I vow to taste the truth of God's very chosen works. Good evening. Well, the Platform Sutra was, I think, maybe my first Zen text that I ever read. And a friend of mine, in the 60s, I was a painter, and this friend of mine who was a painter said, this is maybe 1959, maybe the 50s, somewhere in the late 50s,

[01:08]

or early 16th century, I don't know. Anyway, he gave me this book called The Platform Sutra. Actually, it's that little volume I have, the little brown one. And he said, you should read this. This is really great. The Platform Sutra of Wei Lang. And he was very inspired by it. So I read it, and I thought it was great. But even though I didn't understand it completely, the tone of the sutra and the way it was presented was really eye-opening for me. So in a way, that was a seed, I think, for my Zen practice. And he continued on as thinking, he felt that the sutra was, to him, the sutra was saying, you don't have to join a Buddhist community.

[02:34]

You can realize your essence of mind if you just blah, blah, blah. And to him, that was enough. So I went on to joined the Buddhist community eventually. And he continued being a painter and ended up dying of AIDS a few years ago. But I think I haven't thought about that for a long time, until just now actually. But it's interesting. And he kind of respected the fact of what I was doing and he could see me through the years and how my practice. I didn't see him all that much, you know, but during the years I would see him. But there was always something that he didn't, you know, that he wouldn't verify.

[03:43]

about my being a priest and being in a Buddhist community. It was very hard for him to accept that and to look at himself, because his own life was so scattered in so many ways. But I felt that his interpretation and his understanding was probably okay in some way, he didn't have a practice. And he thought that the sutra was saying you don't need to have a practice in order to practice. So it's kind of interesting. I want to, before I begin, what I would like us to do

[04:43]

After having studied, since last time, the Tarakam Sutra, I'd like you to tell me what it's about. But before we do that, I just want to read you, this book is called The Northern School and the Formation of Early Chan by McCrae. It's a study that he did of the Northern School up to now, the Northern School has been completely ignored. So when people read the Platform Sutra and read about the Northern School of Shen Xu, which died out after a few generations, nobody paid any attention to it anymore. But modern scholars, of course, have been researching, what was this Northern School that is being talked about? And they come up with a lot of factual evidence of what the Northern school was about, Hsinchu, and realizing that the Northern school was not such a bad school and didn't have all the, as I said before, the negative attributes that Mr. Hsinchu attributed to it.

[06:05]

So all this time people have been thinking then students of the Northern school had the wrong idea. I don't want to really get into comparing the Northern school and the Southern school and all the controversy. I think what I want to do is just open up the sutra so that we can study the sutra. When we're familiar with the sutra, then we can study the controversies. But this is just a little introductory note by McRae. And he says, the Platform Sutra is one of the most imaginative and dramatically effective pieces of early Chan literature, which it is. Not only is it entertaining and instructive to read, but it builds upon and resolves numerous issues of 8th century Chan Buddhism in a manner that is ingenious, but not forced or contrived.

[07:08]

It takes the image of an unschooled religious genius, first developed in connection with Hung Ren, that's the fifth ancestor, and expands it into the character of Hui Nung, who is both illiterate and inspired. De classe, but fundamentally superior. He's a nobody. but no class, but very classy. And the Platform Sutra depicts, the Platform Sutra's depiction of Hsuan Hsu as head monk and the originator of a very popular form of religious practice, that is, that based on the verse attached to him, is thus a reflection of the phenomenal success of Hsuan Hsu and the northern school at the beginning of the 8th century. Actually, the northern school was the school descending from Hsinchu that was the most popular.

[08:11]

And the southern school was very obscure after the demise of the 5th patriarch. I'm going to call him patriarch because, if you don't mind. Sometimes I call him ancestor, but everybody says patriarch. I'm going to have to keep transliterating into ancestor. or transposing into, which is okay, but sometimes it works better to say patriarch, so no slur intended. So this was the most popular school, and the Southern school was not popular, and Shen Hui, who was one of the sixth ancestor's disciples, his youngest one, his mission was to make the Southern school prominent and so he did this by kind of slandering the Northern school and he does it by producing the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor and so a lot of the allusions to the contest and so forth

[09:30]

are to discredit the northern school in favor of the southern school. So he says, similarly, in mentioning that Hung Rin publicly rejected Huineng's verse, and that the new sixth ancestor spent years in hiding, the Platform Sutra is acknowledging the initial obscurity of the southern school. Finally, the Sutra's scriptural references conform to the traditional understanding of the development of early Chan. Hsinchu's verse displaced paintings based on the Lankavatara Sutra. Remember, he did... there was somebody who was going to paint these pictures on the wall, and the fifth answer to the painter, no need for you now. We no need to paint the pictures depicting the Lankavatara Sutra, because The Diamond Sutra has now taken place in the Lankavatara Sutra. So Shen Hsu's verse displaced paintings based on the Lankavatara Sutra, but both Hui Nung's original enlightenment experience and final teachings from Hung Ren were based on the Diamond Sutra.

