Bill Powell continues leading SBZC in examination and discussion of:

Red Pine, The Platform Sutra, The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng, Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2006;

Taigen Dan Leighton, Just This is It, Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness, Boston: Shambala, 2015 ; and

William Powell (trans.), The Record of Tung-shan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986. https://terebess.hu/zen/Tung-shanPowe... Powell is a retired professor of Chinese religions, having spent his 30-year professional career at the University of California Santa Barbara. He earned a B.A. in Philosophy at the University of the Pacific, an M.A. in Chinese language at the University of Hawaii and his PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of California Berkeley. He spent three years affiliated with Kyoto University as a research scholar, studying early Chan Buddhism and Song period discourse records under the generous and infinitely patient tutelage of Professor Seizan Yanagida. He began Zen practice in 1965 at the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu under Robert Aitken, Katsuki Sekida and Yasutani Roshi.

Full Transcript

Okay. So, substantial amount of reading I hope you enjoyed and found stimulating. I keep going back to it and find it new every time. The plan for today is to look at one of the major questions that comes up, I think, when Buddhism comes into any culture, from India to China, China to Japan, to Vietnam, to the United States, to England. And it's what it means to be a Buddhist practitioner. If you decide to practice Buddhism, what's the path?

When I get serious about this, I try not to use terms like the Buddhist religion or the Buddhist doctrine or something like that. That's the way we've talked about it in the West ever since it came in. We see it as another one of those variations on religion, another form of religion. But actually, if we look at the Chinese and Japanese language, they don't have an equivalent term. Religion only came in as a term into Japan in the 18th or 19th century, and they got it from the West. And literally, shukyo, and shu means lineage or tradition, and kyō is teaching. So it's the teaching of the lineage, as though that's what's important, the doctrine, the ideology, the principles.

The Chinese word is tao, and that comes up in Red Pine's translation, the way. And it comes up in the fourth vow. The Buddha way is unsurpassable. It doesn't say Buddhism is unsurpassable or the truth of Buddhism is unsurpassable. The path, the way, the course. And so the question is, what does it mean? And then course works pretty easily because in Chinese and Japanese, you could follow the course. You can be on the course. You can fall off the course. But the course is always there. It's a path. And it will change depending on where you start it, because your orientation will be different. So you come at it from a different angle. The course will be the course that you have to take in order to get there. There are all these great metaphors that work out very well with the notion of way or course or tao.

And so the big question was for the Chinese when it first came into China, what do we do? And on what assumptions or theoretical ideas do we accept this? Do we practice? And another word that's used for Buddhism in texts in China, in India, in China, in Japan, is Dharma and the Buddha Dharma. That doesn't necessarily mean theory, because in Chinese it was translated as Fa, which literally means law. And so we often see that translated as law, even in our English text. And it really was law in the sense that it was a set of conventions.

The great emphasis was and what the Chinese were looking for when they first started, they didn't see the text. They had teachers coming in, as we did in the 50s and 60s from Japan, telling us how to meditate, telling us how to sit and some ideas about what Buddhism was about, but we didn't have the resources. I remember in the 60s or late 50s, we had these translations of Koans. I said, "Wow, this is wild, but I don't understand the thing they're talking about. And that's not telling me what to do." So I'll just go out. And then I looked at other commentaries and said, well, you sit cross legged. So I went out and sat cross legged. And that's all I did. And I said, "Well, I don't know what these Koans are about, but why? They're pretty far out. They must be true. They're so crazy and iconoclastic." It's got to be. You know, this was the 60s. So we loved iconic.

The Chinese were highly concerned about the fact that they didn't have access to the texts and that they were totally dependent on Central Asian teachers as it came in. And so they set out to find the texts. And they made dangerous journeys across Central Asia and into India to come back with what the notion of practice, what it meant to be a practicing Buddhist. And one of the first texts was either composed by or copied from his lectures by a monk named Wei Yuan, which is where do you put the robe? How do you wear a robe? What do you say? What do you do? It was all about what do you do? And of course, there was theory behind that as well. And that came in in time as well. But that was a second search that the Chinese had. And they sent their own Chinese monks and some of them did it on their own initiative to India. To find the theoretical teachings of Buddhism as well and bring those back.

I said Buddhism, I fall into the habit immediately. The Buddha way. What do we what are the assumptions under that? So the question then became once it came in and text began to be translated, very complex text. Once they started trying to translate them into Chinese, because the languages are so radically different Sanskrit and Chinese. It took two or three hundred years, but by about the year three or four hundred, there was a significant body of Buddhist texts. The next problem was being Chinese, they had to annotate them. That's what you do with Confucianism. You have to explain them. And they became scholars. And they didn't become scholars. They approached Buddhism as scholars would approach any topic that talks about the way.

And incidentally, the way was also what Confucians called what they did. It was also the Tao. And it's what the Taoist originally took when the Taoism originally was a collection of practices and teachings that didn't need a name. It's only when Buddhism came in that he decided, OK, we'll call it the Tao. So Tao is a generic term in Chinese. And it emphasizes a course, a practice that includes assumptions about what legitimates that. Why do you do that? What's the point in doing that? So it includes that. And now eventually can become much like our word religion, a set of truths and teachings. But it carries a very strong sense of a dynamic sense. In the sense that the path is not fixed. The path changes with one's orientation and one's objective is to be on the path.

