Oh, okay. I'll let you know. Okay, so what happened? First of all, Shen Hui happened. And Shen Hui was a guy who studied, apparently studied with Shen Chou for a while. The first characters of their names are the same. And there's one statement, Dong Yi says that they studied with Shen Chou. And then went to study with Huinao. Actually, it seems that Shen Hui studied twice with Hui Nung, that he went down there a couple of times. And that when Hui Nung finally approves of Shen Hui, what he says is, after you've been in the North, I see that your understanding of Buddhism has matured, or your practice has matured. But Shen Hui, well, he identifies very closely with Hoi Nung.

[01:03]

And in 732, well after Hoi Nung has died, or about 20 years after Hoi Nung has died, 730, 731, and 732 actually, Shunhui start attacking the students of Shenzhou and saying that they taught a gradual doctrine and their lineage was not the mainstream lineage. It was a collateral lineage. It's at this point in the kind of set-up debate of 730, 731, and 732 that that's when the name Northern school is applied to Shuncho and his followers. So it's a pejorative name. It's a name a little bit like the name Hinayana, which is a very negative kind of label. And Shunhui says, that Sun Tzu and his disciples taught a gradual teaching, and Hui Nung taught a sudden teaching. And in my mind, when you look at the writings of Sun Wei, he's very much a, I'm good, he's bad, he's very much a very simple, comparative kind of thinker.

[02:14]

that Hui Nang and Shen Hui himself teach, but doesn't teach him, and that's good. And Sun Tzu's disciples, he doesn't name Shen Tzu by name, he always writes that Pu Ji and another disciple of Sun Tzu's, he always, he says, those guys taught a gradualist teaching, and that was bad. And in calling and in attacking or criticizing the northern school by name and monks of the northern school by name, I think Sun Hui was certainly doing something that Buddhist monks hadn't done before. We don't see it happening. I'm sure that they criticize each other. I was imagining religious people, they're kind of like dog club members. I had a bull map once upon a time. You know, any kind of... I raised orchids when I worked in Santa Barbara. Any kind of little club, you know, there are always factions and people are griping at each other and so forth.

[03:19]

And Shen Hui seems like the typical, or the prototypical, kind of small-minded, my side is better than your side kind of mind, I think. But he was a very gifted evangelist. And the doctrine of Sanyas worked for him on the ordination platforms. because his major role in life was to bring people in to Buddhism by leading them through a moment of religious inspiration as they listened. This guy was a sermonizer, a lecturer, or an evangelist . He would stage these kind of hokey debates where he took some guy around with him and reacted as a fall guy. He would inspire people as they're listening to him, and inspire them to become Buddhists and to take ordination and kind of enter the fold.

[04:23]

After that, Chen Hui doesn't seem to be too interested in it. We don't have any evidence that Chen Hui... taught meditation on a long-term basis. He had other monks that worked with him that edited his writings and so forth. But his lineage doesn't continue on. So he didn't create something that was substantial enough to continue afterwards. I mean, it's a little bit... I call him at one point the Oral Roberts of the 8th century Loyon, but he's a little more like Billy Graham. Now, Billy Graham has a particular style. He'll take his organization into a town, do a revival meeting, have people convert to Christianity, and then he pulls up faith and goes somewhere else. And Shen Hui was... a little bit like that. You seem to be only interested in that first moment of inspiration.

[05:25]

And the doctrine of suddenness really works for him in that way. You can say, your first moment of inspiration, the definition of a bodhisattva, if somebody has bodhicitta, who has the inspiration to achieve perfect enlightenment on behalf of all living beings, And Shen Wei will say, that first moment of bodhicitta is the same as the final conclusion of the path. And so he really wants to inspire people in that way. And I think that the doctrine of sudden enlightenment, he emphasizes it because it fits his mission. It fits the vocation on the ordinary people. But people, as I said, people didn't like the fact that he use names and maybe criticize the northern school, members of the northern school so completely. Now, there really wasn't any entity called the northern school to kind of rise up and defend. These are very loose-knit, I use the word, probably because I don't really know what it means, what it implies as far as the grouping.

