, you know, less than 100 years from when we then began to practice. And monasteries were destroyed, people were disrobed, and the Confucian values were affirmed.

[24:46]

But it's interesting, when you look at this Platform Sutra, if you study it, I don't know if we're going to get to this, it embodies, in this, creating this lineage, this sense of ancestors, It's folding in the Confucian values. It's also in its core teaching of not depending upon words, not depending upon texts, not depending upon any particular actions, very consonant with the Taoist ideology of the time. So the Chinese are always synthesizing all this stuff. And when you go to a Chinese monastery, even now, you'll find a synthesis of practices. You'll find they'll do meditation, they'll do devotional practices, they'll do bowing, they'll do Sutra chanting, they'll do Vinaya, monk's rule practice.

[25:48]

All of these coexist sort of under one roof. which is very rich. So, as I said, the early Tang Dynasty was when these lineages were being created. They were being created from, the ancestors were being named and lined out in a kind of melding of legend and person. We mark, and they mark, the first ancestor, the first patriarch being Bodhidharma, and the second one being Uyghur, who we know as the disciple who, in order to show his sincerity to Bodhidharma, cut off his arm. In our lineage that we chanted, Uyghur is Taiso Eka. Following Wico, Wico transmitted the robe and bowl that was handed to him by Bodhidharma to Sengsthan, or Kanshi Sosan, who is the author of a poem called the Shinshin Ming, which some of you may know, Faith in Mind.

[27:06]

He transmitted the Patriarchate to Daoshin, or Daihidoshin, who then transmitted to Hongzhen, or Daimon Konin, who was Wineng's teacher. Then the orthodox contemporary literature lists the Sikh patriarch as Shenshu of the Eastern Mountain School. All of these were the Eastern Mountain School, which then became named as the Northern School. And Hsuan-Shu then transmitted to Pu-Chi as the Seventh Patriarch. And all of the contemporary chronicles, that's the way it is. And that's exactly... Contemporary, you mean at that time? At that time, yeah. If you go back before, if you go back to the... early 700s, and Shenshu was a very prominent monk.

[28:16]

He was a favorite of the Empress and was very wealthy, very well thought of, and he figures prominently in the story of Wen Ning. which we will get to sooner or later. But Wineng was listed also in those chronicles as a disciple of Hongzhen, but not a particularly prominent one. And little was known of him. There were no records in those early chronicles. None of the stories that appear in the Platform Sutra appear there until considerably later. So there was this doctrinal struggle that emerged. And it's interesting because in the story of the Platform Sutra and in the story of the composition of the Platform Sutra and thereafter, this doctrinal struggle

[29:18]

which is sort of a thread of actual violence that runs throughout it. And we're sort of surprised by it, because you think of Buddhism as kind of peaceful and nonviolent, and everyone is nice, and even if you don't like each other, you get along. But the thread of violence and jealousy and attempted murder is thematic through this story. And it catches us by surprise. Because we think that, well, if he's the patriarch, there should be this kind of zone of enlightenment or peace around him. And we have this mistaken notion that peace means no conflict. Whereas, peace, and this is the way you keep encountering it. Peace means being able to keep your balance in the midst of conflict and danger, and even where you might lose your balance, to regain it, so to hold one's ground in a dynamic sense.

[30:35]

And the fact that there's this violence in the story we've inherited, not the violence here, but we've inherited a world that is deeply violent. It was not much, human nature was not that different, you know, even 1,500 years ago. And so, just as Sui Neng had to reckon with the forces that acted in his life and find Where does the practice, how does the practice inform that? We have to do the same thing. So Winning's settledness, and as you hear the story, his settledness was able to encompass the kind of afflictive emotions and violence that was all around him, even in the face of assassination, or attempted assassination, they did not succeed.

[31:43]

Okay. There are six requirements that sort of create the context for a sutra. One is that there be, well, it's faith, hearing, time, host, place, and assembly. And that's just the way this story begins. Most sutras begin, you know, they begin, thus have I heard the Buddha was assembled. So this one begins once, When the patriarch had arrived at Paolin Monastery, Prefect Wei of Xiaozhou and other officials went there to ask him to deliver public lectures on Buddhism in the hall of Tafan Temple in the city of Canton.

