I found you. Bob, so you'll ring the bell every 15-20 minutes or something?

[01:18]

How's everyone this evening? Okay? You all have all these koans figured out? I'm actually hardly going to talk about them, but it's good to read them and get a flavor for what's going on. Well, I'm tempted to ask if there are any questions from last week. I don't know if that's a fair question. Did you find a character for Kwan? No, I couldn't. You couldn't? Okay. I had to go to the institute. Okay. Well, we can... If you get it this week, that would be great. I'm having a really enjoyable time. studying this stuff and I'm finding I have to leave out a lot. There's just so much to cover. But one thing I discovered last night as I was going through the Sandokai is that we've been chanting the Sandokai this way for years.

[02:26]

There are two lines missing. And actually they're important lines. They're right up at the beginning. We've talked about it. It's like I sort of knew that, but then when I was actually studying it and reading Suzuki Rushi's lectures on the Sendokai, I realized, oh, these are important lines. We'll get to that later today. So- Are you going to talk about this, the Blue Cliff Notes? The Blue Cliff Notes. The blue cliff record. Yeah, I can talk about that a little. I had trouble grasping those. And then I started reading the commentaries and the sly little remarks that are in footnotes there.

[03:28]

I was wondering, what is this? Right. Well, this is kind of Zen language. The stories themselves are basically old Zen stories, and the first one goes back to Bodhidharma. They seem to go back to Bodhidharma, but actually there are some that are even earlier than that, or refer to legendary Buddhas. And then there were They were assembled as a, they were collected, they were collected by Setsho. Is that right? They're collected by secho or shwetu into this particular collection of stories or cases. What case means, what koan means is a public case or public record.

[04:31]

So it's like a story that's been handed down that has some, in a way, it's like a legal case. It sets a precedent for the expression of something. And then Setsho attached these verses to them. And there are two sets of commentaries. There's a pointer and two sets of commentaries. What is the pointer? The pointer is to actually point you towards what the heart of the case is. That's not what he says. What? That's not what he says? What does he say? He said they were there to confuse him.

[05:32]

Well, I think they're there to help, but I think they're there to help you if you have, so long as you have an understanding of the absolute. And then, this is what I, so there's the pointer, the case, then the commentary by Setsho, then the verse, and then there is a commentary on the commentary on the verse. Well, it's a commentary on the verse. The verse itself, in this particular version, as, like if I'm looking at the first case, the verse is, the holy truths are empty, how can you discern the point? And so it's like, the holy truths are empty, and then there's this somewhat ironic commentary, the arrow has flown past Korea. Ah! How can you discern the point? Wrong. What is there that's hard to discern?

[06:45]

So it's, you know, each one of those... That commentary is... Who was it that did that? Was it John McLaughlin? No, no, no. Is he doing the modern commentary? No, it's not the modern commentary. It's a generation after Setsho. In between each line of the verse, there's this... Oh, wait. Actually, I have it written down. I had this whole... I actually... I had it figured out. I did a special... He did the first commentary in the verses? He said he did the first commentary in the verses. I think I had it written down, but it may not have been written down here. Did he do all the verses? Yes. He appended the verses. to them, but I don't see it. I had it written down. Oh, yeah.

[07:48]

I'm sorry. The pointer and the first commentary and the first notes are by Engel. who was, just the verse was by Setso. So the only, Setso made the anthology and appended the verse without any commentary. And that's how that it was assembled. And then, so Setso was about, his dates were about 980 to 1052. And then Engo, who is from about 1063 to 1135, did the other commentary, did the notes and the commentary, the commentary on the verse, and then that last commentary. So actually some versions, like the one version of the Blue Cliff record. What's the two Zen classics?

[08:52]

Who did that? Akita. Yeah, Akita's... Sekita. Sekita, right. His version just includes the verse and the case. Just basically includes Secho's anthology. So, these commentaries are supposed to be helpful and, you know, in a lot of respects they are. They tell you some of the background of the stories. They tell you some of the reference that these stories are derived from. Because often they are stories based on other stories or stories based on short texts from sutras. But- The things that I thought were the weirdest were the notes. The translator's notes? Well, there's the pointer of the case and then there's the notes from the case. Right. Where there's these small comments basically.

[09:55]

That's right. Right. Well, those are also by Ingo. Every case has notes. Right. Some of them do. All I can say is this seems to be the Chinese Zen way, you know, that in guise of insulting each other, they're actually paying great homage and respect to each other. And actually that's some of, a lot of the content of the koans themselves are like that. Some of what I love about Zen is that actually there's a sense of humor about it. So you can read those things as criticisms or critiques, and you can read them as their opposite.

[11:00]

So I think that it's a way to keep turning your thinking inside out, as if we need it. more reminders of that. I don't think we do, given that the cases are very difficult for us, particularly since we're not so steeped in the literature. But I think as you study them more, if you're studying them and you begin to get a feeling for what's being said, you see the thrust of what Engel is doing. So were these used? Yeah, they're still used. Yeah, as being like a central text for studying Zen. Yeah. Does Master Shing-Yin use the Gizmo Perfect? Not too much. I know that Eiken Roshi does. But he's not Rinzai, is he?

