Hui Neng and the Poetry Contest

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Aspects of Practice

 

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the morning
yes it sometimes i can actually emphasized is with this machine and i'd like to turn myself off also
but maybe not right now
ha
it's nice to see you all were having a one day sitting get opens our for we practice period
which would call aspects of practice and been having this every fall for long time now and it's a way to kind of
we commit ourselves to practice and to create a a space where are some newer people can get acquainted with the the ins and outs of what we do and but we ah
what will study about what we celebrate from the past ah and also to refresh does a bus to f
been here for a long time
so our subject matter this is this is a this practice period is led by myself at the can senior students and so we have will have lectures on saturday and in talks on mondays and a
last on thursdays ah and we do this to some extent collaboratively
and you're welcome to kiss fate there's a sign up sheet on the bulletin board and you know if you are so inspired here this morning you're welcome to come to the the our brief opening ceremony this is the afternoon which is care
what time is work for for forty this afternoon for about twenty minutes
and what we're going to study or investigate talked about ah for the next four weeks are basically are chinese ancestors are most of them from the the tang dynasty which was
a
from the early six hundred to about nine or seven and some moving into the song dynasty which was a little after that going from nine sixty two late thirteenth century
ha and a lot of what was established in chinese and that was then carried over into japanese in and brought to us was really set in motion during that time
ah how many if you were here last saturday
so lot of you wow okay so a lot of you've got to here are a kind of overview and storytelling that sojourn whoa she did ah
on the same on the same subject ah and i don't do
probably not i have one central story i'd like to tell you today but i also want to elaborate data on a few of the
sort of ways that we might think about what it is it would do it
ah

i was speaking with such roshi this week and i actually had a chance to listen to his top because i wanted to know what
what was that that he had laid out ah
and let all
pinged
to give a really good are have really good introduction but here we were talking and he was saying we should continue this after aspects
and so we'll see maybe we will is it's been a while i think since we looked at these ancestors ah him
a kind of extended fashion
we
will study and ah
look at particular stories from one hand sister or another but but to see this whole ah
ah had to understand how that family is relevant to to our views and how we practices on
it can be really important and really inspiring it was inspiring to be ah when when jose tassajara in the eighties or
ah both with sojourn it was a rob anderson we were studying these ancestors and i and i also know as you're here for surface we chant the lineage but we don't tell the story so much and telling the stories made me really feel like
like oh this is a family i would like to be
and so was our i found it kind of part of the inspiration had made me want to or day
so search erosion read he read this case
from master kumar
and if the casey read was a basket romances
each of you has your own light
so this is true for each of us as practitioners ah as human beings each of us has
our own particular light her own particular
style
our own particular qualities and also lack of qualities shortcomings
ah
he says if you try to see if everything is darkness when you when you try to see look directly at what your nature is you can't quite make it out but it's easy for us to see it in each other
we recognize each other's light
ah
and so we see it in a sense can reflection from each other
but there's another verse
the frames this that i wanted with you this is a from master dogan ah from
thirteenth century and dogan was ah
and in dublin was very steeped in the in the chinese ancestry and in his are great vow
which we sometimes can't basically his bow of practice
he quotes one of the
earlier ancestors ah he says those who in past lives were not enlightened will be enlightened
he those who had passed lives were not enlightened will be enlightened in this life save the body which is the fruit of many lives
and then this really powerful line before buddha's were enlightened they were the seem as we
enlightened people today
our exactly as those of old
so this is the continuity of awakening
that is been that's what's been given to us we may not see it we try to look for it had it's dark it's you know ah
you know
very difficult for us to see ourselves as enlightened beings but were given this assurance that ah
is enlightened people of today
our exactly as soon as a bolt
so the school of zen that we practice
ah there's another way of framing one of the
in this of homes talking today about winning the sixth ancestor and from the sixth ancestor of all of our 's and blinds kind of flow forth ha
