Go around the pages, because there are some people who don't know who the other people are. No, you don't have to say your name. There's someone else. OK, yeah. I'm starting here. Laurie. John. Andrea. Rachel. Francesca. Kate. Barbara. Well, thank you for coming this evening. Typically at the end of service we offer the merit to pass any energy that has been cultivated or focused in on to help other beings.

[01:02]

So should I forget at the end, I want to say that if any good fortune or focused energy, encouragement and practice is cultivated during the course of these four sessions, I wish that it has a great number of these. Laurie and I were speaking about evaluation of the class, which traditionally happens at the end of a series. It was a handout. People would write down what worked for them, what maybe didn't work, how we could improve upon it. It's fairly effective, and people do bring back their thoughts on paper to a box on the porch. We thought it might be a nice idea to actually share some thoughts at the end of the class each time. We forgot last time. So hopefully we'll end about five or so minutes early. and people can just voice what worked and also maybe what didn't work, what areas may have been murky that could use some more clarification, which will help us and help people in the class maybe better understand the point or two.

[02:13]

So, you don't have to say anything, but it's really going to be helpful to think about that later. This evening, I will be presenting my thoughts on a period of Zen history called the Golden Age of Zen, which took place in China. And this chart that Huang Maiguang created some time ago, showing the lineage in China, the Bodhidharma, it separates out through the five houses. And the types are pretty small, but what's nice is that it's in Chinese, which of course is the native language, and then also in Japanese, because we also use Japanese pronunciation, so we'll be able to understand, or familiarize ourselves with who it's being spoken about. and the division of the five houses, and then I just highlighted the five schools here, which is kind of like the father of the five schools.

[03:21]

That being said, The gentlemen who headed the Five Houses did not set themselves up as creators of the Five Houses. That was something that was actually sort of the one that they established some time later. The Five Houses, they were just practicing Zen and creating a perpetuating of the names that had been handed down to them. I'm actually going to be talking about that later on this evening. Basically, they're sort of style practices. Just to satisfy people's curiosity at this point, the two surviving schools are Rinzai and Soto schools, and we are the Soto school. But there's some Rinzai aspects to our practice that traditionally is considered the Soto school. And the Soto school has a, to my way of thinking, kind of a softer, more poetic feeling to it.

[04:22]

It's very subtle, and it's often considered a sort of farmer's zen. The Rinzai school is aristocratic zen, and tends to have a more explicit firing problem for that. The styles of the teachers often used shakes, shouts, beatings with sticks, and sort of what people who are not Zen students typically think of Zen about, you know, the sticks and shouts and all that. So it's just like in any given room, there's different types of people and different personalities, but we all contain aspects of the other, it's just what's coming into the form. And perhaps someone's silence or wave of a hand, who maybe is a traditional Soto teacher, could be interpreted as a extremely loud shout or a very large hard whack of a stick, but the way it manifests in this moment is just the movement of a hand or closing of the eyes.

[05:27]

So I'll talk about these things with other people in a little bit. I'd also like to encourage people to ask questions or make comments as we go, versus waiting toward the end. Because if one person is maybe a little unclear about something, perhaps others will recall also. And that will help me slow down and clarify things, which I may have not. And importantly, not attend to so well. So please pick up. I don't see you to say something very much for the lecture. Larry ended last week with a reference to the Third Ancestor, and I don't speak Chinese, so I won't say the sentence line.

[06:45]

He's known for his Faith in Mine, or Xin Xin Bing poem, which has a very strong Daoist flavor to it, a soft sort of poetic way of describing reality. And there's a strong influence in Lao Tzu's writing. The early ancestors, and Rory spoke about this, we have stories about them. It's mostly the myth that's the important thing. It's not the actual fact. Did he live in this particular date and time? Did this exchange actually happen or not? Because a lot of this stuff was recorded decades or centuries after this person was allegedly living, including the founder of our tradition, Chekhov. 200 million years after he passed away.

[07:50]

So after the third ancestor, the fourth ancestor's name is Al-Sin. The third ancestor is S-E-N-G-T-S apostrophe A-N. With the fourth ancestor, There is a story that relates very similar to Bodhidharma and his disciple Veko and this awakening of his worthy ancestor goes something like this. He came to Tsangtsang begging to be led to the Dharma gate of liberation. Tsangtsang said, who has bound you? And Tsangtsang said, well, nobody has bound me. Well, that being the case, why should you continue to seek for liberation? And at that, he was thoroughly enlightened, which is a classic sort of ending recap to these stories. And while that sounds a bit kind of overblown, he was thoroughly enlightened, I think we've all probably had experiences of just kind of being caught in our own mind about something.

[09:00]

And suddenly it actually wakes us up to the fact that we're just kind of playing some kind of tape loop and tripping out on something. So it might not sound as grandiose as the liberation maybe is just a simple thing of just trying to clean up my room. I don't have time to clean up my room or organize my papers or what have you. So that's just a simple little story about the awakening of this fourth ancestor. Another thing that's attributed to him, which is rather important, is that this was the beginning of the settling down of the Zen practitioners into a loose-knit community of people. In India, the monks did travel around as a group with Shakyamuni Buddha, but by and large, they had fairly itinerant lives. They went around begging, and there was a lot of money going. And in China, what we actually find is a is a development of a community, and then an environment which was not so conducive to actually begging.

