I don't know if any of you remember the story of Dao Wu and his disciple, Lung Tan. Dao Wu was a Zen master in Tang Dynasty, China in the 8th century. Okay. Yes. We have a little competition today. Daowu was a Zen master in the 8th century Tang Dynasty, China, and he was a pretty famous Zen master after he died.

[01:17]

But he had a young disciple, Lungtan, who became interested in the Dharma when he was about quite young, maybe around 14. And so Lu Tang somehow knew Dao Wu. And he was poor, and his family was poor, and they used to make, to support themselves, Lu Tan's family made little buns, sold at a little roadside stand. And every day, and Lu Tan, excuse me, Dawu gave the family a little hut on the monastery grounds because Dawu was very interested in Lungtang.

[02:38]

He recognized something in him and he was very interested in helping to develop So, every day, after the family made their baked goods, Leung Ton would bring his teacher, Da Wu, ten little cakes. They must have been pretty small. And every day, Da Wu would give back one of the cakes to Leung Ton. And he'd say, this is to help your descendants. And after a while, little Lungtan thought to himself, every day I give Dao Wu ten little cakes, and every day he gives me back one little cake.

[03:49]

I wonder if there's something in this. So he went to Da Wu and asked, he said, why every day when I give you 10 little cakes, you give me back one cake? And Lung Tan said, I only give to you what is already yours. I only give back to you what originally belongs to you." And this opened up Lung Tan's eyes. And later, Lung Tan became Da Wu's disciple, and when he was older,

[04:50]

And he was studying with him at the monastery for several years. And then one day he asked Dawu, he said, you know, I've been studying with you. I've been here at the monastery. But I never received, all this time, I've never received any real direct teaching from you. You've never given me anything to study. You've never told me very much. about anything. And Dawu said, I haven't. He said, when you bow to me, don't I bow to you in return? When you serve meals, don't I receive meals in gratitude from you.

[05:56]

This opened up Lungtan's eyes even wider. This kind of teaching, subtle, direct, on the spot, teach learning. Teaching, it's not even learning, it's just direct enlightened activity that goes beyond any kind of learning. And this became Lungtan's teaching way also. This is very characteristic. This kind of teaching, or teaching of no teaching, is very characteristic of Soto Zen style.

[07:14]

But it depends a lot on association with the teacher. It's not that the teacher gives something to the student. But the student's Buddha nature is awakened through activity with the teacher. through association and just through ordinary activity, ordinary daily activity. So when a student is awakened to a teacher, there's a bond of understanding.

[08:24]

And that bond of understanding is through ordinary activity, how one relates to the other. This was characteristic of Suzuki Roshi's teaching. Suzuki Roshi, when we were studying with Suzuki Roshi, we didn't study something. We didn't have very many books, but we studied how we relate to each other, and how we relate, and not only through how we relate to each other, but how we relate to things and others.

[09:27]

So the teacher-student relationship is the example of how the student relates to everything in the student's daily life. So that teacher is not just this person, but the teacher is whatever we meet. And the teacher is not just some, the teacher is an embodiment. We say that in the Dharma there's the three bodies of Buddha. The Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. Dharmakaya is the great underlying cause of everything, the great potential, which is Buddha nature, and manifests as things.

[10:30]

Sambhogakaya is like spiritual body manifesting. And nirmanakaya is the person. And person is the teacher and student are both nirmanakaya buddha. And they're both student and teacher to each other and to whoever they meet. Sometimes When there's that bond, student is the teacher, sometimes teacher is the student, and vice versa. So whatever we meet is Sambhogakaya Buddha, this spirit of Buddha nature which is embodied everywhere.

[11:38]

So wherever we turn, whatever we meet, whatever situation we're in, is Buddha, is our teacher. In the same way that our nirmanakaya, our embodied person, teacher, is our teacher. Same thing. But we have special relationship with our teacher. Special in the sense of this person. So Dao Wu's task is to awaken Lungtang.

[12:48]

So that Lungtang is on the same level, awakens to his own nature in the same way as Dao Wu is awakened to his nature. But Dao Wu doesn't give anything to Lungtang that doesn't already belong to Lungtang. When Lungtang grew up, he became also a Zen master. And Lungtang means a dragon pond. in Chinese. And when Lungtang was active, he had a retreat in the mountains.

[13:51]

And one day, there was a monk named Dexiang Dushan became a very famous Zen master, but before that he was a very learned young monk who was an adept at understanding the Diamond Sutra. And he had read all the commentaries on the Diamond Sutra and carried them around with him in a basket, in two baskets. and he went around the country lecturing on the Diamond Sutra and he had heard about these Zen teachers and he thought they were a bunch of heretics because they didn't depend so much on the sutras for awakening so he went out in search of

[14:58]

He wanted to destroy the Zen school. He had a mission. So he'd heard about Leung Ton, and he went to find him. And when he was heading toward Leung Ton's mountain, he ran into this old woman on the road who was selling little cakes. And the cakes are called mind refreshers. Even today they're called mind refreshers. And so Lungton came to the bottom of the mountain to inquire where he could find Lungton. So he asked the woman, and at the same time, he was interested in the cakes. So she asked him about himself, and he said, well, that he told her all about how brilliant he was, and that he lectured on the Diamond Sutra, and that he wanted some cakes, too.