[12:11]

He's both. He's both. The Rinzai masters all use them. Yeah. So, they are still used, and they're used in this form. In fact, this version, which has been out of print, has actually just come back in print in a very expensive hardbound edition. So it's still quite a useful book. And there are other collections. There's the Book of Serenity, which is a big, thick book of sort of a little sweeter kind of feeling to it, I think. And there's the Mumonkan, the Gateless Gate, which has just been translated by Iken Roshi, with commentaries by Iken Roshi. It's really helpful sometimes to hear these koans and then to have them with commentary. Iken Roshi's commentary is very good and also I think that Mel's commentary is really good. He's been slowly, you know, working on cases in the bluecliff record over the last, I don't know, two or three years now.

[13:20]

He's often lecturing on them and they're really, it's really good. Interesting to me. Well, I wanted to... There's a lot to cover. So, I'd like to look a little at Huining, who is the author of the Platform Sutra. And I didn't give you any readings from the Platform Sutra, because it's hard, actually, to excerpt it, but we can talk about it a little bit, and what its importance is, and what it contains. Huineng is usually known as the sixth patriarch, or the sixth ancestor, and it's from him that our Zen lineage really takes off. his written record, the Platform Sutra, or his assembled record, as it were, assembled from his talks and perhaps, actually, some of the written parts not having anything to do with him, it occupies this kind of special place as

[14:38]

in Mahayana literature by virtue of its title as a sutra. Typically, or almost without exception, sutras were the words of Buddha. They were supposed to be the spoken words or the recorded words of Buddha. there's some ambiguity here, since this is undisguisedly the work of seventh-century Chinese origin. But I think that the implication is that the understanding of Huineng is the same as the understanding of Shakyamuni Buddha. So, if the depth of his realization was the same, then the words had the same impact as Buddha. And so someone thought it appropriate to call this the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. But I think my personal feeling, and this is also

[15:47]

there's a whole school that feels this way. In a large sense, while this is a document about enlightenment and about sudden enlightenment, it's also a, in the largest sense of the word political, it's a political, it's an argument about for one school. And it was the argument for the southern school of Zen, or the school of sudden enlightenment. And so the whole book was constructed towards that purpose. And we'll get back to that, but I'd like to talk about Huining a little. His biography, which actually is the first part of the Platform Sutra, is fairly well known. He was born in 638 at Fanyang, and his father was an official who was dismissed from his position and banished to another province.

[17:00]

He died while, actually Huining's name at that point was Lu, while Lu, L-U, was a child. And as an only child, he and his mother lived in great poverty, and they made their living by selling firewood in the marketplace. And one day, Lou heard a customer reciting a line from the Diamond Sutra. And the line was, you should activate the mind without dwelling on anything. And with that, this young boy, who was about 12 or 13, was awakened. and set on his quest for more teaching, for greater teaching. Another story has him actually moving to a nearby district, and this is actually considerably later, about the age of 30, and meeting a Buddhist nun who was related to a friend of his.

[18:06]

And she recites a verse from the Nirvana Sutra. She recites a verse and she passes him the book and asks him to read. And he confesses that he can't read, which is part of the legend of Huining. And she says, if you can't read the characters, how can you understand the Sutra? And he, of course, comes back, well, the essence of Buddha nature has nothing to do with deciphering characters, was his reply. And the local people were very impressed and they urged him to become a homeless monk and to leave the marketplace, actually. And so with that as motivation and with the encouragement of the people that he was surrounded with, he made his way to the temple of the fifth patriarch, Hung Chen. In their first discussion,

[19:10]

Hung Chen and the boy, Lu, discuss Buddha nature. And Hung Chen asks him about his origins, where he comes from, and his intentions. And then he tells the boy, a barbarian from the south could never become a Buddha. And Huineng, actually, he doesn't let any of that get by. And he says, although people from the North and South differ, there is no North or South in Buddha nature. And Hongzhen senses his exceptional quality, but says nothing. And he sends him to work by the kitchen, pounding rice. which he does for about eight months. He had no further teaching. You just sent him off to do this work. somewhere along the line in there during those months, Hung Gen decides it's time for him to transmit the Dharma, to find a Dharma heir.

[20:22]

And he's getting old and he wants to transmit the robe and the bowl that had been passed down to him from Bodhidharma. So he invites all of his students to submit a verse expressing their understanding and all the students get together and they decide that the senior monk, uh, Shenshu, uh, is obviously, he's senior to them all and they should defer to him and, uh, uh, let him write a verse, because obviously he's the one that should be successor. So, he feels a lot of pressure about this, but feels that he should submit a verse even though, uh, he doesn't feel that his realization is complete. So, this is the verse that he submitted. He wrote it on the wall in the Buddha Hall.