[10:03]

While Zen was absorbed into the culture of China, Korea, Japan, and finally America and Europe, still the practitioners had to be sensitive to what was the climate of the country. And in India, it was just accepted to go around begging. And I would just conclude that the relationship that the monks had with the lay people there. While in China, while there was begging going on, it was more symbolic. develop a community, and just like we're doing in this country, they had to deal with the politics of community and the relationships we're working about with each other, as well as just maintaining a meditation practice. I didn't, I don't have a literature in describing what those places were like. There are just references to it in the history books.

[11:06]

But as of May, we can see that there was a shift in China of its practitioners. They also practiced not first in Zen monasteries, but actually in Vinaya temples. Vinaya is the, you may recall, is one of the baskets of Buddhism and was concerned with the rules and regulations of the practice. So the Vinaya temples had students practicing there where meditation wasn't the focus. It actually was part of the precepts and presumably discussing what the various facets of these concepts meant, and they were open to having these Chinese Zen guys come in there and stay there. What their relationship was, I'm not real clear about that. But in these Chinese temples, as some of us were fortunate to find out when we visited China, There was a lot of practices going on with brick walls there, which is not so much the case here in this country or in Japan.

[12:11]

You go to a Zen temple or a Pure Land temple, it's pretty much the specifics of the practice that's going on there. In the early days in China, they were doing lots of different practices. And there were lots of teachers and senior students who supported the monks. And of course, they had to practice in one way or another. And the temples were filled with lots of people, hundreds and hundreds of people. So the names had to work, actually, to support themselves, since they weren't dependent on begging mouths of the lay people, and they corresponded, and were their own food, that was their main source of income. if they had any, but again it's not clear exactly how they ran it, but we can look down the street here at the Thai temple and see how their monks actually put on the dharma for the visitors, the lay people, lay people, lay demons by cooking the food and putting the children to sleep.

[13:29]

There are a number of meditation methods attributed to this fourth ancestor. He's traditionally respected as the first master to establish a stable community of students. And the methods of practice included incantation, visualization, and examination of interactions, and the contemplation of the essence of mind. So there was a group of practices with the mind, mostly, as well as incantation, or chanting Durvani, which is what we do here, and visualization, which we may do at the end of this presentation. It's not part of our program. So there's just this one school, Zen, that came from India. And a lot of the central personalities that are part of the literature of Chinese Buddhism and stories here. That's a good question. Please. You're talking about one particular school.

[14:41]

What does that mean? going down with what Buddhism, what sense of Buddhism to China. So it was just, it wasn't, it hadn't divided into the schools that had the group that we had. Okay, so this was the beginning. So there's this fellow named Liu Tu, and this is 6th century China. It's said that birds brought flowers to him at his temple cave, and he was always surrounded by wolves and tigers. And the fourth ancestor heard of this fellow and went to visit and drink his hermitage and pretended to be afraid of a tiger.

[15:44]

Nitu asked, are you still like that? Like what? said the ancestor. And Nitu was enlightened. Well, it didn't take much, did it? No, it didn't. But what this story is, a lot of people have an idea that when you're a Zen student that you get peace of mind. And what the Fourth Ancestor was bringing up to the student who was not quite ripe yet was essence of mind, or just this mind. And to be scared, to be completely scared, or to be completely bold, or what have you, is being fulfilled in the Dharma, rather than having to try to cultivate it as being a piece of mind. That was the teaching on this, what was going on. It seems to me that these types of stories, you know, the master dissidents to the planet, must be much more common in China than in India. Yeah. Yeah, well, again, as history goes, the further back it goes, it becomes more apocryphal.

[16:47]

And it's hard to know exactly what happened. But the sense of teacher-student relationship really came together in China. And in India, while teachers did have students, and there's a lineage there, the practice that kept the bloodline through, there isn't so much of that in teacher-student sparking style. And that is what we're talking about, that link with the Koran, which is what the whole literature is about. Yeah, the metaphysics of the Indian mind is very complex. And the practices and the foundation of Buddhism, especially in the Dhammaka school, was an expression of that mind. And in China, While the Chinese are no dopes, it is also fake. That was the spirit of the practice, as I understand it. It's interesting. If you look at just the food, Indian food is very complex, lots of textures and flavors. Chinese food typically is very simple.

[17:50]

And the food, and the culture, and the tradition, and all that, it seems to be a trick of how I see it. There's another story. a fellow named Tao Lin Zengi, who was famous for doing zazen up in the tree. And his nickname was Bird Nest Zengi. And Bird's Nest, Bird's Nest. And there's a famous conversation that he had with the prefect in the community there. And the prefect was yelling up and says, in her first lesson, she was very dangerous up there. And the roshi leaned down to him and says, it's very dangerous down there. And the prefect was saying, well, what do you mean it's dangerous down here? It seems very safe. I'm not going to fall. And then the teacher began to teach the Dharma to him and said, you're a dangerous one. How can you say you're not in danger when your passions are burning like fire and you can't stop worrying about this and that?

[18:54]

The prefect asked, what is the essence of Buddhism? In the words of Buddha, not to do any evil, to do all that is good and to save all beings by worship, which is also the three-fourth process. The prefect said, any child of three knows that. And Dao Lin said, That's so a child of three knows it, but even that person maybe can't do it. The head gardener here from years ago asked Mel, how do you do zazen when you have a tree in front of you? And that's sort of being stuck on the idea that you have to be sort of breast-legged and on a positive neutral. But we all found a way to do zazen up in a tree. I don't know where this goes.

