Bill Powell guides an exploration and discussion of Hui-neng's Platform Sutra, Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness (Leighton) and The Record of Tung-Shan (trans. Powell).

Full Transcript

Here's the lightly edited version of the transcript, preserving all original content:

So, my friends, it's all ours. We'll invite you in as much as possible. And please enter with questions and, hey, that ain't true. Whatever comes up, let me know. We'll see if we can work this trick out today and focus into a topic that will take us to a coherent conclusion. Although, again, I think of Koan who says, well, if it makes sense, maybe we should try something else. But, okay, here's where we go.

I assured everyone two weeks ago that we would touch on meditation. And so I will try and briefly touch on meditation because I really want to get to the meat for today. But I think it's important to see where Hui Neng was going with meditation and how that feeds into the discourse records and the topic for today, essentially. And there is a connection. That's what I'm trying to draw to some extent.

So Hui Neng talks about the one practice Samadhi. There's only one practice. There's not a set of introductory practices and progression to a final conclusion. It's only one practice. As soon as you start meditation, and we have to find out what Hui Neng means by meditation, you're practicing wisdom. It's complete in the beginning. That's a simple explanation, and Hui Neng goes into much more detail. But I'm just trying to touch some points.

The other thing he says that I think we need to pay attention to is the one practice Samadhi takes place when walking, when standing, when sitting, and when lying down. So it doesn't exist on the cushion alone. The cushion is only one instance in which that takes place. So what Hui Neng has done, he's lifted the weight of the practice off-seated meditation on a cushion. Maybe he's lifted there, but he's expanded it to include all other physical positions. So it's present at all these times.

And what is it? In that little handout sheet I gave you, I just took one sentence out of section 14 in Hui Neng, not to think about thoughts, to be free of thought in the midst of thoughts. So there's a little bit of a conundrum. What does that mean? Well, thought is the word, there are many words for thought. The word nien, as in chon nien khan zeon, bon nien khan zeon, I contemplate, I chant, I call to mind, I focus on thoughts. In this case, thoughts, to recall. And there are many words for thoughts. This is one particular word, well, it's like Eskimo definitions of snow. There are multiple ways, words that define snow. This is one kind of thought. Nien is one kind of thought. So what does it mean to be free of thoughts in the midst of thoughts?

Next one in chapter in section 18, when we practice zen, notice that Red Pine translates zazen as practice zen, not sit zen. The character is the word for sit. Za means sit. Zen is a phonetic representation of dhyana, which means meditation in Sanskrit. So to sit meditation is what zazen means in the Chinese characters in any case. So to practice zen, if Red Pine is right and I think he is, what Hui Neng means by sit is to practice, not necessarily simply to sit on a cushion.

We don't contemplate mind. And there I think Hui Neng refers back to Bodhidharma and Hui Ke. Hui Ke stands outside the cave, Bodhidharma's cave, and said, my mind is upset. Please purify my mind. Bodhidharma says, bring me your mind. And Hui Ke said, with consternation I'm sure. Well, I'm looking for it, but I can't find it. And Bodhidharma says there, I purified your mind. Mind is an abstraction in my own modern terms or philosophically, not my own. Other people who have discussed this philosophically say what we experience are thoughts, not mind. Mind is a step removed from thoughts. We say it's mind, but we don't need to go that far. We have thoughts.

To contemplate mind is to think about mind, to think about all my mind's in a mess and so on. Or this is an important idea, let me think about this some more. No, stay with the thought. Let the thought come and pass and let the next thought come in. So this is a form of using the mind in a particular way. And the argument I think is that suffering is brought on by getting stuck, obstructed is what Hui Neng says, by over attending to a thought and hanging on to it.

So to move quickly on, we can come back to this if you have questions about my interpretation. So the question is, what do you do? If you don't contemplate on thoughts, what do you do? That's what I think section 19 addresses. In this school, by to practice, we mean not to be obstructed by anything externally, not to give rise to objective states. Objective states are the 18 ayatanas of the Abhidharma. I, vision and the experience of I, object and the experience of vision, and so on with each of the senses. So each of the six senses and their objects and their experience are the objective states. Don't be obstructed by those. That's what Hui Neng is saying. Don't stop on one sense. Keep the senses flowing.

And by Zen, we mean to see our nature. Well, that's not what the Sanskrit means and that's not what the character means, but that's how Hui Neng expands on what it could mean in this case. So previous Buddhists didn't take it that way. This is Hui Neng and the Zen tradition. So what do we mean by Zen meditation? Let's put the two together. And by Zen, we mean to see our own nature without being confused. And that's one of his basic themes. That's in fact, maybe the main imperative of the entire text, to see one's own nature. And that's Zen.