[32:49]

In due course, They were assembled in the lecture hall, Prefect Wei, government officials, and Confucian scholars, about 30 each, and bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, Taoists, and laymen to the number of about 1,000. After the patriarch had taken his seat, the congregation in a body paid him homage and asked him to preach on the fundamental laws of Buddhism, whereupon His Holiness delivered the following address. So you have these, the requirements are met, so we can call this a sutra. And he sets the tone from his very first sentence, and the rest of this, as is often the case in a sutra, the rest of it is a kind of explication of this statement. He says, learned audience, our essence of mind literally self-nature, which is the seed or kernel of enlightenment, is pure by nature.

[33:58]

And by making use of this mind alone, we can reach Buddhahood directly. Our essence of mind or self-nature, which is the seed or kernel of enlightenment, is pure by nature. And by making use of this mind alone, we can reach Buddhahood directly. And then he says, now let me tell you something about my own life and how I came into possession of the teaching of the jhana or Zen school. So his telling of his life is the way in which he explains or unpacks that sentence. And that sentence, whether he had said it or not, contains within it some of the critical Dharma elements, this kind of positional struggle which we'll see in the basic stories between the sudden and the gradual school.

[35:06]

Sudden being his school, the Southern school, and gradual being what's ascribed to Shenshu, who was the leader of the Northern School. They were both monks in this monastery under Hongzhen. So, before I leap into the story, any questions or comments? Yeah, that's good. Let's take a five-minute break, and that'll be I'd like to make it short. You want to shut that off so that we can get the whole thing on one CD? Okay, five minutes, folks. Okay, so, Wineng was kind of impoverished youth, supposedly illiterate. I mean, he was a layperson. His father had died when he was young, and he was kind of a, I think of him as like a hillbilly.

[36:15]

a Chinese hillbilly who had native wit. And he was a woodcutter and wood seller. So one day he made a delivery. And as I left the shop, outside of which I found a man reciting a sutra. As soon as I heard the text of the sutra, my mind at once became enlightened. And he was about 24 at this time. Thereupon I asked the man the name of the book he was reciting and was told it was the Diamond Sutra, which is very appropriate since that's what we've just been studying here. And the line that other stories have him having heard was, one should produce a thought which is nowhere supported. And this is a critical point. This is a line from the Diamond Sutra.

[37:18]

And it's a very wonderful commentary by Master Hua on this line, which is great. when he heard this line, which is also the line that was then taught to him when he went, when he received the patriarchy from Hong Jin. So Master Hua says, because I have a kind of radar, I was able to record the discussion. This is a later discussion that happens between Hong Jin and Wen Ning. I was able to record their conversation and I shall now replay it for you. Keep in mind that this is a Tang Dynasty recording, not a present one. So it's probably not on a CD. Do you want to reach Buddhahood? asked the fifth patriarch. Yes, said the sixth patriarch. I just want to become a Buddha. I do not seek anything else. I only want to attain Buddhahood.

[38:21]

Your resolution is extremely firm, replied the fifth patriarch, but if you want to realize Buddhahood, you must first cut off ignorance, for it is ignorance which produces the afflictions of delusion brought on by false views and false thought. If you want to cut off these afflictions, you must first cut off ignorance. For example, the cycle of birth and death is based on the state of emotional love. When you break through ignorance, then the delusions of false views and false thoughts which are tied to birth and death cease to exist, for ignorance is the root of birth and death. If you want to cut off ignorance and thereby put an end to birth and death, then, as the Diamond Sutra says, produce a thought which is nowhere supported. That means do not dwell in emotional love. Get rid of desire and cast out craving.

[39:23]

Then you can bring an end to birth and death. The sixth patriarch heard this and suddenly became enlightened. He saw through to his original face and said, ah, it is basically just like this. It is not difficult at all. In fact, it's very easy. Thus he became enlightened. This has been a Tang Dynasty recording, which has just been played for you to hear. So here, when he hears this verse, there's an immediate resonance. He has an awakening, but it's not thoroughly integrated. And so he asks this person, where did you hear this teaching? And it was a monk, and the monk replies, he came from the Tung Chan Monastery, and the teacher was Hung Jen, the fifth patriarch, and there were about 1,000 disciples under him. And so Wun Nung decides, I'm gonna go there.