xcel from from his two disciples you have what became the soto lineage and what became the site lineage through our
ah
loot
grids i lineage flows through a non-eu way his disciple non-gaap cool ah to masuk and then on to today's lineages in the soto ah flows through a genuine or steak and yoshi as we
in our lineage to second turkey said and then down to a second term peace ah is the author of the
sandow chi which we chant
and so what we have
in one of the ways that the that japanese buddhist framed of the lineage we have what they called ancestral sin and to target zinn
ah and
it's just one of those duality seen on their flights
i hit it
the teacher but they can in college who said there's two kinds of people in the world
those who divide things into and those who don't
you think they're back that line destroys your mind
our so our this ancestral sin is nominally what does and school is an excess them is in line with you know this famous are teaching by that ascribed to bodhidharma
ah a special transmission outside the scriptures not founded upon words and letters by pointing directly to one's mind it lets want to see into one's nature and attained buddhahood so this is a poll this is the ancestral in ah which doesn't
depend on particular set to practices or doctrines or our sisters of teaching it just are it's basically what we might describe as warm hand to warm hand or mind to mind transmission
ah and then to talk it does in which of course is getting the bum rap here he is
a scriptural exempt it zen that follows the the sutras and these systems of teaching are you know the eightfold path and the a factors of enlightenment and this and the of foundations
mindfulness all these systems of dharma that you are
det er be explained as if they actually ah progress progress step by step or steps and stages so this is a this is the kind of far
a characterization a false characterization i think have the other school of zen ah and if we look at it really if we look at what we do what if we look at what we learn
you know on the one hand we have of a formless practice where we are encouraged to sit with whatever arises and to record recognize our enlightened nature
and on the other hand you may have noticed there's stuff we have to work with that keeps rising and we we have we use buddhist tools and other tools to ah to work on
so you have this tension and i think a false kitchen that's been set up between ancestral sin and to target doesn't and it's also in what i'm gonna read you ah ah sometimes this is characterized as ah
the aesthetic chosen as the sudden school
and to talk at isn't as the graduate school
scholars point out that sometimes a certain school takes a lot longer than the graduates to for
yeah if you ask me that if you ask me personally i can attest to that as a practitioner of the sudden school and ninety eight so it's like you know i can ah and sometimes it's also characterized in in the history of chinese nana's the northern the north the southern
school is a certain school is the ancestral school and a northern school is the gradual school is the to target is in school southern school good northern school bad
okay i got that him
have carved in your mind now throw it away
because that's all just politics
you know that's all
the polemics of have any religious system you know my system is better than your sister ah whereas really beef you think about think about ah
by the time the tuition and got to sticky dough he said says the teachers of the north and south or but different expressions and the same reality ranching streams flow on at the darkness ah so we're beginning to understand that this kind of factional
awesome ah
really was not a bad different perspectives of ah of buddhism in many ways it was about different manifestations of ego
okay so
i want to talk about winning so are our
ancestral tradition begins because from bodhidharma through a for other ancestors some of whom we know almost nothing about
we get to winning and we think we know something about winning ha although what verifiable was is really hard to pin down
but there's a buyer is willing was the person who purportedly spoke or wrote the platform sutra which is one of our key little texts in ah in this and traditions and the platform sutra begins with a buyer
biography or autobiography and also and at the heart of that gives a poetry contest and so that's what i would like to relate to you did you so us
the story of we never said ah
his father was a low level official who died and left ha winning and his mother in very poor circumstances are in kampong in southern southern china ah and he made his living by cutting firewood cutting itself
some firewood and one day when he was in the market selling firewood or
a customer came to his shop and when he was carrying firewood out of the shop he heard someone in the street reciting the sutra
as soon as i heard this text my mind became enlightened and i asked what he was resigning he was about fifteen him purportedly illiterate
but he had to have an instant awakening to this text and the man explains well this is the diamond sutra diamond sutra is one of the project army to supress or which the heart sutra that we ah that we chant is how is apart