What do we mean by Zen meditation? What is meditation in the context of Zen? Externally, to be free from form. Now, form is a messy word too, because it means there are different Sanskrit and Chinese terms for form. The form that's being mentioned here or being introduced here is Lakshana, which means marks or distinguishing characteristics. This is a good thought. This is a happy thought. This is a bad thought. This is a blue thought. This is a green thought. This is something else. Qualifying it. This is a different thought than something else. Differentiation, to distinguish. Much of what Abhidharma meditation practice was and conventional orthodox meditation practice was, was to distinguish thoughts and to categorize them and allow them to fall away. So that's one form of meditation. There are many forms of meditation. This is Zen meditation. So externally, not to distinguish between thoughts. Internally, not to be confused. And thank you very much. I confused much of the time in meditation. That's what he says. So I leave you to work on that one.

The final thing I'll say about meditation and then if you have any comments, please bring them up. At the end of the very late in the Platform Sutra in Section, well he talks about it in Section 29, but he goes on in Section 48 to describe what he means by not getting what empty mind is. Chapter 48 is called the Gatha, which means the verse of truth and falsehood and movement and stillness. The movement and stillness parts, I don't know if any of you like T.S. Eliot. But in the Four Quartets, he talks a lot about movement and stillness. We don't have time to go there now. I love those passages about them, but we will keep moving.

So there's one section of that Gatha. There are about five or six sections of the Gatha. The one I'm referring to, I gave to you on the handout two weeks ago. And it goes this way. To see what truly doesn't move. Those who practice staying still resemble motionless, lifeless things. To see what truly doesn't move. In movement, find what doesn't move. That's an important line. In movement, find what doesn't move. That's the Four Quartets too. In the midst of this spinning gyre, I think is one of the expressions. That's actually someone else. In movement, find what doesn't move. Because what doesn't move is what doesn't move. Lifeless things have no Buddha seeds.

So as I read this, and I welcome your interpretation, the practice of zazen is a very dynamic process. It exists in stillness, but a lot is happening, more is happening than would normally happen in our daily lives. It's very active. The mind is very engaged. What it's engaged in is left unsaid. But thoughts are flowing. They're not obstructed. Feelings are flowing without obstruction or differentiation. And that happens not only on the cushion, that happens in all other activities. So it's a mode of being meditation as much as it is sitting on the cushion.

I have to point out that where these poems existed and these verses were in mainline Orthodox Buddhist monasteries, where there was regular meditation every day, and there was regular chanting every day, and there were regularly rituals performed every day. The Zen monks were right there doing exactly those things. They were meditating on cushions. So even though meditation kind of drops out as a rhetorical term for the next 200 years, the monastic system is still there, still there, practicing meditation. All the evidence. We don't know exactly what was going on in monasteries in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. We don't have these few texts, but we don't have Zoom meetings to see what's going on, and we don't have iTunes to record what they're doing. So we have to kind of subjectively figure out what they might have been doing.

By the time we get to the 10th and 11th century, we know a lot of what they're doing. And this is where Zen really comes into its own in China. We know very little except these few texts that we've been talking about so far about the time before that. There were multiple traditions and there were multiple meditation practices. We know that because those exist in the texts. What was happening in the monasteries that we don't know really very much about until about the 10th or 11th century. Pure precepts come into existence and there are extensive discussions of what's happening and how the monastic day should continue day after day.

So let's go beyond meditation. I want to point out one sentence, the last sentence in that poem or in that verse. That's exactly what you're going to see contradicted in the thing we read for this week.

Tim: Yeah, so in lifeless things, is he referring to insentient beings?

I think so. So that's a connection to Dongshan. Except he's saying they don't have Buddha seeds. They don't have Buddha nature. As Confucius was true of that period of time. In fact, we know and his immediate disciple, Shen Hui, or second or actually one of his 10 disciples were adamantly opposed to attributing Buddha nature to rocks and tiles and even to some extent to animals. That's why the dog gets in there. So you're right. What you asked Tim is correct. I think he's this was a major huge debate for three centuries and still is. There are Buddhist traditions today based on doctrine. You say no, sentient beings don't have Buddha nature. So the notion of Buddha nature in the Tathagata Dharma are very strong in China and become almost totally accepted by the 10th century Buddha nature in all beings. It was debated hotly for 400, 500 years before that. So yes, good question, Tim. That's exactly where he's going. I was shocked by that at first too. And then I said, no, Shen Xiu says exactly the same. Shen Hui says exactly his disciple addresses that explicitly and says, no, they don't.