[16:17]

And she said, well, I'll tell you what. If you can answer my question, I'll give you three cakes. And he said, OK. She said, it says in the Diamond Sutra that past mind, future mind, and present mind cannot be grasped. With what mind will you eat these mind refreshers? And Lungtan was stumped. And she said, if you want, excuse me, Dashan was stumped. And she said, if you want to see Lungtang, he's up on the top of the mountain there. So Dashan went up to the top of the mountain and met Lungtang. And Lungtang was sitting there, this little old man who didn't look very special.

[17:21]

And Darshan said, so this is the famous Lungton, the famous dragon pond. And Lungton said something like, yes, you're right. This is Lungton. And he invited Darshan in. And they talked about dharma. for a long time, all night. And by that time, Doshan was a little bit broken down. The woman had given him his first problem. And then he was a little bit softened up by the time he got to Luton. And then during their talk, he realized something about Luton. And then it got kind of late, and Lung Tan said, well, why don't you spend the night?

[18:31]

And he said, there's a little hut outside here where you can sleep. So Lung Tan lit a paper torch and handed it to Doshan. And just as Doshan reached for the paper torch, Lungtan went, and blew it out. And there was total darkness. Everything was in pitch black darkness. And Lungtan, Darshan, excuse me, Darshan woke up, had big awakening. The next day, He burned all of his commentaries, as they say. But Dushan later became very...

[19:47]

a very famous Zen master who was famous for beating his students with a stick. And he would say, whether you're right or wrong, you get 30 blows. So whichever way you went, you couldn't escape. No way out. You had to go right down the middle. Dushan's experience of total darkness was something that we should all experience. This total darkness is total enlightenment, complete enlightenment through total darkness, no separation. Just one mind with everything.

[20:52]

But Dashaan was ready for this experience. Whether we have some big experience like Dashaan or not is not the point. In our Soto Zen, we don't look for some big experience of enlightenment. But there's a saying that when you walk in the fog, without realizing it, your clothes get wet. Means when you just practice for a long time without expecting anything, without looking for some special progress or some big experience, one day you realize that your clothes are wet.

[22:00]

This is more characteristic of our school. A more subtle way And you could say that Lungtan woke up Dushan, kind of like the mother hen tapping the egg at just the right time. So the chick comes out, a little help, just a little help. Darshan just needed just a little help. He was okay, but he just needed a little help. So Lungtan didn't really give him anything. All he gave him was just a little help.

[23:06]

So teacher, characteristic of teacher is just to give a little help. Whatever we do, we do by ourself. Our understanding comes through our own effort, and it's not something that we learn, but something that we already have. like those little cakes. So it doesn't mean that

[24:13]

You know, when a student and teacher have the same mind, it doesn't mean that they have the same personality. Personality of the teacher and the personality of the student are usually very different. And when students and the teacher's mind accord, then the teacher And the student should find his or her own way. If the student is always just like the teacher, then there's no reality, no real development.

[25:17]

So, Lungtang had a different personality than Dawu, and Dasan had a very different personality than Lungtang. Lungtang was very quiet, a subtle person, and Dasan was very demonstrative. beating his students, famous for beating his students, not maliciously, but to wake them up. So different teachers have different styles. Some teachers are very gentle, very quiet, and other teachers are very demonstrative, very noisy. Everyone should develop, every student should develop their own personality.

[26:21]

Personality is not like ego. Ego is different than personality. Persona is our true personality. When we can let go of the personality that we accumulate or is stuck onto us, that we stick onto ourself, then our true personality emerges. When Lungtan blew out the light, Darshan assumed his true personality. Right there. He had complete understanding of who he was, and so he could act out of that understanding.

[27:23]

Nothing false, nothing stuck on, just starting from zero. Just like a baby. Do you have any questions? At the recent conference celebrating Buddhist women, There was a lot of discussion on this topic. And the focus tended, the interest tended to be around issues of the process of transmission. And somebody talked, I don't remember this entirely, but gave three kinds of stages of teacher-student relationship.

[28:39]

I think women were feeling that the tradition of students and teachers which has come from a monastic setting in Japan and is finding itself in a new setting is obviously moving and obviously has a number of dimensions. And so these three stages, roughly speaking, were first a kind of friendliness. between the student and teacher. And second, a kind of open communication. And open communication in this context was a communication which is unimpeded by a projection on either part. That is, unimpeded by the student's feeling that the teacher is way up here. It's kind of rather what you were talking about at the beginning of the lecture, that it's some kind of activity, but it's not. into psychological images.

