This morning I want to talk about the old Zen stories, the foundational stories of Zen and a little bit how we use them and what they are and the difference between truth and history and facts. So part of the context for this talk is that we've started a series of five Saturday afternoon classes. The first one was yesterday, a kind of survey of essential Buddhism and Zen. This next Saturday, Laurel's going to be talking about essential Mahayana teachings, Bodhisattva teachings. The week Saturday after next, I'm going to be talking about essential Zen. stories.

[01:07]

So this is a kind of introduction to that or kind of preview of that. And the other context for me for this is that I'm teaching a course now, my annual online course at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. I'm teaching now on museum stories and traditional Zen stories mostly from the great 9th century masters in China from the 800s. Most of the stories that are in the classic Zen koans are teaching stories. These stories are used in various ways in Zen still. It's the main literature of Zen. They're not riddles to solve, although sometimes they're thought of that way, but stories that inform us about our own practice.

[02:11]

And so we talk about them and teach about them. Most of what I want to talk about today goes back before that, so before the masters of the 800s. I want to go back to the beginning of Zen in China, the beginning of Chan, the beginning of Zen. Chan is the Chinese word, Zen is the Japanese word. And start with who we consider the founder of Bodhidharma. who died around 532, so this is going way back before the classic masters. But I want to say a little bit first about the nature of truth and the nature of fact. So when I started practicing a good while ago, you know, a lot of the stories from these classic masters of the 800s, as well as stories about Bodhidharma and the Sixth Ancestor, the two main figures I want to talk about today, were kind of accepted in the tradition as true stories, you know, as part of the history of Zen.

[03:26]

And the stories of Linjie Rinzai and the Soto founder Dongshan, or Tozan in Japanese, and great other masters like Yunmen and Zhaozhou, or Zhou Shu, talked about recently. These stories from the 800s are the main stories that are, and there's lots of others, but there are lots of collections of these stories that are used. But in the last, oh, 20 years, 15 years, 25 years, it's become clear to academic scholars and to historians that, well, it used to be thought that the 800s was the golden age of Zen, but a lot of these stories weren't written down till the Song period, which is in the 1000s and 1100s. and into the 1200s when the Japanese founder Dogen went to China and brought back Soto Zen. So we don't really know, in terms of historical fact, if any of those stories were spoken by those original teachers.

[04:34]

And a lot of the academic scholars doubt it seriously. Some we know they weren't spoken by them. We know historically that they're not true in the sense of historical accuracy. And on some level, it doesn't matter. The point of these stories, the truth of these stories, has to do with how they relate to, you know, whether Zhao Zhou or Zhou Shu ever said that a dog has Buddha nature or doesn't have Buddha nature, it doesn't really matter. That story has been studied for a thousand years. So we have these records of these stories which were, at the very least, embellished for sure, centuries after the teachers about whom the stories are told. So, Zen has, as part of its lore, this teaching about truth.

[05:37]

that the truth isn't in the history books exactly. The truth has to do with what is the reality. I think this is instructive in terms of what the newspapers say and the history books say about stuff more recently and what is the real truth and how do we see that in our lives. Anyway, that's a little introduction and we can talk more about that in the discussion, but I want to go back all the way back to Bodhidharma. So he's considered the founder of Zen. He's an Indian. So we sometimes chant the names of a lineage going back from Shakyamuni Buddha to, well, to Suzuki Roshi, who brought our branch of Zen from Japan to San Francisco. And we know historically that the names of the Indian masters were not, you know, that those, some of those people never met each other. That was concocted later in China. But, and some scholars question some of the names, particularly the ones I'm going to talk about this morning, from Bodhidharma to the sixth ancestor.

[06:46]

So, you know, the scholars question a lot of this. And maybe some scholars still don't think Bodhidharma ever lived. I think, and that used to be the general opinion of scholars, I don't know, 20 years ago, 15 years ago. Now I think it's pretty accepted that there was somebody named Bodhidharma. Now there are other people who maybe actually originated what we call Zen. There's a guy named Gunabhadra, translated some text and has something to do with it. So the history is really murky. And I would say history today is still really murky. But anyway, that's another story. So I want to tell stories about Bodhi Dharma, who died in 532, as best we know, and apparently actually existed. There's these stories that we have about Bodhidharma, and then five teachers who came after him, leading up to a man named Huining, who lived 638 to 713, who we consider the sixth ancestor.