[19:57]

There were monks and nuns that were unattached to monasteries at this time were ordered to register. The population was growing. curious about this popular religion and wanted to kind of keep them seen and registered. So there's a few people that agreed with them and continued to wander around helping poor people in the beginning of their lives. They lived like a monster. That's the reason why there's so many people that kind of took care of them. So there was a And there was a monk there whose nickname was freelance master. And he wandered about. And he was summoned by the empress, actually, and entered her bedroom. And having been silent for a while, he asked, did you understand?

[21:02]

She said, not at all. He said, I keep my vow of silence. And we didn't have enough to want to kill quite at a loss. But it was a temptation of a monk coming to the emperor's bedroom and then potentially creating a panic that he maintained his vows. And even though he wasn't registered, he got the teaching from the emperors and got those pocketbooks. There's another fellow whose name is Pato. And what he did was he went to a mausoleum that housed a public for sacrificing animals. It was a public for burning dead animals to be sacrificed. And in another mausoleum, he destroyed with some additional culture that we can present to other people.

[22:06]

And this fellow, Professor T. Trujillo, used to open and shut his eyes and ask about things. And this is a teaching outside the scripture that he put it down on the basis of his approaching students to gene practice. And reading Akinosha's biography, that was his response, I believe. And he responded in kind for us. So these responses that are written about, that we experienced, they may appear new to us, but in actual deliberation we can see a bridge of responses and a line of practice that connects all of these people. This is like the 6th century, about 500 or so. Yeah. OK, close your eyes.

[23:15]

Well, that's a good question. My understanding of that is when you When you close your eyes, there is darkness, and always one of darkness. And when you open your eyes, things are just changed. And there's, uh, you know, uh, the religion is, uh, that, uh, you know, they're, they're going to call it, uh, [...] uh Well, rather than taking up valuable time, there is a piece in our liturgy where things are distinguished in the light and all is one in darkness.

[24:15]

And if the person just closed their eyes, then they would be attached to the Absolute Oneness. So the movement of open-closed unity speaks to that whole. So now we're going to the 7th century, 601 to 674, with the 5th ancestor, Hong Jin. And he was the only one of the 4th ancestor's 500 disciples given permission to teach. And he used the Diamond Sutra for his teaching. And the sutra stresses non-attachment to form, elimination of religious self-consciousness,

[25:15]

the elucidation of means, when the end is attained, and the distinction between concept and reality, and then breath, mobility, and mind. The Diamond Sutra is part of the Prajnaparamita literature, and is actually the oldest existing book in existence. They have a copy of it in the British Museum in London. It dates from like 1868 or something like that. Yeah, Chinese book bar. I haven't seen it, but that's what I've read. So the monks were studying the Buddhist literature. But with the Fifth Ancestor, as the story goes, he stressed meditation more than study.

[26:19]

But this doesn't mean that the monks didn't study. No, their Ps and Qs. But that was an emphasis. That was simple. There's a teaching of truth from the ancestors. It says, look to where the horizon disappears beyond the sky and behold the figure one. This is a great help. It is good for those beginning to sit in meditation. When they find their mind distracted, they focus their mind on the superior mind. And the Chinese character for one consists of a single horizontal line.

[27:21]

And this horizon is where heaven and earth meet. And symbolically, the earth stands for the relative world, not the world. And heaven stands for the absolute. And as my office says, the card is out to infer that that's the way in our practice, or relative to how it's being addressed in our practice. So this was a meditation practice that was both, it was a very calming experience, but also it was a visualization practice that was being done. You have to visualize, you have to go out there, visualize the intersections, the rise, the fall. The fifth ancestor is most important because he was the teacher of the sixth ancestor. This is where Samuel comes into his world and is shared with me.

[28:29]

where Zen lived in China and forward, prior to the Sixth Ancestor, the teachers, while although Chinese, were still looking back toward India as their frame of reference. So with the Sixth Ancestor, we have lots of the stories attributed to him. And he's a real hero of mine for a few reasons. Primarily because he woke up and received transmission as a layperson. He was ordained later by a teacher, and the stories is in the Monarch literature. where he so refined his understanding of the guidance of the worship and was ordained as a monk. And he was also illiterate, which also speaks to him teaching us some scriptures in exodus. The last thing you will understand is that your good nature doesn't matter.

[29:35]

What matters is that your gender lives, that your social status lives, that you're a good woodcutter, trying to support your widow and mother, which is what he was doing. He was a woodcutter. He heard the Daka Zutra being recited by someone, and he came with me to his home, his home in the true south. And when he spoke to the man who was reciting it, he told him about the fifth ancestor, and he went to go study with him. And, as the story goes, he, uh, humiliated his mother because she told him that he was just, uh, for support, and he was getting fired with his, uh, ways of, uh, making money. And, uh, he, uh, was given some life. The story goes about this man who's had a dino-syndrome. She was worried about it. She supported herself.

[30:36]

And he was able to grow up with his family, with his ancestor. There's some feeling that maybe that story is apocryphal, because in China, there was Confucian, and a very strong feeling of pride for a kid to be his mom. We don't know if it's going to be popular. So it's maybe enhanced later, just so everybody's taking care of this kid. Well, H-U-I-N-E-M-G is the sixth ancestor, or daikon, D-A-I-K-I-N-E-N-O in Japanese. And his years are 638 to 713. And here's a story that is attributed to him when he met the Fifth Ancestor, who traveled for 30 days to reach an east mountain where the Fifth Ancestor had his temple. And met with him, who asked, where do you come from, and what do you want?