[06:36]

They're very loose-knit kinds of associations and features and so forth. And once the Northern Stool moment had passed, there was really nobody around to defend it as a demand. In fact, the Northern Stool lineages lasted until something like 900. They certainly outlasted the Shunaways lineages. And I think also that the coming of in other words, the esoteric Buddhist masters who came into Chang'an in 719 and thereafter, that that became the next fad. And so it's probably fair to say that a certain amount, a substantial amount of the interest in Northern school style Zen Buddhism was lost to the esoteric Buddhist teachers after they came into town because they were the latest and greatest thing, especially court society and so on.

[07:44]

It's a very bad consciousness. So did Shen Wei, what kind of impact did he have in causing the end of the Northern school? I don't know. It's hard to say, but I think less than is typically said. Most authors draw from Husserl in talking about a battle between the North and the South. And I see precious little evidence of any response by the Northern school. Shenhui is banished at one point in time, and that's kind of attributed to somebody from the Northern school, where they're kind of some biographical problems with it. Shen Wei, as a speaker, as a proselytizer, he would attract crowds. And just what his banishment is described as being based on the fact that he was drawing crowds. And I think it's quite reasonable for the Chinese government in Chang'an to have, and Luoyang in effect, to worry about large assemblies.

[08:48]

You know, they don't really care what he's saying about the northern, you know, some other Buddhist monk. Big deal. The fact that he's attracting large crowds is a lead to the possibility of social unrest. Now, within the Zen tradition, then, what seems to have happened is that the platform sutra comes along and, as I said, resolves the crisis. And the Platform Sutra resolves the crisis by accepting Shen Wei's ideas, in particular the notion or the slogan of sudden enlightenment. And it relegates Shen Wei, it basically paints Shen Wei out of the picture. So that Shen Wei appears in the Platform Sutra in a couple of places, but then as a boy. It's not a negative treatment, but he's relegated to a very minor position. And the story of his debate, so-called, of 730, 731, and 733 were basically eliminated.

[09:53]

Also, if you look at the Platform Sutra, it has a different... It's not the simple gradual is bad, sudden is good kind of thing. It's not that simple. And if I read you the verses, right, which I'm sure you've... Is it fair to... Has anybody here not heard anybody talk about the platform sutra versions before? Okay, the platform sutra tells the story of the fifth patriarch of Huineng, and it tells the story in terms of a kind of a verse competition. where Hongren, the Fifth Patriarch, says, well, you know, I'm about to pass on. I need to appoint a successor, right? And so he calls all his students in and says, okay, everybody go write a poem, right? And write a poem that describes your understanding of enlightenment or of Buddhism.

[10:55]

And all the students Say, hey, look, we know it's the TA, the teaching assistant, you know, head monk. You were head monk for a while, right? The head monk, Shenshou. Are you head monk now? I see, I see, I see. Anyway. The straight guy, yeah, exactly, yeah. So the students all say, hey, look, he's the guy, Shenshou's the guy, he's been teaching us the guy, no? And, you know, it's clear that whatever we know, basically, yeah, we know Hong Ren's our teacher, but he's the guy who actually takes care of our kind of day-to-day instruction and stuff. And he's going to get this. So all the students, they kick back, and they don't do anything, which is typical of students. Back then, back then. And Shenzhou, he's described as, it's not a negative portrayal, really. It's just that he doesn't quite have it yet.

[11:56]

he realizes he doesn't quite understand Buddhism. He's not in a profound sense, the way he's talked about. And he kind of agonizes over it. Should he write a poem and describe it to his understanding? If he does it in order to become the fifth patriarch, that's going after personal advances. So maybe he shouldn't write the poem. But then his teacher told him to write the poem. So if he doesn't write it, he's disobeying what his teacher told him to. Doesn't, doesn't, was it Beckett? Did he do the right thing for the wrong reason? Anyway, this is not, not a dilemma that's limited to Schoenthaler. So finally he goes and he's kind of embarrassed about the thing. And he writes the poem on the wall of the corridor outside the abacate room. And he writes, the body is the Bodhi tree.