[10:49]

So the transition from Northern to Southern school has traditionally been explained in terms of a shift from the Lankavatara to the Diamond Sutra and from the gradual to the sudden teaching. In these senses, the Platform Sutra narrative can be read as an historical allegory. Actually, the Diamond Sutra did displace the Lankavatara Sutra. The Lankavatara Sutra is very difficult and seems to be pieced together It doesn't hold together in the same way that the Diamond Sutra holds together as one piece of complete thought. But there are many wonderful things in the Lankavatara Sutra. So Bodhidharma, when he came to China, said, you should study the Lankavatara Sutra. So, the Lagavatara Sutra was kind of like the basic text for Zen up until the sixth ancestor who said, he heard somebody reciting the Diamond Sutra and that awakened his mind.

[12:03]

And then the fifth ancestor taught him the completion of the Diamond Sutra before rowing him across. So, the Diamond Sutra became the prominent text, and the Lankavatara Sutra became more obscure. And people don't study the Lankavatara Sutra so much. So we chanted the Diamond Sutra this morning, wasn't it? Yesterday. This morning, yesterday. One critically important omission, however, indicates that the Platform Sutra was not merely echoing history, but rewriting it. This is the complete absence of any reference to the role played by Shen Hui, who carried the banner of Huineng during an extended energetic campaign against Shen Xiu's disciples and the Northern School in general.

[13:05]

The whole point of the narrative, in fact, is to validate Shen Hui's claim about Huineng, without reference to himself. In other words, he's kind of putting forth his own ideas in the form of Huineng. That is, the Platform Sutra wished to adopt and build upon Hsuan-Hui's teachings without identifying itself with his sometimes acrimonious and self-serving campaign. Although the verses and anecdote introduced earlier were evidently written after Hsuan-Hui's death, His extant writings include no mention of them. They are designed to expand on positions first articulated by him. Hsuan Hui attacked the Northern school for teaching an inferior gradualistic doctrine of meditation and enlightenment. According to Hsuan Hui, the adherents of that school taught that one should approach Buddhism as a means to progressively purify oneself and to propel oneself further and further along the path to perfect enlightenment.

[14:09]

So this is kind of gradual, you know, perfecting and polishing of oneself. And this reflects the verse about polishing the mirror. That if you continue to polish and continue to purify yourself, you will gradually become more and more enlightened. But this actually was not the doctrine of the Northern School. apparently Shen Hui's propaganda against the Northern School. So Shen Hui was particularly critical of the meditation practices of the Northern School masters, claiming that they taught their students to freeze the mind and enter dhyana. So there are a lot of different kinds of meditation, you know, And there were different varieties of meditation taught at that time, and since that time, and before that time.

[15:20]

So when they talk about dhyana, or meditation, it's really hard to be sure exactly what is being talked about. Because there are subtle differences which make a lot of difference in types of meditation. And Dogen, when he talks about meditation in China, he said, for 500 years, nobody was doing it right. So we have to think about what it is that is being talked about when they talk about meditation. And here, he says, freezing the mind. There is a type of meditation in which the mind you're not supposed to have any thoughts, or stop the mind from working, or be blank, you know. And people think that Zazen is like that. Even Zen students think that Zazen is supposed to be like that.

[16:24]

The biggest complaint that I hear of Zen students, day after day, is no matter, you know, I go into the Zen dojo and my mind is moving continually. Thought after thought. There's not a moment when my mind was free from thoughts. As if there was something wrong with that. But do you think anybody ever froze the mind? Or do you think they just talked about it? Well, it could be that they talked about it. I think people tried. I think that, yeah, people do try to do that. And you can. I mean, it's possible to do that. but it's not zazen. People sit cross-legged and often the form of the posture looks like zazen, but what actually goes on inside is not zazen. So there are a lot of different practices going on, even though the body is in a pretzel shape.

[17:30]

to freeze the mind and to enter dhyana, to fix the mind, to view purity, and to activate the mind, to eliminate the external, and to concentrate the mind, to realize the internal. In other words, the members of the Northern School supposedly manipulated their minds in order to achieve certain special effects. A lot of people do that. which, through a long regimen of sustained practice, eventually led to enlightenment. Hsien-Hui's Southern School disdained such practices because it was interested in a realm that was beyond all notions of duality, that is, of imperfection and perfection, not making distinction between perfection and imperfection, and in an approach to religious training that yielded attainment of the ultimate goal instantaneously rather than gradually. But we have to look at what the word instantaneously means, actually, because it can mean two things.

[18:46]

It can mean an instant of time, or it can mean all-inclusiveness. And it can mean all-inclusiveness in an instant of time, but I think it goes beyond just something happening in a sudden. All at once can mean not just all at once in a moment of time, but everything at one time. I don't know if that sounds the same. Maybe it sounds like A flat and B sharp. But there's a difference. It can mean in an instant of time, or it can mean seeing in one piece.

[19:55]

So I just wanted to read you that to prepare your mind. Now, I wrote a list of subjects that are taken up in the autobiography. And I read the autobiography. And these seem to be some of the subjects There are a lot of subjects, actually, but these are some of the main ones. So, the first one is that Hui Nang is young, that he's illiterate, that he's poor, that he's fatherless, and that he's a Southerner, among other things. Which means that he has no learning, and he doesn't even have the tools with which to learn that most people have. and he has no support and yet when he hears someone reciting the Diamond Sutra immediately his mind is awakened to his essence of essential nature.