And so is my favorite example of mine is the beginning of the Heart Sutra, when Avalokiteshvara was coursing, which means traveling, moving in the deep wisdom of the Prajnaparamita. He looked down and saw the cries of the world and that the five skandhas were empty. And the Sutra goes from that point. So there's an assumption. But where does the assumption come from? It implies that it comes from Avalokiteshvara's coursing in the wisdom of the Prajnaparamita, which is what the Heart Sutra says. And that's literally the term. So Marga and Dao are very close. Marga is also Sanskrit for the path. The Buddhist Marga. Path of the Buddha.

So once that came in, the big question became, how do we relate our assumptions and what we've learned about Buddhism from these texts? To our practice. If we're going to be a Buddhist. If we're going to be a follower of the Buddhist path of the Buddha path, trying to correct my language as I go. What do we do and what legitimacy does that have for us as Chinese? Or I would say now. As Buddhism began to come into the United States, we went through the same process and we're very early in that process. The early process was we had many teachers coming mostly from Japan in the beginning, perhaps a little bit earlier, yoga teachers from India, but for different traditions. And we relied on the teachers to tell us what to do and how to sit. Or whatever the process was.

But just to watch as I have now the development of Buddhism over in the United States over 50 or 60 years. Is to see a significant change in the way we approach Buddhism as a practice today, from what I saw back in the late 50s, mid 50s, late 50s and 60s, in that we now have a large body of domestic priests. Who are now transmitting the tradition and the Chinese had the same thing, took them a little longer. And they didn't have as much access as we have now to the traditions in China and Japan. So it took them longer, even though they were closer to them longer, but we're moving at a pretty fast pace and I'm not sure whether I don't know whether that's good or bad yet, but that's just the reality we're having to change because times change. And we have to adapt to what's going on now.

So that's the topic for today. And that's the topic that I think emerged in the eighth century in a kind of complete form in the text that we're reading. So it's not only myth, it's actually assumptions and teachings that we see, particularly in the sections we've read now. There's a great quotation from Bruce Lincoln, a scholar of religion, he said. Ideology, religious ideology, religious ideology is narrative in the form of myth. And then he said, scholarship is myth with footnotes. So that's what I'm doing, myth with footnotes. And so it'll be different than the approaches that we have when we have a teacher who's practiced Buddhism for a long time and certified as a teacher. It's a little different. It's another way to look at it.

So that's where we're going. So we'll start with looking at many of the assertions of the six patriarch and some of the resources available to the six patriarchs. When these ideas came up, we'll look at the primary. I think the essence of his teaching is that namely meditation is wisdom, wisdom is meditation. They're not two different things that can be opened up expansively into a variety of understandings and available to other to teachers and students alike. So we'll look at that as a kind of centerpiece. And then I want to go back to the resources that were available to Huineng, to the writers, the authors of that text, to see where that came from.

And here's the reason I do that. It finally occurred to me reading Huineng for the first time. Was like listening to a telephone conversation where you're only hearing one side. It's not that they're arguing, but they're talking together. They're conversing and they're responding to each other. And China was like that. It was a huge. Well, in terms of population, not so huge, but a large conversation going on between many teachers and students and scholars about what this was. What the tradition and tradition is not a good word either, because it implies the string of pearls. But what's going on? What are we trying to do? How do we practice? And what assumptions do we make when we practice? That was the discussion and the question was the relationship between those two things.

Now, when it comes to the states. And to England as well, France, to some extent, more so to England and the US. Question is, how do we practice? Not well, let me step back in the teachings that first began to appear in having to do with Zen. It was really what do we do? Forget about what we believe. This is not a religion of God or all of the things that we had been part of. Just tell us what to do. How do we sit? That's pretty easily easy. Now, just do that and watch your breath and do and these various things. So it was heavily practice oriented. That was probably and is a necessary thing in many ways. Other traditions came in from Tibet and Vipassana and so on with bringing much more of the theology into play. But Zen was radical. We don't have to be concerned about that. We can just do that. We can sit. And that's fine.

But there comes a time when we begin to realize that many of the things that we were told to do legitimately were part of a long conversation that had been taking place in China and then in Japan through my great. The person for whom I have immense respect, Dogen, in the Japanese tradition, who also reimagined what was going on in a very constructive and dynamic way without losing, it seems to me, the essence. If there is an essence as Buddhist, we shouldn't ask for an essence in Buddhism because there aren't essences. Nothing was transmitted right. So technically we shouldn't. But nonetheless, I think Dogen had his hands not on the tail of the dragon, but on the head of the dragon. And it's a wild dragon because it can move around a lot. So I think he really grabbed the head and stayed on top of it.

So here's another way to put the question. It occurs to me. And it don't. I love this reason I mentioned Dogen is he plays with this. He said the question is the statement was. Don't. You can't eat a painting of a rice cracker. Dogen said, eat the painting. And went on to develop that idea. So that's where we're going to go. We're going to eat the painting with this study of the six patriarchs. And we're going to also fall back on. If you can't eat the rice cracker, too, but at least eat the pain.

So rather than seeing the Buddhist path as a set of doctrines and specific practices, I prefer to see it as a repertoire of resources that don't always agree with each other. Within the sources, there are many contradictions within the Buddhist canon. There are many contradictions or different paths or different ways of following the path. And so it's a resource on which the Chinese began to draw heavily. And particularly, how do you practice and the Zen teachers began to draw on. And so let's look at some of those before we look at Huineng. Let me point out some of the things that will inform your reading of Huineng. What was he relying on? What were some of the things that? What were the resources that were available to him?