[31:41]

He replied, I, your humble disciple, am a commoner from Tsenchao in Lingna, and I have come a long way to pay my respects to your reverence, with no other aim than to become a Buddha. Hong Zhen, the fifth ancestor impressed in being a technical teacher, tested him in response. So you are from Lingnan, and besides a barbarian, it was common to think of southerners as barbarians. How can you ever become a Buddha? Lingnan manifested himself in responding to this trap by saying, although people can be classified into southerners and northerners, the Buddha nature knows of no south or north. The body of a barbarian may be different, then the body of a monk. But what difference can there be from the standpoint of the human nature? Is that right? That's right through to the essence of our practice. And, um... Practice number four. I do my best. Yeah. Which language are you thinking of?

[32:43]

The way I... Southern. Yes, that's true. That was written some centuries before. I'm reminded of this. I'm sorry, I think it goes after that, thank you. What a team, what a team. Let's check the feedback. I think of the story when I have a judging line about somebody who's not getting it, and what their social status is, or whatever, that we all have the potential to wake up with appearances, I can categorize people. of the hyper-awareness to actually think about and awaken to a light by somebody who is like a light. This comes through as a little piercing understanding of our practice, or about some kind of work process, or behavior theory, or experiences of being pleasantly surprised by somebody who has shown us a way, though by appearances it didn't appear so, that they would be able to do that. We were after, we started a little late, and we could take a few minute break, just about half way through.

[34:08]

So, let's do that just in case somebody needs to stretch their legs, use the bathroom, or whatever. There were a number of students practicing with him, and when it came time to transmit the Dharma to the next generation, he asked for them to to compose a verse for their understanding. And so no one bothered to try, because they had, other than the head monk, because everyone said, well, the head monk, our teacher, it was like the Abbot of the temple, and then it was like the head monk, or shuso, and that's kind of the teacher of the students, the acolytes there. So they thought, well, this guy is going to get the transmission, so let's just let him compose his verse. Oh, I might add, before that, that the fifth ancestor realized that Winang had some understanding, a great understanding of the Dharma, but he didn't want to show anybody his, show this guy, so he asked him to grow a pound of rice in the pantry, which he did for about eight months.

[35:17]

He didn't see him at all for eight months. So he would be kind of invisible, and practice without being too aware. and to cause a lot of disruption because he was a barbarian and illiterate. He didn't have the literature or the practices that the monks had been studying so assiduously for years and years. So if he was going to say, here's the next teacher here, there would be a lot of uproar. So that's kind of the politics and the business of Zen. takes place, and then you look at the even contemporary Zen in America, where that transmission process is taking place, and it's kind of the business side of it that you're actually finding, where they're standing in temples. They're not actually the ones that are curing the damage, they're the ones that are residing in the damage. So it's good to see that our practice has the potential for purity, but within the impurity, there is a so-called impurity.

[36:18]

There is a taint of being human and the choices that we make. And as Mel affectionately recalls the story of Nick Baker receiving transmission from Suzuki Roshi, So, so the, There was a... So the poem that the head monk wrote, Xin Xu, he wrote, the body is a tree of enlightenment, the mind is a stand of a bright mirror. Wipe it constantly and with ever watchful diligence to keep it uncontaminated by worldly dust.

[37:23]

So the fifth ancestor saw this and publicly praised this understanding. The Sixth Ancestor came across a monk that was reading this and kind of reciting it and asked after it because he couldn't read it himself. And the monk recited it to him, and they said, well, I have a verse in response, and could you write that down? And the monk did that, and his verse says, Enlightenment is no tree, nor is a bright mirror a stand. Since it is not a thing at all, where could it be contaminated by dust? So that's our hero's response, and what pervades in that verse is the dharma of emptiness, that that thing exists.

[38:35]

And that's kind of the side of our practice that we tend to talk about and emphasize, and we tend to put through the side of this contamination and polishing, but it's important to look at that other side as one of the older practices of Buddhism, the Vinaya or Theravada practice of self-purification and really watch it closely, maintaining posture and breath, looking at our practice with regard to the three steps and really kind of keeping a clean, clear vision on that. And it's a more gradual approach to practice in our school, the Seventh School. when it's that verse through conceptual thinking into reality. And the impression of that is in Antipas, and in this poem, is a boy versus a girl.

[39:37]

Well, there's different translations. This particular one says, enlightenment is no dream. nor is a bright mirror a stand. Yeah, but actually a bright mirror is ourselves. The bright mirror is the illumination from within and the reflection of other things into ourselves and ourselves into other things. It's not like this here. It's not this. Yeah, yeah I've got another 500 years to go here.

[40:47]

So the fifth ancestor realized that this was actually the answer or the response or the person who authored that could carry on the tradition and he met with the sixth ancestor and they had their talk. And it was a secret talk. And this is another thing that's carried on to this day, that the talk that they had happened at midnight. And the Fifth Ancestor held up his akesa as a screen to kind of shield, to kind of create a sacred space with his disciple, and no one else was included. Everyone was included, but no one was included in this exchange, in this room connection, which in turn created a sacred environment, if you will, in the late 1870s and early 19th century. And to this day, the part of the transition ceremonies that happen at the Zen Center happen in that hour of the evening, and the room is covered with arches.