[07:59]

And there's more we know about him and about his contemporaries. So again, there's the history and there's the stories. So Bodhidharma, was an Indian master, Buddhist master from some states from South India. And he came to China. And he came to the southern kingdom of what's now China. And he was brought to see the emperor, Emperor Wu. And this story is the first story in the Blue Cliff Record Koan anthology, which is one of the most important collections of these stories. And the story goes that he came to see Emperor Wu, who was a great patron of Buddhism and had arranged for many temples to be built and many monks to be ordained and texts to be translated.

[09:02]

And part of this idea about Chan or Zen in China is that already in China, by that time, Buddhism was very well established, and there were very good Chinese schools of Buddhism with very well-developed philosophies, the Chiantai school and the Huayan school, that are very much part of the foundations of our practice and of Chan and Zen. But anyway, but Chan and Zen, Well, I'll say more about this, but really emphasized the actual practice, bringing it out of theoretical into the actual practice. How do we actually live this teaching, these ideas and ethics and principles? Anyway, Emperor Wu was a great Buddhist patron and heard about Bodhidharma. brought him in front of the court and Emperor Wu said to Bodhidharma, what is the merit that I've accrued from all of these wonderful things I've done for the Buddha Dharma?

[10:10]

And this is, you know, that seems like a kind of Maybe an arrogant question, you know, like, what was my, what merit have I done? But a lot of the sutras talk about gaining merit from doing, you know, good deeds to benefit the Dharma, benefit the Buddhist teaching. So, you know, it's not that strange a question, really. Bodhidharma just said to him, no merit. And the emperor was a little taken aback. And back then in China, I mean, if somebody offended the emperor, he could just have his head chopped off. That was not a big deal. But anyway, the emperor was said to this master from India, well, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? And Bodhidharma said, vast emptiness, nothing holy. And Emperor was puzzled and Bodhidharma split and he headed north.

[11:21]

And Emperor said to his Buddhist minister assistant, who was that guy? And the minister said, oh Emperor, don't you know that was the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guan Yin, come to transmit the Buddha mind seal. And the ember said, oh, get him back here. And the minister said, oh, all the king's horses and all the king's men will never, anyway, no way. And so anyway, that's basically the first story in the Blue Cliff Record. So all these stories about Bodhidharma, we don't know much historically, factually about Bodhidharma. There's one piece of writing that maybe actually was from him. Anyway, there's Andy Ferguson who visited here. a few years ago, has tracked a lot of this down. And there is evidence, actually, Steely's archaeological evidence that there was somebody named Bodhidharma.

[12:27]

And for a while, he hung out near where Emperor Wu was the ruler. And so it's possible this story actually happened, or something like it. But anyway, the story goes, he went, Bodhidharma split, and went to Shaolin Temple in northern China, where I visited and Paulie visited. And later on, that became a center of martial arts. But the story goes that Bodhidharma sat in a cave and did wall gazing, face to wall, for nine years in the snow. So I moved here. I immigrated from California seven years ago last month, and that year in 2007, that summer I went with Andy Ferguson and did a kind of pilgrimage to some of these temples. I went to Shaolin Temple and climbed up that mountain where his cave is, and where this cave is where supposedly

[13:28]

Bodhidharma sat in that cave and is still there for nine years. So there's lots of stories about Bodhidharma and some of them are obviously not true. And there's lots of pictures of Bodhidharma and there's lots of images of Bodhidharma. I think we have a Daruma doll in the library. It's a Japanese version of Bodhidharma. He's sitting with no, he's kind of pear-shaped and there's no legs and you knock him over and he comes back upright. And it's a children's toy. And later on, in all these Zen stories with these great masters in the 800s, one of the basic questions that Zen students would ask the teacher to understand the basic question of reality, the basic purpose of practice and of our lives, they'd say, well, what was the point of Bodhidharma coming from the West, coming from India to China?

[14:34]

And they would say various things. And one of them, the great teacher, Zhao Zhou, or Zhou Shu, we talked about him in December at the session, said, oh, the cypress tree in the yard. And so he just pointed at what was in front of him. After we were at Shaolin, we went to Kongshan Temple, which is where Bodhidharma is supposed to be taught for a number of years. And at that temple, they have little carved cypress tree statues of Bodhidharma. And one of them is on our altar. Dale McKenzie from my old sangha in California donated that to us. It's on this side of the altar next to Buddha. Anyway, Bodhi Dharma's this kind of fierce looking figure, you know, he kind of, you know, you'd have to be to sit for nine years in a cave facing a wall in the cold in northern China. I don't know if it was as cold as it's been this winter in Chicago.

