might be of interest to you just anyway there's a funeral ceremony for Alan tomorrow in Shambhala Center I guess in the Lower East Side from 9 o'clock to 1 o'clock so nice people are It's remarkable to be here again with you to discuss the Dharma. And I thought that since we started yesterday, I should say something about lineage and our ancestors. Because if you don't understand what lineage is about, it's pretty hard to understand what we're doing here.

[01:10]

And I don't want to make lineage something from big deal or something inaccessible, like it goes back and then it's passed and all that, but something quite ordinary, actually. And an answer to a particular kind of problem Yeah. Now, there are two main ideas that inform what we're doing here. One is to think of this as a laboratory, a personal laboratory, in which to study yourself. And so, what we do here, the conditions are meant to... It's... are to create the conditions for this study and observation of how we exist. The other main idea is that if it's a laboratory, it's an apprentice story.

[02:17]

I don't think there's any such word. But in any case, a place for apprenticeship. An apprentice comes from the word... like apprehend, to grasp, to take hold of something. And so the attention span of a three-month practice period is part of creating the attention span of apprenticeship with each other and with the teacher. It's just the nature of the beast, dragon, ant, Insect. Yeah. The nature of the creature that we are together. Yeah. So, What can I say?

[03:26]

You know, I don't know how to describe it exactly, but it's not our usual idea of learning, study, etc. It's a kind of osmotic transmission. I mean, this staff was given to me by Sukhya Rishi. And I don't know how far back it goes, but it goes back a ways. That's apprenticeship. That's not learning or study. This is something he carried and held. Now I'm doing it, and I have to give it away. It's my job to give it away. So somebody, I have to give it to somebody, maybe one of you, someone. But I have several, so don't worry. You don't have to compete. And I discussed this earlier, but I think it would be useful to make this point again, that from my reading I would say that our culture is empowered and limited by

[04:51]

several factors that go back to Greek times. One is the creation of a phonetic alphabet. There's a reason why I'm talking about this. A phonetic alphabet. And also the Greek social conditions, which were societal conditions, which were to demythologize society and to see secular and religious society as one thing. And as a result, instead of using language to tell dramatic creation stories, language was used, and when you have a phonetic alphabet you have a lot of literacy, because it's the same as speaking. You had the writing down of ideas, and often speculative ideas, half-formed ideas. Now, this is a very big difference in writing down how the Earth was created or what the gods said or something like that.

[05:59]

You're writing down half-formed ideas. Now, what's important about that, as I pointed out a couple of times in the past recently, is that it allows ideas to be developed over generations. It allows a multi-generational development of ideas. So what language then functions as is externalized memory. Okay, now you understand that, I think. Now, the problem is that in Sangha we also need externalized memory, but there's no phonetic alphabet which will describe meditation practice, signless states of mind, the essence of mind, and so forth. So that's why, you know, they had said they had so many circles, because they did kind of mimetic, not mimicry, but mimetic analog modeling.

[07:09]

And they had, I don't know, 97, I forget now, circles to represent different states of mind, transitions between states of mind, and so forth. And as you know, we can see that in Tungshan's five ranks, these circles. And as I said, the ancestor of these in the simplification is the yin-yang symbol. I mean a descendant of these. So the problem of Sangha is we want to continue and develop a multi-generational teaching, but we can't do it in language. So it can only be done by an apprenticeship. And this is the bloodline, we call it the bloodline, the real inner stream of practice.

[08:12]

I mean, there's all kinds of forms of Buddhism. But my own opinion is, Buddhism would not continue from generation to generation in its true form without lineage. But it's only a lineage which can keep this multi-generational intact and developing. OK. So this is some kind of learning or coming to know by taking hold of, not by studying, but by taking hold of. And that's why Yaoshan got down from his seat. Because, you know, it's nice to give lectures and I obviously do it quite a lot. But I don't feel exactly like I'm giving lectures.

[09:14]

I feel like We're rubbing minds together or something like that. Peeling oranges. Anyway, he got down from his seat to say, this high seat is not our practice. It's just living together, eating together, doing things together. This is osmotic, multi-generational transmissions. We can't say what happens, but something happens. Sekiroshi spoke about it as walking in the mist together. It's not raining, but your robes get soaked through. And who you're walking with, your robes both get soaked through. So we can't say exactly what it is. Sometimes it's called elder-to-elder. And sometimes its transmission is likened to how birds start singing together in the morning, the first night.