so a and this person who's reciting it says well they there's saw a master
in the wong may district the fifth ancestor booth who teaches this ah and so this man encouraged ah we aim to go in study isn't quite conveniently also gave him ha gave him a packet of coins so that
his mother would be able to support herself in his absence ah and
thereby his mother leaves the story never hear from view about her again ah
have any rate he goes to heat so i went to pay homage to the ancestor and was asked where i came from and what i expected from him so he makes his way you know over the mountains to
two or donjon monastery and we didn't says i'm a commoner for quantum from quantum i thought i've traveled far to pay your respect and i asked for nothing but buddhahood
an act of the masters taken back said you are a native of quang dung a barberry i feel building basically are you know how can you expect to be a buddha i replied although there are northern men and southern men north and south makes
no difference to buddha-nature a barbarian is different from your colon is physically but there's no difference in our buddha nature is you know is ah
ah spunky different
a and knows what he knows so there's no difference in ability so the fifth and and was a bout to make to speak further to me but the oath but the presence of other disciples made him stopped short until he started the okay
go to work since sent them off to the to the workhouse the temple
and of course winning exist may i tell your holiness that prajna often arises in my mind
when one does not stray from ones essence of mind one may be called the field of mirror
what work would your holiness have me do
and winnings says this barbarian is too bright
go to the stable and good and stable and shut up the actually go to stable and speak no more ah
i then withdrew to the backyard and was told by a lay brother to split firewood into pound rice so he does this work for the significant ah interval of nine months now
just enough time to give birth to a buddha ah and one day the the ancestor assembled his diaper disciples and said the question of rebirth is momentous day after day and trying instead of trying to free yourself from this sea of life and death
you reach for tainted merits which will only cause rebirth ah marriage will be no help to you so go and seek for your wisdom and write me a verse about it
the one who understands their essence of mine will be given the robe and the dharma and i shall make it the sixth ancestor so it's it's like he's setting rules for contest is delay not in writing as deliberation is quite unnecessary
i
so
the disciples get this you know they get his instruction and there you know if they're a bunch of what are is commonly called rice bags
do you know what rice cakes are
this thing we're rice backs the
we feel ourselves with rice and we should have to remainder and then the next day we thought of with rise again i will not to the these months into anything they're just respects with retrograde specs ah so ah the disciples to go stand aside
didn't say it's no use for us to concentrate our mind to write a verse and submitted to the ancestor since the winner is bound to be our teacher shinshu he's the head trademark ah
if we if we bothered to write it suddenly a waste of our energy
the empathetic it really didn't are why should we take the trouble
hereafter look just like shinshu wrote the person will follow his example and wherever he goes will look to him for guidance
meanwhile shinshu
it was one of the protagonist in this was thinking
i wonder whether i should write a verse and submitted to his holiness if i don't how can the ancestor know how deep or shallow my knowledge is
ha
had he thinks about this quality thinks maybe he's gonna paint diverse in secret at night on the wall
ah
he made several attempts to submit this verse but as soon as he went near the hall his mind was so perturbed that he broke out into sweat all over
ah he could not screw up his courage to do it although he made thirteen attempts
and finally says okay i've i've got guarantee this ah
all and let the ancestors see it and if he approves it that i shall come you can read it in secret if he improves it can i shall come and pay homage and tell him that it was done by me
so but if he disapproves it than i shall have wasted years in this monastery receiving praise from others which i don't deserve
so he writes it
and this is the verse which you may have heard
our body is the bodhi tree
in our mind is a mirror bright
carefully we wiped them power by our and let no dust a light
our body is the bodhi tree and our mind a mirror bright carefully we wiped an hour by hour had left no dust a light it's quite remarkable had that ancient chinese both rhymes and scans variation
ah
it is
so he breaks isn't it goes to his room has know he perceives to ah
fall into a fit of anxiety about it was a good not good what are we it in this vein he kept on thinking until dawn as he could neither sweet nor at
ah
so the ancestor comes the next morning to the mall where he's going to have some he was going to apps some murals painted and he says he sees says he sees the first and he said ah
