So I've been speaking the last couple of weeks about an important character in Zen, the sixth ancestor of Zen in China, Huine. And a lot of Zen teaching has to do with teaching stories. And this is one of our central stories in Zen. And so there are various parts of it and various, quite a few things to talk about, about the sixth ancestor. The story I want to talk about tonight is one of my favorites and one of the most pivotal. To give a little background, the story about him as opposed to the history, which is less important than the story that's been studied for 1,200 years, is that he was an illiterate woodcutter in Canton in the south of China, a layperson, a poor woodcutter.

[01:11]

And yet, He heard a monk passing by reciting the Diamond Sutra, one of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, and he heard a particular line that struck him deeply, that we could say awakened him. And one version of this line is, you should activate or realize the mind that does not dwell on anything. And part of the reason we study these stories, well, these stories are not just kind of historical or folklore stories. They are practice instructions. And this particular line is one of the many that we could actually use as a meditation instruction in our zazen. to activate the mind that does not dwell anywhere, that does not dwell on anything, or that is free from attachments, another translation.

[02:17]

How do we activate that mind? So I've talked about that a little bit, and actually it relates to the story I want to talk about. tonight, which comes later in the story. Just to give the background, he heard that line from the Diamond Sutra and asked the monk where he could find out more about this, or he wanted to follow up on this realization he had, and he heard about the fifth ancestor of Chan, or Zen, who had a large monastery in North China. So he went there, and there are various stories about his arrival and what happened there. I talked yesterday about this supposed poetry contest where Li Nang, this illiterate woodcutter, bested the head monk there who talked about cultivating practice and brushing

[03:21]

meraclean, and so that there would be no dust. And Huining's poem was about how there was no place for the dust to align anyway, that from the beginning, not a single thing exists. So Huining is the, in many ways, the master of emptiness teaching. He takes that side of wisdom teaching the side of sameness in terms of the harmony of sameness and difference. Although, of course, emptiness is part of sameness and difference. At any rate, as a result of whatever happened, the story goes that the fifth ancestor recognized him, this young literate woodcutter who was working in the back of the kitchen pounding rice. and decided to make him the sixth ancestor and transmitted to him the robe and bowl, supposedly the robe and bowl of the Buddha that had been passed down and brought from India by Bodhidharma.

[04:31]

Anyway, so here's this young, illiterate pagan from the south of China, this Cleary translates him as an aborigine anyway. He was not from the Han class or clan according to the story. The fifth ancestor then transmitted, gave him dharma transmission at midnight in the middle of the night and ever since then in the Zen lineage, dharma transmission happens at midnight. And then the fifth ancestor got in a boat and rode him across the Yangtze River to the south of, and said, go and, you know, don't teach for 15 years, go get lost in southern China. And so this is the story of the sixth ancestor. Anyway, the fifth ancestor at some point thereafter told his monks that he had passed along the Rubin Bowl to this illiterate woodcutter.

[05:36]

And the reason he had sent him away was that he knew that the monks would be very jealous. So a bunch of the monks decided that this young lay person, this kitchen worker, must have somehow tricked the fifth ancestor, and they went after him to get back the Roman bull. And that's where the story I want to talk about tonight starts. So this is basically, well, this story is case 23 in the Gateless Barrier, a Mu'mun Khan, important Khan collection, And the version that's in there is basically the same as the popular version of the Platform Sutra, the Sixth Ancestor. There's an earlier version of that sutra, which is much less embellished. But anyway, the story that's been studied for more than 1,000 years goes basically like this. So the Sixth Ancestor was pursued by an elder monk, Ming, Li Ming.

[06:41]

all the way to the mountain ridge. And part of the background is that this character, Hui Ming, who had been one of the many dedicated monks in the monastery of the Fifth Ancestor, had formerly been a general, a soldier. Clearly translates it as a four-star general. Anyway, he was a general of the third rank. Anyway, very high. He was a tough guy. and rough. And he pursued Huining all the way to a mountain ridge. When the ancestor Huining saw Ming coming, he put the robe and bowl of the Dharma Transmission on a rock and said, this robe symbolizes faith. Could it be right to fight over it? You can take it away. And then Huining tried to pick it up, but it was immovable as a mountain. vacillating in fear, Huimin said, I've come for the Dharma, not the robe.