[21:33]

So the point of the autobiography is to bring out the fact that everyone is endowed with the possibility of realizing their essential nature and it doesn't depend on education or wealth or position or support. And this is what was so wonderful, I think, about the Platform Sutra. And as the Platform Sutra progresses, it's not even dependent on meditation and it's not dependent on sutras or anything. And so the whole autobiography brings out this point, which is a wonderful point, you know, and it is very inspiring actually.

[22:36]

So then he has his first interview And he goes to the ancestor, to the fifth patriarch, and has this dialogue with him about wanting to study with him. And then the patriarch says, well, people from Lingnan, from the south, have no Buddha nature. Although that isn't expressed in, he doesn't say it exactly that way in the translation. Dogen. That's Dogen's interpretation is that the ancestor says, how do you expect to... Well, he says, I want to be Buddha. I want to discover my Buddha nature. He says, well, people from Lingnan have no Buddha nature. How do you expect to discover your Buddha nature? And then Hui Nong says, well,

[23:43]

people from the North or South, whether they're from the North or South makes no difference between their Buddha natures. So Dogen uses this term, no Buddha nature, he uses this as a koan in his Buddha nature fascicle, which I'd like you to study with you if we have time, but I don't want to study with you now because I want to go through the whole thing. but so this is used as the koan by Dogen and essentially his meaning is that you can't try to get buddha nature. There's no buddha nature to get because there's nothing but buddha nature. So he says no buddha nature. People from the south have no buddha nature. How do you expect And when you read that in a dualistic sense, you think, people of the South, how could the fifth patriarch say that people from the South have no Buddha nature?

[24:52]

Even a dog has no Buddha nature, has Buddha nature. So it's the same koan as the dog koan. And if you think about it, many, many koans are exactly the same koan as the dog koan. expressed in different ways. So then he's asked to work in the shadow. The fifth ancestor sees his ability and he wants to protect him, so he asks him to work in the rice pounding mill. Stay out of sight. You know, you should study from the shadows. That's a kind of Zen way of practicing sometimes.

[26:00]

I remember when I was shuso with Tatsugami Roshi, and Tatsugami Roshi was teaching us how to do the chanting and the drum and all of the procedures that we do. And I was a shuso, and I said, well, can I study the chanting too? He said, you should study from the shadow. You should be in the shadow and just study from there, which I thought was very interesting. And I did. He was very good. He was excellent at teaching people to chant. And he would walk around, and he'd say, well, when you want to test your chanting, come up and say so." So he'd just wander around and then the Dhawan would plug up their courage and say, what about this? And he would chant with them so that they were chanting together and they'd go right through his whole body and come out knowing how to chant.

[27:06]

So the fact that he's learning from the shadow is important in this story because he's supposed to keep himself in the background. And then of course there are verses, the famous infamous verses of the mirror and the wiping and the no mirror and no wiping. And then there's the transmission of the robe and the bowl and the running away and being pursued by Hui Ming. Remember Hui Ming, the general? And Hui Ming not being able to pick up the robe and the bowl and then being enlightened or opened up by Hui Nung, who says, now sit down and stop thinking.

[28:19]

Don't think good and don't think evil. In other words, stop your dualistic thinking. And right now, what is your essence of mind? And he woke up to his essence of mind. So Hui Nung's message is very simple. The whole point of the sutra, Hu Yidong's message, is very simple. Just stop your dualistic thinking and realize your essence of mind. That was Suzuki Roshi's teaching. So this is the core of the sutra and Hu Yidong's teaching. Stop dualistic thinking and realize your essence of mind. then you realize the essence of the... you know what the Diamond Sutra is talking about. So then he comes back and enters civilization again after living with the hunters and goes to the monastery

[29:28]

And there are these two monks arguing about the wind and the flag, which is moving, the wind or the flag? And he says, and they were arguing about this, and he, excuse me, he said, I think it's your mind that's moving. So this is a famous koan, which I'll talk about in Sashin. And then he's recognized, and then he's ordained. And that's the end, and it gives some teaching, and that's the end of the biography, autobiography. The autobiography of Huynh Nguyen, or somebody. There was also a school of Zen called the Ox Head School, which you don't hear about very much.

[30:30]

In the histories, it's kind of off to the side, but it's always mentioned as being a kind of isolated school, which didn't amount to much. But modern scholarship is beginning to recognize the contribution of the Ox Head School and begin to think that there's some big connection between the ox head school and the platform sutra and all this stuff. History has a lot of holes in it, or it's kind of fragmented, and so modern scholarship is kind of bringing the fragments together, kind of like dinosaurs. You discover a toe bone and then you can build a whole dinosaur. they begin to be able to build the dinosaur of Zen history and put it together, you know, little by little.

[31:35]

So it's interesting. Anyway, the Platform Sutra still has the essence of Zen, and no matter how it was put together, what it's saying is inspiring and valid. And some things, you can see, don't fit. But you kind of have to work your way through it and see what maybe is junk and what really is real. So now that you've had a chance to study it, is there anything, do you have any questions? Have any questions come up in your study? And what would you say is meaningful for you? And what can you say positively or questioningly? Yes?