[13:00]

The mind is like a bright mirror stand. At all times, we must strive to polish it and must not let death collect. And he does it at night. So the next day, Hong Ran sees this, and Hong Ran says, great, wonderful, everybody should practice according to this, you get great benefit from practicing according to this verse. And so the disciples all start reciting it. Meanwhile, Hui Nan, who's the eventual hero in the story, writes, He had arrived at the temple, like, eight months before. He's not a monk. He was a wood collector from the far south, like, from Hong Kong. I love to have people from Hong Kong in my classes, or Canton, actually. I tell them, this was, in this day and age, that was the boondock. You're talking about, you know, like, Arkansas, basically. Indiana, they'd go and talk about Kentucky. Um... So he was an illiterate woodcutter from the far south.

[14:06]

His father had died. His grandfather had been banished there or something. An official had been banished there. He was supporting dear old mom by collecting firewood. To collect firewood is like the bottom of the social scale, pretty much the bottom of the social scale in China anyway. He wasn't a monk, but he hears somebody reciting the Dhamma Sutra and has a moment of inspiration. And he, through this circumstance, it turns out that the person learned about the Dhamma Sutra from Hong Ren's wife. And when he goes up to Hong Ren's community in the East Nhan and Huang Nei, they send Hui Nang, or they send him to the threshing, they send him to work, basically. He's not even a monk, and he's in the threshing room that he hears some student come along reciting this verse, and because Kway Nang, even though he's an illiterate, barbarian layperson from the far south, he understands Buddhism. He has the intuitive grasp of Buddhism.

[15:09]

He hears this verse and realizes that the person who wrote the verse didn't quite understand it. And so he has to be taken to the wall, the quarter wall, where this verse had been inscribed, and he recites his own book. He dictates his own book and he has somebody read it for him. And actually, in the Dunhuang version, there are two versions that Huainan recites. And it's clear that the editor of the Dunhuang version couldn't quite figure out which one was best. And then in later texts, it reduces it to one verse. And I'll just go by the later one. The standard thing is that Huineng writes, Bodhi originally has no tree. The bright mirror has no sand. Fundamentally, there's not a single thing. Where could death arise? And Huineng's, excuse me, Hongren's reaction to this when he sees that is exactly the opposite from before. He rubs the thing out. He says, oh, don't pay any attention.

[16:11]

That's what he does in public. In private, he calls Hui Nung into his room, like at midnight that night, and he gives him the teaching. He gives him a full exposition of the teaching based on the dynasty script. And he confers the patriarchate on Hui Nung, gives him the robe and bowl, and sends him away. So he makes this illiterate barbarian from the far south the sixth patriarch. And Part of the impact of the story, I think, is a kind of a paradoxical method, a paradoxical impact, that we in the Chan tradition, we have gone so far to make this illiterate barbarian lay person from the far side. We will make even someone so unqualified socially and intellectually and from any kind of worldly standard, we'll make someone so unqualified by any worldly standard our patriarch.

[17:19]

Because he has the one qualification, the only qualification that matters, which is that he's enlightened. He has the intuitive understanding of religion. Well, yeah, but when I say it's a paradoxical effect, what this says also is that anybody that we designate as a successor, we don't care about the fact that he may have come from a very wealthy family. But he may be socially very well connected. He may be very well educated and a very elegant kind of person. The only thing we care about, in spite of all his apparent qualifications, is that one most important thing, whether or not he can like me. So, on the one hand, this serves two purposes within the Buddhist tradition, the Zen tradition. It does have a kind of an everyman aspect to it.

[18:24]

You don't care about social status. But I think also, paradoxically, it has a very conservative kind of impact, because we can appoint people who are rich and well-connected, and we didn't appoint them because of that. We appointed them as successors because they were in life. Also, these verses say something interesting, I think, about or it's an interesting structure for the explanation of Buddhist practice. Because, first of all, these verses cannot exist apart from each other. That is to say, if I simply presented you with the final verse, Bodhi originally has no tree, the bright mirror has no span, fundamentally there's not a single thing, where could dust arise? If that was all we had, it would be incomplete. It would be, I think, almost incomprehensible, because it would really have to answer.

[19:30]

These verses have to address this. And so that leads us then to look at the first verse and to ask the question, what relationship do the first verse have to the teachings of Shonsho, the historical Shonsho? Can we figure out a way to or some manner in which the editor of the compiler of the Platinum Future actually took from Shunkyo's actual ideas and created it first. And there does turn out to be a way. When it writes that the body is the Bodhi tree, the mind is like a bright mirror fan, it's using different kinds of metaphors, different kinds of similes. And it turns out there are a number of references in Northern Chan, Northern Zen school writings to such and such as like the Bodhichitta.