Pamela: Yeah, this surprises me and alarms me a little because I don't understand. I can't yet understand how Hui Neng puts together non-duality and not everything having Buddha nature. I mean, how do you do that? How does he do that?

You're asking the same question that Dongshan asked, I think. This is in fact what the discourse records are about. Every generation looks at the same discourse record and brings it up to date. They take it another step. But the interesting thing is, the disturbing thing is there was a strong flank of Chan Buddhists who said everything does have Buddha nature. At the time Hui Neng was saying, no, it doesn't. Now this verse was added probably after Hui Neng died. This is what Red Pine points out to you was a later addition to the Platform Sutra. So the source for many of the additions to the Platform Sutra was Shen Hui, Jinne in Japanese. And he explicitly addresses this issue as saying no. Only sentient beings, only sentient beings, that would include dogs in theory, but only sentient beings have Buddha nature. The Nirvana Sutra itself tended to limit that even to human beings. But quickly the Chinese spread it, extended it to other sentient beings. But the great debate was whether insentient beings have Buddha nature. There's more that could be said about that, but we get drawn into a complex, the issues of the debate. And I don't think we need to get into that debate at this point, simply to recognize that this discourse record that we read for today is not an anomaly. They're not bringing up a strange point about about non-sentient beings teaching the Dharma. It was the hottest debated topic in for three centuries. We see it and we say, what's going on here? What do you mean, non-sentient beings? It was the topic of the century, of three centuries of today.

So let's go to Pedagogy.

Bob: Professor, I have three things to add.

Three?

Yeah. Well, for now, living things know how to move, lifeless things stay still.

I want to address that. Rumi said in his poem "Quietness," "You're covered in thick clouds, slide out the side and become still. Stillness is the surest sign that you're dead." And I think that's pretty remarkable in itself. But that's Rumi's point of view.

There's another point of view that the Dharma teacher Will Johnson uses in his study. He calls it "the great wide open." He said, "Don't sit there like stone Buddhas." He has a whole bunch of followers on his talks, which he says, people that sit so still in Zen, like they're afraid to move. And he said, "Breathe through the whole body." So that's the second one. He's using this idea of movement within what doesn't move.

And the third one, I just came to this last night from a reading on Pat Enkyo O'Hara. She was talking about a celebrated sitter. I don't know what a celebrated Zen sitter is, but a celebrated Zen sitter said he couldn't stay for the whole day because he was unwell. And he hoped only to stay long enough for the talk. But he stayed the whole day instead. And at the end of the day, the roshi approached him and noticed he hadn't left. The sitter said he was sitting beside a young kid who was restless, always in motion. He thought it would be good if he sat still on his own cushion to set an example. While we're sitting, we're not just sitting for ourselves. We're taking care of everyone. So that's my definition of meditation. Don't do it just for yourself.

So does that mean you're not just sitting quietly on your cushion? Externally, I looked like I'm sitting still. Internally, the whole universe is exploding. You would never know sitting next to me. What about when standing or walking? Even more so. Yeah, thank you. And actually, Red Pine has a very trenchant comment on this. He says we do need to sit a lot in Zen. But there's also the Zen sickness of sitting too much. So I think that gets us off the mat as well. And extends the single samadhi practice to places off the mat. I'm talking about Judo. Off the cushion as well.

I think that's very interesting because when we go into kinhin, we rise off our cushion and we bow to the cushion, to the zafus. And then we bow to the front, to the walking. They're both sides of the same coin. Okay, that's good. So there's a lot more to do with meditation. We could talk for much longer, but we won't. Particularly because this new mode develops, which is the discourse dialogues.

And so my topic for today, that sounds very profound, the topic for today is pedagogy. How do you teach? How does one teach and therefore how does one learn? It's not only the teacher who should be aware of this, but also the student and the learner. So I come back, the first session we had, I read you the fourth case in the Mumonkan. And I'll read it again because it's the essence of what pedagogy is. It's the primal conundrum of teaching Zen, teaching Buddhism.

This is number four in the Mumonkan. Shinien said, "It's like a man up in a tree hanging from a branch with his mouth, his hands grasp no bough, his feet rest on no limb. Someone appears under the tree and asks him, 'What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?' If he does not answer, he fails to respond, as is his duty incumbent on all Buddhists to spread the teachings. If he does answer, he will lose his life. What would you do in such a situation?" Pedagogy is teaching, is answering the question. Your own salvation is hanging on for dear life with your teeth and keeping your mouth closed and being silent.