[42:01]

But there are older cases that have gone away there that are up as an homage to his time in China. So there are a couple of stories from the Philippines that you all wanted to share. This is the sixth ancestor. Good friends, how then are meditation and wisdom alike? They are like the lamp and the light that gives forth. If there is a lamp, there is light. If there is no lamp, there is no light. The lamp is the substance of the light. The light is the function of the lamp. Thus, although they have two names, in substance they are not two. Meditation and wisdom are also like this. Four centuries later, Dogen talks about practicing right and being right.

[43:07]

And that, to me, is a reiteration of this thing that we're not forbidden to do. I don't know. I really don't know. He went south and he was asked to go into seclusion for a number of years and he lived with a bunch of hunters and he used to eat the food that was in the pot that was not the animal food but just the vegetables that were put in there and he later left that and he found this temple where these two monks were arguing about a flag that was waving. And then one monk said, it's the flag moving. The other monk said, no, it's the wind that's moving. And then the other monk said, no, it's the wind. And that's what happened.

[44:09]

And then he was ordained, and the lineage carried on from there. The Master said, good friend, I shall make a formless verse for you monks and lay people. When all of you recite it and practice according to it, then you will always be in the same place as I am. The verse says, it's a long verse, I'm just going to read just a few lines. Proficiency in preaching and proficiency in the mind are like the sun and empty space. Handing down the sudden teaching alone, enter into the world and destroy awareness doctrines. Although in the teaching there is no sudden and gradual dilution and awakening, there is slowness and speed. In studying the teaching of the sudden doctrine, ignorant persons cannot understand completely. Although explanations are made in ten thousand ways, if you combine them with the principle, they become one.

[45:12]

The liturgy that we recite the Siddha Prajna Samadhi is teaching that. Oh great. And another teaching that people say, you know, how do we save all beings? It's one of the quote that you talk about. So the sixth ancestor is, he said, save the beings in your own mind. And that's, again, there's a retrospect to ourselves and what can we do. The torture, the suffering, the contempt, the discontent that we are experiencing is, well, it might be so just not to fight, but to look out there. It's actually our own fault that we have caused the disruption. Just don't assume that what we say is right. Yeah, the awakening with them, it has less of a separate feel to it, but actually Mel also says saving them is also good because that has a more proactive thing that we can be doing to help other people.

[46:19]

So I think it's kind of, again, like the fifth ancestor, I mean, those two poems, there's a proactive way of what can I do to help this person? And then what actually happens is we awaken with them, that we and others, self and others have merged. I'm not understanding how these men got to be the 5th or 6th ancestor. I mean, who decided that they are that instead of that somebody else was that? That's a really good question. Well, Bodhidharma is the 28th ancestor in India and the 1st ancestor in China. And tradition goes that he transmitted a robe and a bowl to his principal disciple, great guru, and another disciple in turn. And so on. So that was the one person who received the lineage of the transmission. But you know, Sojin has a number of transmittees, one person would take over a temple.

[47:24]

There's a number of people practicing concurrently with that. So we remember, although it's a little bit different, because back then, according to literature, there was like one light disciple, but a number of people practicing with that sort of light. So you see, for example, now we're actually transmitting four people, so the tradition splits out. With the sixth ancestor, the work involved, and it ends with you, where we know more of the sort of physical transmission of objects, the transmission of other kind of divine voices, which is the one hand in one hand. So, a monk friend of mine said, you know, we have this lineage that we recite, but there's hundreds and hundreds of monks and nuns, lay people, who practice alongside that we don't know. We don't know their names. And they had some understanding. They may have enlightened the teacher and all the people, but we don't know their names.

[48:28]

But as far as the business of the tradition goes, it's passed on. And we have these records on. And to some extent, it's the history of people looking back and making them, naming it, as much as it is. Another question. The other term, teacher. Is the Sixth Patriarch the ancestor term of the Kingdom to America? We don't know how much gender there was loaded onto the Chinese. No gender is in Chinese language. So it could mean ancestor, just as much.

[49:32]

So maybe that would be over here. Or in Japan. Japan, yeah. So the sixth ancestor, I asked Mel this morning about this class that Laurie and I were presenting, and I said, you know, it's a lot of information, and I said it's impossible to remember it all, or to record it all for everybody. And he said that what your job is, is What your job is, is to spark interest and curiosity in this tradition, and then it's up to the person, whatever their interest happens to be, to make use of our library and lecture tapes and to read all this stuff that's kind of developing, because in a way, you really are getting fed by it. So it's just known as a general overview, and so you'll be interested in some sort of work of art than others.

[50:32]

After the sixth ancestor, he had two disciples. And those two disciples are primarily known as the teachers of the next two, where the lineage breaks off. And the two famous lineage holders are Sekkanto, and the Recycler of the Monk of Sendokai, who he offered them, and Baso. There are a number of stories attributed to these gentlemen also. And actually, the interesting thing is that, and this is the beginning of Rinzai and Soto lines, the monks used to travel for miles and miles in straw sandals between these two teachers. And it's pretty amazing how many miles they traveled. Now, I mean, there are people who do practiced with other teachers in this country. They might fly over to Europe or Hawaii and practice with other teachers and do sushis and all that.

[51:39]

But generally I think people pretty much still could. But back then, it was very common. There wasn't a sense of rivalry. And actually, if you read the literature, you hear stories where one teacher is actually praising another teacher in the way that they helped their student come to some realization. So that's something that a lot of faculty do, the Chinese tradition. We don't hear about so much in Japan, but in China, certainly, there was that. was a disciple of Secretary-Author Alessandro Tantia. While visiting a temple became quite cold, he used one of the temple's wooden buddhas for firewood, which brought a severe objection from one of the residents to the discovery of the incident.