[32:44]

I didn't look for the context, but Polsky has a footnote saying something about Dogen. Quoting Dogen, he didn't necessarily like the platforms. Yes. I read that, too. Well, Dogen liked the Platform Sutra. If you read Dogen on Sixth Ancestor, Dogen really felt inspired by the Sixth Ancestor. He felt that the Platform Sutra was a spurious sutra. Just the fact that it came out of China. for Do Yen would be, who's such a purist. But that doesn't mean that he didn't like the teachings of the Sixth Ancestor, which he commented on quite a bit, actually. So he commented on Sixth Ancestor's teaching in a very positive light.

[33:49]

But nevertheless, he had his doubts about the Platron Sutra as he had his doubts about all kinds of sutras. He also had his doubts about sutras which he would criticize as being spurious in one fascicle and commenting on in the next fascicle. When we talk about what Doggett liked and didn't like, you can't really pin him down, I think. Well, what did this bring up for you? I was just wondering about why it is that there's a spirit of competition in this, around someone knowing the truth, or someone knowing how to realize one's essence, and someone else... Why there's a competition around people understanding that?

[35:03]

Why there's a quality of competition in this, as far as someone understanding and someone not understanding, or an unschooled person having a better understanding than a schooled person? Just why there is that quality about this teaching of Well you're talking about the teaching, you're not talking about the schools. Just in this teaching. In all of Buddhism, any school of Buddhism, the point is to produce the true teaching. There are many teachings which look close to what people, Buddhists, would consider the, excuse the expression, orthodox teaching. So, always Buddhists throughout history have always looked for the touchstone, you know, of the truth.

[36:17]

And where is the authority? What is the correct authority? In any religious practice, where is the correct authority? So in Christianity, many people think the Bible is the authority. In the West, the Bible is used as an authority by a lot of people. Not everybody, actually. Some stories, some experience, or something that you can touch to. You see, it's written here. So in Zen also, what is the right touchstone for truth? Because anybody can say anything they want. A person can put on robes, go out and preach, and people say, oh yeah, but it's not Buddhism. It's just somebody's idea. And we have that.

[37:21]

happening already, you know, in our 30 years, 35 years of practice in America, we've had people who don't even bother to put on robes, you know, they just go out and recruit people and start talking about what they think is Zen, and they get them, a lot of people that come, and they pay them a lot of money, and they advertise in the New York Times, full-page spread. Have you seen that? Zen Master Rama. That's an example. But, you know, so there's always the people always looking for the authority, you know. When you come to a practice place, where's your authority? How do we know that we can trust what you say? How do we know that?

[38:25]

So, this is one of the reasons for Dharma transmission. People are authorized by somebody who has understanding to teach and to be a touchstone for the true practice. That's the purpose. That may not always hold. Sometimes it fails. But in the long run, it holds. So we go to people who have the proper authorization to teach in a long tradition of authority which is handed down. the schools are always in some tension with each other because some schools teach a little bit different kind of Buddhism.

[39:37]

But there are certain basic things in Buddhism which all the schools agree on. There are certain truths and realities and doctrines that All the schools agree on it. And as long as those are the foundation of what is being taught, then you feel some verification. So one school will question another. Your teaching is different than ours. Is what you're teaching the true dharma? Or is it some deviation? So schools... question each other as to whether or not you're teaching the true dharma or some deviation of it. So people are always trying to establish the right school, the correct school.

[40:41]

And there are a lot of variations on how dharma is expressed. which is okay as long as the touchstone is as long as you can find it in either the scriptures or the authority of people who have understanding. But the scriptures have always been a touchstone because you can always refer to them and people agree that they have the right, that they are talking about the right understanding. So in the history of Buddhism, schools would form around various scriptures, like the Lotus Sutra. You know, a lot of schools formed around the Lotus Sutra and the Lankavatara Sutra and

[41:47]

the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Kegon teaching. And people studied these sutras, you know, for centuries. And they became very powerful schools. And those sutras were the touchstones for verification of your understanding. And even a Zen teacher, the most far-out Zen teacher will say, Whatever I say has to accord with the meaning in the sutras, even though it's his own language. So yes, you can use your own language, or any language, or any kind of demonstration, or whatever, as long as it accords with the truth that's stated in the sutras. Can I ask one other thing, just in what, talking about that this is, Sutra's talking about realizing one's essential essence of mind or buddha-nature.

[42:55]

What is that? What is one's essential essence of mind? What you see in front of you is your essence of mind. This is it. When a disciple is free from all doubts, it indicates that essence of mind has been found. See, we just cleared up your doubts. But if you want an explanation, there is one in here. Right here in the sutra. He gives five five characteristics of prajna. And the five characteristics, after, on page 19 of my book, I don't know if it's page 19 of your book, but, this is what, after, when he, when I was

[44:13]

in the patriarch's room, and he's teaching in the Diamond Sutra. And so he says, knowing what his message meant, the three pound, remember he pounded three times, he said, which meant, meet me in my room at 3 a.m., or at the third watch. So he says, knowing what this message meant, in the third watch of the night I went to his room, using the robe as a screen so that none could see us. That's symbolic, I'm sure. He expounded the diamond certificate to me. When he came to the sentence, one should use one's mind in such a way that it will become free from any attachment, I at once became thoroughly enlightened again and realized that all things in the universe are the essence of mind itself. Then he says, who would have thought I said to the patriarch that the essence of mind is intrinsically pure. Who would have thought that the essence of mind is intrinsically free from becoming or annihilation?