[29:49]

And then the third stage is student and teacher finding the universal aspect of each other, which is, again, what you were talking about. But I wonder if you would like to comment on that. Well, stages, we just leave the cat be. Whatever he does, we'll deal with him later. When we talk about stages, it's just a way of talking about something. What we call dharma transmission is when the teacher and the student accord and the teacher realizes that the student is independent, is finding their own way.

[31:00]

But not every student receives dharma transmission. So there are two dharma transmissions. One is that there are a lot of students and a lot of those students have accord with the dharma. But the teacher gives a few people a formal dharma transmission in order to carry on the school or to as acknowledgment in certain cases of understanding. So even though there are some students who receive, this is a little further on than what you were saying, but there are some students who receive formally dharma transmission

[32:06]

to carry on the teaching. Others carry on the teaching too, and they also have dharma transmission, but it's not formalized. So, and that is, if we look at your three questions, or three stages, the first one is What was the first one? Well, levels. I think they were called levels. Levels. So you would think of them as elements and you wouldn't study them. Just being in accord. Now, this is... I remember when Popel, remember that Korean monk, Popel, was here for a little while, and he said that in Korea, There are a number of Zen teachers and everybody knows who they are.

[33:14]

And there are a lot of monasteries. The monasteries are all up in the mountains. In Korea, Buddhism has kind of... Christianity has become very big in Korea. And Christianity kind of serves the people better than Buddhism. And Buddhism has become very monkish. and retreated to the mountain monasteries. So in these mountain monasteries there are teachers, wherever they happen to be. And everybody knows who they are. Thousands and thousands of monks, 35,000 monks in Korea, or more, I don't know. And the students, they travel around and visit the various teachers. The teachers have maybe 10 students. something like that, ten major students. And the monks will travel around and they'll listen to the teachers and stay at the teacher's place for a while.

[34:25]

And if they find a teacher who they have an affinity with, that's what I would call friendliness, that there's an affinity. People have affinities with each other. And it's good if you find a teacher who you really feel a connection with. And that's the first stage. What you call friendliness, I might call affinity. You feel that you can, you could study with this person and that they understand who you are and you feel good with them. And then the second stage, I didn't quite understand... I mean, second level. Open communication, meaning an absence of projections. A kind of absence of delusive... I see. Yeah.

[35:26]

Yeah, in other words, seeing... just being real with each other and not putting something on the teacher and the teacher's not trying to get something from the student. There's no muck in between the relationship, right? It's just... fair and square, straight, right on. That's a good level. At that stage you can really start doing something. That's maybe the stage of where there's something going on, something really happening. And the third stage, level, is... Yeah, and it seems to me that's just the stage where the teacher blew out You know, the candle, that would be the wax torch, that would kind of be... Yeah, well they got comfortable. It all happened very quickly there, it was three. Three levels, very quick.

[36:28]

And the third is finding the universal teaching in each other. All three of those stages happened at once in that incident. And that comes after a long period of work. That's like you realize that your clothes are wet. That's the stage at which you realize that without realizing it, your clothes have been getting wet. There's a very famous story in the Pali Sutras about a monk in Buddhist time who... So, this is not a... Please don't take this personally if you're a woman.

[37:31]

But, let's say there was a nun who saw a very handsome man walking toward her, and she thought, oh, what a handsome man. And she was feeling something, you know, for him. And he came up and smiled. And when he smiled, she saw his teeth, beautiful teeth. And she said, those beautiful teeth are just bones. And behind those bones are other bones. So she went through the whole process of analyzing this person and realized that there was no real person there. So this reminded me of instantaneously or very quickly going through all the stages.

[38:35]

She went through all the stages of realization of the body. Just through that one example when he smiled. It's really the other way around but I didn't want to... It's interesting, though, because the point of departure, the feeling that came up, there was some kind of desire. I'm assuming that's what was happening next door. Yeah, some kind of desire came up. And that's the point of departure. I think it's the point of departure on both sides of the student-teacher relationship. The teacher has some desire for a student. Usually, I think.

[39:36]

And the student is also looking for something, and it's like, even though we're like trapped in these desires, and there's a big problem for us, they're also like a point of departure. It's like the beating of a drum you can move from. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So desire is not so bad. It can always be used in the right way. So it's always a point of departure. I think this kind of subtle teaching works when there's not so many people.

[41:01]

But when you have large groups of people, then teachers started resorting to other means, like koan study. so forth, but when there's a small group of people, just through association, we find our way. But a teacher has to stay very honest, and the students make the teacher, and the teacher helps the students.

[41:47]

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