Well, the theory starts with the Buddha and the four truths. So that, of course, is there always theory is there is a problem. There's suffering. That's a truth. Except that it's going to be based on that. There's a cause. The cause is ignorance, but that can be expanded on as well. There's a solution. And the solution is the eightfold path. Now, as Red Pine very astutely points out, Huineng was only interested in the first of the eightfold path, namely right views. Once you have right views. The rest will come will come of itself. Just straighten out your views. And perhaps this is the Bodhicitta. And this, in fact, is what the proselytizers in the eighth and ninth century, using the six patriarchs of Trump, were interested in, in simply getting the right view there. And once that was there, they moved on to another place, get the view in place. And move on. The view is a set of ideas, not just practices, a set of ideas. Ignorance. So on.

So there was principle and there was practice in the four truths. Both of them existed there. But it began with right views and progressed towards nirvana. Now, the interesting thing about nirvana, Zen isn't apart from that. The interesting thing about nirvana was that it's unconditioned. It's one of the three unconditioned dharmas of the of the mainline tradition. The other dharmas we know there, it's part of the skandhas, it's thoughts, it's anger, all of the things that we read are identified as dharmas. None of these, according to the earliest Buddhist teachings, could produce nirvana. Nirvana has no cause. It's unconditioned. Whatever you learn, whatever you do, that in itself will not produce enlightenment or nirvana. It's unconditioned.

There are three unconditioned dharmas in one of the early formulations. I love the first one, it's space. I said, what are we getting into physics for? Cosmology. This is religion. Come on. Why space? Well, the Indians were interested in cosmology, actually, cosmogony and so on. The other two are. Nirvana with remainder. In other words, you're still alive, you're still functioning in the world. So the karma is still keeping you present. And then at death, you attain nirvana without remainder. No karma is left. You won't be reborn. That was an early doctrine in Buddhism. And it seems to carry over to the Buddhist or Huineng's notion is to get rid of skill and means. No means is ever going to get you to enlightenment. Well, you're probably aware of this already. This comes in a lot of Sannarachan teachings.

So, OK, that's there in the background. And then so what comes out of that is shamatha and vipassana. Shamatha is calming. It literally means focusing the mind, training the mind to focus on a single point. And that's what the teachings were in the early text.

How do you focus the mind? You can turn a spotlight on a single detail of your practice. What is the nature of the self? Just focus on that. And if you focus on that long enough, you'll attain some kind of insight that is composite and so on.

So it begins with actually a four stage. The early teaching of shamatha was four stages. First, it starts with... What does it start with? Can't think of it right now. Ah, shamatha, very clear in the Visuddhimagga. Focus on a single object. Could be anything. It could be a mound of a little ball of mud. Anything that brings your focus down to one point. It's a training. It's not the solution. It's a training. It's calming that takes place as a result of that. But in that first stage, you also have two forms of mental deconstruction that you focus on, and the fourth part of that system was on joy and bliss. So we get the four unlimited come into place here. Compassion for oneself, compassion with others, sympathy and so on. Focus on those one things. And that's the first of the four practices, four stages.

The second is you get rid of the joy and bliss or not get rid of the one of the mental constructions. Then you get rid of the second mental construction. That's the third stage. Then you get rid of joy and bliss. And all that's left is single pointedness. And you're ready now for Vipassana, which is insight into the truth. So that's a basic Buddhist path practice.

The other things that are available to the that's already there. For the Chinese. One of the things that opened up to Huey for his for Chan Buddhists was the Nirvana Sutra. So that's mentioned that comes up in Huineng. He refers to that on occasion. The Nirvana Sutra came in in three different... Well, it was translated three different times and second or third time. It finally had an idea that Huiyan, a third, fourth century monk, said must be there, namely that all beings have Buddha nature. All beings have, well, he didn't actually say Buddha nature, he said, have the potential for enlightenment. This was a contradiction of everything that came from India. Because in India, there was the notion, well, there are just some people who are so obstinate, they're not going to get it ever. They're done. Don't worry about them. And there's a word for them, Icchantika.

So Joel and I joke with there. We know a few Icchantika in America right now. So they're just not going to get it. So, yeah, Icchantika. The Nirvana Sutra explicitly says even the Icchantika have the potential for enlightenment. Even the ignorant, even the obstinate, actually, it means the incorrigibles is the way it's often translated in English. Even the incorrigibles have the potential for enlightenment. Also in the Nirvana Sutra, there was the implication that animals as well. So all sentient beings, animals are sentient. So vegetarianism becomes a thing for the first time in China. They begin to get interested in vegetarianism because in the Nirvana Sutra, it says these are sentient beings. And Chinese Buddhists are pretty adamant about their vegetarianism, unlike Japanese Buddhists. And they're quite strict. And when I've been in China, I found them much stricter than the Japanese communities that I love. Because I like sushi and stuff. But in any case, they're very strict about that. Those who are vegetarians in China are very strict for religious reasons because of their Buddhist understanding, not for health, not for anything else.

So, OK, the Nirvana Sutra is underneath all of these things. This is one of the things that Bodhidharma had access to. Actually, it comes this translation of the Nirvana Sutra came out about 445 CE. That's about the time Bodhidharma arrives in China, according to the tradition. So this is happening simultaneously in the fifth century.

Another text that's important is the Yogacara tradition that Ben Connolly gives seminars on and as translated or published a book on, which became available in another form, the Lankavatara Sutra. So you read about this in Huineng. In a sense, Huineng, this myth is the myth that actually is historically accurate. Historically accurate in the sense that when the inscriptions of the poems are put on the wall, where does Huineng put his on the opposite wall on the wall that has to do with the Diamond Sutra, which is exactly what happened within Chan Buddhism. It started focusing by focusing on the Lankavatara Sutra. By the time of the eighth century, ninth century, it had shifted to the Diamond Sutra. So in a sense, this platform sutra is mythologizing the reality of history. The tradition did shift. We can see that in all the commentaries and texts to the Diamond Sutra. There are other examples of that as well. It has to do with the state of the Sangha at that time.