[20:30]

It says, for example, the Buddha is the path of Bodhi. Non-abiding is the seed of Bodhi. The serenity of mind is the cause of Bodhi. The serenity of the body is the condition of Bodhi. You don't get the Bodhi tree in there, but they do talk about, there are lines in Northern Tulma, here we go, the mind serene and enlightened and distinct, the body of serenity is the Bodhi tree. Peaceful and vacuous, limitless, untaintedness is the path of life. So, okay. That does occur in northern school writing. Maybe that line bears something, some relationship to northern school writing. Where it then says, the mind is like a bright mirror's fan. How could you understand that line? Is there any way to understand the line by itself? The mind is like a bright mirror's fan.

[21:33]

they're often translated incorrectly because they nobody knows well the word in Japanese pronunciation does sometimes mean mirror by itself in modern Japanese and very often you see this line translated the mind is like a bright mirror but that's not what it says it says the mind is like a bright mirror of sand and you face it Well, okay, God will. Like a mirror, if you want to do that, then mind, our mind, is like a thing, and it's set up.

[22:44]

Okay, I think that's a fair enough answer. I mean, so that if we say mind here and concept here, So that the mirror represents, say, Buddha mind. The mirror represents Buddha mind and the stand. The stand represents consciousness. And maybe mind is the same as brain. Right, okay. I think that... I think that's a good stab, but I think that's not quite what's happening. And I actually gave you a clue earlier on when I read that passage about bodhisattvas. Remember the passage about votive lamps said, when one's wisdom is bright and distinct, it's likened to a lamp. For this reason, all those who seek emancipation always consider the body as the lamp's stand, the mind as the lamp's dish, faith as the lamp's wick. The augmentation of spiritual discipline is taken as the addition of oil.

[23:46]

For wisdom to be bright and penetrating, it's likened to the lamp's flame. At this point in time, a mirror... You and I think of mirrors as reflections. And the Chinese knew that mirrors reflect, but they think of a light source, they think of a mirror as a light source. And there are passages that say the seeing of the eye, that is how the eye sees how a lamp illuminates and how a mirror reflects is basically the same kind of process. A mirror is somehow, I mean they don't know about protons or whatever bouncing off of objects on the mirror. And so if you take this passage, and you say, well, let's, instead of saying lamp, we say mirror. We say, when one's wisdom is bright and distinct, it's likened to a mirror. For this reason, all those who seek emancipation, all those who consider the body as the mirror's stand, the mind as the mirror's dish.

[24:48]

Now, these lamps are like... They're cups. They're kind of little ash trays. They're cups with oil, and you put the wick in from the side. It is a candle kind of effect, but the wick goes in from the side, and you have to trim the wick every once in a while. So the mirror doesn't necessarily have all the same parts as the lamp, but I can imagine very easily an extended metaphor based upon the mirror. where they would say something on the order of, the mind is like the mirror of the fan. So I'd suggest that that line in the verse attributed to Sun Tzu is a truncated or an excerpt from an extended metaphor, very much like the kind of metaphors that he would use. And what he was originally arguing for in that kind of metaphor was this kind of constant practice where the mind The mirror constantly illuminates, the lamp constantly reflects.

[25:53]

So it represents, in any best interpretation of Shanker's teachings, it represents not a gradual teaching, but the perfect teaching, the constant teaching, because that's the way mirrors function and Buddha minds function. The brain is the thing that supports the mind, which is through the mind. Yeah, it wouldn't necessarily have been brain, but I take the point. Yeah, I, in fact, I don't, I don't, yeah, actually, in his, in his, in his text with his metaphor, he talks very clearly about the, it's a very dualistic presentation, and I think one of the reasons that I think the Norman school formulations are very easily

[27:13]

misrepresented as dualistic because he said dualistic. But he talked about the pure mind and the defiled mind. I can't remember if he talked about consciousness holding the pure mind or the Buddha mind within our ordinary consciousness. I'm not sure that he talked that way. But that's what's going on in this verse. Actually, I think on the basis of this little verse, we can't probably can't get to that level of specificity. But what I've noticed is that there are actually quite a number, several of the elements from both virtues, that is, the virtues attributed to Sancho and the virtues attributed to Huaman, they occur in modern school material. Yeah, behind us. Yeah. When I read this sutra, my feeling was, oh no, I'd better study Chinese history with it.

