Good morning. This week we've been talking about the stories of the first ancestors in China, from Bodhidharma to the sixth ancestor, Huineng, who we'll get to today. So these are from Dogen's 90-case koan collection in his extensive record with his first comments So we started with Bodhidharma, and what Dogen said about that story is that Bodhidharma faced the wall for nine years. So that's what we're doing, facing the wall, and allowing the wall to face us, and looking, facing, observing, like a wall, just being present, facing our lives as they manifest here now.

[01:01]

And we talked about Dogen refers to him as a snake in the grass, but the second ancestor, the one-armed man who stood in the snow all night and eventually became Bodhidharma's main successor. So these are the legendary stories of our origins of Chan in China, how the Chan or meditation movement developed in China as a reform, maybe, of the existing, very developed Chinese Buddhism, with many sutras translated and monasteries and so forth. And as I've noted, these are

[02:05]

great legendary stories, some of them may not be exactly historically accurate, but they're about our practice. These are not, these koans are not just historical artifacts or nonsense riddles or something like that. They're instructions about developing our own practice body. We talked about the third ancestor, Jangje Zongsan, who was a leper and We talked a lot about what leprosy means, which I learned from Rebecca Solnitz far away nearby, that leprosy is a condition, the damage is caused by numbness, by not being aware of the nerves in the extremities, in the fingers and toes and hands and feet and nose and skin. And so, the importance of feeling pain, how important pain is to us.

[03:09]

Of course, this happens in Sashim, to not try and go numb to the pain. But, although that includes, you know, pain in your knees, or your back, or your hips, your shoulders, it's also the pain in our hearts from facing the sadness. So, it's important to face that pain, that sadness, that difficulty, that problem that is your life, but also not to be overwhelmed by it. So how do we respond? So all of these stories are stories about relationships. They're stories about one ancestor responding to another. Yesterday, we talked about the fourth ancestor who came to the third ancestor, the leper, Xiong-Zhu Song-San, and asked for his compassion to give him the Dharmagate of release and liberation.

[04:23]

The third ancestor said, who has bound you? whether he said it immediately or sometime later, Dao Shen was able to say, nobody bound me. Then the ancestors said, then why are you seeking for liberation? And this is an important question. Why are you seeking for liberation? So we have to actually turn the Dharma wheel. So that's a very, very brief review, and then I go back to some of that. But the story today, is about the fifth ancestor. And I'll say a little bit about another story about the fifth and fourth ancestors' relationships. But this story, as Dokin presents it, the case is, Zen Master Dhamman Hongran, the fifth ancestor, at midnight secretly visited the rice-pounding hut and asked Wayman Huining, is the rice refined yet or not? Huining said, it is refined but not yet sifted. Dhamman tapped the mortar three times with his staff.

[05:28]

Huineng shook the rice winnow three times and then entered the teacher's room. So that's the case. Dogen's verse about this, in the deep night with eyes vivid, they saw each other as the old monk Buddha in India. With divine dignity, the lion helps the younger bounce it back. Where the elephant king treads, fox tracks are erased. So there's a lot going on in the story, and this is a good example of one of those stories where there's a physical action, an everyday kind of event going on, but it also serves as Metaphor is not an adequate word, but it represents something much deeper. And these stories work on a literal, figurative level, and also on this much deeper level, as this one does.

[06:35]

So before I talk about the story itself, I should say something about Guine. So, Hong Ren, the fifth ancestor, had a very large monastic establishment in northern China. Many, many monks, very well-trained, very scholarly, adept meditators. The future sixth ancestor, we know him as Hui Nan, was a layperson, a woodcutter, a poor woodcutter. down in southern China in the boondocks of Guangdong. And yet, he one day heard a monk passing by reciting the Diamond Sutra and he heard the line, to see the mind that does not abide anywhere. And Huainan had some

[07:41]

deep realization, and he asked about it, and asked where he could find out more, and he was directed to go to the monastery of the Fifth Ancestor, Hong Ren. And maybe I should say that, you know, we chant, we will chant for a midday service the lineage from Shakyamuni Buddha to Bodhidharma, to Wei Neng, Dogen to Suzuki Roshi. And it seems like, and it's sometimes presented like they're, you know, like a strand of pearls, like there's one teacher after another. But actually, in most generations there were, each successor had studied with a number of teachers. And it wasn't so cut and dry. And so we say that Huene was the sixth ancestor, but there were other lineages that developed before him.