[40:29]

It was about 1,000 miles away. And he says, it must be due to my good karma in past lives that I heard about this and that I was given 10 tails, that's an amount of money, a lot I think, for the maintenance of my mother. by a man who advised me to go to interview the fifth patriarch. And so after the arrangements had been made for her, I left for Huangmei, which took me 30 days to reach. So it's nice in the story, he provides for his mother, he takes care of her, and then he goes and does the spiritual work that he needs to do. He gets there, and he is introduced to Hung Chen, and who asks him where he comes from, and what he expected to get from him. He says, I am a commoner from the South. I have traveled far to pay your respect, and I ask for nothing but Buddhahood. You are a native of Guangdong, a barbarian?

[41:33]

How can you expect to be a Buddha, asks the patriarch. And I replied, although there are northern men and southern men, north and south make no difference in their Buddha nature. A barbarian may be different from your holiness physically, but there's no difference in our Buddha nature. He was going to speak further to me, but the presence of other disciples made him stop. He then ordered me to join the crowd to work. So he sends him to work, he doesn't ordain him. He sends him to work, and that's physically he sends him to work, and also he's sending him to do his spiritual work, his refinement, his cultivation. But Wineng is kind of a smart ass. May I tell your holiness, said I, that prajna, transcendental wisdom, often rises in my mind. When one does not go astray from one's own essence of mind, one may be called field of merits, which is a title that's given to monks.

[42:42]

So I do not know what work your holiness would ask me to do. This barbarian is too bright, he remarked. Go to the stable and don't say anything else. I then withdrew myself to the backyard and was told by a lay brother to split firewood, which he was very good at, that was his former gig, and to pound rice. So one day, the patriarch assembled all of his disciples, he was getting old, and he He's decided he's going to pick the new patriarch. Go and seek wisdom in your own mind and write me a verse about it. He who understands what that essence of mind is will be given the robe, the insignia of the patriarchate, and the dharma, the transmission of the Zen school.

[43:57]

and I shall make him the sixth patriarch. Go away quickly. Delay not in writing the stanza, as deliberation is quite unnecessary and of no use. The man who has realized the essence of mind can speak of it at once. and he can't lose sight of it, even when engaged in battle. So the disciples all went back to their room and basically said, it's no use for us to concentrate our mind to write the stanza and submit it, because it's bound to be won by the head monk, Shenshu, who is actually their teacher, their instructor. Meanwhile, Shenshu is saying, Considering that I am their teacher, none of them will take part in the competition. I wonder whether I should write a stanza and submit it to His Holiness. If I do not, how can the patriarch know how deep or superficial my knowledge is? If my object is to get the Dharma, my motive is a pure one.

[44:59]

If I were after the patriarchate, then it would be bad." He can't figure out whether to write something or not because he knows he doesn't really have it yet. He doesn't get it. And he knows that. Then he suggested to himself, he composed a stanza after several attempts, but he couldn't get his courage together to submit it. And this took him like four days. He said, oh, altogether in the course of four days, he made 13 attempts to write out this stanza. He just couldn't get himself to do it. Then he suggested to himself, it would be better for me to write it on the wall of the corridor and let the patriarch see it for himself. If he approves it, I shall come out to pay homage and tell him it is done by me. But if he disapproves it, then I shall have wasted several years in this mountain in receiving homage from others which I by no means deserve."

[46:07]

In that case, what progress have I made in learning Buddhism? Yeah? Well, that's an interesting narrative problem. The narrative is being spoken by Huining. And one might well inquire, how does he know this? Right. That's why this is a story. This is Shenshu. So at 12 o'clock that night, he went secretly with a lamp to write the stanza on the wall of the South Corridor. He wrote, The body is the wisdom tree. The mind is a bright mirror in a stand. Take care to wipe it all the time and allow no dust to cling.