Okay, we want to get to these other topics. So let me move quickly through the other ones. The Vimalakirti Sutra is important to the Chan tradition. It was an Indian Sutra, originally produced in an Indian language, perhaps Sanskrit, translated into Tibetan and Chinese. The Indian version has been lost, but we're fairly sure that there was a Sanskrit version. It's a beautiful sutra if you haven't read it. It's humorous, it's insightful, it's iconoclastic, and great. Basically, Vimalakirti is a layman. He's in Bodhisattva, but he doesn't tell anybody that. He's a layman. He tweaks the noses of all the famous Bodhisattvas in the Mahayana tradition. Maitreya, Manjushri, they're all there. They come into his room. He pulls the tiger's tail constantly. He challenges them. What's the final teaching? It's described in Japanese as the great sound of kats, which is silence and no content. That's Vimalakirti's teaching. Even though we've gone through all of the teachings of Manjushri and so on, you get the standard Mahayana teachings, Vimalakirti caps that I make in chapter seven. You see paintings in Japan with this character for kats in huge letters. It's described as Vimalakirti's final teaching on the sense of the Mahayana. Who else would cite this text but Huineng and other Chan Buddhists, because it's getting close to what they're driving at. That's another one.

The final one is the Prajnaparamita Sutra. It's big, plays a major part. The next thing we'll read is the sixth patriarch's commentary on the Diamond Sutra. Be ready for anything. It's not going to be what you expect. Just as the precepts. Don't you love the precepts? They've been completely revised. Incidentally, when we did Katagiri's discussion of the three bodies of the Buddha, his was out there as well. But look at Huineng's. The three bodies are interpreted in terms of something completely different. The Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are the three bodies, the Buddha, the Sambhogakaya, the Dharmakaya and the Nirmanakaya. Who else ever said that? The first time I think I've ever seen anything like that is in Huineng's characterization of the precepts. We won't spend much time on the precepts. They're worth a lot of time, but we don't have that time.

So, okay. So as I said, we're in a conversation. The eighth century was the period in which the fourth patriarch, Daoxin, Daoxin's disciple, Hongren, the fifth patriarch, Huineng, the sixth patriarch, Huineng's disciple, Shen Hui, they were all in the eighth century and their writings appear in the eighth century. Some of them were born earlier, but they come into the eighth century. That's where the conversation is taking place. And the history is being created. It goes back to Bodhidharma. Now, Bodhidharma was probably composed earlier in various forms in another community, Huike's community, but the fruition of Chan comes together in this conversation going on between Shenxiu, who was the one who lost out in the poetry contest. They're all there and they're all talking to each other. And exchanging ideas on practice and its relationship to the principles. So that's why it's a conversation. And we'll start out with hearing Huineng's side of the conversation and then bring in the other three conversants if we have time.

I got carried away with this. We need to move more quickly than I've been allowing this. So let's start with the first text that I sent you as background text, which is section 13 of the Platform Sutra. And it's just one line. And I'll have you read some of the others, but I'll read this one line. Meditation is the body of wisdom. Wisdom is the function of meditation. Meditation is the body of wisdom. Wisdom is the function of meditation. So here we have one of the innumerable dyads that Chan Buddhism uses far and extreme of any other tradition. Body and function. Many people say that's the Chinese variation on shamatha and vipassana. Body and function. But the difference is the philosophical understanding among Chinese of all traditions, not just Buddhist, or all paths, not just Buddhist, was that they're just two sides of the same thing. They're not different. It's just a different perspective on the same thing.

So when Shenxiu writes on the wall, the Bodhi tree is the body. He's using the same dyad. The mirror stand is the... It actually becomes the mind in that particular dyad. The mind that is vijnana, the sixth mind in the prasana part, in the yogacara tradition. It's the mind that is involved in awareness and sensation and ideas and so on. That supports the clear mind. Now, Shenxiu doesn't go on to say that, but that's where he's going with that. And we know that because of his own writings, which you got a little piece of in the bit I sent you. So he's part of the conversation. He's talking to Huineng and Hongren. This is the way he's understanding the Buddhist path, or conveying the Buddhist path. So the word for body literally is a picture of a body, the character for body. But it also means the principle, the teaching. And the function becomes, in fact, the prasana, wisdom. The expression of wisdom that the teachers provide are words, are concepts. Of course, prasana goes back to the pure body, which has no concepts, but the discussions and the teachings are the function.

So... Let's look at the next comment that Red Pine makes on Chapter 13. And if you have the piece I sent you, is that in front? Does everyone have that in front of them? So you see the next comment that comes in 13 is after listening to a number of different forms of Buddhist meditation practice. Red Pine goes on to write. Pamela, why don't you read the rest of that? And then let's look for the dyads within that.

[Pamela reads]: To perform any of these meditations requires the constant support and involvement of wisdom. Otherwise, you wouldn't be engaged in such practices in the first place. Also, when we concentrate our mind sooner or later, we have to examine the nature of what we are concentrating. And this also requires the application of wisdom. Thus, any differentiation between the two can only be relative. There is no real difference.