[52:42]

Tantia claimed he was wearing the buddha in order to obtain the sarya, which is the indestructible little relic resembling a pebble typically found in the ashes of a human being's feet. The accusing monk asked, how can you get a relic from a piece of wood? If you want a piece of wood, why are you looking at me? Two generations later, in Secundo, there's an account of Ryotan enlightening his disciple Tokusan by blowing out a candle as he was about to take his knee into darkness from his master. They were in their room talking and it was dark out and then the teacher blew out the lamp or candle of the monk as he was about to go out and he woke up. And some people feel this was the beginning of teaching by not teaching, by not actually saying something, by doing something.

[53:49]

But that's debatable. Because when we talk all about the eye of God, that's being a teacher. The real-time complained of his teacher not paying him any attention. He retorted, when have I not taught you? When you brought tea, I received it from you. When you brought me a meal, I received that too. When you bowed to me, I pointed my head toward you. When did I not teach you? When you look, just look. If you wonder about it, you won't get it from me. Real-time. And to me, that starts speaking to the Soto style, that Maoist teaching is really, really subtle. And for myself, when you were around Mao, there's a way in which he carries himself, and he relates to people, that you can see there's this give and take, bowing and receiving and giving, that is a real deep teaching.

[54:55]

It has the power of sticks and shells, but it doesn't come off that way. And that's something that it's very, very subtle, but it feels like it's there, and that speaks to this teaching. You have to be extremely sensitive. Not necessarily. I think it's easier if you can pick up the subtle, that's the one thing. For me anyway, my understanding of subtle style is a very subtle, soft style. And as our mind flies, we can pick up on that. It's not that it's a better teacher than one side, but I think for certain personalities, it's more conducive, easier, more accessible, and I don't think anybody's going to be shaken or shouted at for not doing what they're supposed to do.

[56:06]

There was a fellow who kind of fortified the monastic system in China, Hai Cheng, or Hakajo. He's considered the founder of his own kind of food system. He's also the famous eater for day without pork is a day without food. He was getting very old, and the monks there at the temple gave him gardening tools, and he refused to use those tools when we turned to him. So that's, again, part of our tradition of working a little bit and supporting the practice, not just sitting by the temple. So that's my goal. As I said, it is incredibly important to our practice. It also gives us a lot more push in our minds as we move closer to the United States and just take it into action. And now, the five health programs. Well, sorry. The five, now the quick overview of the five health programs.

[57:09]

This time in China, Tang China, it's a high point in Chinese culture, actually. Lots of stuff going on there. And it's considered the golden age of Zen. It's called the golden age of Zen. I feel that we're in a golden age of thinking. The thriving and vitality of our temple here speaks to that. And I love history and the stories that we have to read and share and be inspired by are certainly points of support to that. But in our practice work, we're talking about being present and being awake. It feels like a great time here, especially at our temple over the years.

[58:15]

Soji Wright is a teacher. His lectures, the vicinity that he's working in, and the students maturing, we all so know. The show's all so known for what they're up to, the teacher and student really. To me, it speaks to the writing process that's going on here. We've already had five good months of not always famous stories. At the beverage brewing party that we had a few weeks ago in Missouca, there were some stories shared from days of work. There's a history here. It may not seem as illustrious as Tony China, but I think in the realm of practice, it's vital. There were persecutions that happened in China, the most famous ones. were happening in between 841 and 846.

[59:24]

There was a fanatical Daoist. It's a root song. His successor softened these rules and policies right after that, but for whatever reasons, I think there was just a sense of, well it's like George Bush, okay, here's the president of the country, and he's like fanatical, and he has this sort of fear, and so there's a lashing out. Back in those days, A lot of monks were diffracted. Monasteries, temples were destroyed. It was a pretty awful time. The Zen school fortunately survived because they were away from the urban centers up in the mountains. It did survive, but it suffered a lot. They had some numbers of thousands of people who were diffracted and such, but details aren't as important as just to know that it was glorious. They had to return to lay life.

[60:27]

They had to work and be so-called contributors to the community. So the five schools, the first one was called the Kuei Yang, K-U-E-I-Y-A-N-G, which is named after the two founders of the temple, of the line. And that school is best known for experience in action and an ideal teacher-student relationship because of these two monks and the way they practiced together. Yangshan said that they were two mouths without a single tongue. sort of the intimacy with which they practice. And there's a famous story attributed to Guixiang who... His teacher, Pai Cheng, placed a water jug in front of his students and said, if you can't call this a water jug, what do you call it?

[61:44]

Huishan kicked over the jug and walked away. So there's a sense of, you can't name something, then what is it? Well, you can examine the same way as a jug is water. You knock it over, it's going to go spilling. That's sort of a discursive way of describing what it is. But by kicking it over, then that experience is a way of just kind of going beyond an explanation. Huishan and Yangshan were in a tea field and they were picking tea. Huishan said, All day I have been listening to your voice as you pick tea leaves, but I have not yet seen you yourself. Show me your real self. Yangshan shook the tea tree. The master commented, You have achieved the function, but not the substance. Asked the Master what he himself had achieved, the Master remained silent. Thereupon Yang Chang remarked, You, Master, have achieved the substance but not the function. So you can see the interplay between these teachers through intimacy with which they practice, and that you have the first principle, which is silence, just being present and quiet, and the second principle, which is the action or the explanation that describes the essence.