[47:08]

That's another translation actually. I like this one better. Our body is the Bodhi tree and our mind a mirror bright. Carefully we wipe them hour by hour and let no dust alight. It was really amazing how he could rhyme in English. But the patriarch already knew that Shenshu had not entered the door of enlightenment and they had not known the essence of mind. He sees the verse and he ordered incense to be burned. and all his disciples to pay homage to it and to recite it so that they might realize the essence of mind. After they had recited it, all of them exclaimed, well done. At midnight, the patriarch sent for Hsinchu to come to the hall and asked him whether the stanza was written by him or not.

[48:11]

It was, sir, replied Hsinchu. I dare not be so vain as to expect to get the patriarchate, but I wish your holiness would kindly tell me whether my stanza shows the least grain of wisdom. Your stanza, replied the patriarch, shows that you have not yet realized the essence of mind. So far you have reached the door of enlightenment, but you have not yet entered it. To seek for supreme enlightenment with such an understanding as yours can hardly be successful. He didn't say he can't do it. He just says he hasn't got it. To attain supreme enlightenment, one must be able to know spontaneously one's own nature or essence of mind, which is neither created nor can it be annihilated. Now one of the things about this sutra is that there is no Zazen instruction in it. He never tells, neither here nor later, is there an explanation of what you have to do

[49:14]

to realize this essence of mind, which is interesting. Actually, the place that tells you what to do is actually contained in Shenshu's verse. That's the closest there is to it. That's partly why even though this is a political document or a polemical document, almost unbeknownst to itself, it contains the truth, if you put the elements together. Sen Shu made obeisance to the patriarch and left. For several days, he tried in vain to write another stanza. This upset his mind so much that he was ill at ease as if he were in a nightmare, and he could find comfort neither in sitting nor in walking.

[50:18]

So then the, Wenang is walking by. He hears the monks reciting this. He can't read. And he said, what stanza is this? And this monk replied, you barbarian, you don't know about it? The patriarch told his disciples that the question of incessant rebirth was a momentous one and those who wished to inherit his robe and dharma should write him a stanza. Elder Shenshu wrote this formless stanza on the wall of the South Corridor and the Patriarch told us to recite it. He also said that those who put its teaching into actual practice would attain great merit and be saved from the misery of being born in the evil realms of existence. I, this is we nun now, told the boy I wish to recite the stanza too so that I might have an affinity with its teaching in future life. So he asked the boy, he's never been to the Dharma Hall, he's been in the kitchen pounding rice for eight months.

[51:23]

The boy took me there and I asked him to read it to me as I am illiterate. When he had finished reading, I told him that I had also composed a stanza and asked him to write it for me. Extraordinary indeed, he exclaimed, that you can compose a stanza. Don't despise a beginner, said I. You should know, he's modest too, you should know that the lowest class may have the sharpest wit, while the highest may be in want of intelligence. If you slight others, you commit a very great sin. Dictate your stanza, said he, I will take it down for you. But don't forget to deliver me should you succeed in getting the dharma. He's covering his bases, this guy. So he writes, he has this young monk write him a stanza. So his stanza is, so let me read you Chen Xu's again. The body is the wisdom, no, read this translation, sorry.

[52:27]

Our body is the Bodhi tree and our mind a mirror bright. Carefully we wipe them hour by hour and let no dust alight. My stanza read, There is no Bodhi tree, nor stand of mirror bright. Since all is void, where can the dust alight? When he had written this, all disciples and others were present, were greatly surprised. Filled with admiration, they said to each other, how wonderful, no doubt we should not judge people by appearance. How can it be that for so long we have made a Bodhisattva incarnate work for us? Seeing that the crowd was overwhelmed with amazement, the patriarch rubbed off the stanza with his shoe. Less jealous ones should do me injury. He expressed this opinion publicly, which they took for granted, that the author of this stanza had not yet realized the essence of mind.

[53:32]

Next day, the patriarch came secretly to the room where the rice was pounded. Seeing that I was working there with a stone pestle, Actually, the way it's described is he had this big rock tied around his belly so that there was more weight in the pounding. He said to me, this is Hung Jen, the fifth patriarch says, a seeker of the path risks his life for the Dharma. Should he not do so? Then he said, is the rice ready? And I replied, ready long ago, only waiting for the sieve. In other words, waiting to be filtered through the teacher's consciousness and then ready to be cooked and served. He knocked the mortar three times and left. Knowing that this message meant in the third watch of the night, I went to his room.