it'll be good to leave this stands in here so people may study and recited if they put its teaching into actual practice they will be saved from the misery of being bored being born and evil realms of existence
the merit gain by on practices will be great indeed so he's praising it
the actual
meaning of this is is a little subtle he's not saying they will be free for a reverse you just say this is good enough so that they'll be free from evil be birth if you practice it you won't be born as a hungry ghost or demon if you practice this first but you will still continue
to be reborn
ah
he already instance to be burned and all of his disciples to pay homage and decided ah and after they recited in oldham exclaimed well well done
at midnight the ancestors sent for shinshu to come to the hall and asked him did you write this are not ah
shinshu said yes it was me i dare not be so vain as to get the rope and bowl but i wish your holiness would tell me whether by stanza shows the least grain of wisdom
the answer says so far you have reached the threshold of the door of enlightenment but you've not yet entered it
ah
he says to attain supreme type enlightenment one must be able to know some spontaneously one's own nature or essence of mind which is neither created nor can it be annihilated
ah
so he says you'd better go back think it over for a couple days and then write another verse if you're scared to show you have entered the door of enlightenment i will transmit to use a rope and dorm in are you
since you made obese since and left for several days he tried in vain to write another stanza this upset him so much that it was if he were walking around in a nightmare
stuff
so couple days later ah one of the young months is walking by the workroom where we name is and he's reciting this verse how loud and we know says what stands it is this had the voices you
barbarian you don't know about it the ancestor told the disciples that the question of incessant rebirth was a momentous one ah
and so on and support so shinshu wrote this formless stamps on the wall of the south corridor and the ancestor told us to be signed it
ah
i asked the winning as the boy to show him where the stanza was so that he could bow to it
ah
boy took me there a petty officer of the chung jo district named john to young who also happened to be there read me diverse when he had finished reading i told him
i'm also had composed of a an immigrant it and asked him to write it on the wall for me
extraordinarily extraordinary indeed he exclaimed that you you can also compose a stanza
don't despise a beginner said i if you a seeker of enlightenment you should know that the lowest class may have the sharpest with while the highest me want in intelligence
ha
if you slight others you could be a very great sin minnesota this text is in the cases dictators dancer i have yeah
the are forgetting i'll do it to are
i will take it down for you but don't forget to deliver me should you succeed in getting the dharma so it makes a make this promise ah which of
he also has never heard from again the sticks
he made he did forget about them so here's the purse
so remember the first let me just being the first running against just a ha

her body is the bodhi tree and our mind and mirror bright carefully we wiped an hour by hour and let no dust a light can his vs there is no bodhi tree nor stand of a mirror ride since all is empty
where can dust light
okay
when he had written of this all the disciples and others were present were greatly surprised and said to other wow how can it be that you say well he said
how can i be that for so long we have made a bodhisattva incarnate work for us
see that the crowd was overcome with amazement the ancestor
took off his shoe and rubbed off my vers les jealous wants to do me injury what can i say what can i really like about the stories it's it's quite visual you know you can see this as a has a movie you know ah would be fun to do you ha
so the fifth and to express the opinion that the author of this dance had not yet realized the essence of mind
next day the ancestor came secretly in the room where the rice was bounded he said to me a seeker of the path risks his life for the dharma should he not do so
then he asked his the rice ready
ready long ago i replied only waiting for the sif he knocked the ancestor
not with his stick three times
hands off
knowing and left knowing what the message meant in the third watch of the night i went to his room
using his robe as a screen so that none could see us he expanded the diamond samba to be
diamond sutra yes thank you when he came to the sentence one should use one's mind in such a way that will be free from any attachment
hi at once became thoroughly enlightened
and realized that all things in the universe our essence of mind
thus to the knowledge of no one the dharma was transmitted to me at midnight and consequently i became the inheritor of the teaching of the sudden school as well as the role in the big bowl
so that's the story and it unfolds from there
hum
some years ago i was working on a piece of writing which remains in my desk
he told the story
and and i think that this or
