I vow to taste the truth of the Tartarus's words. Good morning. This morning, I thought I would talk a little bit about the sixth ancestor of Zen, Daikan Ino Daisho. His Chinese name is Hui Nong. And you can read the story of the sixth patriarch, sixth ancestor, in the Platform Sutra. The Platform Sutra is not a real sutra.

[01:03]

It's a Chinese sutra. The sutras, or scriptures, originated in India and what is considered a sutra is those works, those scriptures which originated in India and are supposed to be the words of the Buddha, but of course we know that the words of the Buddha were not written down until 400 years after Buddha's great decease. But there are many different scriptures, some of which are very contradictory, somewhat contradictory, but all together you can glean the essence of Buddha's life, his truth. So this platform sutra is considered a sutra because it's so venerated by the Zen school.

[02:21]

So even though it's a Chinese sutra, it's considered a sutra. So I encourage you to read the Platform Sutra, because even though it's kind of a concoction, it still presents the spirit of Chan or Zen, which originated in China, and which is the touchstone of our understanding and teaching. So first I want to tell you this little koan from the Mumonkan, about the sixth ancestor.

[03:24]

After he was given the robe and the bowl, a so-called Dharma transmission, from the fifth ancestor, whose name is Daimon Konin Daisho, The fifth ancestor said, when I give you this robe and bowl, since you're such a young squirt and a layman to boot, people are going to be very envious. So you should really get out of here. So little Daikon Eno ran away. he was pursued by a hundred monks from the monastery for two months. And one of them, who was a former general, caught up with him.

[04:34]

His name is Hui Ming. And Daikan Eno put down the robe and the bowl on a rock. And he said, these are just symbols of the Dharma. If you want them, you can have them. So Hui Ming came over and tried to pick them up, but he couldn't pick them up, couldn't lift them. This is a kind of metaphor for he realized that the whole thing was, when he really got there, he realized the whole thing was too heavy for him. And when he realized that, his whole mind changed. And he said, he was extremely apologetic.

[05:42]

And he said, I realize why you have the robe and the bowl. Please, you are now my teacher. Please teach me. And so Eno said, sit down and cross your legs. Just sit down here with your legs crossed, which he did. And then he said, without thinking either good or evil, good or bad, what is your true nature? And immediately, because his mind was so contrite, it was wide open, and he understood immediately. So that's the story, that's the koan. And the koan is, please show me your true nature.

[06:46]

When Eno was a young boy, I don't know how old he was, but he was, you know, fairly young. I don't know if he was a boy, but he was fairly young. There are different ages they're given for him. But he heard, one day he heard someone reciting the Diamond Sutra. And what this person was reciting was something like a passage from the Diamond Sutra. your mind is completely unsupported, so you should produce a thought which is not supported by anything." And he had some kind of realization at that point.

[08:02]

And when he told it to somebody, this person said, you should go visit the fifth patriarch, the fifth ancestor, at his monastery in the mountains. So he got himself together, got somebody to take care of his poor old mother, and left for the monastery. And when he got to the monastery, I don't want to tell you this whole story, He was really illiterate. He was just a young kid from the South. And Southerners were not considered, were considered really low class people. And not only was he a Southerner, but he was illiterate. So, he was interviewed by the Fifth Ancestor and put into the kitchen to pound rice where he stayed for a pretty long time.

[09:17]

And the Fifth Patriarch, the Fifth Ancestor was getting kind of old and he wanted to pass on his dharma to somebody and to have an heir. So he announced that he wanted everyone to write a gatha or poem to express their understanding and he would choose, depending on, he would read all of these poems and see which one expressed the true understanding. Everybody was really scared and they thought that The head monk, because he was so advanced, would be the only one who would naturally do that, say the right thing.