[21:26]

The body is the Bodhi tree. The mind is like a clear mirror. At all times, we must strive to polish it and must not let the dust collect. The body is the Bodhi tree. The mind is like a clear mirror. At all times, we must strive to polish it and must not let the dust collect. That's pretty good. And seeing this verse, Hung Gen praised it and made an incense offering to it. But he called Chen Chu aside and said that though your verse is very helpful, your understanding is not complete. And he urges him to enter the gate and see your own original nature.

[22:29]

Actually, I mean he was very kind and encouraging. I mean he was saying well, you can do it. Just just enter the gate He's just sort of urging him on and pushing him on And as it turns out later, which we'll come back to, Shenshu ultimately was a Dharma successor of Hung Jin, and was the patriarch of the Northern School of Zen, which has been much maligned as the Graduate School. So his understanding was actually very deep. and it deepened. But for the sake of this story, and this is the story as it's told in the Platform Sutra, his verse was not complete. Meanwhile, Huining hears a young monk reciting this verse, which caused quite a stir in the monastery.

[23:40]

And instantly, of course, he knows that it does not express complete enlightenment. So he asked to be brought to the South Hall to reverence this verse. And then, in what was an astonishing move for an illiterate rice-pounder, he asks that his own verse be copied by one of the monks on the wall, because he can't do it. So here's Huineng's verse. Let me read you Hsinchu's verse again. The body is the Bodhi tree, the mind is like a clear mirror. At all times we must strive to polish it, and must not let the dust collect. So Huineng's verse is, Originally there is no tree of enlightenment, nor is there a stand with a clear mirror. From the beginning not one thing exists. Where then is a grain of dust to claim?

[24:42]

Originally there is no tree of enlightenment, nor is there a stand with a clear mirror. From the beginning not one thing exists. Where then is a grain of dust to claim? So everyone admired this verse, but Hong Zhen, who came to read it on the wall, said it was still not complete. That night he came to Huining at the rice meal, the rice pounding part of the temple, and he said, is the rice ready yet? And Huining replied, it's ready, but it hasn't been sifted. And then Hung Chen struck the mortar three times. And Huining followed him to his chamber where he was taught Hung Chen's Dharma of Sudden Enlightenment and received the robe and the bowl.

[25:47]

And Hung Chen advised him to flee south. until it was the appropriate time to teach, because he was afraid of the jealousies that might, that might, just the violence and jealousy that might befall him as having received the robe and the bowl. And, in fact, Hung Gin accompanies Winang part of the way and ferries him across the river to the south. There are a lot of other stories. He was a layman. He stayed a layman until very late in his life. He was not ordained. And he was a layman all the time that he was hiding in the southern mountains. And one day he heard two monks arguing at the temple of the doctrinal master Yinzhang. It was a windy day and the temple banner was blowing this way and that. And these two monks were arguing, and one said the flag was moving, and the other said that the wind was moving.

[26:57]

And Huining sort of, he was listening to this and interjected, may a layman interrupt your lofty discussion. He's a snotty guy, I think. And he says, may a layman interrupt your lofty discussion. It is not the wind or the flag that is moving. Your minds are moving. And hearing this, doctrinal master Yin Zhang was, he was amazed and called Huining to account for himself and explain his understanding. And immediately on the spot, he became Huining's disciple, saying, I am an ordinary mortal, but now I've met a living saint. And he arranged at last for Huining to be ordained. And his formal teaching began from that point. So that's some of the biography or some of the story of Huining. Well, the sutra itself is this great work and the autobiography is in great detail.

[28:08]

What's really interesting are Huineng's instructions on meditation, and there's also a large section of what are called formless precepts, or precepts on emptiness, that are very much like the precepts that we take. But it's also, as I said, a highly political document that was largely assembled by who names one of his disciples, Shenhui, to make a case for the sudden school of Zen. And part of the argument in the doctrine is that prajna and bodhi, wisdom and enlightenment, are intrinsic, that we carry it, everything and everyone carries it within themselves, and that it's complete and indivisible. And that wisdom and enlightenment is the same thing as wisdom and meditation, that they can't be separated, which occurred to me is very much like what we'll get to in the last... I mean, I don't know if Meili's going to talk about this particular concept, but it's very much like Dogen's concept of practice enlightenment, that just taking the seed of zazen

[29:34]

is an expression of enlightenment. That that act is enlightenment itself. So, in that sense, it's both very encouraging and it's also very challenging for those of us who don't feel that our understanding is complete. even though we sit there every morning or every afternoon. So Hsuan-hui took it on himself. This was not Hui Neng's policy at all. Hsuan-hui took it on himself to challenge what was then the orthodox school, the northern school of Zen, which evolved from Hung-chan to Hsuan-shu and then other disciples and was quite

[30:47]

It really was the orthodoxy until after this time, and he labeled it the gradual school, sin of sins. To me, if we go back and look at these two verses, Hsuan-Chu's verse and Hui-Ning's verse, they actually reflect both sides of our practice. we have the notion of sudden enlightenment and the notion of gradual enlightenment. I'm always told in the Soto school your practice is like walking out on a foggy day and you don't notice that it's wet but as you keep walking gradually your clothes become soaked.