[54:35]

using the robe as a screen so that none could see us. So Hongchen takes his robe, because the walls were very insubstantial, he takes his robe and he spreads it out over them, which is interesting. If ever you've been to Tassajara when there's a Dharma transmission going on, the Dharma transmission is done in this red room, you know, with room completely hung with red, and that's, echoes of this Hongjun taking his robe and spreading it out. Very intimate. Just think about it. Using the robe as a screen so that none could see us, he expounded the Diamond Sutra to me. When he came to this sentence, the one I had quoted, you should raise a thought which is nowhere supported, or one should use one's mind in such a way that it would be free from any attachment. I at once became enlightened and realized that all things in the universe are the essence of mind itself.

[55:41]

So the patriarch, the fifth patriarch continues to teach him for a few minutes and says, you are now the sixth patriarch. Take good care of yourself and deliver as many sentient beings as possible. Spread and preserve the teaching and don't let it come to an end. When the patriarch Bodhidharma first came to China, most Chinese had no confidence in him, and so this robe was handed down as a testimony from one patriarch to another. As to the Dharma, this is transmitted from heart to heart, and the recipient must realize it by his or her own efforts. Then he says, as the robe may give cause for dispute, you are the last one to inherit it. should you hand it down to your successor, your life will be in danger. That's the robe itself. And upon receiving the robe and the begging bowl in the middle of the night, the patriarch says, oh, now you should leave this place as quickly as you can, lest someone should do you harm.

[57:00]

Upon receiving the robe in the begging bowl in the middle of the night, I told the patriarch that, being a southerner, I did not know the mountain tracks and that it was impossible for me to get to the mouth of the river to catch a boat. You need not worry, said he. I will go with you. He then accompanied me and ordered me into a boat, and as he did the rowing himself, I asked him to sit down and let me handle the oar. It is only right for me to carry you across, Hongjun said. an illusion to the sea of birth and death, which one has to cross before the shore of nirvana can be reached. To this I replied, while I am under illusion, it is for you to get me across, but after enlightenment I should cross it by myself. So I think I'm going to stop there for a moment. Let me say a few things about these poems and also just take some questions.

[58:08]

When talking with Sojin Roshi, he said, Suzuki Roshi didn't like this story very much. He didn't think it was authentic. Now, he probably knew some of the scholarly material that had already surfaced. that this was a constructed story well after the fact. But I think what he didn't like, and this has been my feeling about this, and Sojin Roshi, I know he's taught it this way too, that actually neither one of these poems is sufficient for us in our practice. together they create the practice that we do. So Wineng's poem is really coming from the absolute.

[59:16]

It's coming from, and his school is identified as the sudden school, that basically when causes and conditions come up, come together in such a way that you just awake at once. And the gradual school has been falsely characterized as a school of steps and stages. But actually if you read the literature of Northern Zen, it's not like that. It's just, but Shenshu, who then became the Sixth Patriarch in that northern lineage, what he is talking about is constant cultivation. Together, these make the practice that we do. It's very much, I relate it to the question, when Dogen was a young boy,

[60:24]

The question that plagued him was, if we already have the Buddha nature, if each being is Buddha, why do we have to practice? And Raoul may talk about this. When he asked his teachers in the Tendai school about this, they said, you know what, you should go talk to a Zen teacher because they really know about this stuff. And what he came to, which I think has a lot to do with our practice and with Suzuki Roshi's practice, and I suspect it had a lot to do with Wen Ning's actual practice, although it's not discussed much in here. I mean, he was the abbot of a monastery, he did ordain, and he did teach after wandering in the wilderness for 15 years. So it wasn't that he was oblivious to cultivation. his work, the work of pounding rice, is an expression of this cultivation.

[61:36]

So these later redactions of his story I think is what Suzuki was responding to as not, didn't ring true to him. So what Dogen came to was this concept that we really do try to enact of practice realization, that when we sit down and sit upright, we're actually expressing our Buddha nature, our Buddha life, by taking the position of the Buddha. So there's cultivation. We take this position. If we just walked around carelessly, we wouldn't be aware. If there was no cultivation, we would not be likely to wake up suddenly.