[45:21]

Who would have thought that the essence of mind is intrinsically self-sufficient? Who would have thought that the essence of mind is intrinsically free from change? Who would have thought that all things are the manifestation of the essence of mind? So essence of mind is another name for Buddha nature. And Dōgen doesn't use the term essence of mind, but he does use the term Buddha nature all the time. So essence of mind and Buddha nature is the same thing. So knowing that, knowing that I had realized my Buddha nature, knowing that I had realized the essence of mind, the patriarch said, for one who does not know his own mind, there is no use learning Buddhism. If you don't know your own essence of mind, there's no use learning Buddhism. On the other hand, if one knows their own essence of mind and sees intuitively into their own nature, that person, he says, is a hero.

[46:35]

I don't know if that's a good translation. A teacher of gods and men, Buddha. So, thus, to the knowledge of no one, the Dharma was transmitted to me at midnight, and consequently I became the inheritor of the teaching of the seventh school, as well as of the robe and the bowl, the begging bowl. It just seems, I wonder what he would say about how to do this. Oh, yes. Do you think someone could just use your mind to realize your essence of mind? This is one of the problems of the Platform Sutra. This is one of the problems of the Platform Sutra. Because there are no methods. He doesn't tell you how to do anything. The Sutra will say all these wonderful things, but it doesn't say how to do anything.

[47:37]

So... This is why, this is one reason why Zen, no matter how good a book you have, Zen has to be practiced with a teacher, or with teachers, or with people who know how to practice. And a book is only a kind of, well, something that states the truth, but it's just words on paper. And although someone, I could say Sekito was enlightened by reading, but it's very rare. I mean, all of us get enlightened by reading to some extent. You know, we read something, we have little kinshos, but when you actually enter into practice, it's very different than reading a book.

[48:39]

And when you enter into practice, and study and actually practice for a while, then you pick up the book and you say, oh, yeah, I see what they were talking about. But it doesn't go the other way, because you have no experience, no practice. So Cekito was enlightened. What was he reading? Oh, he was reading Tsingtao. Tsingtao's treatise on prajna is not knowledge. Sengchao was Kumarajiva's disciple, a Chinese disciple, and he was the one who had his head cut off. He was very bright. Kumarajiva was the teacher from India who actually made the sutras available to the Chinese language.

[49:43]

And his school in China, the emperors of China gave him so much help in translating and made his school so prominent in translating the scriptures that the energy that went into that is considered comparable to the energy that we put into atomic sciences during the war. So he was enlightened by reading Tsingtao's treatise on prajna is not knowledge. There are two meanings to the word prajna, actually, which the sixth ancestor talks about a lot. He talks about prajna a lot and prajnaparamita. And one meaning of prajna is knowledge, usually pronounced as prajna.

[50:51]

And the other is intuitive wisdom. And the way we interpret the word prajna, it's actually not prajna. Prajna is not the way to pronounce it. You don't say, the J is not pronounced as J, but it's a kind of nasal sound like ng, ng. If you close, put your tongue at the roof of your mouth and go, ng. It's a soft prajna. So we interpret prajna as intuitive knowledge, but it also means learning. It has those two meanings, but we don't use it in that way. So it's beyond learning, and it's our own essence of mind which has to be sprung loose.

[51:55]

Yes? You can't see the people behind you. Which one? I don't know who put it there. Somebody put it there. But, you know, stories become expanded in time. Sometimes they become expanded when somebody has some insight. And they say, you know, they try to make it look, you know, fill it out, you know. So what do you think it means?

[52:59]

What do you think that phrase means by behind the robe? Exactly what it says is, Knowing what his message meant, in the third watch of the night, I went to his room, using the robe as a screen so that none could see us. He expounded the Diamond Sutra to me. I noticed that on some esoteric Buddhist school statues, the mudras are covered with a cloth. And I was told that that means are transmitted. Could that be the same thing going on? Yeah, I would say it's similar to that. Secret, you know, it means like, you know, when you have dharma transmission, ceremony of dharma transmission, in Japanese dharma transmission,

[54:03]

cover the walls with red cloth. In Japan, they do it with silk. They have these huge yards and yards of silk cloth that they make a room out of, actually, which is exactly like that. Make this room out of this red silk cloth. And when we do dharma transmission at Tassajara, We used our tablecloths. What? Yes, I would. Thanks. That was a great meal, but it makes you thirsty. I noticed this advice to realize the essence of mindfulness. Yes.