[63:02]

In the Three Bodies of Buddha description, it would be the dharmakaya being the essence, Sambhogakaya is the expression of that. And the second school is the school of Limchi, or Rinzai. And this is a school that most people, as I said, have quite a variety and are familiar with. And Limchi originally was very timid. that he would practice and he got very cocky when he had some understanding and was reprimanded by his teacher. But after a while he matured and became a great teacher with a lot of energy and a lot of disciples. And he's best known for his shouts. Because of the shortness of time, I can't share all these stories.

[64:04]

But we'd like to share one thing that people probably haven't... Well, one thing, the command, if you meet the Buddha on the road, you kill the Buddha. That's attributed to this lineage. It doesn't mean literally kill the Buddha, but kill any ideas of Buddha or holiness. There's a very nice story attributed to him, nice in that it's not a shot or a kick or a beating. Lin Chi was planting pine trees on the temple grounds. And his teacher, Wang Po, said, what's the use of planting so many pine trees in the depths of the mountain? Lin Chi replied, in the first place, it will beautify the scenery of the mountain temple. In the second place, it will set up standards and patterns for hospitality. This said, he punched the ground twice with his head. One poet teased him by saying, even so, you have already received the dirty blows from me, which is just an affirmation of this is truly a teaching, and that it is true.

[65:14]

Then she again punched the ground twice, and then he, alongside, when he heard how he died. Again, the traditional form of education. So, you know, planting trees is just planting trees to beautify. If you have some idea about, you know, make something pretty nice, you can place it in some magazine or have some garden. That's something extra. It's just planting trees just to nurture life and to raise life up. And the second aspect of it, is that it sets up standards. It shows, it's kind of like when we maintain our temple here, when people come to visit, they see the standards that are being maintained at our temple. There's a way of looking at it when we're just painting and scraping and gardening and doing all the so-called mundane things of temple life. When people come here, it has an effect on them and shows that the standards have been maintained and the tradition is upheld. The third school is the Soto school, named after Dongshan and his student Taoshan Soto.

[66:20]

Is this a chronological development of the schools? No, it's chronological as far as how they were presented in the book, but they're all around 800 or so AD. It's like it branched. Yeah. You can see on the chart here the actual years that are attributed to them. Yeah. And Tongshan, when he was 10 years old, entered a local temple. And he was studying the Heart Sutra. And upon hearing the lines, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, He put his hands on his face and explained to his teacher that, I have eyes, I have a nose, I have a tongue. And his teacher said, well, you're not my, you can't be my student. And he had to go off and find a teacher. And what that showed was this young man's curiosity, that it's not taking things for granted, that I'm not going to say anything because of the teaching himself, but actually raising that question up showed his

[67:22]

He's an individualist. And the teacher recognized that this guy, he'd actually got a lot more on the bar than the other students, and was questioning what's being taught here. And sent him along to his, on his way. And he found a, he started traveling, as he got older, to different teachers. And there's a famous story where Tun Shan went off on pilgrimage, and he visited a teacher, Man Chuan, who was in a camp. And Mantuan was preparing a memorial service for his teacher Matsu Nobasa. And Matsu's, I'm sorry, Mantuan said, tomorrow we are going to make offerings to Matsu. This would be just like the Founder's Ceremony here at BCC, the day before, where he sets up the tray and all that. And someone says, where will Suzuki Roshi come? So in the story, it says, where will Matsu come? The whole community remained silent until Dongshan approached and said, he will come as soon as he finds the companion. Wanchuan remarked the phrase, although this man is still young, he is excellent material to carve and polish.

[68:30]

To which Tangshan responded, let not the venerable abbot debase a free man into a slave, which means someone who is already free and coming and going into something that's going to be done by somebody. And what that means as far as will he come, he says when he finds his companion, Matsu had died some years before, but he's not talking about Matsu. He's talking about here and now at this temple. And if we, in fact, are ready to receive Matsu's teaching, if we can get quiet and sit still, we'll receive the Matsu, just like we receive Elijah at Passover, or we see the Hiroshi at the service in this temple. So that's the thing we talked about today. Part of this sort of subtle poetic practice that we've achieved at the Sutter School is when Dengxian visited Beishan.

[69:50]

He asked him whether inanimate things expound the Dharma, and if so, how is it? And Guixiang said that the mouth which my parents gave me would never explain it to you. And Guixiang recommended that he visit another teacher, Liu Dian, who became his preceptor for Dharma transmitter. And when he asked the same question, the teacher said, do you hear? Dongshan said, do you hear? And Lin Yan said, if I did, you would not hear my expounding of the Dharma. As those skeptical Dongshan stood there by, thinking, whereby Lin Yan there faced, why was he asking, do you hear? Dongshan gave a negative reply, and just kept pushing and pushing. And then finally, Dongshan, while crossing a stream, he looked down at his reflection and he woke up. And his enlightenment poem, The rest they avoid seeking without, lest it be seen far from you.

[71:11]

Today I am walking alone, yet everywhere I meet him. He is now no other than myself, for I am not, not him. And the key line's here. He is now no other than myself, He's standing for the absolute, for the base of this life, is no other than myself, a reflection of myself. When I, as a self, come forward and say, I am this, I am this, that's self-centered thinking, and is not consistent with the way. And centuries later, Dogen rephrased this mind, saying, But the $10,000 advance realizes self. That's enlightenment for itself. It advances forward. That's delusion. The last two scores, one of young men and one of Bai Yan. Young men is known for very short word teachings.