[28:15]

I can't really understand it without understanding Chinese history. But my reading of it, the actual poem debate was the least significant aspect of the sutra in my reading. so much to speak to me. And again, it would be so much reading in because of how little history I knew having to do with something between, you know, China being divided between the North and the South. The fact that Bulgarians were not seeing that they could have, that they could be enlightened. That China was in the process of nation building inside the United South. So we have all these other kind of things. It's very hard for me to know how much is reading in, but all these other kind of political and social aspect here, and the fact that he's a barbarian, he's illiterate, all this kind of class and social and all these other classes, basically, at least to me, struck me as much more important than the poems that were written, than the debate between the poets. At least that's how it really hit me.

[29:16]

I think that the poems, what's striking to me is that the traditional explanation of the poems from Vilnius, this guy who died in, what, 841, and writes a lot about Chan, a lot of our information. And he quotes, apparently quotes quite actively, and he's quoting people. But Vilnius has this whole, he's a systematic thinker, he's a very systematic thinker, and he describes the Norway school as gradualistic and on the basis of this kind of rudimentary kind of thing. And that explanation becomes kind of adopted by everybody. And what strikes me about these poems is, first of all, that that explanation doesn't seem to fit the teachings of the northern school, that there's a structure to these poems. Well, first of all, there are other things that we're not going to have time to go into, but where in Huineng's response, he says, fundamentally, there is not a single thing, which is in later versions of the text.

[30:20]

So we get a number of references to a single thing, and I do not see a single thing in Northern school writing. And even there's a line in a kind of an early Chan, I think it's basically a kind of from the same period of a pre-Shen Wei text, where it says, fundamentally, originally, there is not a single thing. So what I'm saying here is that the Platform Sutra is written to represent Kuenong's teachings, It draws on Shen Hui's innovations, but when it actually gets down to describing Hui Deng's teachings, it also borrows very significantly from Northern school material. So the kind of the lines that you see in a linear chart are fundamentally and profoundly oversimplified, you know, where they say Hui Deng has sent it to Pong Ran has sent it from Daoist research. Now, in terms of the structure of these ideas, it's much more, I mean, where I said Shen Wei is gradual is bad, sudden is good, you know, there's that, I'm this.

[31:32]

He's very much a team player, and my team wins and your team loses. The Oxford School of People, if this is, as Yanagida argued, if the platform is, as Yanagida argued in 1967, an Oxford School of Tech, it fits. Because the optical people have a particular style of a thesis, antithesis, synthesis kind of argument. And so if I want to describe my teaching as being the way, like if I'm a math teacher, and if I have a new type of theory of math, I don't want to say my theory of math is better even than addition and subtraction, something that you learn in second grade. I want to say that my new theory of math is better than whatever, you know, quantum mechanics. I want to establish a high bar to jump over so that mine is even higher.

[32:35]

And this is, I think, what the octave tool people are doing. There's this perfect teaching where it's basically the bodhisattva practice. You practice on behalf of everybody. But then we apply the rule of emptiness to that. We knock the kind of symbolism of that with which that teaching is explained. We knock the terms of that out. We say they don't exist. They're non-substantial. They're empty. And by doing that, we point at a higher type of meditation, of religious practice, that is basically the same as the perfect teaching, but it's without conceptualized or without descriptive use. You see? And the Aksed Stoics, if you look at their other teachings, they tend to have this threefold kind of structure to the way they argue things. And that, I see, kind of

[33:37]

what the message of the Herces is. Now, as far as the rest of the text, yeah, there's a lot of material in the rest of the platform secrets. And frankly, it doesn't all fit this nifty little exposition. But whether the rest of the text is more important or not, I don't know. I think the image of Quenon has an enlightening the literate. I think that's, besides all this doctrinal stuff, I would say that that image of plenum is the most important thing. The thing that has the most kind of lasting value. But as a religious document, this text then kind of sums up all of what had gone on in early times, kind of is the capstone text in the sense that it gives us the final answer, and it established these one story that everybody can go with.