Makes sense. Actually, I once said to Kobun when he gave me some suggestion, I said to him, well, that makes sense. And he said, well, maybe I should change it then. So maybe I shouldn't say it makes sense. But you follow the logic in what's going on there, the rhetoric. Red Pine's rhetoric. And what's the difference between that and Vipassana and Samatha? That's the important question. But what the Chinese were inheriting was a system of Samatha, calming, breathing practices, etc. As a basis for going on and attaining Vipassana insight into a particular phenomenon as taught by the Buddhists, such as the composition of the body or the 8-12 links of causation, to concentrate on a single teaching or phenomena based on calming. This is different. How?

You know, the first thing that came to my mind when I started reading this particular section is Dogen and continuous practice. And so it's not just calming practice. It's not just that. It's just everything. So that to me seems like a difference.

OK, we're going to get to everything, as you see later in the comments. Shenxiu brings it to everything. I just wanted to follow off on Pamela's because that was immediately what I thought of with Dogen and practice realization. He combines them, practice realization, as one term instead of practice and realization. It seems that he's, you know, maybe this is what you're saying, is that he's just taking this. I mean, it just draws this historical link for me, that he's taking this and reinterpreting it in his way and framing it for his community. But it's really that same thing, or so it seems, and that he's just, you know, bringing these teachings into his present, just like we're trying to do.

Yeah, it really impresses you on how strong this idea was and became throughout the next 1200 years, actually, after the Platform Sutra. How important it is to the Zen tradition. Now, I recently it's, yeah, go ahead, Joel.

This is great. I was thinking of Hongzhi, Silent Illumination. You can pronounce it and I can't. It's about two generations before Dogen. And his teaching was Silent Illumination, which is basically, as I understand it, what Dogen took and developed. So silent would be shamatha and illumination vipassana. And, Luzer, forget where I read it. Oh, I think Sheng Yen had a commentary on, well, it was his discussion of Shikantaza. And he goes through, well, this is silence and this is illumination. Back and forth as he, well, he had, I don't know, it doesn't matter. I mean, because I forget anyway, exactly. There are various associations I have. But there was, I think that Sheng Yen went through text, and he was constantly pointing to this is the silence side. And this is the illumination side and constantly emphasizing that they're one thing, that there's no difference. So anyway, that's another place where you find the same kind of idea. You know who this teacher is. He's a real big deal. There's a book of just a few teaching poems. If you want, I can run and see if I can find the book and tell you who this teacher was. But it's a real big deal. Anyway, there you go. Silent Illumination. So, yeah, we're on the path, I think, once we get to that.

Yeah. Well, it's just sitting like Monica said. Anything to add on that somebody may want to inject?

Yeah. I think I lost the question, but what came to mind was what's missing is the subjective involvement of our engagement. But you might want to repeat the question again if you could, because I think I lost it.

I asked several questions. I'm not sure which question you're...

My question is what was my question? That's my question.

Your question, the last one, Ilsan, was what is the difference between the original method of calming versus what is being proposed here?

Yeah. So, Emily, that sounds like you're tracking subject-object on that particular... as an answer to that question. So do you want to explain that? What do you mean by that?

Well, it's a little more dynamic. And like you said, it's not fixed. I mean, the teaching is not fixed, nor is our wisdom. I'm trying to put that in the context of practice and principle or body and function.

Are you saying that you could take an objective look and then shift to a subjective perspective on what is essentially the same one thing?

Yes, kind of. Like they said, there's two sides of the same thing, but I think there's more than just two sides.

Okay. Outside of subject and object, what's the side which you identify? Outside of subjective and objective?

Well, if there are more sides, I can only think of subject and object, but maybe there's another one that I'm not thinking of.

Well, another way of looking at it is that here's the relationship without calling it a relationship. Because it is one thing. Is that what you're saying?

That could be said.

You want to clarify that? What would you say if there's another?

I keep going back to what he said, constant support and involvement, because everything is meditation. And everything is wisdom.

Which is wisdom. So what's the virtue of being able to look at it from those two sides? I'm going beyond your question now. So at least those two sides, if not more. What value does that have as compared to the vipassana, samatha vipassana system?

That was a

What I first thought was that in samatha, we're bringing everything down to a single point. But why? In other words, there's no goal in any of this. And the vipassana would certainly open it up to boundlessness. So I see the duality of that tension of are we here to accomplish something or give it a name, give it a label, or is it continuous practice? And you could call it illumination, but the goal is not illumination. There's no goal. Am I on the track here?

You're touching the high points. I mean, it's highly discussed. This is an open question. Who was just saying, oh, Emmy was saying, it is open. It's wide open to a lot of possibilities, but not necessarily. It creates conversation. The original vipassana samatha analogy was a narrowing of insight. It's like a spotlight on a particular phenomenon. My understanding of Chan is that it's more like an illumination, which we get in the later characterizations of the people leading into the six patriarchs. The sun comes up and the world is illuminated. And there's nothing.

And actually in Hongren, I didn't include this quotation. The teacher asked the student, what do you see? And he said nothing at all. And then he said, what do you see in the north? Nothing at all. He goes through all the directions. And the whole point is there's nothing to be seen in this great illumination that takes place as a result of meditation.

Well, when we take our own personal experience and apply it, in other words, we're looking at how many people's description. But they're describing, we hope, their own personal experience of meditation. And so it's perhaps quite likely that when we begin and I could say I do get to a point where I am single focused and it could happen outside on a single seed or a single flower. And then that opens to a unified field. So I think it's very much like what I've described many times of that micro macro merger. It can go on.