and also get a lot of research suzuki roshi i was talking with surgeon suzuki work he is with other chagrin suzuki roshi to express the sentiment that ah he kind of doubted the veracity of this story ah
a and he sent this his sojourn wants but such never asked him why ah me sex in it
i should have asked him
ha
but i also found a
a poem which are we can hear this here's my take on it
i told him ha ha
winnings voice to this desert area i do not doubt that this ancestors of pin and doing a doubt the ancestors opinion that i was the best i was the vessel best qualified to carry the dharma but neither did i fully accept the idea that the dharma of resides with any see
single person
whatever doubts shinshu the other disciple may have had at the time he wrote his verse he the seed of enlightenment was clear to me in his words
my verse was not truly in contradiction to his but in extension
bringing forth the empty nature of mind that shinshu implied
in later years the foolish descendants when foolish descendants fell into the sorry human habit of squabbling northern and southern schools of zen arose supposedly allied with shinshu and myself
nothing could have been further from my thoughts
the poet joanne
ah was almost contemporary with wynnum precisely speaks my mind that this manner years st paul by showering
the minds of these two men were like moon and sun with no cloud in the four directions they appear in space
the three vehicles share the same path the myriad teachings or one
the division into northern and southern schools is an error of speech
so
the question to killed like to conclude with as we look at this story is
what does this mean to us
what does it mean to me ah how is it
when they trained and yes care of started with circumference of your house is useful for our practice and ah then he
turn it around and said ah
how can we be useful to our practice
you know how does is help us be useful to the practice itself rather than how kinda how does this sub folks must make use of the practice
hum

we have this emptiness side which is sometimes framed as the absolute
and you know the heart sutra is an exemplar of that no eyes no ears move those no tango body won't mind the indication of everything of and also oppose all these systems of dharma of everything that we think we want to rely and stand on
take that away and what have you left to stand up
at the same time
ha we have
practices can we have precepts we have values we have the teachings of our body we have things that we have to rely on and they're both these these systems are interacting
ah if you didn't have you know their put forth as contradicting contradictory but i've seen them as complimentary
ha has the
if you seen them together you'll really see the to me i see that the interpenetration have
the so-called relative and the so-called absolute
ha and even though
we don't practice
we say we don't practice in steps and stages we still to the said though we sit down we maintain a form there are there are disciplines that we lean on
that are
manifestations of our of our mind
their traditions and ways that were handed down and to the extent that they work for us we'll keep showing up here
and so i like to imagine what i continued in this writing that i was doing the next section of it was you know ah we name runs off to the to the forest and lives in the forest for several years an actor is there for a couple of months
ah shinshu tracks him down
and ah
they spent a year
living together practicing side by side
ah just doing the practice today had been taught by the chest ancestor hand
manifesting their practice informed me rather than in ah the attention of ah differences that will recruit with that were created later
so i can catch for i'm going to end for today and and i think you'll see some of these as we continue through some of the ancestors which ah we're not going to do in such a systematic way but i think you'll hear echoes of these perspectives he and much of the teachings from the
ah enlightening women and men that we that we talk to me so a little time a few minutes for question
comments have sunday and the slendering i'm here with when we know that are you winning lived in the early ah
eighth century
weren't actually late late seventies early eighth year and think die and seven sixteen where did you live in southern china i believe are in a
no to cartoon area ah you know what was in i think was that cantonese area of china now
on me an auto bahn
but that's one of the things that the surgeon dr this
there were these these mountains in these teachers and and students went from one to another to you know not looking at what for this one works causes one but where's the are you know where's your good teaching and where might i learn something
i did he know that he was a first the
we don't know what he knew
ah that's a think it's really it's really hard to tell because august happened
has so what one of the things that i'm not sure if it's so to target would you have is the an imposition of a kind of confusion a worldview that's being imposed on buddhism ah and so are all of this
was happening the platform sutra is part of the construction of lineage yeah it's part of a lineage project you know do so whether he knew that he he was part of it or not i i would have been to say