[34:40]

And it doesn't really offend anybody. It's not a really negative view of Sun Tzu. It doesn't describe him as evil. And nobody knew anything about Hui Nung, so they can make him up however they want it. And so it creates the kind of final, what's with that story? And you kind of build off of it. The thing that we haven't gotten to at all, that I'm sorry we haven't gotten to, is how all of this relates to genealogy and how it relates to dialogue. And I think that also important is the fact that the platform is a story. The fact that it's, well, I mean, okay, Hong Ren says go write me a poem. And that's maybe not real interaction, like, you know, Linji and someone going at it, even with their fists and whatever.

[35:43]

But it sets up a model of religious practice that's based upon genealogical descent. And I would argue, I started out talking about that one, Patrick McFarland's epitaph. And I'll say, I would, basically, leave you with this. I'm going to have to go to the airport. But that genealogy is used in Chan in at least two ways. One is to define the history of the school. And that's what it looks like right on the surface. That our school, the Zen school, is defined as this successive existence. And that's pretty... But I would also argue that Zen is essentially genealogical in that religious practice, as it describes in these texts, not so much these texts of early time, but the next period, is genealogical in the sense that it's an encounter.

[36:44]

You know, in the Northern School and earlier, like in Tentai materials, we have a great teacher, Michael Wenger, he gives his lectures, he gives his sermons, somebody writes them down, we don't know really who he writes them down, and he writes them down as his great expositions on the teachings. And yet the Mazu, He doesn't do that. He has dialogues with his students. Now, he may be given certain ,, otherwise. But they don't pay much attention to that. And they start writing down the dialogues that teachers have with their students. And so the interaction and encounter between math and students becomes essential. And I would suggest that the genealogical model that is gaining entry into the family tree affects how Chinese Zen practitioners thought about their practice. That it wasn't simply me, as a practitioner, sitting alone in meditation, kind of, you know, rubbing the mirror of my mind, trying to gradually perfect things.

[37:53]

They may be doing that in some ways. They may be spending a lot of hours of the day doing that. But what they focused on, what they thought was more important, was me interacting with my teacher. That I, as a teacher, don't exist through my lectures and sermons. I exist through my interactions with my students. So that enlightenment, what it gets you is you get the membership in the Old Boys Network. It gets you members, you're accepted into the family church. And that's a different kind of conception of enlightenment from the Indian mind. Well, what I'm saying is that... Yeah, well, I'm trying to be controversial, too, but I think it's fun. You know, we can argue about, we could argue about, does that mean that religious awakening...

[38:56]

According to the genealogical model, it's somehow experientially different from an Indian yogin experience of enlightenment. And then you get into some rather interesting issues about defining religious experience or, you know, mystical experience and so forth. And it's tough, tough to say what, for me to say what your religious experience is like, right? And people will say different things. Some people will say all religious experience somehow have to be all the same. And other people say, oh, no, I don't think so. And that becomes a rather extensive argument. What I am saying is that the genealogical model, to me, seems to define not only in the macro level sense a history of a movement. It seems to also define the way that Chan practitioners view those kind of the most important aspect that we need to track.

[39:58]

So then you have what becomes most important in sound literature from the moduli onwards is this sense of interaction between speaker and speaker. And that's a really big thing. That's basically my closing. I guess it's the meeting with that great opener. We can talk about phases and try to characterize periods and stuff like that, but defining, you know, the question is defining how does time become, how does it change? How does it become so popular in Chinese and East Asian society? One of the challenges, if this is true about Chinese zhang, if it's somehow sensually or quintessentially or fundamentally or characteristically genealogically based practice, is it going to work in American society where we don't have the same notions of genealogy?

[41:16]

Maybe with that one. I think maybe those serious questions I'll type up and that'll be the nip from that. We'll come back, right? So thank you very much. And don't forget, next month, Carl Bierfeld is going to come on the Origins of Zen Entertainment. And I already prepped up the answers. Interesting questions. Give him a hard time. J. McCray at Indiana.edu. J-M-C-R-A.

[41:47]

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