So these are scholars. This is what Huineng is saying? Well, maybe. Yeah. These scholars are writing. But what are they really writing? Are they writing their intellectual dissertations? Are they writing their personal experiences in the best way they can, which is often a koan or a poem? You know, because it's a poetic experience when they really experience it. I would say.

But now let me ask you, if you're aiming for one pointedness at which you once achieved allows you to illuminate the world. Aren't you separating it into two phases, a cause and a result?

I can for the intention of discussion. But what I just said is my lifelong experience is that they in its interbeing its inter are. They are continually exchanging. So for the, you know, it's so amazing the way you describe how do we get from Sanskrit to those all those linguistic changes. How do we get to the essence of the experience if we're trying to talk about it? Write about it?

I would say they used metaphors and myth. That's how they talk about it. Analogies metaphors and myths that it really blossoms in the Chan tradition, much more so than the other Buddhist practices in China. Poetry. The first poetry that we see associated with Chinese forms of Buddhism is in some of these Chan texts. And they bring it into full play by the time we get to the 12th century.

So it's talkable. But Huineng is capping a phase in the development of Chan and making a very radical statement. He's getting rid of the Lotus Sutra essentially. He's saying there is no skill and means. There is only innate original enlightenment. And the presence of the Buddha mind. And the practice of meditation, which isn't for any enlightenment, it's the manifestation of enlightenment, wisdom. And that does away with the Lotus Sutra. Basically, any other comments?

Yeah, one thing related to your discussion with Emmy about subject and object. It seems to me maybe like what's missing is what's between them. Like grammatically, the verb I see you. So you're the object for me and I might be the object for you. And like as kind of a metaphor, I think of God and Adam of Michelangelo. Like the space between their hands. As a charged relation between subject and object where they're indistinguishable. I mean, is there a difference between God and man? Well, theoretically in Christianity, of course there is. But in that space between the two hands, it's something more dynamic than that.

Let's see if we can put our finger. Let's go on to 14. OK. Let's see, Bob, you have it in front of you. Did you read 14? Deluded people who... Who do you want to read? Who do you want to read? I was going to ask Bob to read, but... Go, Bob. Unmute. Bob, unmute. Good. Number 14. Go, Bob.

One practice samadhi. Deluded people who cling the external attributes of a dharma get hold of one practice samadhi and say that sitting motionless, eliminating delusions, and not thinking thoughts are one practice samadhi. But if that were true, a dharma would be the same as lifelessness and would constitute an obstruction of the way instead. The way has to flow freely. Why block it up? The way flows freely when the mind doesn't dwell on any dharma.

So what bells did that ring for you?

Should we meditate? This reminds me of the question last Wednesday of the water and the river. It has to flow. If it doesn't flow, it's dead. And if it's dead, it's lifeless. So let's meditate, but let it flow. Breathe with it. Feel it. Live it.

What's flowing, Bob?

What is flowing? The way. The way is flow. Flow is the way. Get out of your own way. I'm using way in a different sense there. My own way versus the universal way.

Your way is the universal way.

Oh yeah, there you go. So there is no difference.

So look at the line, not thinking thoughts. That's no good. Think non-thinking. Does it mean not thinking? Of course not. That's what he's getting at. So then the Tao is thinking. Right? Wrong. And that's what we're doing in meditation, thinking. But what's the difference between this meditative practice and just doing what I do all the time, which is thinking about philosophical ideas and whether I should have lunch at 12 or 1:30? What's the difference between that kind of thought and what Huineng is talking about? Anybody?

I was thinking, he says, mind does not dwell on any Dharma. So there's lots of Dharmas arising, lots of thinking arising. And that is the way, but the way flows freely like water. When it doesn't dwell on the Dharma, the Dharma arises, Dharma arises, Dharma arises. And the mind is aware of it and doesn't stay there. So it's free and open and flowing to the next Dharma. So that's sort of how I understand that.

Yeah, I think that's pretty much, it's a simple message. Thoughts keep occurring when simply doesn't attach to them and allows them to flow. And incidentally, one of my first professors who was fluent in about six languages, he was a Russian immigrant into Russia and to China. And he said, this is the word Wei is cognate with the German WEG, which is a water course. How about that? And the water course flows. A water course is a course in which things flow, water flows. So the way is actually a water course.

So remember, one of the early books on Zen was The Water Course Way by Alan Watts. And I never took it. I didn't realize until I began to look at what Wei, what Dao meant, that he may have actually been translating that word in the title of his book.

Well, in Dutch, it's WEG. And that's what they call the Milky WEG, the Milky Way. Look up in the sky sometimes at night.

Yeah, that's I was saying WEG, but it's WEG. You're right. In German, it's also WEG. So yeah, the notion of flow comes through here, which we find again and again later on.

What was the other thing? A lot of people get confused about what you're doing in meditation. Are we just cutting off thought? That's some of the first impressions that I think people have is you're just cutting off thought and that's what Zen is about. And this is quite clear here. He's drawing a very straight. It's not no mind. It's no thinking mind. Let's go the other way. It's about thinking mind. It's not about no mind. That's what he eventually says in other places. No mind is just sitting like a stone.

Okay, continuing on. So let's see if we can. We have a few minutes to go. Incidentally, he adds in section 14, one practice Samadhi while walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. So meditation takes place all the time. Wisdom takes place all the time. Wisdom takes place all the time.