[08:46]

And anyway, the exact history we don't know. In fact, we know that the names we chant from the Indian Lineage are not literal, because they were put together in China from names of great Indian teachers, and some of them didn't know each other, that we say next to each other. It's kind of like the women ancestors, we don't, it's not a, that we will also chant, it's not a lineage exactly, but it's a collection of names of great, great women teachers and practitioners in India and China and Japan and America. Huineng is thought of as the sixth ancestor because all of the lineages, many lineages after him, of Chan, we'll talk about the beginning of one of them tomorrow, but they all go back to Huineng. But there were other students of the fifth ancestor who became much more important teachers during that time in history. Anyway, Huineng came to the fifth ancestor and

[09:51]

And the fifth ancestor asked him why he wanted to, why he was there, and he said, I want to become Buddha. And the fifth ancestor, you know, he said he was from Canton, or southern China, and the fifth ancestor said to him, you know, southerners don't have Buddha nature. So, you know, with all due respect to those of you, you know, like Michael from North Carolina, who are from the South, I think there are probably some others here. Oh, yeah, Roy is. Well, now from Tennessee, is that the South? Yeah. So this is kind of an age-old problem. We might think of this in North Chicago and think of people in South Chicago as not having Buddha nature. But the future sixth ancestor said to the fifth ancestor, amongst people, there's North and South. And Buddha nature is North and South. Anyway, this is all background to this story.

[10:56]

The Fifth Ancestor appreciated that response from this illiterate, you know, poor woodcutter, layperson from the South, and said, okay, go work in the kitchen, work in the back of the kitchens, taking care of the rice, in the rice pounding hut. Now, Dogen does not cite, there's a story in the Platform Sutra which is, at least that story, maybe not other parts of that sutra, clearly apocryphal about a poetry contest, and Homer had said something that more invoked emptiness as opposed to gradual cultivation, and so he became the sixth ancestor rather than This other guy, who was actually more important in his life. Anyway, all of that sort of footnotes. So, the piece of this that Dogen cites as the case, he said that the Danban Hongren came at midnight, secretly, visiting the rice pounding hut.

[12:02]

There's other versions of the story that actually make more sense in a certain way that he came some other time because of the three, which I'll get to. But anyway, he asked Lehmann-Huynheng, is the rice refined or not? Huynheng said, it's refined but not yet sifted. So this is the key point of this story and of the sashimi. How do we produce nourishment? Literally, rice is refined by removing the husk, and there's a process of making it from brown rice to white rice. And then it's sifted, because the little pebbles get in. So literally, this works. We're talking about something else.

[13:05]

Is the rice refined yet or not? Maynang said it is refined, but not yet sifted. So this refining is, you know, what we're doing here, sitting facing the wall, facing Bodhidharma, having Bodhidharma face us. And it's refined but not yet sifted. There's this endless refinement. So part of what we need to do is to refine that which is on your sheet now, is to dispel, let go of karmic grasping and anger and confusion, which the Third Ancestor thought it was his personal sins that had led to his condition of leprosy. And we talked about how our karma is both personal but also very much collective, that we are... Many things in our lives are a product of

[14:20]

the causes and conditions of our culture, of our human saga, and in the case of this country, wiping out of Native Americans' cultures and peoples in many cases, most cases, and slavery and racism, which still are very much part of the world around us. and gun violence and weapons companies and so forth. Okay, so it's not just personal. It's not just that, you know, the third ancestor's leprosy was not caused by his personal misdeeds. It's a product of many things. So part of this refining is to see through are karmic conditions, personal and collective. Not to get rid of it, because, you know, some things drop away.

[15:23]

Some personal bad habits we can let go of. I stopped smoking cigarettes a few months after I started sitting. I told that story, but it's sort of endless refining. And there is also the refining of going deeper. So all of you have been sitting zazen for a while now. Some less than others, some for a long time. And in addition to seeing, observing, being present with our karmic patterns and habits of grasping and anger and so forth, also in our practice there's this settling, there's this going deeper. There's this opening up, this possibility of being helpful, being a true person. And so both are going on as we sit, period after period, day after day.

[16:33]

And Huining, this illiterate layperson, So part of the point of this is that, you know, you don't need to be a sophisticated intellectual student of the way to see reality. It's important that we have an illiterate barbarianist, you know, in some ways the second founder of Zen, after Bodhidharma. But he said it is refined but not yet sifted. So there's two sides of our practice. I talked about it, the one traditional way of talking about it is Tathagata Zen and Ancestral Zen. So part of our practice is just to see Buddha, to allow Buddha to

[17:37]

be expressed in your body-mind. And we sit upright and take another breath and keep coming back to this, and this, and this. And we start to recognize, oh yeah, Buddha. And Buddha is just the one who works to help everyone enter the path to awakening. But Zen also has this other side of sifting. And so all of these stories I'm talking about this week are about meeting someone, about one student meeting a teacher. So another expression is, realize on your own and go see someone. So the sifting, as Winang said, it was refined but not yet sifted. still needed confirmation.