[07:46]

Please instruct me. And then here's the key line, which I want to talk about and which is a very fine zazen instruction, something to consider in the middle of zazen or in the middle of any old inhale or exhale the new ancestor, Wing Yang said, don't think of good, don't think of bad. Right at this very moment, what is your original face? So this question is very powerful. Not thinking good, not thinking evil, right now, right at this very moment, what is your original face?

[08:46]

And this not thinking good, not thinking evil doesn't just mean about good and bad, but any of the many discriminations and dichotomies that are part of how our minds think. Put aside good and bad, right and wrong. Choice A, choice B. This activity or that activity. all of the ways in which we discriminate. Put it aside, not thinking good, not thinking bad. Right now, what is your original place? So this is an excellent question to sit with. or to consider when it comes up in your life.

[09:50]

Not thinking good, not thinking evil. Right at this very moment, what's your original face? What is your fundamental face, beyond your ideas of right and wrong, good and bad? Well, upon hearing this, we may immediately attain great enlightenment. His whole body ran with sweat. In tears, he bowed and asked, is there any meaning further than the secret intention of these secret words you've just spoken? He asked the music's ancestor, who said, what I have just told you is not a secret. If you turn your attention around to your own state, the secret is, after all, in you. So this is the key part of the story.

[10:54]

There's a little bit more. And this provides yet another kind of basic meditation instruction. Turn your attention around to your own state. There's a version of it in one of Dogen's early writings. Take the backwards step that turns the light away to illuminate yourself. This is what we do in sunset. Not thinking good, not thinking bad. What is my original face right now? Or turn your attention around to this landscape. And then he said, this secret is after all on you. There's nothing secret. So this is, the heart is in truth.

[11:58]

Beyond our discriminations, what is it right now? What is your face? So, Quy Man, this kind of tough guy, I'm afraid to do a modern version of it, maybe he'd be a mafia boss or something, anyway. Although I went along with the assembly at Quang Mai, Quy Man says, in reality, I had not seen into my own state. Now that you, your six ancestors, have pointed out a way of entry, I am like a person who drinks water and knows for himself whether it is warm or cool. Now you are my teacher." And the sixth ancestor said, if you are thus, then you and I alike are students of the fifth ancestor. Keep it well on your own. The fifth ancestor. So this is the basic story. How do we see our... Any word I put in next is...

[13:10]

a little off, our true self, our deepest self, our original face. And part of this is, you know, this concern. So again, he says it's not a secret. The secret's after all in you. All of you are here because in some way you have some concern about your state of mind, your state of being. how you are in this life, in this difficult world, with all of our attachments, all of the ways we do get caught into defining good and bad and setting up standards on our own. But the starting point of Zen is just this question.

[14:13]

Putting aside that, turn the light within. What is my original face? And I like in the story that he says, your original face, your fundamental face. It's not some abstraction. It's your face. This is how we know each other, face to face. We mostly recognize each other by our faces. Maybe, you know, you might recognize somebody's elbow or hand or something or foot, but really we meet face to face. What is your original face? Before you start thinking about So this is very challenging.

[15:16]

The commentary in the book of, in The Gateless Barrier, by the Chinese master woman said, one comment he gives says, if the sixth ancestor, it could be said that he, the matter came, comes from a busy house. He was so kind that it was as if he had peeled a fresh lychee, removed the seed and put it in your mouth. So all you have to do is swallow. In this kind of Koan language, there's always this kind of irony, and sometimes it seems like it's put down. Of course, what Wu Man says is not fair to the sixth ancestor. This is difficult. He's not making it that easy for us. His first comment, Wu Man says, it cannot be depicted, and it cannot be drawn, and it cannot be praised enough. Stop trying to sense it." Or what did David Byrne say?

[16:19]

Stop making sense. The original face has nowhere to hide when the world disintegrates. This does not decay. So the sixth answer was Sester was talking about something very deep. It can't be hidden. It's not secret. It's something we must see for ourselves. But this, even when, you know, if the worst, if climate change does its worst, still this does not There's a later commentary that Leary quotes in his translation. Few people believe in the Buddha in their own mind.