[55:11]

So what I'm wondering is, are those two different things, or are they one thing? Same thing. When he says, don't think good or don't think evil, that's just a metaphor. Although it does mean that. It's also a metaphor for dualistic thinking, any kind of dualistic thinking. Well, one seems behavioral or emotional or psychological. somehow epistemological or insightful, like a knowledge that is a kind of knowledge, that is seeing the essence of self. And it makes me feel, and I feel like it makes other people feel, there is something to discover, there is something to see into, almost with your eyes or with some faculty of knowledge. Well, I'm not sure what you mean by emotional, by your distinctions, you know.

[56:22]

I don't know how to relate to your distinctions exactly. Well, to me, the distinction is, on the one hand, sort of an injunction to not thinking good, not thinking bad. That's sort of emotional advice to me. That's behavioral advice. It seems to be the essence of my true nature. It makes me feel like I need to do something different. It doesn't make me feel like putting down my judgment. It doesn't make me feel like changing my behavior or changing my actions. It makes me feel like there's some project that I should engage on. So there seems to be a vice headed in two different sorts of directions. Well, I don't see it that way. One thing about this sutra is that You know, a lot of the ideas of Maya and of Buddhism are expressed here in the sutra. And what Huineng does in the sutra is take all those ideas and express them as the most mundane kind of, in the most mundane way, you know?

[57:32]

Experiential way, right? So he diffuses the intellectual aspect which is so confusing to people. If you study Mahayana Buddhism, which you probably have, and say you study the ten bhumis, or you study all of the departments of Mahayana Buddhism, and it's so unreachable, and ungraspable, and unattainable. It's like you're watching some movie in the sky. The first bhumi starts out in such a lofty way that how do you grab onto that one? So what this sutra does is takes all of that thought and brings it down into practical application as the stuff of your daily life.

[58:38]

And so, yes, it's emotional. He talks about good and bad, and right and wrong. And later on in the sutra, he talks about not fault-finding. The thing that keeps you in bondage is fault-finding. Real practical stuff. Real stuff of your life, which anybody can understand. You do not have to be a lofty Buddhist, you know, to understand this stuff. And that's what's so wonderful about the Sutra. And that's why it's a Zen Sutra. It just completely takes it out of that intellectual realm and puts it right there in front of you and say, look, you know, it's the way you stand up and sit down. You know, you can't avoid this. You can't intellectualize it. It's just right there in your behavior. So yeah, it is emotional, but I don't see why that's so hard to relate to.

[59:46]

Actually, that's not hard to relate to at all, and I relate to that very much. And I find that to be more helpful than anything. But these injunctions to discover the essence of mind, that is a direct injunction to someone I find rather misleading. I think perhaps if that's the result of practicing these... Right, I see what you mean. ...other injunctions, that's fine. But just to set someone out on that, it just to me seems very misleading. Well, if you take it as something to strive for, is that what you mean? Without the additional advice, he did say, right now, without thinking good, without thinking bad, what is your essence? But without that, without that not thinking good, not thinking bad, it makes one feel like there's something to see, something to see into. And my question is, is there or isn't there? Yeah. So he's saying, see things as it is, rather than through your bias.

[60:56]

So when he says, don't think good and don't think evil, there is good and evil. But he's not talking about good and evil. He's talking about your bias. He's talking about your split personality, your division. of the world into good and bad. It doesn't say that good and bad don't exist. They do. And this is a big problem because Buddhist people say, well, I studied Buddhism and Buddhism is non-dual and so there's no good and bad. That's not what Buddhism is about. There is good and bad, but good and bad, but stop thinking It's not falling into good and bad and realize your essence of mind, which includes them. May I pursue this with one more question?

[62:02]

Why even recommend to someone to realize their essence of mind? Why not tell them to just not think good and bad? Well, they'll say, well, why shouldn't I? Well, because it could mislead people. No, I mean, if you said to me, don't think good or bad, I'll say, well, why shouldn't I? Oh, I see. Well, you might say it because you can't suffer. Yeah, but that's because you want to say that. Well, why tell someone to realize their essence of mind? Well, because if they want to realize it, then... But Huy Minh wanted to realize it. He said, Teacher, teach me. He said, I didn't come to get the robe and the bow. I came for the Dharma. Please teach me. So then, Huy Minh said, Well, sit down and stop thinking.

[63:04]

Not now. Clear your mind. Put your mind at rest, and stop, and don't think good, don't think evil. Right there, what is your essence of mind? So, Buddhists don't teach people unless they ask. You don't go around preaching Buddhism. You wait for somebody to ask you. Buddha waited three times for someone had to ask him three times, and that's actually traditional. It remains traditional to be asked to do something, to be asked to preach the Dharma. You don't go out and stand on the corner and preach the Dharma. I mean, it might be okay to do that. Maybe it would be helpful. But traditionally, you wait for somebody to ask you, so your question is valid. Why should you tell somebody that? Hey, what's so good about that? Well, if somebody wants to know, then you tell them, but you don't tell them

[64:07]

Unless they want to know. Yes. Now, where did that come in? That's at the end of the book, isn't it? Okay, now, I wanted to stick to the autobiography. Oh, I'm sorry. But, since you asked the question, people don't have a reference to it, see?