Okay. Then we have Vimalakirti. Let's do that one quickly because we're pretty much the same point. Red Pine reminds us of that and this is in Vimalakirti. You can look it up in chapter three. I'm going to read it. Meditation means conducting your life without leaving the stillness of Samadhi. Meditation means engaging in ordinary activities, grinding rice in the storeroom of a Buddhist monastery. Meditation means engaging in ordinary activities without giving up the teaching of the way, the Course. Meditation means entering nirvana without putting an end to passion, and that's Vimalakirti per se. He's an active layman in the world. He lives in society. He's a very active layman in the world. He lives in society. And one practices Samadhi even in that state. And it's just profound stuff.

I think the guy's coming across with some. The guy. We tend to name one person. We like heroes. It's a group of people who are discussing and arriving at these and then embody that in a particular person. And at least that's my reading of that.

So let's look at some of the, we have a few minutes. Let's go. If you don't mind, I'll go quickly through those so we can kind of set them up for the next discussion.

The earliest discussion description of meditation is the one I show you here. The earliest written of a description of meditation takes place in the fourth century, fifth century actually. And it's in a apocryphal sutra, a sutra that's created in China and attributing its source to India. And there is no source in India for this text. This is a Chinese text on describing meditation. Chinese were trying to come up with explanations for what they were being asked to do. And this is one of those.

In a quiet place, spread out a sitting cloth, sit cross-legged, arrange your robe, straighten your body, sit upright, uncover your right shoulder and place your left hand on top of your left hand. And then you can go to the top of your right hand, close your eyes and press your tongue against the palate. A thousand years later, Dogen cites the same description. That's Dogen's description as well.

This is the earliest. We thought Buddhism's been around for 800 years. How come there's no written description before that, before this one in the fifth century? No written description other than cross your legs and sit down. This is the first one. And then in this text, he goes on to describe more of what's going on in meditation. So this is in the background. This is in the background of the conversation.

We have Bodhidharma, treatise on two entrances and four practices. The entrance by principle. The entrance of principle is to become enlightened to the truth of the basis of the teaching. On the basis of the teaching, one must have a profound faith. Incidentally, the Chinese, I would prefer to translate that as confidence in the teaching. That's the way I think it's usually used, to have confidence. To have confidence that one and the same true nature, this is the appearance of Buddha nature in the Chan tradition, true nature, is possessed by all sentient beings right out of the Nirvana Sutra. Both ordinary and enlightened. Is possessed by all sentient beings who are both ordinary and enlightened. Ichantikas and sharp people. And that this true nature is only covered up and made imperceptible in the case of ordinary people by false sense impressions.

If one discards the false and takes refuge in the true, one resides frozen in wall contemplation. Later on, people thought that meant sitting in a cave looking at a wall. That was a much later interpretation of that. The original meaning of that is quite different. Was simply not being influenced by the outside. This is an internalization of the practice. In which self and other ordinary person and sage are one and the same. One resides fixably without wavering, never again to be swayed by a written teaching. To be thus mysteriously identified with true principle, to be within without discrimination, serene and inactive. That is called the entrance of principle.

Several ideas here come to influence Huineng without discrimination. This becomes a hallmark. I'm sending texts. Ordinary and enlightened. In the dharmakaya, in the state of dharma awareness, there is no discrimination between dharmas. They're all equal. They're all the same. This is prajnaparamita. And this is where prajnaparamita actually plays into this. So we have all these seeds appearing in the fifth century. They're all there already. This is the introspective.

The entrance by practice is very interesting because it's outside, it's external. The first of the entrances by practice are the practice of the retribution of enmity. To accept all suffering as the fruition of past karma without enmity or complaint. That's the first practice. That's something you do in your daily life. You view all suffering, all problems, as the result of past karma. It's a practice. It's not necessarily a truth. It's a practice.

Two, practice the acceptance of circumstances to remain unmoved by good fortune and recognizing it as evanescent. This is still in your daily life. This is not a spiritual practice. These are things you can do every day. It's not focused on the non-reality of the self or any of the other principles of Buddhism. It's just around you all the time.

Three, practice on the absence of craving to be without craving, which is the source of all suffering, daily life.

But four, what's happening in four, practice of accordance with the Dharma to eradicate wrong thoughts. This is the Sixth Patriarch. Start with getting rid of wrong thoughts, right views. That's the beginning. That's where it starts. Practice the six perfections without having any practice. Great. We're onto something now.

I want to get to Hongren because this is the guy who's interesting. He's beautiful. The way he writes about meditation, no one else has written as well as he has, I think, up until this point. Incidentally, Hongren, this was Huineng's teacher. This is the Fifth Patriarch. He and Daoxin, the Fourth Patriarch, taught only meditation. They taught no theory. They taught no recitation, no ritual. His students came from all over China. Some of them were Mahayamika people. Some of them were Lankavatara people. People came from every other Buddhist source to practice for short periods. This is like going to a retreat, going to a retreat often for a year or two, rarely more than a year or two.

If you think of Huineng, he was only there eight months. He only spent eight months with Hongren, the Fifth Teacher. Shenxiu spent seven years, maybe eight years. That was the longest anyone knew of anyone spending time with Hongren. So Hongren is totally focused on meditation and the practice of meditation. Huineng, who brings wisdom back into play with this.

He begins to use images. For once, we have a living person who's being recorded by his students at the time the text is produced. All the other ones are retrospective, people looking back and creating discussions. Here we have a real person and his teachings being described by his students immediately after he teaches them.

So there is an adamantine Buddha nature, still with Buddha nature within the bodies of sentient beings like the sun. It is essentially bright, perfect and complete. This is what you were talking about Tova, I think in that kind of limitless view. It lights, it illuminates the entire world in front of you, the practice of meditation. It's not any one thing. So the knowledge of everything doesn't mean you know every single thing. You know what's opened up in front of you in terms of this enlightenment that is in fact the practice of meditation. And so this is a practice that brings that on. It's still progressive. Huineng is going to depart even from this view.