[62:43]

What when he talks about, later in the sutra, when he's talking about sudden and gradual, he says, well, really, there are no sudden and gradual. They're just people with different capacities for taking things in. It's like what I think Suzuki already talked about. There's fast horses and there's slow horses. And you might actually find being a fast horse to be a handicap because you would have some awakening, but you wouldn't have cultivation. Win Neng was smart enough when he awakened to know he had to find a teacher. He immediately went to seek that teacher and then practiced with him. So these stories contain both sides of our practice.

[63:45]

Does that make sense? And so it's interesting, we have to extract from this text, we have to extract what our truth is, which is not necessarily the same as the argument that's being laid out here. So, any questions or comments at this point? Elizabeth? I think I'm about to get tangential. You know, it's interesting that Suzuki Roshi maybe didn't see some of this story. I'm thinking in terms of othering. You have the South and the North. You have aristocratic and working class kind of tensions in the story, as well as the two lessons from the mirror of size coming together in a holistic sense.

[64:50]

And it makes me think a lot about Suzuki Roshi's idea of wanting to bring East to West and Zen to American students and vice versa and have that connection. And it makes me think a lot about within that element of the ancestors and what you alluded to earlier about the gender. And even within the Zen centers that Suzuki Roshi founded, the fact of at least two of the genders of the continual actually practice together apparently for the first time. And so the reason I'm so hot on this issue is because I've been trying to, I recently learned that there was a diversity committee at San Francisco's Zen Center and I was trying And to me, that's what I hear, is another story of inclusivity brought to us courtesy of our six-painter.

[66:01]

I'm not even sure where to go with that without getting off on a larger tangent. Essentially, I agree. And it's also true, we have to keep looking that we bring our mind to this story. And to go back to this, produce a thought which is nowhere supported. to Master Wah's comment. I think in all these cases we have to be very careful. To produce a thought which is nowhere supported means don't have any idea about how things are supposed to be. Of course, when we learn later in this, in this text, he describes a kind of ordination, when it's an ordination where you receive the precepts.

[67:27]

So this is not apart from the precepts. It's not an amoral sense, but it's just to constantly look. This master was saying, look at your attachments. To produce a thought that's nowhere supported is kind of like recognizing that your thoughts, you, looking at your thought is like a person on a raft on a river. Sometimes the river is flowing slowly, sometimes the river is flowing really fast. You're just on this raft and it's just going. And it doesn't bear much relationship to the scenery that's passing. And whatever idea you have about this moment, if you hold on to it, you're down the river and it's not so relevant, you're already in the next moment. And so it's not to be attached to things in the past and not to be leaning towards things in the present.

[68:32]

And the question is how do we bring that forth in a way that saves sentient beings? And that's what Master Wah is saying. When he says emotional love, the way I hear that what you want to do is to be free. Our suffering comes from emotional reactivity, not from emotion. because we can't stop the emotion. Emotions is a thought unsupported. It just comes forth because, you know, the river has banks and it has body of water and it's got conditions and within it, it just flows. But so that's like our minds, you know, we have lives and we have conditions, we have backgrounds and jobs and all that stuff. But, and we have emotions, which are part of the you know, part of the landscape. So they're going to go by.

[69:33]

But if we react to them, if we're caught by them, then that's where we fall off of producing the thought. That's where we produce a thought that we try to support. Does that make sense? So, you know, and how that relates to diversity and inclusion, I mean, it's a long discussion. I think it does. because we have to have a very wide view of what we're doing here. Other thoughts, questions? Ellen? Well, I think it's interesting that his literacy, for example, is not historic, and maybe his class, his actual class background is not historically accurate, for example. But it's interesting, I mean, the reasons that, you know, so the historical reasons that the story is actually written, right?