[15:37]

Maybe. Maybe there was even more snow, I don't know. So there's all these stories. I was going to say one of the stories that I'm sure is not true is that he was staying up all that time and to help him stay up he cut off his eyelids so he wouldn't fall asleep and tossed them on the ground and out of the ground sprouted up tea and that's where tea plants come from. So there's all these stories about this guy Bodhidharma. Another story, the second, the guy who's supposedly the second ancestor, and again, most of this, the historians say that we don't even know if there was really this guy who was the second ancestor whose name we chant Huike, but he supposedly lived from 487 to 593. That's a long life. Anyway, he, I think I copied that right. Anyway, he, had already been studying all these other Buddhist teachings, and then he heard about Bodhidharma sitting up in this cave, and he went up there because he wanted to study with him, and he stood outside the cave, and Bodhidharma just ignored him.

[16:54]

And finally, the story goes, he stood outside the cave all night, and finally in the morning to prove his sincerity, he cut off his arm and handed it to Bodhidharma. At which point, Bodhidharma was willing to teach him. Anyway, this is a story that was famous later on to intimidate Zen students and make them be very diligent or something. We know that actually there was this guy, this second ancestor did have, was missing in Armony Parliament. Even early on they said it was actually from an encounter with bandits. Anyway, there's all these legendary stories that, and then there's a third ancestor who historians say they know even less about and he was supposedly a leper and he met the second ancestor. There's all these legends about these people. And he was, oh, this is about the second or third ancestor.

[18:03]

I think this is the second ancestor came to Bodhidharma and said, my mind is troubled, and would you please pacify my mind? And the teacher said, well, show me your mind. And he said, oh, I can't find it. And he said, see, I've pacified it. Anyway, so the point is the stories themselves and there's just, you know, Zen is supposedly later, many, you know, centuries later they said that Bodhidharma said there's, that Zen is direct pointing to the mind beyond words and letters, beyond all the scriptures. And some, Some fundamentalist-type anti-intellectual Zen people have actually thought that meant you shouldn't read anything, you shouldn't read the scriptures. Actually, all the great Zen masters have read all, you know, very well read in the sutras and the scriptures, and Zen, which is supposedly outside of words and letters, has this huge body of stories and literature and then commentaries on them, and commentaries on those commentaries, and now we're making more commentaries.

[19:17]

Anyway, so there's this huge body of Zen literature, but the point is not to get caught by any of them. If you don't like some of the stories, forget about them. But some of the stories actually have to do with your practice. So that's the point. The truth is in whatever of these many stories, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories, whichever ones speak to your efforts to live in some aware, conscious, caring way in the world. So we have all these stories, and we tell these stories, and we talk about these stories. So I started to say something about the third ancestor. We don't know so much about him again. Supposedly he died standing up, holding onto a tree anyway.

[20:21]

Then there's another thing about Zen teachers dying in this very encouraging, conscious way. So I'm gonna talk tomorrow about Mazu, the horse ancestor, one of the great teachers of the 700s. who had 139 awakened disciples, one of whom died standing on his head, so nobody's been able to top that. But some of you do yoga and you can practice, but anyway. What starts to become into the realm of history is that the person who's considered the fourth ancestor actually had a community with, let's say, 500 students. And then his student, his successor, Huang Mei, had a much larger community. And so then we get into the realm of something that the historians even are willing to say, well, there's something happening there.

[21:32]

And then there's this guy named Hui Neng who lived 638 to 713, according to historians, who we consider the sixth ancestor. And all of Zen afterwards comes from him. So he's a very important character amongst all these characters. Again, all of these old Zen masters, the point isn't, the point is just that there's these old stories and we can dig them. I think it's useful to know a little bit about the historical side and so we don't have to hold on to any of these stories or any of these people too strongly. I want to talk about the Sixth Ancestor, particularly this morning, and then a little bit about some of what happened afterwards, and then have some time for discussion. So, again, the Fifth Ancestor had this large community, and actually many good disciples, and they had been studying and meditating.

[22:47]

I think some accounts say there were 1,500, you know, it was a large monastery. Anyway, Huineng had been this, the story goes, and there's different versions of this, what's called a sutra. Sutras are supposed to be the words of the Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived, well, sometime around 500 BC in our reckoning. 400 BC, we don't know exactly, in what's now northeast India. So supposedly sutras are the words of the Buddha. But then there are various other texts that have been called sutras just because they have that kind of authority. And there's the Platform Sutra, which is the story of this sixth ancestor, Huining. who was not that important in his own lifetime, but all of Zen since is from him, and so we look back at him as being the sixth ancestor.