[18:42]

So literally, again, sifting the rice is when you take out the pebbles from the grains of rice, or the sand, or grit, or whatever. So, Huineng said this, it is refined but not yet sifted. And, you know, I would say that there's endless refining, but at some point, there's some level of refining that is can be confirmed by someone else. So when Huynh Anh said that, the story goes, Donald tapped the mortar three times with his staff. Huynh Anh showed that he understood. He shook his rice winnow three times. And then he entered the teacher's room. So part of what this is about is that the three taps and the three shakes are about the third watch, so the way they divided time back then.

[19:47]

That refers to what we call midnight. And whether Daman came to the room, as this version by Dogen says, at midnight, or whether he came earlier and then later on at midnight, Huina, who understood, came and went to see, secretly went to see Homura. So, there's another place where Dogen mentions this story in his extensive record, and he says that this sifting is like becoming a true person. So, really this whole process, whether it's refining, sifting, whatever, is about how do we fully express ourselves? How do we face our own patterns of karmic grasping. See them well enough so we don't get caught by them, that we're not enchanted by them, that we don't cause harm based on them, that we see new options for how to respond rather than react.

[21:04]

And the story is that beyond this is that Huining went and at midnight, Hongren gave him the robe and ball as insignias of transmission, supposedly from Shakyamuni, and that's more mythological, and that's when he became the sixth ancestor. And as a result of this story, Dharma transmission in our tradition always happens at midnight. And there's a very formal, elaborate, private ceremony between the teacher and student that happens when there's dharma transmission. And it always happens at midnight. So this is this basic story. I'll just read it again. Zen Master Dalai Lama at midnight secretly visited the rice pounding hut and asked Lama Nguyen, is the rice refined yet or not? Huineng said, it is refined, but not yet sifted. Daman tapped the mortar three times with his staff.

[22:14]

Huineng shook the rice window three times, and he entered the room. And that transmission happened. So Huineng, you know, right from the beginning, as soon as he hears this line to the Diamond Sutra, or maybe before that, even though he was an illiterate woodcutter, and impoverished, he saw something, he had some insight. So Wisdom, his name, Daikan Enno in Japanese, one of the characters of his name is Wisdom. And Wisdom in Buddhism, or maybe more accurately, Insight, is not about knowledge, it's not about a lot of learning, it's not a function of reading a lot of old-sense stories. It's about seeing what's in front of us right now. Insight. Insight means to look within, but also it's what's right in front of us, facing the wall, the wall facing you.

[23:15]

So Huaineng was illiterate, but he still saw clearly. And so Dogen's verse comments, in the deep night with eyes vividly saw each other as the old monk Buddha in India. So Buddhas see all others as Buddhas. Buddhas are continually going beyond Buddha. And that way they can meet the next Buddha appearing before them. So again, this is an important story in our tradition. Dogen adds, with divine dignity, the lion helps the younger bounce it back. Where the elephant king treads, fox tracks are erased. So in the poem, in the story we talked about yesterday, there's other animals. Dogen says, a phoenix chick is born from a phoenix, but they are not the same.

[24:21]

A dragon gives birth to a dragon child, but they are not separate. So this relationship between, well, we could say between teacher and student, but it's also between each of us and reality itself, and the ultimate, and suchness, or emptiness. As we're sitting, we start to see, to feel, to hear, physically, viscerally, yogically, this deeper reality of Any word I say isn't it, but of interconnectedness, of the ultimate, of the universal, this aspect, this background of perfect balance. Sugiyoshi said we are constantly losing our balance against the background of perfect balance. But we start to have a relationship to that. And it becomes refined and we can go deeper and deeper. And part of that relationship to the ultimate is that we want to express it.

[25:34]

You know, the teaching tells us we're supposed to. But actually we realize that we want to share that with our friends and family and the people we work with and all of the troubled people in our troubled world and we want to respond somehow to be helpful. And we each have our own different ways of doing that. And we can refine and open up. There's different ways of doing that. But that relationship, so that relationship between the phenomenal particular self, the conventional limited self, and ultimate reality is very interesting. And it also, you know, it's, again, it has this as part of it, this sense of, how do we share that? How do we express that? So he emphasizes very much expressing our awareness from Zazen in our everyday activities.