[10:20]

So nobody said anything. Nobody wrote down anything. And the head monk was scared too. But in the middle of the night, wrote a poem on the wall which said something like, the body is the Bodhi tree and the mind is like a great mirror. And over and over, wipe the mirror so that no dust alights. And when Eno saw this poem, Well, everybody in the monastery thought, oh, what a great poem. And when Eno saw the poem, he thought to himself, there's something not quite right about that. So in the middle of the night, he wrote another poem on the wall that said something like, the body

[11:31]

is originally is not the Bodhi tree. And the mind has no special form or shape. Originally, as a matter of fact, nothing exists in any way, shape or form. So where is there for the dust to alight? And when the fifth ancestor saw this poem, he realized that this person who had written it had correct understanding. But he didn't let on. He said, oh, this, I don't know who wrote this poem, but I can't remember the head monk's name. Shen Hsu. Shenshu, he said, Shenshu, of course, has written this wonderful poem, so everybody's attention went to Shenshu, but secretly he took Huineng into his room and gave him the Dharma transmission, and then he said, I'm going to take you across the river and

[12:58]

get out of here for 15 years. Don't come back for 15 years and then after 15 years you can come back and teach. Just develop your understanding. This is a good thing actually for someone who has Dharma transmission to go away for 10 or 15 years and mature their understanding. But we don't have time to do that. We learn on the spot. On-the-job training is our way. So that's actually what happened, according to the story. Show me your original mind.

[14:01]

That's Zazen practice. I can't hear you. He had somebody write it for him. He had someone from the kitchen. He said, please, would you write this down for me since I'm illiterate? This is one of the key points, you know. When Bodhidharma, Bodhidharma is the first ancestor of Zen in China, so when he came to China, people in China had been studying Buddhism for 500 years, but it was the academic scholarly kind of Buddhism. And when Bodhidharma came to China, he introduced Zazen.

[15:05]

Some people say the special teaching outside of the scriptures, but I think it's more like the actualization of what the scriptures are pointing to. And so this whole reaction against scriptural study manifested after Bodhidharma. And so in order to emphasize this point, it's emphasized that sixth ancestor was illiterate. In other words, he couldn't get his understanding from the scriptures, it had to come from his own nature. And this is always the emphasis. So they say that Eno was illiterate.

[16:13]

He had to depend on his own intrinsic nature to produce the Dharma. So from this time, from the time of Eno, is the time when Chinese Chan really came to flower after Eno. Bodhidharma and his heir was Taiso Eka, and then Kanchi Sosan, and then Daihe Doshin, and Daimonkonin, and then Daikon Eno. And from before that, we had the seven Buddhas, which represent all the Buddhas of the past, before Shakyamuni. So we say, Vibhashibhutsu Dayosho, Ashikibhutsu Dayosho, Vishavabhutsu Dayosho, up to Shakyamunibhutsu.

[17:19]

Those are the distant Buddhas We say seven, but actually it's innumerable Buddhas from the beginningless beginning. The seven just represent numberless Buddhas from no beginning of time. And Shakyamuni is one. And then the ancestors from Shakyamuni are the Indian ancestors up until Bodhidharma, who is also Indian, but he's the transition between India and China. And then from Bodhidharma, Taiso Eka, Kanchi Sosan, Daihi Doshin, Daimai Konin, Daikan Eno is the sixth ancestor. And from Eno comes all the schools of Zen. So after Eno we say Seigen Gyoshi, and Seigen

[18:27]

represents the Soto Zen side, or the Soto Tsao-Dung side of Zen, and Nangako Ejo represents the Rinzai side. But all the schools of Zen are descended from Eno. There were five schools in China, sometimes seven, but five major schools of Chan or Zen in China. And Rinzai and Soto, Rinzai and Cao Dong in Chinese, come from Seigen and Nangaku Ejo, but they both, those are the two surviving schools from the Daikan, you know. And Rinzai, of course, gets their name from Rinzai, and Soto school gets its name from Tozan and his student Sozan.

[19:44]

They take the first characters from each name and turn them around, so it's Soto. Sozan and Tozan, but Tozan was Sozan's teacher. It just sounds better, you know, in the language. It goes better to say so-to than to-so, to-so somehow. If you come, probably in the Chinese, cao-dung rather than dung-cao somehow probably makes more sense. So, Tozan is the ancestor of the, you know, we get Soto lineage from Tozan, Tozan Ryokai.