[31:59]

Both sides, I think, represent our practice. And the notion of gradual enlightenment also sort of echoes to me what Meili was reading in the section she read from the Lotus Sutra on skillful means, on upaya. that, and again we'll come back to this later tonight as a theme, that we practice as best we can according to our abilities and our predilections and how quick our mind is and how slow our mind is. And it's actually it gets back to this point of Shengshan's and the Xinxinming, where it says the Great Way is not difficult for those who don't pick and choose.

[33:11]

Chen Xu wasn't picking and choosing. Huining wasn't picking and choosing. But I would make an argument that Chen Hui, who assembled this sort of polemical document, was picking and choosing. And while I was reading the Sandokai lectures from Suzuki Roshi, Suzuki Roshi really emphasizes that. That this was not the work of, this is not a direct expression of Huining, but with the expression of Shenhui. What he says, actually, what he says is, people often get into confusion because of discrimination. Dull from sharp, or dullness and sharpness of mind.

[34:19]

But from the standpoint of the patriarchs, it's the same. All the patriarchs understand this point. So there is no southern patriarch and no northern patriarch. He goes on, cleverness is not always an advantage in studying Buddhism. The dull one is good because he is dull. The sharp one is good because he is sharp. You cannot compare and say which is good. I'm not so sharp, so I understand very well." And Suzuki Roshi is saying, My master always called me, you crooked cucumber. I was the last disciple of my master, but I became the first because all the good cucumbers ran away. So for studying Buddhism, my dullness was an advantage. If I were a sharp fellow, I should have run away with them. So there's also the story of the different horses, slow horses and fast horses in Zen.

[35:22]

In a sense, This is where it gets really interesting to me. You have a kind of interpenetration of opposites with Huining and Qianshu. Huining, who is illiterate and uneducated, is perceived as dull. dull-witted or slow. But actually, in all the exchanges that we've talked about here, he's right on the mark. He's really fast with a retort and really fast to come back with something that expresses what he perceives to be the essence of things. Whereas Chen Xu, who was this kind of very dedicated monk, a very solid scholar, had very great grasp of the Sutras, is... you'd ordinarily think of him as very sharp and very smart.

[36:30]

But in a sense, he's actually the slow horse. And he's the one that takes him longer to recognize his own essence. So there's a slow horse. He's a slow horse, and Huining is a fast horse. But actually, there's no race. It's actually just like Tassahara, no race. Do you know about that? There's no race there down there in May. And Reb usually wins the no race, actually. He races, and he can run. But there's no winner. It doesn't matter. And that's kind of what I draw from these stories.

[37:31]

I'm curious to know what people think, if there's any After Hui Neng died, Hsin Hui spent almost the entire remaining part of his life promoting Hui Neng. It was incredibly political, like you said. It's just really interesting. a consonant politician, and it was his big deal. And he spent his whole life trying to promote Huining. It wasn't at all clear that Huining was going to be sort of recognized in Buddhism as this Sixth Patriarch. I mean, it could have been... He wasn't. I mean, it was in all the original, like the earliest texts that they've gotten from Dunhuang, he's usually not mentioned.

[38:35]

He's mentioned as a disciple, but Xianshu, And it's only a little later that that argument won out. even more, the story, I don't have the details here, it's in one of the books, Shen Wei was, he was a very political guy, and he got in with the aristocracy, and actually provided favors for them, which ended up meaning that he got favors for his school over the northern school, which slowly died out over the next couple generations. I'm getting confused with the names. Right. Shenshu and Shenhui are very similar. Yeah. Which is the one who wrote the thing on the wall? Shenshu. He was the... And he's the one who was recognized by some as the patriarch.

[39:40]

Right. He's the patriarch of the northern school. And then Shen Wei was a disciple, but was not, by any means, the main disciple of Wing Neng. And he sort of, then after Wing Neng, was his spokesman. His PR man. But what I was curious, if people have thoughts about this gradual and sudden, because it's a personal issue, I think, that if we feel like supposed to have sudden enlightenment. How does that apply to this kind of daily practice that we do? Well, all enlightenment is gradual before it's sudden. What do you mean? you could have a deep sudden experience and label that sudden.

[40:57]

But where does that come from? Well, in this context, it's interesting to me to follow a little bit that Buddhist school that's on Sanford Street. No, it was right across the street from Wampanoag. What was the name? Oh, the... Siddhartha? The Siddha Yoga. The Siddha Yoga. Oh, look it on display. That's right. Because, from what I've heard, what happens there is you go and pretty quickly you get zapped. It's sort of very high charged and very devotional and very emotional and something happens. Well, there are hindrances. And then, and so that, and then you work you kind of work back and forth after that's happened. It's a real different kind of structure than ours. It's about as much opposite as ours usually is. And from that point of view, I mean, obviously you can't get zapped, as Charlie says, if there's nothing there to begin with that responds to the zap.