[65:10]

Because we haven't, everybody hasn't read it that far. But, that's always been a kind of controversial part, you know. But my feeling about this, you know, if a person asks you a question about something, then you bring up the other side in order to non-dualize it, right? Because the other side is included in what the question was. Well, in the autobiography that kind of comes up, I'm going to bring it up because Well, he puts his meat into the... I mean, he puts his vegetables into the meat that he's cooking for the hunters.

[66:12]

Is that what you mean? Yeah. That's it. So... See, he's willing to harmonize with his surroundings, even though to most people that would be incompatible. I think this is a very good point. He goes out into the world and he doesn't live by himself and he doesn't live with people who are compatible. He goes out and he lives with hunters and he works for the hunters, cooking for them. And they're cooking meat and he cooks their meat for them. That's pretty neat, you know? Cooking their meat, but he doesn't eat it. And he doesn't say, you shouldn't be eating meat. And he doesn't complain.

[67:14]

And he doesn't judge. He just cooks their meat for them. And he puts his vegetables in there with them. And then he serves them up the meat, and then he eats the vegetables. And if they say, what are you doing? He says, oh, I cook my vegetables with the meat. Makes this little excuse. But he doesn't eat the meat, he just eats the vegetables. And he serves them the meat, and he doesn't say, you're bad boys. He just, you know. But he sets the animals free. Yeah, he sets the animals free, that's right. When they're caught in the trap, he sets them free, but he doesn't say, you know, you shouldn't be trapping these animals. He just does his practice. You know, right in the midst of all this stuff, he does his practice. He doesn't criticize. And he doesn't make a scene. He just sticks to his practice in the midst of what everybody else is doing, which is different. So I think that's a great lesson. But his influence is very strong, because eventually, the Chan school became the dominant school of Buddhism in China.

[68:29]

After all the other schools, lost dominance due to persecutions. So there were all these persecutions in China. The Taoists and the Confucianists and the Buddhists all tried to get the ear of whoever was the emperor in order for their school to have dominance. And the Taoists, or the Confucianists would say, you know, those Buddhists, you know, they're plotting your overthrow. And then there'd be these big persecutions. And all the monks would be either killed or disrobed, and the monasteries abandoned. And the Zen monks went to the hills, went to the mountains. and practice in the mountains. And they didn't need to have so much because their practice, they weren't reliant on scriptures and they weren't reliant on ceremonies.

[69:38]

And they could go to the mountains and practice Zazen and Koan study and live there. And the schools became very strong and became the most dominant schools. After a while, the other schools the intellectual schools and the scholarly schools lost prominence. The issue about him being around other people and just doing his practice and not being critical of what other people were doing, I think this issue has come up actually hugely recently about some people doing individual practices within this practice and shouldn't we all be doing the same thing? Especially around the food issue, dairy, non-dairy, not eating afternoon.

[70:40]

No one ever said that we shouldn't eat afternoon in this practice. Maybe an individual or a couple would take on and say, okay, I'm not going to eat afternoon. And then somebody else saying, what's that? Or the issue of preparing special meals for non-dairy people. Hey, most of us are dairy. Why don't you just eat dairy? That kind of thing. Most of us became dairy. Anyway. The younger ones maybe grew up non-dairy, whereas the older ones had to become non-dairy. But that aside, Japanese practice, which is our foundation, Japanese Zen practice, you know, when the Japanese come to America, they're always in groups.

[71:42]

You notice that? They get off the tour bus, and they all have the same clothes, the same cameras, and they take the same pictures. Japanese practice in Japan, period, is whatever social, or work, or study, or any kind of group you belong to, What do you say? Well, you subservient yourself to the group. In other words, whatever you do is for the sake of the group, not for your own sake. In Japanese Zen practice, it very much advocates this kind of practice. That's why everybody goes to the Zendo at the same time. You know, we all get up at the same time, we all go to the Zendo, We all eat at the same time.

[72:45]

We all do everything together. That's the nature of our practice, which has come to us. And it's the practice of letting go of ego. I don't say the Japanese don't have ego. They have big egos, just like we do. But the practice is to face, is to deal with ego. If they didn't have ego, they wouldn't have to deal with it. We have it, and we haven't dealt with it. very much. We think promoting ego is a good thing, and we get in a lot of trouble that way. But Japanese practice is the practice of reducing ego by self-effacement, actually, and by taking care of the body of people that you're with. And that's the important thing, is the body of people that you're with, not yourself. So, you know, when Suzuki Roshi was our teacher, nobody wore socks, nobody ever wore socks in the zendo.

[73:58]

If somebody wore socks in the zendo, you'd look at them, you know, like, what? And nobody ever, ate anything different than anybody else. Whatever it was, you ate it. And it had nothing to do with what you liked or didn't like, or what you thought was good for you or not good for you. You just ate it. And that was it. And if you asked a question, why do we do something? You'd say, I don't know. There was never an, oh, you know, well, we do it because of the, never. I don't know. Just do it. Just do it. Really concentrated practice that made you think about things. You know, what you do, how you do it, why you do things, and how it all comes about. So, you know, as we lose the Japanese Zen master focus,

[75:04]

We start introducing all of our own things. Oh, I like it this way. Oh, I want it that way. Can't we do it this way? We want to turn our practice into our normal American life. That's what we want to do. And it takes a real strong teacher to say, no, don't do that. Keep the practice as a problem for you. If the practice is not a problem for you, you might just as well go out there and do everything everybody else is doing. Should we put nuts in the first bowl? I mean, isn't this a silly way to eat anyway? It's not really, I love it.