[17:21]

Unwilling to take responsibility for it, they suffer a lot of cramps. Arbitrary ideas, greed, and anger, the wrappings of afflictions, all are conditioned on attachment to the cave of ignorance. So this original face is very important, and I hasten to add You know, as the Harmony of Difference and Sameness says, and that was written by a monk who studied with the Sixth Ancestor when he was young and then received transmission from one of the main successors of the Sixth Ancestor, that according with sameness, according with emptiness is still not enlightenment. So, seeing this original face, is, you know, I don't know, half of the point of our practice. All that's saying is that Shakyamuni only got 50%. How do we take care of this each in our own way?

[18:29]

How do we first see this? And it's not that you see it one time and that's it, although sometimes one can see it in some dramatic way that is transformative. Or sometimes it's, you know, we glimpse it out of the corner of our eye and, you know, don't even realize how much it is, it saturates us. But then, we keep our ears open, we hear the sirens going by. We hear the sounds of suffering in the world. How do we take care of this non-secret, this I was going to call it a great joy, but that's too meager. This ultimate, your face, that goes beyond all of the calamities of the world.

[19:34]

How do we express that then? just in our everyday activity with family, friends, co-workers, in Sangha, in the various communities we're in. So this is the side of precepts, which I tend to emphasize. And really, it needs to be emphasized, because this is how we find and share kindness in the world. But the story of the Sixth Ancestor is very helpful, I think. And the story goes on from there. I mean, really, it's enough just to say that the one line, don't think good, don't think bad. What's your original face right now? And again, I encourage that as a practice. Just sit with that. But just to To finish up the story a little bit, to take the story a little bit further, Huimei went, one version of it, again this is story, not history, but Huimei went and practiced at a mountain.

[20:50]

Oh, first he went down to the foot of the mountain where he had met Huining and told all the other pursuers that Huining wasn't there. And then he went and practiced in the mountain and, according to some versions, went back and studied with the fifth ancestor more. Huining went south and worked as a cook amongst a group of hunters. Well, it says in this version, the hunters used to have me watch over the nets, but whenever I'd see living creatures, I'd let them all go. In mealtimes, I would put vegetables in the pot, but the meat was being cooked. If anyone asked me about it, I'd reply that I just ate the vegetable beside them. And then eventually, he started teaching and became the sixth ancestor. Anyway, that's the story that we tell in Zen. So when he says to put aside good and evil, right and wrong, it doesn't mean that to ignore ethical conduct when we step out from our seat into the world.

[21:59]

But how do we go beyond our descriptions of good and bad, right and wrong? How do we see something deeper? That's what this story is pointing to. So, maybe that's enough please feel free. Okay, Susan. So, how does this relate to Dharma Gates? This is the Dharma Gate. So, what about, like, good and bad being Dharma Gates? And what do you mean by that? somehow in not turning away from discrimination, but entering it, to me seems like a very accessible darn gate for most human animals.

[23:08]

Yes, and so that's right. And actually, of course, everything in the entire What this story reminds us of, though, is kind of the sponsor back there. This realization or awareness or some sense of, some taste of that which goes beyond good and bad. And then, of course, In our life, in the world, we have to take care of good and bad. But to see that good and bad are just what we call them. So we know that what is good and bad changes quite rapidly. 100 years ago, women weren't allowed to vote in our country.

[24:12]

That was assumed that that was a good thing, that women didn't vote. Of course, it changed. And we can see many examples in the world today of different value systems within our country, in our country and other countries. So good and bad are relative to one another, like front and back, foot and walking. And still we have precepts, we have criteria for what Buddhism says is good and bad. what this experience of this original phase teaches us as helpful. So maybe that's a better word. Not to cause harm, that's the basic principle. How do we support life instead of killing and harming and suffering? And we take Bodhisattva vows to awaken all beings and to

[25:13]

and you're all Dharmagates. So yes, the situations of the world are Dharmagates, but if we are caught in some version of good and bad and we think that's what's real, then we can fall into fundamentalism or some kind of imposing, you know, oh, my idea of good and bad, that's absolutely right. So I heard that there was some, a contemporary reference, but some Fox News guy said that he'd heard that Tiger Woods was a Buddhist, and that that was obviously a problem, and that if he would only become a good Christian, then everything would be forgiven and he'd be okay. So, you know, there are various different value systems operating in our world today, obviously. How do we see, from this place that Huining is pointing to, what accords with this taste of my original face.