[72:16]

And some of the examples are when a teacher asked him, or when a student asked him, what is Zen? His response to me was, that's it. Or what is the way? Grab it. So what he was doing was he was not explaining things to people. He would just instruct them with just the truest of words or phrases for them just to catch it and to wake up. And a favorite line is, somebody asked him, what is Buddha? And he said, a dry chit stick, which sort of takes away the kind of lofty idea of what a Buddha is, that it's just an everyday object like normal people. He's also He appears 17 times in the booklet record, and 5 times in the New York Times. So he's an absolutely popular character in his energy and his bosses to his students.

[73:23]

Yin Men, Y-U-N-M-E-N, or Yin Men, Men, Yin. Is this the third school? No, that's another school. Yeah, the young man's school. So the young man's school, the Fai Yan school, which I'm just going to make a mention of, were absorbed into the Ren Tsai school. So the school stayed pure. And the Fai Yan school, it just died out. they use a number of practices, syncretic practices, it wasn't just Sasa in their school and some people feel because of that it kind of lost its vitality. In the last house, Fayen, He would often repeat the question back to them, almost like a therapist, and put it back to the student to figure it out.

[74:25]

So when the student asked a question, he would just say the same thing, without maybe even a question mark, just for them to hear it again. And a couple other quotes. A monk asked Thay again, what is Buddha? He answered, first, I want to ask you to practice it. Second, I want to ask you to practice it. Well, I apologize for not getting it all in in time. But I got it all in in time. But it does feel kind of like it short shrifted. But as Mel said, hopefully enough interest was perked in your mind to check out some books on the teaching. And this rolling screen. Anything for the first time? Because we didn't put a lot of videography for the class. So, The Roaring Stream is one book, and The Golden Age of Zen is another, and the Duma Ling books are also very good for recounting these stories.

[75:36]

This is called The Zen Stream, Buddhist Occurrence in India-China, which was a class I did back in 1995. I did all this research and put it together. I put this together, yeah. So I could think of things I wanted to say, but it's a little after nine, and I want to respect the time that we have. You know, the class is 730 to 9. We did start a little bit late. And maybe if you could just take a couple of minutes, if anyone has anything to say in support or in critique of Max's own critique. So whatever. Does anyone have a thing or two that they want to share?

[76:38]

We have our chart, but I would appreciate maybe a handout that has the names of the five stars. Kind of started with that handout you had for us the first time. We had Bodhidharma and a few of their early ancestors carrying out the family order of the five stars. But those are mine now. They're substantial, and I can make copies. Laurie and I chatted about that, and I said, nah, I'll just put it out of the way. I'm listening here, but it's probably easier if people have it in front. So I'll make copies. The problem is, as easy as it sounded, or as clear as it sounded, there's lots of names and skipping of generations. And there's the question of, and having all those skippings, whether it be pages and pages, or just having just the names until you see how it branches out.

[77:43]

And I'm not quite sure how to do that, but one version will come forward this week. Interesting. Thank you. But these books have lineage charts in them also to, yeah. Well, if you had to specify the meaning of some of these things, how would that be? Well, We'll always be talking about the koans. So do you have any? You can read them. We'll not talk. I think that one thing that sometimes happens is that some people are too busy to really deal with problems in class, so we sort of decide not to. I think this would be great. I mean, the thing is, it's like an ocean. Just take a dip. There's no way to get it to a comprehensive thing. Yeah, but I'm not sure which one.

[78:46]

On Saturday we sell the book, Two Zen Classics, which is the Blue Cliff Record and the Mu Man Con with commentary by Tsukita, who is a student, a teacher of Eikinboshi. And that's a really good book that Mel used often for his lectures on Saturday. I mean, one approach would be to read about Deng Xiang, who was our lineage. Of the five schools, that was our, the one that came down from us. So that would be one. Deng Xiang. And, you know, his work just kind of elaborated through the schools, through the stories. Yes. I like the way it was that you took the ancestors and you told the stories that were related. Oh, David Mather.

[79:55]

Yeah, yeah. He had this thing which was like, I was really very used to the old exercise, but it was just like a new way of counting. I've been thinking about actually for next week an assignment after, not for next week, but thinking about giving it. It'll be optional. I mean, it is virtual. One thing that we can do, it's not really a homework assignment, but it should be part of our practice anyway as ed students, is the colons of everyday life that come up. And while we have colon literature that's been recorded, things come up in our day-to-day life.

[80:58]

which in fact are questions and kind of that it becomes a point where we can't solve it with our discursive mind. So we just have to kind of move through it in some way and take a leap. And so we can just think about those moments in our life that in fact are forms and how that can be created into a body of literature. and maybe share some of those next week if people feel inclined to do that. That's what my brother and I was doing. There were current stories that were 30 or 50 years that were powered into a portable time package. So thank you for your patience and your comments. And I look forward to next week's rendering of a little later development in China of the Quran literature. There's one great commentary on the history of the Quran literature, which is in the audiosheets.

[81:59]

I'm going to give it a quick translation. And when we come in here, hello. I checked it out, and I put it in and returned it. It's in the return. Anyway, it's at the beginning of the history of it and all that. It's pretty great. So it's 10 after 9. So we're doing the four vows, which will take us to the end of it. And we just give the vow to each other, to all beings.

[82:29]

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