[42:08]

But from that point of view, it's the sudden that comes first, and then the gradual is a kind of working out and understanding of what happened. But what about us? We're supposed to be in the sudden school. But I thought Soto... Isn't Soto... It's so much back and forth. I always think of Rinzai as a sudden... That's the more sudden school. Well, what about the ox herding pictures? Now, as I recall, it's picture number seven that's sort of the blank one, the empty circle. Am I right? Right. And then there's two or three pictures after that depending on Well, but I think... Well, the answer is yes. Yes, but what's interesting about the ox-herding pictures in this context is that it's a picture of... it's a series of pictures about stages of enlightenment before you get to picture seven.

[43:20]

Right. Well, that was my point. I just thought about a better way to explain what I said before. Not original with me. Alan, who is the gradual school then? Shenshu. Where is that today? Well, as a school, it died. As the northern school itself died. But the Theravadins are much more in that direction. They really believe in stages of practice. When Aya Kima came to talk in Zendo, this was a long time ago, and she was pretty well talking along the lines of gradual practice, like Xuanzhu's poem. And I think I asked her, well, what do you think about the other poem, the difference between these two poems?

[44:24]

She said, well, and I was sort of baiting her a little bit. And she said, well, they're just different levels. They're just different levels of understanding. Or, as it says, the teachers of North and South are but different expressions of the same reality. Actually, let's come back to this. Let's go on and talk a little bit. Continue on. Because in a way, this question of sudden and gradual is sort of the theme of the evening.

[45:27]

Because it comes up right here. Chinyuan is, so we chant, Huining is Daikan Eno Daisho, in Japanese, and Chinyuan is Seigen Byoshi Daisho. So it's Chinyuan. Winang had two famous disciples from whom all of the present Zen lineages come down. One of them, on one side you had, one of his disciples was Nanyue Huizhong, from whom we have Master Matsu and then Huizhong. I don't know, people still have that, the lineage chart? Yeah. You can't tell the players without a scorecard. And so on through the Rinzai lineage. And then the other disciple was Chingyuan Tsengsu, or Seigen Gyoshi as the Japanese call him.

[46:29]

And Chingyuan had a great number of disciples, although very little was known about him. And from him we have the flowering of the Soto school. So Chinyuan's enlightenment story, which you may have read, if you read stuff from the Transmission of the Light, it's very famous and it carries echoes of this sudden gradual dialectic. He comes to Huining, his teacher, and says, what work should one do so as not to fall into stages? And Huining responded, Well, what have you been doing lately?" And Ching Yuan says, I do not even practice the Four Noble Truths. And then Wei Ning says, So what stage do you fall into? And Ching Yuan replied, If I don't even practice the Noble Truths, how can I speak of stages?

[47:37]

And Wei Ning recognized to nuance profound attainment So does that make sense? I Mean he's talking about the four noble truths as Stages of one's understanding The first understanding that you have, what brings you to practice is that you're suffering, that your life is suffering. Then you look a little harder and you see that the root of suffering is desire or clinging. somewhere the thought of enlightenment is raised, and you take up practice, and as you practice, then you realize enlightenment.

[48:42]

And it's very much a stage-oriented path, and the Eightfold Path. Is is the practice of buddhism that that's advocated in the the fourth noble truth, and that's Once you get to the Theravada texts and also to the Tibetan texts This notion of path is so complex You know even though it's the eightfold path there's stages and stages and stages and stages so all of this was you know, common knowledge for Ching Yuan. So, it's sort of shocking when he says, I don't even practice the Four Noble Truths. But he's just practicing this sort of one-mind practice. Well, it's what we do keep hearing in the Sutras, you know, and in the Lotus Sutra. I guess I didn't read the passage, but how exhausted and dried up and tired and enervated and joyless the early disciples were from this point of view because they'd just been working and working and working on the stages.

[50:02]

And then the new word comes and everybody is filled with joy and brightness. For some reason it makes me think of the Hasidic movement, which was sort of a similar movement in Judaism where, you know, where you had a tremendously, you had a deep scholarly, highly legalistic tradition that was not accessible to very many. And then you had somebody who had the vision of a kind of a mystical a practice that celebrates this kind of notion of interpenetration and that everyone could do it. And that it was a special transmission outside the scriptures. But it wasn't in contradiction to the scriptures.

[51:05]

It just was another point of entry. It's sort of nice. Chinyuan's second name is Singsu, which means walking thinker, because he was constantly walking around and he was thinking, who is mindful of the Buddha? Who is mindful of the Buddha? And he transmitted the robe and the bowl to his student, Shito, who we know as Sekito, in 740. And he called his disciples together and said, I'm going now. And crossed his legs and sat in Zazen posture and died. So there aren't a lot of stories. I really tried to dig up more stories about him, but I couldn't find any. But his most famous saying that's attributed to him is one that we probably heard, and one that I think of a lot.

[52:16]

I'm always trying to figure out what it's really about. Before I had studied Zen for 30 years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have its very substance, I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters." And I wonder if anybody knows what the difference is, has an idea. In the beginning, he took it sort of like on faith, because everybody knows mountains are mountains, and waters are waters.