[76:11]

I think I'd rather eat in the Zindo than anyplace else. Food always tastes better. Notice when the same food that you would eat in the Zindo, when you're eating it in some other, it's not the same. It does? I stole that. People ask him why we can wear a watch and he says, the fruit tastes better that way. He said, without your sock on, too. John? Isn't it sort of funny that, I mean, it leaves a funny feeling for me, or a funny taste in my mouth, that Shen Wei caricatures of the Northern School. Yes. In this quite acrimonious way. Yes. And part of the story that he apparently concocts is the story of this wonderful non-combatant Hui Neng who harmonizes so well with the world.

[77:17]

Yeah. So I just wonder how... Well, there are a lot of discrepancies in Shen Hui. Also, we don't know the whole story. The one reason why it's a little bit hard to talk about is because we don't know the whole story, you know? And history is difficult. I have trouble with historians because when they start just looking back at all this stuff, they say, well, so-and-so didn't write about this and that, so he must not have talked about it. It seems crazy to me. There's plenty of stuff that we talk about that we don't write down. And in those days, you know, they wrote even less. They had less access to writing in various ways, you know, so who knows what they talked about or didn't talk about. So, I feel incomplete when I'm talking about reasons and, you know, I don't know.

[78:24]

I mean, your question is a valid one. I think that Well, what is said is that the platforms which are ideas are really ideas of the Northern school. But I mean, the thing that bothers me is that there's, well, hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Of course, the religion is full of hypocrisy. Loaded with hypocrisy. Right. And there are lots of people who say, put down all opinions, and this is what this school says, and it's not true. We're the only ones who have that knowledge. Yes. Do you think there's any way to guard against that? Yes. Don't have any opinions. And don't... It's good to really be careful about criticism.

[79:30]

And don't try to make yourself... As soon as you try to make yourself a problem in school, you've got a problem. It's better to be nobody. It's really... I really, you know, feel very strongly about that, that as soon as you start promoting yourself, you're lost. So I think this is Shin Hui's problem. But also, you know, what he did created the access for Zen to a lot of people. So it had various sides to it. But anyway, history is mixed up. Yes? So it seems to me that when I was studying feminism and all that stuff, often in order for something to change, it requires a kind of, or for something to be refreshed, it requires this kind of violent tone or negative tone in order for there to be a change.

[80:48]

It's just, it's a kind of, what do you call it, part of the process or something. And that kind of feels like he's trying to refresh. Yeah, reform. Yeah, the practice or, you know, expand it or something or find it, go back to some deeper level or something. You know, it wasn't an action. Well, instead of saying, we're good and they're bad, that's your interpretation. I don't think he ever said we're good, or anybody said we're good and they're bad. But what is said is, this is the correct transmission of the Dharma, and this is the incorrect transmission of the Dharma. So that's the way it's stated.

[81:48]

It's not stated, we're good and you're bad. It says, this is correct and this is incorrect. So, even though we make distinctions, it doesn't necessarily mean that all distinctions are dualistic. We have to understand the difference between... If you say that all distinctions are dualistic, then you can't make a distinction. It means you can't make a choice, right? Without being dualistic. But that's not so, because whether you're dualistic or not dualistic, you're continually making a choice on every moment. Right? We are. You choose to get up or sit down or go here or go there. How do you do that? What determines what you're going to do? You have to make a choice, and the choice has to be based on something.

[82:49]

What is the choice based on? What is all of our picking and choosing based on? See, this is the question. And if we think that non-duality means not to make a choice, that's not non-duality. Within non-duality, we have to make choices. It's called the discrimination of non-discrimination. I mean, kind of going with the flow, where there isn't choice in the sense of picking and choosing, it's just movement. Well, it's the same as saying non-thinking. Non-thinking doesn't mean that there are no thoughts. Within non-thinking, all these thoughts come. So, it means not thinking self-centeredly.

[84:00]

Because self-centeredly is what creates duality, distinctions of duality. So if your thought is not self-centered, then what is it centered on? Well, something like intention or something that isn't supported by a notion of self. Yes, something that's not supported by a notion of self. But intention can be supported by a notion of self or it cannot be supported by a notion of self. So how do we make our choices? What are they based on? Are they based on self-centeredness or what? Non-self-centeredness. But what does that mean? So that's our question.

[85:02]

And it's three minutes to nine. So what does it mean, non-self-centeredness? That's a good question. Infinite. Infinite? Universe-centered. Yeah, Buddha-centered. Buddha-centric. That's like your question, I think. in a way. Don't think good, don't think evil. Well, what will I think? What will my thoughts center on? Next time, we'll talk on the second a chapter which is called Prajna... Samadhi, not Samadhi and Prajna, but... Prajna.

[86:12]

I'm Prajna. Pramya. We tried to do that once, but...

[86:23]

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