[70:39]

There's all these political reasons, all this underlying, but then to try to figure out what's, I think that's what Akinroshi's saying, it's like, okay, so let's try to, who cares about the politics and all that? Like, what can we actually get out of this story? And I think that is a theme that was really powerful to me when I first read the story You know, it's like the movie's actually already been made. It's Good Will Hunting. Somebody else said that this week. Oh, Eric Green. Yeah. It's this bright, illiterate person from wherever who comes into this establishment and kind of blows them all out of the water. But not really, maybe, but kind of. I don't know, I mean I think it is a story of acceptance and I think the encouraging part about this story, now I'm more curious to find out whether Waynone actually was a person of lower class or exactly his historical self.

[71:48]

It's interesting, his family was declassed. His father was an official who was then dismissed. and then died. So he came from, they had an upper class background, but they had been poor for years, and without a father, it was very difficult. But it's interesting, in all of these things, you never hear a complaint in any of sorts about the poverty that he comes from, and that when he needed to do what he needed to do, the world came forward and gave him what he needed to support his mother so that he didn't just desert her. But also the lesson of the story is that the moral of the story that I got from it when I first read it is that it doesn't matter where you come from or what your background is or who you are, you can do it and you can make it and don't think. It's like what he says to this encouraging him.

[73:13]

I don't know, I find it interesting that Suzuki Roshi didn't like the story. No, it's not that he didn't like the story. It's that he didn't believe it. He believed that this, and I feel the same way. The story I relate to, the counterposition of, the counterposition of Shenshu and Wineng doesn't ring true to me. As a story, you know, it makes some sense, but you can see as you go on, there's a constant denigration in this text of Hsuan Hsu. And in point, in actual fact, in 732, Hsuan Hui, who was the disciple of Tsui Nung, organized a conference to denounce Shenshu and the Northern School. And Shenhui, this text comes out of that. So it's polemical.

[74:14]

So it's not that I don't believe there's religious truth in here. It's just I can read the politics in it, too, and that's what doesn't ring true to me. I think that's what probably didn't ring true to him. Mark? kind of psychological tale here. I read the statement, have a thought that is not supportive. It's not a negative comment. It's a positive, it's be bold. Don't worry about your sources in a certain way. It doesn't have to be connected. Say it, do it, sudden school. Just do it. That goes along with this sort of development of the character there. He's just doing things. Well, we're out of time, just about, but the next section, he goes to the mountains and you have this dimension of filial piety where the fifth patriarch says, don't do anything.

[75:55]

for a long time. He goes to the mountains and he lives with hunters and mountain men for 15 years. 15 years. Not showing himself, not teaching, but 15 years of practicing, of cultivating his mind, of... So he's not just out there. You know, I'm realized and I'm going to express it. It's like he realizes that with his realization is the responsibility for cultivation and refinement. The rice is actually not ready. You know, he has to put himself, the sieve has got to be the sieve of his own life. And he spent 15 years doing that, which is, you know, a really powerful part of the story. One more question and I think we have to end tomorrow. There's also, for me, there's a whole myth of transmission.

[77:00]

It's really big in this story, that one guy has it and the other guy doesn't. And in reality, I find that there's something kind of troubling about that to me, the idea that you either get it or you don't. And some people get it. I was thinking, when a CEO moves on that's political. Yeah, well I think that's right, and we can, I'd like to continue this discussion. We'll find another venue, I think maybe an open discussion on Monday, but you know, in point of fact, Hong Chen had 10 registered disciples, and one of the things is we're not just talking about transmission.

[78:04]

I mean, and Bodhidharma had heirs also. In this creation of the ancestral lineage, there's a kind of, these people, there's a contention in later generations for deciding who's the heir. You know? Of course we do. Yeah. But it doesn't mean, I mean, for example, we talked about Sojinroji, to date, he has 18 Dharma heirs. 18, and there will be more. Is one of them? No one of them is the heir. People may have to take different positions, lead this group or that group, but when they're recognized, they're recognized because people are recognized theoretically because of their understanding, not because of their position.

[79:09]

speaking for myself, I'm not so sure about my understanding, but it's not a hierarchical thing, and it's not even exclusive of everybody else's, of each other practitioner's understanding. painful and difficult feelings come up around this. And this is, you know, and they were so difficult that he had to flee. And immediately when he fled, he was chased.

[79:41]

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