We start by viewing the world from the view. We start by viewing the sun as its setting. It's a means to get to this. And that standard trope, it's merely, it's only covered by layered clouds of the five skandhas, like a lamp in a jar. There is no difference between an individual moment of ignorance and enlightenment than the clouds of delusion. That's the only thing that separates you from enlight

And the only answer is to get rid of those thoughts that obstruct that thought. Get rid of attachment to any concept eventually. It obstructs that illumination of the universe.

So I'm going to skip to his two meditations. The first one is the concentration on the innate Buddha nature. And you visualize that as the sun. Just as it sets, shining back from one fixed point on the horizon, large and round, like a giant temple drum, hanging sideways on a stand. This is a shamatha practice. This is a calming practice. But at the same time, it's a vipassana practice, because the sun is illumination.

And then the second meditation he advocates is concentration on the obstructions to seeing Buddha nature. So he comes back to the world. I'll let you read that. But at the bottom, I like the line, view your own consciousness tranquilly and attentively, so that you can see how it is always moving, flowing like water, or a glittering mirage. Thank you, Pamela, for the problem on Wednesday. It comes back in again and again. Thought flowing like water.

I think Hongren is incredible in this practice. He takes the edge off it. He makes it a very light practice that isn't aimed for a goal. It flows, it follows the path that's been prepared by the elimination of wrong views. When consciousness disappears, all of one's illusions will disappear. And with it, the extremely subtle illusions of the bodhisattva of the 10th stage. That was an old argument in Mahayana. The 10th stage is the final stage of the bodhisattva path.

We don't have time for much more. I only want to emphasize two things, and then I'll step back. The interesting thing about Shun Shou is he has a new system of analysis. He looks at every teaching, every mundane activity of the Buddhist practice in terms of a description, a skillful means, he calls it skillful means, for understanding the practice of meditation. Everything is about meditation. Everything the Buddha ever said, everything in the monastery, every piece of art, every poem, every sound of the shakuhachi is about meditation. Drinking tea is about meditation. So there's your constant practice. When you're sweeping the temple grounds, you're practicing. If your mind sees it is in terms of meditation.

But the one I want to go to at the last, because it illuminates, and I like the word illuminate, his poem, Shun Shou, this is Shun Shou's poem. Shun Shou was not a bad guy. He was one of the great guys of that period. Look at what he says at the end. What are lamps of brightness, these all around Buddhist temples, you have lamps of brightness, votive lamps, people light lamps and put them in the altar and outside and all over the place. If you go up a sacred mountain, they're votive lamps along the trails. They're all around the votive lamps along the trail of Asian men.

Lamps of brightness are seen as the truly enlightened mind. Consider the body as a lampstand. Aha, source. This is actually Shun Shou. This is not a creation of Shun Shou. This is what Shun Shou taught. As a lampstand, the mind as the lamp's dish, meaning the reflective dish, and faith the lamp's wick. The augmentation of moral discipline is taken as the addition of oil. When constantly, and that's the important word for Shun Shou, burns the lamp of truly such like true enlightenment, its illumination will destroy all the darkness and ignorance and stupidity.

Constant practice was Shun Shou's practice. It's adopted by Huay Neng. It's worked into his system, but Shun Shou was shuttled out to the side because of a lineage issue that was taking place in China at that time. Who was going to be the next controller of the monasteries and so on? Huay Neng was going to be. Even after he was dead, he was, according to this.

So compare that to Huay Neng's refuges. Huay Neng treats the refuges in the same way. Each refuge is explained in terms of a Buddhist practice, meditation practice. Huay Neng's doing exactly what Shun Shou did, only he's doing it with the precepts and he's doing it with the vows. Huay Neng is also doing constant practice.

So this is where we're going to leave it because it's going to change. You think this is it? No. The next part, we see another major shift, so it'll be exciting. Hold on to your seats. We're on that wild ride at Disneyland in the rafts. We're going down this fast stream and it's going to move faster actually as we get into the 11th and 12th century. But this was so fertile. These myths, this poetry, these understandings that came together in the eighth century, that it created a century, ten centuries of practice and commentary. So extremely important, even though it was largely ignored in the 12th century, the Platform Sutra came back into play after that again. But we'll see that in Dongshan and some of these other things. But we have more to deal with with Huay Neng, so we're not done with Huay Neng. So sorry to take so much time through the explanation, but I wanted to get us through 300 years of history.

Thank you, Bill. Before we do the vows, Bill, I'll do the English, you do the Japanese, I'll do the English. But I want to say in the kitchen here at Jikoji, I've been on dishwashing duty at dinner and right above the dishwashing station it says, very on point, the kitchen is the zendo. I'd like to piggyback on that. In the tea ceremony, it was Susan Becker that pointed this out to me. We were very careful in the tea room. And then I would go into the kitchen and just toss the things down and come back and be very careful in the tea room. And then go back out and she said, what happens in the tea room and what happens in the kitchen is the same thing. The light bulb went off at that point and then I understood what I was doing.

Anybody else want to sneak in a word before we do the vows? Okay. May our intention equally extend to every being in place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Desires are inexhaustible. I vow to put an end to them. The dharmas are boundless. I vow to master them. The Buddha way is unsurpassable. I vow to attain it. Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Desires are inexhaustible. I vow to put an end to them. The dharmas are boundless. I vow to master them. The Buddha way is unsurpassable. I vow to attain it.