[10:26]

And there's no kind of program like it ends at a certain point or you get a degree or something like that. And Sukershi, as I said yesterday, stopped speaking about enlightenment because he found in America it separated him from people. People immediately, you got it, I don't, or somebody's got it, somebody doesn't. He just wanted out of that, so he stopped speaking about it. It'd be like, you know, it's really nice to have a good meal, and it's nice to really taste things. And it's fun if we all went out together and had a good meal. And it's fun to go have a meal with someone who enjoys food, right? But if that person went around talking about food all the time, it's ridiculous. It's just for enjoying food, you know. Enlightenment is like that.

[11:30]

It's just something we enjoy together, you know, like a good meal. We'll put Randa in charge of enlightenment, because we're having such good meals. Okay. Now I said Yaoshan's teacher was Shido or Sekito. He was called Sekito because seki means stump. He studied with... When he was quite young, he went to Soke, which is the word for where the sixth patriarch comes from. That's his name. And so it was nearby. I guess he lived in a kind of rough neighborhood. A lot of people... And still people do live in caves in China. But a lot of people living in caves without houses and... having all kinds of supposedly alters to malevolent deities and things like that.

[12:34]

And highwaymen around. So anyway, but Soke, the Sixth Patriarch, lived nearby. Can you believe it? The Sixth Patriarch lived... Yeah, the Sixth Patriarch lives down there somewhere. And so he went when he was 13 or 14 and studied with the Sixth Patriarch. The Sixth Patriarch took a liking to him and thought he was a vehicle of the truth and gave him instruction. But a couple years later, the Sixth Patriarch died. And young Shido was one of the people, Kisen, was one of the people around the deathbed. And then he was ordained by someone and then he went to study with Seigen Gyo-shi, who we also chant his name in the morning. And Seigen was one of the

[13:37]

main two, who most of the lineages come from, disciples of the Sixth Patriarch. So he, Sekito, knew the Sixth Patriarch for a couple years and then studied with one of his two main disciples, Nanue or Nanaka, who was the other main disciple from whom the Linji, Rinzai lineage comes, and from Seigen, the Soto, Dungshan lineage comes. So you can see how closely these practices and teachers are woven. And there were schools in those days. There were lineages, not schools. And still, I think that should be the case. That was Sukershi's view, too. He was with Sagan, I don't know, quite a number of years and inherited his Dharma. There's a famous line when he first joined Sagan's community.

[14:48]

Sagan said, I have In my assembly, he said, in my assembly there are many horned animals, but one unicorn will do. And a unicorn, and there aren't many of them in China, and it was an auspicious animal, sort of like the Kirin of Kirin beer. You know, the Kirin is an auspicious animal. And somehow I believe at one point that emperor of China got himself in possession of a giraffe from Africa. How the heck a giraffe got from Africa to China, I don't know. But they called it a Kirin. They didn't know what it was. It must be a Kirin. So they had this giraffe sort of tied up in front of the imperial palace to indicate this was an auspicious brewery. I mean, auspicious century. Anyway. But for For Sengen to say this, that in my assembly there are many horned animals, but one unicorn will do, is to express that a Zen master or teacher needs one disciple.

[16:14]

This is the main job, one disciple. You might have several, because then they can help each other. But the main job is one disciple. So one unicorn will do. So then he left. When he left Seigen, he went to Nanyue or Southern Peak or Nannaku, Japanese Nannaku. And he found a large flat rock and he built a hut on it. As Yaoshan started out in a cow shed Yaku-san Sekito built a little hut on a big flat stone so he was called locally the monk who lives on top of a stone that's where Sekito comes from or Shido so these you know I'm telling you about this to make you familiar with who you're chanting in the morning Yaku-san Igen Dai-yosho Seigen Gyo-shi Dai-yosho

[17:29]

Now, from Dongshan, the Sixth Patriarch, who we know a great deal about, I mean, Dongshan, the founder, the original ancestor, really Sagan is the original answer, but the name of our lineage comes from Dongshan. From Dongshan to Sagan is Segen would be his great-grandfather's grandfather. That's not very far. His great-grandfather's grandfather. And from Segen to the sixth... from Sekhito to Bodhidharma, it's the same distance.