[23:56]

But the story about him is that he lived in Guangdong, Canton, in southern China, and he was an illiterate woodcutter, and kind of low class. So how many people here are Southerners? Yeah, you're from? Alabama. Alabama, that's right. Anybody else from the South? Where are you from? I grew up mostly in North Carolina. North Carolina, oh yeah. I have family in North Carolina. Although I can't claim to be a Southerner. But it seems to be in many cultures that Southerners are kind of considered low class and look down on, you know. Anyway, so this was the case in China, too. But this guy who was, you know, we could say that he's really the founder of Chan or Zen. He was from southern China. And he was, you know, this literate woodcutter, wasn't a priest or anything, he was a layperson.

[25:01]

But he heard somebody walking by, reciting something from the Diamond Sutra. This is one of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, and I think it was a line that said something like, something about finding the mind that does not abide anywhere. And this guy heard that and, wow, something happened, as they say, and he just, oh, wow, the mind that does not abide anywhere. And he wanted to know more about this, so he inquired and found out that there was this teacher, Huang Mei, who now we consider the fifth ancestor, up in northern China. And he decided to go and find out about it. So he went and... So there are many stories about this, but one story, he met the fifth ancestor and... The Fifth Ancestor looked at this Southern guy, this low-class guy, and said, what have you come for?

[26:04]

And he said, oh, I want to be a Buddha. And he asked him where he was from, and he said, oh, people from the South don't have Buddha nature. And this guy said, this young guy, kid, said, well, amongst people there's North and South, but in Buddha nature there's no North and South. So the fifth ancestor knew this was, this, somebody was, this was somebody. So anybody just had him work in the back of the kitchen, pounding rice. And after some period of time, well, there's a whole, so in one of the versions of the story, there's a whole story about a poetry contest. And we know that that story is not true, that that story is a kind of polemical, political story. So some of you have heard the story about, there was the fifth ancestor finally said,

[27:09]

Give the dharma transmission and give the robe and bowl of Bodhidharma and make it into the sixth ancestor, the person who writes the best poem about the dharma. And the head monk then was a man named Shenshu. And so there's this story about a poetry contest and Shenshu writes some poem on the wall about dusting his mirror to make it bright and Huining supposedly couldn't read, had somebody read it to him and wrote another poem. Anyway, we know that story's bogus, that that was written down later by one of Huining's later disciples who was trying to promote Huining's school. Anyway, Shenshu actually was the successor of several. Huining was one of them, but Shenshu was the successor of the Fifth Ancestor, who was actually a very well-known and famous and important teacher during their lifetime.

[28:19]

And there were a couple of others, historically. So Shenshu was a very good teacher. But Huining, anyway, the story goes, At one point, the fifth ancestor went to him in the kitchen and signaled to him to come to his room late at night and gave him Dharma transmission at midnight. And in Zen now, all Dharma transmission ceremonies, because of that, happen at midnight. And then, story goes, the fifth ancestor took Huineng on a boat and rowed him across this big river to the south and said, go and don't teach for a long time. And so the story goes Huineng worked as a cook for a bunch of hunters and was kind of living hidden in the world for a long time. And one day he was Then he was traveling and he passed some monks and they were arguing about a banner that was flapping in the wind and one of them was saying, it's the wind that's moving.

[29:34]

And the other one was saying, no, it's the banner that's moving. And the green angel said to them, no, it's your mind that's moving. And they thought, oh, what was this guy? Anyway, eventually Huining got ordained and became a monk and a teacher and became the sixth ancestor and he had a number of students, a couple especially. So anyway, there's these stories about these people and the stories are cool and we can learn from them. So in this, one of the things in this Platform Sutra, or there's other versions of it, this text that is attributed to the Sixth Ancestor, there are a number of teachings, and we don't know for sure, but I like to think that some of them are actually from Huining. One of them that I like particularly talks about the oneness of samadhi and prajna.

[30:34]

So Samadhi is concentration or meditation, settling, deep focus. And Prajna, sometimes translated as wisdom, is insight. But actually this is a very useful way of thinking about our practice. That when we're settled in meditation, insight arises. It's not that you meditate and settle and then later there's wisdom. that they're together, that right in the middle of our settling into upright sitting, Prajna is there, Insight is there. So as we become more settled, Insight arises. And this is my experience and the experience I see in others. You don't have to try and figure out your insights or write them down or keep notes while you're sitting.

[31:38]

In fact, it's not recommended. We actually don't like you to have a notepad by your cushion while you're doing meditation, doing zazen. We might say something to you if you try to do that. You don't need to do that. Samadhi and Prajna are together. So when we take this position of Buddha, whether it's cross-legged or kneeling or sitting in a chair, sitting upright and relaxed, Prajna is there too. So we think of wisdom and meditation as sort of separate, but actually what the six ancestors said is that they are one, they're the same, they're together. So anyway, there are numbers of good teachings in that sutra about the Sixth Ancestor, but the historical part we don't have to take literally.