[53:18]

And he went through some sort of an experience where he really knew himself. But in the process of going through that experience, he or she had stepped back and looked at things from a distance, and saw things differently than the first time, but still are separate, still separate. Well, it's kind of the two, not one, not two thing. You know, you can start out by seeing mountains as mountains and waters as waters, and then see the interconnectedness of all of them, and then go back to seeing that Yeah, they're interconnected and a mountain is still a mountain and water is still water. But is it the same? I mean, in a way this is interesting because maybe this is stages and I wonder if when he

[54:26]

Now that I have its substance, I'm at rest, where I just see that mountains are mountains and waters are waters once again. Do you think that's the same perception as the one that he originally had? Yes and no? No. Very good. No, it's not. It's different. No, it's the same perception, different mind. No, I think, well, I think it would be another level of understanding. I mean, if we're talking about levels. Would you read the beginning again? Yeah. Before I had studied Zen for 30 years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters.

[55:32]

But now that I have its very substance, I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters. Well, maybe he didn't... He, after going through what he went through, to come back around, maybe he didn't... just didn't need to see the mountains as not mountains and was just perfectly happy to see the mountains as mountains and the waters as waters. Robert Thurman gave a lecture once where he was very, very emphatic that the seeing mountains again as mountains was not the same as the original perception.

[56:39]

But he couldn't express what the difference was. You know, that one, this third stage, the way I think of it, I can think of the first stage as like, form is form. That's our habit. You know, we just think that things are, the habit of our minds is to think that things are real. And then the second stage is form is emptiness. That you see that these things that you think that are real, they're made up of all these other essences or something. They have no intrinsic nature of their own.

[57:42]

But the third stage, I don't quite know how to think about it. It's not quite emptiness's form. Yet, big mind contains small mind. Right. Well, maybe we're just going to leave that there and not solve it. Well, I just keep thinking of the last ox-herding picture, you know, where the Mr. Nobody, who's been through the whole thing, just comes back to the marketplace and just happens to have bliss-bestowing hands. Right. Has bliss-bestowing hands. That's good. Alan, how is that related to your first question? Which was? About sudden enlightenment versus gradual enlightenment. Is that arguing for gradual, staged enlightenment?

[58:46]

Well, I actually feel it's somewhat like what Charlie was saying. That enlightenment, realization, is If realization is intrinsic, it's there all the time. But our own seeing of it, when we see it, it's complete. And until we see it completely, we're not seeing it. I'm hesitant to talk about this because it's something that's not quite within my understanding. It's intellectual. But I think that it suggests that both of those exist simultaneously. I think stages is an important element in understanding it.

[59:55]

But I think by the nature of... You have a car, and you take apart a car, and it's a lot of parts, and then you put it together again, so you have a new understanding of what it is and what makes it work. But to try to say that that explains there is a mountain, there is no mountain, there is a mountain, sort of makes it too crude. But the understanding is much deeper. that makes it sort of loses what it is in the in the last stage I mean but sort of like I think we all know have a sense of what it is you know that comes you know it is when we see trees all our lives you know and you do sashin and you go outside and you look at the tree and the tree looks a little different you know and you know and you look at the tree some more and gradually you know then for a while you wonder what is this thing

[60:58]

I mean, in Sishin, I've found myself, I look at grass, I look at the lawn as I walk by all the time, and in Sishin, I've found myself by circumstance, lying down on the lawn and really looking at a blade of grass, you know, and it being a totally astonishing thing that's connected to the lawn, which is in Berkeley, which is connected to the planet. But this is just, this is a metaphor, and we're more, it's more useful in a way, it's more mind-opening for us to deal with the metaphors than to try to pin them down. And you understand something, I'm reluctant to say more, I'm even reluctant to say different in the third. What we're talking about in expressive, in a language, like you say. I think some of the cases, if you read was Issa Mura's book on koans, and what I found reading there was that some of the cases actually are about language.

[62:06]

Well, I think they're about, they're not all about language, they're about, they're different cases, different types of cases are about, you get to different things, points of consciousness, but some of them are about language itself. I'm trying to find which one. Which one? I felt all four of these that I read, the first, second, and third, and the fifty-third, were all about language. That was sort of... They might be. I don't know. Let's move on because it's about 8.40 and I want to talk about Shito or Sekito Kisen.

[63:16]

Sekito was the author of the Sandokai, which we chant every Tuesday morning, incorrectly, or incompletely. And he lived from about 700 to 790. His dharma name, Chito, means stonehead. He built his hut on a large flat rock on Southern Peak. where he practiced with many students. The biographies, the original biographies refer to him as a very unusual child with calmness and assurance beyond his years. The district that he grew up in in China was very primitive and many people were living in caves and practiced, I guess they practiced a kind of animism or a kind of spirit practice where they made offerings to protect themselves from evil deities and sacrificed, built shrines and sacrificed wine and sacrificed oxen.