[26:19]

How can we... When we see our original face, we see that we're connected with everything and everyone. And yes, then we practice with all the Dharma gates. So I don't know if you have a follow-up question to that. Start. Start? It's a start. Thank you very much. Other comments? Eric. I was wondering if you could comment on the word face. I never ever noticed in the story before, but the line from the Diamond Sutra that you quoted, I can't remember, know from other translations as abiding nowhere, let original life come forth. Is that correct?

[27:21]

It doesn't sound wrong, but of course there are various ways to translate things. You should act, so it's about the mind, not the face. Activate the mind, or use the mind, or realize the mind that does not dwell on any not getting caught up. And I talked about this, I think last week, about how in our meditation we do dwell on some opinion or some discrimination. It's not that we can get rid of those. In fact, we shouldn't get rid of those. We do live in the world. It's not about going off into some mountaintop and just living in the ultimate state. The point is, how do we awaken beings when we are suffering? you know, that line that I expressed, I think I have seen in another translation in that same position, and I was struck by how close that is to what he says.

[28:38]

It's almost the same thing. It's almost as like he takes the line from his original sort of insight and passes it on directly, but there's a very kind of key, maybe a key change from particular kind of thing, and I just, I don't know how to make it that. Yeah, well, I said a little bit, and to say more, you know, again, how we meet is face-to-face, how we recognize each other is face-to-face, and it's particular, it's not some abstraction like mine, you know, mine can be particular too, but how do we face we face the wall, or we face our life and reality in our sitting. And so yeah, it's particular, it's concrete in a way. It's not some theoretical, it's your face, your original face.

[29:43]

Is that different than your original face? I won't say different, I won't say the same. In harmony? Facial harmony. Yes, this is the point. Facial harmony, exactly. How do we harmonize this face-to-face meeting that we have with something very deep, and my job is to sit up here and talk about it, and we all can talk about it, and yet, by talking about it, we're missing it a little. And that's okay. How do we live in a world where we can stop as we sit? Put aside, right and wrong, good and bad. All of that stuff that we produce and that our society produces for us and just, what is it right now?

[30:50]

This face. And then, from there, how do we then express kindness and harmonize all our different faces. David, you guys? I just think it's interesting how in the face is where most of our senses operate from. And then in the Sandokan, he talks about eyes and sight, ears and sound, nose and smell. That's right. Big face. And Great Master Rinzai was talking about the same thing when he said, there's a man of no rank, no status, or a woman of no status, a person of no status, coming in and out of the portals of your face right now. Look, look!

[31:51]

How do we get beyond? So, no status, no rank is like no good or bad. We face our life. So this practice is about how can we face our life with all of our confusion, all of the different decisions and different options And yet... So this is why I believe that it's helpful to, you know, several times a week at least, to stop and just sit down for 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever, and just sit and face the wall, face yourself. Put aside all of those categories, and of course, our mind continues, our brain continues to secrete thoughts, and they come up again and again anyway, but where is this mind that does not dwell on anything?

[33:13]

How do we use it? Other responses? Yes, Josh? One thing that really struck a chord with me is when you said, how do you take care of your face on the day of your life? And I think that's a really gentle way of putting it. I think sometimes, for me, I can kind of beat myself up and fall to pieces. But thinking about how do I take care of it is a little more, it's a gentler way to think or if you don't think maybe we or I have a responsibility to take care of our face to the universe, to ourselves? Yeah, sure. I mean, we all do take care of our face, sometimes not so well.

[34:17]

Sometimes we get intoxicated or we, you know, use various substances to distract ourselves from facing the world. But yeah, it's... And as you say, yes, we can beat ourselves up or get all caught up in trying to decide what's the right thing to do, as if there was one right thing and one wrong thing, when in fact, of course, there are Dharma Gates everywhere. It's not that we have to choose A or B. It's always many possibilities. So when I sat in the monk's hall with Nakashinkai Roshi in Japan, the first teaching he gave me was when I woke up the next morning, he had someone teach me how to wash my face. There's a particular way that's done in the monastery in Japan. So washing your face is a very good practice for Zen students to do.

[35:23]

How do we take care of our face?

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