[26:43]

He talks a lot about the procedures and everyday practices in the monastery he founded. So we have lots of different forms that we use even in this non-residential-like temple, and how we move around the zendo, and the way we do service and bow, and later on how we do our zendo meals. So those of you who are using tray and bowls may think that the people with the wrapping cloth are doing this exotic, fancy, formal thing. It's just actually the most practical way they found in China to serve a large number of people food and clean the bowls without burdening the dishwashers. Anyway, all of these practices and forms are expressions of something deeper.

[27:43]

They come out of people, people who've refined and refined this connection to something deeper. And it also has to do with teacher-student and relating to that. So, Dogen says, with divine dignity, the lion helps the younger bounce it back. So this is another A follow-up to the dragon gives birth to a dragon child, but they're not separate. With divine dignity, the lion helps the lion cub bounce it back. How do we take a hold of this dharma wheel that we all have tasted because we're doing this practice and share it? Yesterday somebody did a somersault in the Zen-do to demonstrate this.

[28:44]

How do we share this together? And then the last line, Dogen says, where the elephant king treads, fox tracks are erased. So there are lots of stories of foxes in Zen lore. There's one... a teacher who said that enlightened people, cultivated people, don't have karmic legacies, are not caught by causes and conditions. And because of that, he became a fox for 500 lifetimes. Eventually another teacher showed him that cultivated people don't ignore cause and effect. These patterns of grasping and anger and confusion and so forth recur subtly, even more subtly, even as you start to see through them. Anyway, where the elephant king treads, fox tracks are erased.

[29:46]

So we talked yesterday about dragons and phoenixes. Sometimes dragons are paired with tigers, but often they're paired with elephants, dragons and elephants. She's so ceremonied there. She says, dragons and elephants give me questions. So elephants are very wonderful animals. They're large. They have big brains, too. They're very smart and very social. And they grieve when an elephant dies. The other elephants come and they face these animals. They also have very good memory. So there's a lot more Then, in the deep night with eyes vivid, they saw each other as the old monk Buddha in India. So this tradition, Zen tradition of meeting each other, seeing each other as Buddha, both refining and sifting.

[31:02]

All of these stories, you know, bring up other stories. So there's another story about a person working in the rice paddy hut. This is a story about the great Juefang, or Seppo in Japanese, who was famous for being a Tenzo at many, many temples. Eventually became a great teacher and had, I think, 1,500 students. a tenzo, an acting tenzo, an assistant tenzo, a former tenzo here, and others of you who've been assistant tenzos. Anyway, this choice, so Xuefeng was tenzo and this was when he was practicing with Dongshan,

[32:05]

Yang Jie, who I've talked about a lot this year, who said, I am not him, he actually is me, or I am not him, he actually is me, who's responsible for the Jewel Mayer Samadhi, who sometimes chants, and the teaching of Seshnas, and anyway, I've been talking about him a lot this year. So Xue Feng was Tenzo also at Dongshan's place. One day, While the rice was being cleaned, Dongsheng came in the hut and asked, do you sift out the sand from the rice or do you sift out the rice from the sand? Xuefeng said, I throw out the sand and rice at the same time. Dongsheng said, then what will the community eat? And Xuefeng overturned the bowl with all the sand. Dongshan said, maybe later you'll meet somebody else, and basically go away.

[33:07]

So Xuefeng saw emptiness. He saw the side of things where there's no difference between the sand and the rice. The pure grains and all of the chaff, you know, depend on each other. Without the the grit in the rice without the chaff. We wouldn't have the rice. He saw the emptiness of these distinctions very clearly. And he said, throw them out the same. And then he went and overturned the rice sifter. Dongshan said, what will you feed the community? So it's not enough to see the ultimate, it's not enough to see emptiness, it's not enough to see through all the phenomena and particulars. Shrefang eventually went and studied with Deshan, who was

[34:20]

sort of on the side of Renji and kind of tough guy practice. Dongshan was much subtler. Deshan was one who used to shout a lot and hit his students. And I guess Xuefeng needed that. Some people need strict, tough, macho teachers to tell them what to do. push them around until they let go of their stuff. This style of art tradition is more gentle and subtle, but also challenging. It's up to you. It's up to you. Will you stay present and upright and pay attention to your life? Pay attention to inhale and exhale. Pay attention to all the stuff that comes up, and be willing to sit through it, and let it go, and see it come up again, and not react to it.

[35:24]

So I can't make you do that by going around and hitting you on the shoulder or something. I don't think that's... Anyway, it's up to you. Is the rest you're trying to get? So I'm going to tell a different story, because it's about the fifth ancestor and the fourth ancestor. This is a background story, and maybe off the point of the main story. But I find it interesting. So excuse me for this digression. You can ignore the rest of the talk if you want. But this is the story. So we heard the story yesterday about how The fourth ancestor was 14 when he came to the third ancestor and asked, how do I become liberated? How do I find the gateway of liberation? The fifth ancestor, so this is a story that I haven't, I think it's taken from some old Transmission of the Lamb text, but the only place I know of that's, well, that's been translated is in Dogen's essay on Buddha nature.