[32:41]

There's also this issue that comes up in the teachings of the Sixth Ancestor about sudden and gradual. Oh, there's another story, the sixth ancestor, after he got the robe and bowl from the, so this is before he went and worked as a cook for hunters, he went, he had the robe and bowl, according to this story, from the fifth ancestor, and he went south. The Fifth Ancestor told the monks about this and they got very upset and figured that he had tricked the Fifth Ancestor. The Fifth Ancestor was just getting old and, you know, was hoodwinked by this, you know, rascal from the South. So they went after him. And there was a guy, one of the monks was named Hui Ming and he was a former general, a big tough guy, you know. And he caught up with Hui Ming. And Huining put the robe and bowl down on a rock and said, go ahead and take it.

[33:48]

Well, he asked him, did you come for the robe and bowl or did you come for the teaching? And Huining went to pick up the robe and he couldn't lift it. So then he broke into a sweat and said, no, I'm sorry, I came for the teaching. And so this is another, you know, another one of these Koan stories. This is in the, this one appears in the Gateless Barrier collection. He said, Mu Man Kang, he said, Huining said to him, don't think good, don't think bad. What is your original face before your parents were born? And Huiming broke into sweat and had some awakening and wanted to be Huining's student, but then Huining said, go back, you're Huang Wei's student. So beyond our ideas of good and bad, what is your fundamental face before your parents?

[35:00]

So this is another of these teaching stories, or koans, or challenges. You can see them as all these encounter dialogues as challenges. Anyway, so these two figures, on some historical basis, all the stories may have been made up, or they may have been based on something, or embellished. We don't know, and it doesn't really matter. The stories have something to teach us about our practice, about our meditation, about how we meet our life. So Bodhidharma and Huining I wanted to focus on, but just to say a little bit about what happened later. Huining had two major students, and they each had one major student. Mazu, the horse ancestor who I talked about during our New Year's, Year of the Horse celebration last week, and who I'll talk about tomorrow night, some of his stories.

[36:05]

And Shito, who wrote the Harmony of Differences, Sameness We Chance Sometimes, and the Song of the Grass Hut. And from them came what came to be called Five Houses later on in the 800s. These great founding figures who all these stories come from. People like Guishan and Dongshan or Tozan who founded Saodong or Soto School that we're part of. Linji or Rinzai in Japanese, the great master who founded the Rinzai School. And there's two others, Baiyan and Yunmen. Anyway, there are all these great masters in the 800s, and I'll be telling some of the stories about them. And Zhaozhou, who's kind of beyond all of us. So I'll be talking about them in a couple of Saturdays, and some of their stories. And I mentioned Zhaozhou. So there are a lot of stories where the student asks, well, what was the point of Bodhidharma coming from the West?

[37:08]

What's all this about? Why do we bother? you know, showing up and sitting upright like this and reading these scriptures and telling these old stories, what's this all about? And so there's many answers to that. General Joseph said once, oh, it's the cypress tree in the yard. And other people said other things. A young man once said, an old turd. So, you know, partly because influenced by Taoist kind of colloquial talk and stories, part of the point of, again, of these Zen stories is to take these teachings from these kind of very flowery, Bodhisattva sutras from India and bring them down to earth. So the Chinese were very practical down to earth people and the kind of stories from Taoism and kind of

[38:16]

language of nature poetry, you know, it's all very practical. So that was part of the influence of bringing these teachings into kind of these dialogues where there was very kind of direct encounters and challenges. And again, there's whole collections of books of these stories and, you know, some Zen schools have whole systems of, you know, curriculums of going through hundreds of these stories and you try and get through them and, you know, that's considered some accomplishment. The way I see them is all, All of these stories, you know, I sometimes work with students individually on them, but the point isn't to solve them. It's not like they're riddles to solve. Each of them has something, can have something, to show us about our own life and practice.

[39:20]

And you never finish with any of them, but they become part of our practice body and we can hang out with them and come back to them. And there's, you know, there's many, there's hundreds of them. And new ones keep coming up. So I like some of the... And they keep being creative, so I like using some of the stories created in our own time. So amongst my own koan curriculum, there's Bob Dylan saying, there's nothing, really nothing to turn off. That's a really good one. You can hang out with that for a while. And I think the highest koans and tradition is from a great American yogi who said, if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be. So that's a little bit about Bodhidharma and Huineng and some of these stories.

[40:23]

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