[20:46]

In the chant, Dai Osho means, Osho is a priest, and Dai means great. But it's more than, I think in the lineage, it means ancestor, great ancestor rather than great priest. It has that exalted ancestor rather than priest. And then the lineage is Chinese up until Dogen. Tendo Nyojo, Daiojo, is Dogen's teacher in China, and then starts Dogen, and Eijo was Dogen's student, and then down to Keizan Jokin, who was the last one that we chant, and Keizan Jokin was actually the one who started the Soto

[21:55]

school. Dogen, of course, had the Soto lineage from Tendo Nyojo, but Dogen was a kind of purist, and the Soto school didn't really develop under him. It developed with Keizan. So Keizan is the last one whose name we chant in the lineage. But then there's Suzuki Roshi's lineage from Kaizan, which we don't chant, but it's a little too much. We already have a lot of ancestors whose names we chant. But priests, some priests chant that, chant the rest of the lineage. if you have time.

[22:58]

I should be chanting the rest of the lineage every day, but it's hard to find the time. I just want to say one more thing about the lineage chant. When we do that lineage chant, we try to do it as one word. rather than making pauses. It's easy to kind of make pauses after Dai Osho, you know, and take a breath, but it makes it very choppy. So if it's chanted as one long word and you don't hold on to the O at Dai Osho, then it just goes from one to the other as one long uninterrupted. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, like that. with nice rhythm and it feels good to chant. As with all of our chanting, if we have good, strong rhythm in our chanting, it feels good.

[24:07]

And meaning is not always the thing that we're trying to get at. The meaning is in the way we do it, the way we chant. carries the meaning, how we put ourselves into it and how we bring forth our own spirit. That's very meaningful, how present we are. So breathing and chanting with the breath and rhythmically to make things, to make it move and that's very important in chanting. Since we chant every day so much, we should enjoy it. It should be something that really feels like you're doing something. So our chanting gets

[25:11]

to kind of spread out, you know, and lose its integrity. So every once in a while we have to bring it back, tighten it up. And then, after a while, it starts to lose its integrity again. And then, you have to bring it back. So, like everything, just like our posture, it starts to lose its integrity, and then you have to bring it back. So I was thinking that the way we come to practice is a lot like the way Hui Ming was chasing Hui Nung. We come and we want something and we pursue it

[26:26]

And then, but we don't know what it is that we're pursuing. We want something, but we don't know exactly what it is or how to get it. And then somebody says, just sit down, cross your legs, and think neither good nor evil. At that moment, what is your true self? And that's, we all come to that point. That's Zazen and Sashin. I wonder if... I think it's just about time to end.

[27:43]

Yeah? You talk about Buddhas before Buddha, all these numerable Buddhas. Do we have Buddhas in these days? Yeah. Where do you think Buddha is? I haven't met anyone yet. Well, as far as Shakyamuni, you know, that level of Buddha, that level of Buddha comes periodically. The next Buddha is called Maitreya. The future Buddha is called Maitreya Buddha.

[28:46]

Maitreya means love, loving kindness. Love, loving kindness. So the next Buddha's name is loving kindness. And that's the prediction. for the next Buddha. But, there are, Buddhas have disciples, which are called ancestors, or patriarchs, or whatever you want to call them. And they are also Buddhas. But, and then those Buddhas also have students who are called bodhisattvas. But buddhas and bodhisattvas and all sentient beings are really not different.

[29:53]

And it's important to realize that ordinary sentient beings and buddhas are not different. So we say everyone is Buddha nature. Buddha nature covers everything. Or is everything. Yeah, somebody, that's right. The names we chant are not special people, but in order to have the, it's like there are countless Buddhas in India, countless Buddhas in China, countless Buddhas in Japan, but when we chant

[31:12]

the lineage, we only pick out Shakyamuni in India, Bodhidharma in China, Dogen in Japan, someone to represent all those Buddhas. So it's not that those are the only Buddhas, they just represent all the Buddhas, otherwise you'd endlessly be chanting names. And there are levels of understanding. So someone's on this level, someone's on this level, someone's on this level, and people, the person who's on this level pays attention to the person on that level and helps the person on this level. So everyone is in a position with someone up there and someone down here.

[32:14]

And at the same time, we're all on a horizontal level together. Muni is a sage. And Sakya is the family that Siddhartha came from. No, it just means the sage of the Sakyas. But there are many, he has many names, exalted names. But that particular one means that. Yesterday you said that in unification we do not discriminate. Yeah. Can I talk about that tomorrow? That will be the point of my talk tomorrow.

[33:19]

Discrimination and non-discrimination. Okay? Thank you.

[33:30]

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