we don't know it's factual there
two it feels like what when you're talking about his skillful means so that there is the practice of just showing up with nothing to attain as we chant
and at the same time skillful means arrives and sometimes were taught what they are certain sutures you know like the managed to charm and a practice and so on and some of them arise spontaneously
and so in terms of practicing and sanga practicing supposedly with the other the enemy
ah how do you see this integrating
not quite sure understanding the question while imagined bernie sanders and donald trump
in the house and
how to be intimate with that with without other you know just getting carried away with making fun of one or the other of them or a demonizing one or the other of them
on
seeing you know you can call empty or you could say common humanity or something like that were how do you actually engage with that difference bernie sanders and donald trump in my house
no know sure that temperature question surgery about would be a wonder on i would do
i would
want to see
who each of them and like to try as best i can perceive or each of them is because they're caricaturists to me the way they're portrayed and i know that they're not characters characters paw they are foolish humans are in
in various ways as i am ah but they're also ah
i have no doubt they loved their family and loved they haven't human qualities that i'd like to know what those are before i started before i serve
reconcile them to the box particular place if what we're looking at is them being guests in my home
you know so you have to remember if you're if you have guests you have responsibility
as a host
and that's one of the one of the great dynamics of of zen guest guest and host so far
that doesn't mean i have to agree with what one art other thanks politically but here's somebody said said feels to me ah
the similarly really resonated with me they were upset ha
is there had been a family dinner is really happened and ah
they got into argue book about politics and up
one person just
got up and walked out and his wife got up and walked out with him
and ah my friend was upset ah
because they were being argued wish they hadn't actually been started the artist but are my friend said you know our
when we're breaking bread together
can eating a meal together
ah we want to manifest
harmony
and i think that's you know i it gets really important you know if if you're if you're doing that together at least for that moment you know you don't
antagonize her intimidate did or you know inflame the other person's like we're doing something that involves sharing right now
maybe after dinner we can have the argument
anyway
lol that's a response right now
they want more linda
lithia heart sutra is mainly teaching emptiness or does it give a kind of quality to form an emptiness
i think it gives well
it's putting forth a position in which form an emptiness interpenetrate each other but it's also you know it's seen as a
we have to cease to these negations it's fourteenth it's doing that by way of negations which of course imply the affirmations as well no eyes no ears know those are gun your guess of course i have eyes ears nose tongue ah but you have to see through and past indication so as
putting forth that side of things as it's like all these teachings or medicine is medicine for ah
ah the sock decide that says dharmas are real and substantial ah and is saying and way was not that there are unreal but they're constructed
and so that's the desk the emptiness school if you will but the emptiness school doesn't mean that ah nothing is real
ah that's that's my understanding and people's feeling it really puts for emptiness that for me it's power has always been that it makes form an emptiness unable to escape hm yes depends on what you mean by emptiness miley wants their well i'll just say very i'll just say
a very simply my understanding of emptiness is really
i think you could it's the type fullness that that everything is the is the interrelationship of causes conditions in forms ah so it's not like
ah there's nothing there and this is what and one of the other things about the if we've studied the platform sutra which were not one of the other aspect of the platform sutra is it's a kind of argument for it it's an embodied expression of the diamond sutra in many
oasis it's a dance which is pretty can be pretty heavy and abstract and the platform such as said well here's how it works in the world and in your body ah and i think that this is as we get the super place to and as we get to talking about the ancestors they're all doing it there
ancestral sin is about taking these teachings and doctrines there can be abstruse or obscure or heavy
and filtering them through one's own body so that you see this is real and this is a way to live with the right what can go back to your man one so like right yeah if any run a
yeah it reveals itself as ones light
so that's that's really good place to in and i look for woman to have a a month of continuing our discussion and teachings and
ah please do your job