[64:26]

And one of the stories about him is that he used, as a boy, he used to go around destroying the shrines and freeing the oxen, which I'm sure endeared him greatly to his neighbors. Another ox freeing story. Right. Ox freeing story. It's interesting. When I was in Thailand, when you go to these temples, there are women there who have birds in cages. And if you want to build, if you want to accrue merit, you can pay them for these birds and set them free. It struck me as odd, but it's a very common practice. And sometimes you'll have these ceremonies where they will release hundreds and hundreds of birds at one time. But I found them at several of the temple grounds in Bangkok.

[65:31]

Are these trade birds that fly back 15 minutes later? I think they have to hatch them or something. But actually, my favorite story about Shito, Shito studied with, late in Huining's life, Shito studied with Huining. And when the sixth patriarch was passing away, Shito asked him, well, after you're gone, whom should I follow? And Huining answered, you should go and find out su, which means thinking. So Citto took that to mean that his teacher had asked him to practice meditation and contemplation. So he sat in silent meditation for many months, absorbed in this deep thinking, until one day the head monk came to him and said, Your master is no more. Why are you sitting in vain?

[66:33]

And he said, I am observing my master's last instruction. I am therefore searching my thoughts. And the head monk replied, you have a Dharma brother named Sing Su, walking thinker, who is living at Chi Chau. Your fate lies at his place. The master spoke to you directly. Why are you still deluded about this? But Sing Su was Ching Yuan. And what I really like about this is he just got it wrong. He just misheard it. And fortunately, someone helped him, which is one of the... The wonderful thing about all these stories is that even though people are kind of sharp with each other sometimes, they're always... or pointing out the incompleteness, as you were saying, pointing out the incompleteness in someone's understanding of the Blue Cliff Record, that pointing out is very helpful.

[67:38]

because he could have sat there forever thinking that Huineng's instruction was just sit, instead of going to find Chinyuan and studying with him. So that's what he did. He went to Chinyuan, and Chinyuan said, where have you come from? And Chitou replied, from Kaoshi, where Huineng had taught. and Ching Yiuan held up his whisk. You ever see Mel with that horsehair whisk that he uses for ceremonies? It was originally actually for keeping flies off. We need one here tonight. And Ching Yiuan held up his whisk and said, is there this at Kaochi? And Shinto said, no, not at Kaochi, not even in India. And Ching Yiuan said, You haven't been to India, have you?" Shito said, if I had, it would be there.

[68:40]

Chingyuan then said, that's not enough. You better say more. Shito replied, you too should say half. Don't rely entirely on me. Chingyuan said, I don't decline to speak to you, but I'm afraid that later on no one will get it. And Chitto said, it's not that they won't get it, but no one can say it. At which point, Chinyuan hit Chitto with the whisk, and Chitto was greatly awakened. It's a wonderful, this is like, there are lots of these kinds of dialogues that sort of ensue from this point on in the teaching. And we don't really have time to talk about it and do what I'd like to do, but if you want, I can give you a copy of it.

[69:48]

It's a wonderful story. I mean, now we're sort of plunging into deep water. you know, at any place we go, and there are many wonderful stories about Chitau, and he had dialogues with Lehmann Pong, and with Matsu, and with Yao Shan, his direct heir, and others, and the lineage begins to get, people, you can see just you know, very simply you can see people starting to study with other people and there was a great flowering of Zen at this period and a great opportunity for people to just be homeless monks and travel and study with different teachers. Because it's really, it must have been a very exciting time. That's what these lines across the lineage means. They actually studied, when we get to Yaosheng, you'll see he studied with Shito and then he went and he studied with Master Matsu who then sent him back to Shito.

[70:59]

But I want to read you one brief more thing, one brief thing that I like very much from Shito about whom there is a lot written. And what he says, and this goes back to, it goes right back to Bodhidharma, this very mind, just this is Buddha. Mind, Buddha and sentient beings, perfect wisdom and the defiling passions, these are but different names for one and the same substance. I like that. Buddha and sentient beings, perfect wisdom and the defiling passions. These are but different names for one and the same substance. Know that its substance is apart from extinction and permanence, and that its nature is neither sustained nor pure. Know that it is absolutely still and completely whole, and that in it secular and sacred are exactly the same.

[72:11]

I actually remember Blanche lecturing on that a few years ago. I didn't quite know where it came from, but this very mind is Buddha, and the thought of all these things containing the same essence, including the defiling passions, is again very encouraging. And that is the theme of the Sandokai. We have ten minutes to the Sandokai. Maybe not. I'd like to just say a little about it because we read it every Tuesday. These are complete copies. These are corrected And I'll just tell you that the lines that are missing are lines 5 and 6, actually.

[73:23]

The mind of the great sage of India was conveyed intimately from west to east. There are differences in human personality. Some are clever and some are not. The teachers of the North and South are but different expressions of the same reality. Then, here's the lines that are missing. The spiritual source shines clearly in the light. Branching streams flow in the darkness. To be attached to things, this is delusion. But just to understand that all is one is not enough. So actually these are very, these are extremely key lines. Why was it left out to begin with? I think it was a typo. Shouldn't it be corrected? Yeah, it'll be corrected. I'm sure it was a typo because it's there in all the translations and there's no reason to leave it out. So the first part, just those first four lines, the mind of the great sage of India was conveyed intimately from west to east.