[18:34]

His great-grandfather's grandfather. It's about a hundred years. I mean, I actually know quite a bit about my grandparents and my great-grandparents and my great-grandparents, and some of you may too. That's not very far distance from Dungsan, to the Sixth Patriarch, his great-grandfather's grandfather, and from the Sixth Patriarch to Bodhidharma. It's the same distance, his great-grandfather's grandfather. And I have the robe, when I received transmission, Sri Guruji gave me the robe of the person who would be my great-grandfather's father. So that's not very distant. We have his picture in Hotuan. So anyway, I'm trying to humanize this for you. It's just folks like us.

[19:36]

And it doesn't go back. I mean, you know, we're talking about knowing something now in 1990 about people who lived in 1890. We know a lot about people who lived in 1890. And in those days they knew it differently. They didn't know it from books and kind of occasional tales. They knew it from a concerted effort to know each other thoroughly. Hmm. Hmm. So lineage is this multi-generational effort, practice, to continue the teaching of signless states of mind. We could say it's that simple. The essence of mind. And Sekito, Shido, one day, this is recorded, he took the high seat and said,

[20:47]

I received my dharma from this dharma from a previous Buddha. I mean, to hear someone say that today, it sounds rather, geez, makes you wince. But it's really important to believe that Buddhas live in your society. It's one of the great things about Tibetan Buddhism. is that they really believe there are enlightened people and Buddhas living in Tibetan society and among contemporary Tibetans. This is very healthy. It's not like, oh God, this guy thinks he's important or something like that. It's not about that. It's about believing in your own contemporary society and not historicizing it or believing it's some idealistic thing that's never going to happen. To believe in your own society means you believe that Buddhas are present in your society. Without idealizing it, maybe becoming more practical about this,

[21:49]

So he got up and he had to speak one day, so he said, this Dharma I have received from a previous Buddha, no matter how, what is important, he said, is that you realize the Buddha Dharma, that you realize Buddha wisdom. And he said, this very mind, just this is Buddha. Now, you have to believe that. You also have a mind. You are a mind. This, you don't have a mind. You are a mind. It's not something you possess. Now, I'd like you to just grok that. Is that a German word? Heinlein, right? I'd like you to just grok that.

[22:52]

This very mind. Just this is Buddha. I should stop now. And you can practice with that. This very mind is Buddha. You can bring that to your... It can be your one mark samadhi. This very mind is Buddha. And you know the famous story First it was taught that way and then it was taught, oh no, this very mind is not Buddha. So you can practice either way if you want. This very mind is Buddha. This one marks samadhi. So he said, you should, no matter how I, this, teaching was received, you should understand the Buddha Dharma. This very mind is Buddha. Just this is.

[23:53]

This very mind. Just this is Buddha. And then he said, mind Buddha sentient beings. Mind Buddha sentient beings. Perfected wisdom and defiling passions. Perfected wisdom and defiling emotions are all of one substance. You should know this. This essence of mind is neither pure nor tainted. It is completely, it is absolutely still and completely whole. This is what we've been talking about. It's absolutely still and completely whole. So you can work with this.

[24:57]

I mean, again, you can take a word as a semantic... Because we are word-speaking people. Let's use words in our wisdom practice. Absolutely still. Or completely whole. Completely whole. Completely whole. Not some other idea. Completely whole. So anyway, Shido said this. And then he said, the three worlds, we can also understand this as on the triple lamp, the three worlds are your own mind. They are like reflections of the moon in water or images in a mirror. Someone asked him,

[25:58]

Who inherits, who inherits, who has inherited the true teaching of Soke, of the sixth patriarch? Who has inherited the true teaching of the sixth ancestor? And Shido said, the one who understands Buddhadharma. And the monk said to him, do you Did you obtain the true teaching of Sokhe? And Sik Sido said, I do not understand Buddhadharma. May our attention...

[27:14]

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