[36:44]

And the story goes that the fifth ancestor, Dongwan Hongran, who's the teacher of the story with Huining, was a man named Saesong Daochil, which means pine planting, person of the way. And so, you know, planting trees is not just a modern environmental practice, but it's also very much part of our Chan tradition, Zen tradition. Anyway, he, as an old man, he was planting pine saplings, and he encountered the fourth ancestor, Dai Yidao Shin, who is the guy who went to the third ancestor and asked to be shown the gate of release Dali saw him and recognized something.

[37:46]

Dali was away from his monastery. This fourth ancestor, Dali, said, I would like to share, transmit my Dharma to you, but I'm afraid you're too old. If you happen to get reborn into the human world, I'll be waiting for you. So this is the clearest story I know of a Zen tradition about rebirth. There's a few others. So, again, you can ignore this and you don't have to believe it, certainly, but anyway, he said, you're too old. If you get reborn in the human world, which is very auspicious, I'll be waiting for you. And Sai Sang, this old man, nodded in agreement. Later, he got reborn as the son of a man named Chao, the son of his daughter. And then it goes really aviographical. She abandoned the infant in a muddy creek, but he was protected by divine messengers.

[38:48]

So, I don't know. I guess this story is after Moses. Maybe they heard that story. Anyway, seeing that he remained unharmed even after seven days had passed, the daughter retrieved him and raised him, and he passed in normal childhood. OK, one day when he was seven years old, the future fifth ancestor, Wang Lin, was traveling, and he met the fourth ancestor. And even though he was still a child, he certainly discerned that he could tell that he was set apart from ordinary children. And then there's this strange dialogue. The fourth ancestor asked him, what is your name? And the boy replied, I have a name, but it is not an ordinary name. What name is that? asked the fourth ancestor. It is Buddha-nature, said the boy. And the fourth ancestor said, you have no Buddha-nature. Just like the fifth ancestor later said, took my name.

[39:52]

People from the South have no Buddha-nature. But the boy who was the future fifth ancestor said, you say no Buddha-nature, So the fourth ancestor, if you ask the boy, was a vessel for Buddha Dharma, and eventually he became the fifth ancestor. So this Buddha nature, this quality of awareness, is not some thing you can possess. And yet, we're telling these stories this week about this refining and sifting, the refining and confirming of this buddhiness that we encounter when we see our wholeness, when we see this background of the universal, this background of perfect balance that were never quite there, or maybe, you know,

[40:59]

for a few minutes in one period, or maybe sometimes for a period or two. And yet, we're in relationship to this. And it takes endless refining, endless sifting. And then, sometimes, something happens. So, again, this this verse comment by Dogan, in the deep night, in the middle of the night, with eyes vivid, they saw each other as the old monk Buddha and India. So part of our practice, part of the practice of Buddha's is to see Buddha in all, in everyone, in each of us, in all beings. And then our practice is, how do we refine that? be willing to go deeper, to sit yet another period of zazen, or another day of sashimi.

[42:04]

So I would say there's no end to the refining, there's no end to the sifting, but sometimes something happens and there's, oh yes, it's refined, and you accept it. And somebody says, yes, I will sit back for you. So these stories, again, are, you know, family jewels. There are 90 of them in this collection, if I don't get… The ones I've told so far, the first four days, are consecutive. Tomorrow I'm going to tell another story that's later on, but it's about one of the stories in here about Huineng, and when he's a teacher, and how he passes that along to someone. So, how do we take care of this nourishing treasure that this practice provides us?

[43:21]

How do we not become numb to the problems of the world and suffering in our own life? How do we meet ourselves? How do we become truly ourselves? And again, that involves, requires facing all the yucky stuff. It just has to be. We have to face the violence in our world, the violence in our own heart, the weirdness, the sadness, the loss. But also, it's not that we have to do that first, then we do the other. As we do that, there's also this refining that comes as we settle.

[44:22]

as we allow ourselves to more deeply be ourselves. So thank you all very much for giving of yourself just to be here and to support each other, to do this challenging, noble, rewarding practice. Please enjoy it. Enjoy the process. Thank you. Dear Kala Sangha leaders, I vow to free them. Illusions are impossible. I vow to end them. I vow to enter them.

[45:27]

Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to...

[45:36]

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