[74:26]

There are differences in human personalities. Some are clever and some are not. The teachers of the North and South are but different expressions of the same reality." Here you have Shatto sort of addressing this question, which was a question of his age about this Northern and Southern school. The Northern school still existed then. It was probably still under attack. and he was making a case for that both are expressions of Buddha nature and that one doesn't need to distinguish which one is correct and which one is in error. So these lines that are left out, the spiritual source shines clearly in the light branching streams flow in the darkness, that is really the expression you'll find is echoed again and again through the Sandokai in different ways.

[75:35]

So it's too bad it's left out because it's kind of at the heart of it. So what that suggests to me is that the spiritual source is the Absolute which shines clearly in the light. The light The light in this particular case suggests that in the light things are differentiated. We can see one object and tell it apart from another object. But that the spiritual source, the Absolute, exists within differentiation. And the other half of that is that branching streams flow in the darkness. the darkness represents a sense of unity where things are not differentiated and yet in the darkness you have a differentiation you have these branching streams which are flowing but you can also turn all this inside out because you can think of light as the light of realization and you can think of

[76:51]

darkness as non-realization. So you can read this either way. But didn't I read in one of these cases that at this time darkness was meant, in Secularist culture, meant unity. Well, I'm sort of actually making the argument that Suzuki Roshi makes in his Sendokai lectures. I think essentially it does mean that. But since we are dealing with it with our concept and with our sense of language, we have some freedom to think about it in both those ways. So then he says, to be attached to things, this is delusion. that just to be attached to things, this is delusion, that's the argument of Sankstein again.

[77:55]

But then he pushes it further, which is to say, just to understand that all is one is not enough. That, in fact, there is differentiation. That things are, that everything is not one. It's not two, but it's not one. And that's the argument that's being made again and again. And I've often puzzled about the ending of the Sandokai, which I like a lot. Reading the above lines, you should have grasped the great reality. Do not set up your own standards. If you do not see the way, you do not see it, though you are actually walking on it. When you walk the way, it is not near, it is not far. If you are deluded, you are mountains and rivers away from it. I say respectfully to those who seek the way, do not vainly pass through sunshine and shadows."

[79:03]

I wondered, after thinking about it, and thinking about the context that's set at the beginning, again, this kind of counter-polemical context, I wonder if that's what is being brought back at the end of the Sandokai, to remind you, I say respectfully to those who seek the way, which there's some voice of criticism in that to me, do not vainly pass through sunshine and shadows, which I'm wondering if what that's saying is I say respectfully, don't waste your time deciding that the Northern school or the Southern school is the sole vessel of truth. And that also corresponds to me with the notion of, do not set up your own standards.

[80:10]

That if you do not see the way, you do not see it, that we are actually walking on it. It means no matter which way you're walking, you are walking the way. And if you're setting up your own standards of what is the way and what is not the way, then perhaps you are vainly passing through sunshine and shadows. Anyway, that's one way to read it. that I've been thinking about this week. And it's, again, it seems to be, if you don't know, by the way, there is a series of lectures, and I think we have it here, that Suzuki refugees in 1970 at Tassahara on the Sandokai, and you're welcome to to take it out and look at it. I found it pretty helpful. It's a little rough going, because it really, it's very discursive. But I found his perspective made a lot of sense to me.

[81:17]

And I think some of the ideas that I'm suggesting here are from that. I think that, I'm going to stop. We can talk a little afterwards if you like, but I had one thought about next week, and I wanted to run it by you. I've been telling stories which are essentially koans, and people have been reading some of the koans, some of you have, and I thought it might be fun to For people to write something, people wanted to write something short, to write your own koan, whether serious or not, or to write a small poem, like one of the, even like one of the verses to the koans, or like one of the verses in Dogen's Moon in the Dewdrop.

[82:25]

As far as I'm concerned, you can write about anything. I'm thinking also if there's a story or an exchange or something that you remember or that you witness that's come up in your practice or you've seen transpire here, that might be something to think about to write down or transpire anywhere in your job, in your family, at other practice places. So if some people would do that, it would be great, and then we can share them. And if we get a number of good ones, we can compile a small white plum record, which is the name of this temple. Does that seem interesting? Right, it could be any style.

[83:30]

Right, it could be any style. Why don't you try it and see what happens? Some people will do it. I'll do it. I'll do one. Too bad Grace isn't here. Well, that's right. What is it? What is what? That's Grace's case. What is it? What is it? You've got to remember. We can bring that one in as a sample. Actually, maybe Rebecca could recreate the circumstance of it. Anyway, I can actually think of some real good ones that I probably won't dare to write down. If you do something like that, that'd be great. We can share it. It'd be nice to have a little fun while we're pushing through all this stuff.

[84:33]

Thank you. Good night.

[84:35]

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