So this feeds right into a Chinese rhetorical system. Zhuangzi, one of the great teachers of Taoism or the great texts of Taoism. And Zhuangzi puts the same conundrum this way. "If we say that words don't mean anything, have we said anything or not? If we say that words don't mean anything at all, have we said anything or not?" He doesn't answer that question. That's a rhetorical question from Zhuangzi.

The way the Buddhists would put that, at least the Zen Buddhists, well no, the Mahayana Buddhists. All doctrinal formulations are contingent. They depend on other things. They don't exist of themselves. They are contingent on time, place, event, etc. They are partial because they never involve the entire Dharma dharma, the entire Dharma realm. Anything one says doctrinally will not be complete because it doesn't incorporate the entire Dharma realm. If you go to another position spatially, you might say something else. Every doctrinal assertion is simply a mediation. It mediates between the ultimate and the phenomenal. The finger is a mediation device pointing at the moon.

But the Zen Buddhists, the Chan Buddhists in China, took it one step further and Dongshan among them. The moon is also a symbol. It's a mediating device. So, okay, we've accepted the fact that there is a truth that we can't contain directly. The moon, the finger points in that direction. But the moon is also an image of a truth that's inexpressible. And a truth that's inexpressible is also a way of saying something that can't be said because it's partial. So you get into this infinite regress if you accept that all statements of doctrine are partial and incomplete and mediating and mediational.

So that's what the man up in the tree is facing. That's the existential dilemma that Zen Buddhists have. How do you state anything definitively, knowing that it can be stated a different way and undermined in a different context? And so some teachers in the 10th and 11th century arrive at the conclusion that liberation lies in the realization that mediation is inescapable. Let me say that again. Liberation lies in the realization that mediation is inescapable. The man hanging from the tree with his mouth has to speak, even though he'll die when he speaks, but that's all right. He has to say something. How do you say something and not die? That's the problem. How do you teach? What do you tell a student to do?

So both Huineng and the encounter dialogues are dealing with that problem in a unique way that hadn't been dealt with in that way before. Huineng teaches the one practice, samadhi, in which the result is contained in the cause, is not separate from the cause, and wisdom is not separate from meditation. So what does that mean? That's an abstract statement. How do we actually embody that? It's one of the, I suppose, things a lot of people deal with when they sit down to meditate. It's an existential problem that any Zen Buddhist or Buddhist faces every time they sit on a cushion. They sit on a cushion.

Huineng addresses the problem directly by explicitly and by an exposition. No, let me put that differently. By explaining, by an expository approach to what meditation and wisdom are, they're one thing. It's an exposition. It's not an embodiment. It's an exposition. What the Buddha taught in discourses was not an embodiment, even though he may, he certainly embodied his teaching. But what he said was an exposition, an explanation. This is what wisdom is. This is what the body is. This is what the self is not, and so on. Explicit teachings.

We get to the 10th century, and Huineng is not so important in the 10th century. He comes back later on in Buddhist history, but we dispense with expository explanations of what wisdom and sitting is. We move from expository to a new form of rhetoric, which is dialectical. It's Hegel. Dialectical rhetoric. It's a rhetorical form, which seeks to embody the non-dualism that Huineng was talking about without talking about it. Without explaining it, simply doing it, performing it.

The Platform Sutra, as I said, was expository. I'll get through it with this in a minute, and we'll get on to the actual thing that we decided we were going to focus on today. So what was the expository nature of the sixth patriarch's? I'm going to return to him one more time. Sixth ancestor. Number 45, which I suggested you look at. Here's Huineng's approach to pedagogy. The closest he comes to pedagogy. How do we teach? How do we teach? He's talking to his 10 students, his 10 foremost leading disciples, including Shenhui.

"In whatever you state or imply, avoid dualities." Dualities are contradictions. But you're going to use pairs. "Whenever you explain any Dharma, don't depart from its nature and attributes." That's Abhidharma. "And whenever someone asks you about a Dharma, always speak in terms of pairs. And hold up its opposite." Here's a Dharma, here's its opposite. This is very explicit. So far, Huineng has been rather abstract. He was telling people exactly what to do. "Since each depends on the other for its existence or non-existence, the pair, all of the pairs depend on each other. They're mutually dependent, either for their existence or non-existence. Both Dharmas are eventually eliminated, and there is nowhere left to turn." If you bring up both sides of the equation, you cancel them, respectively, out. No. Dongshan's going to go beyond that. Don't panic yet. It's not going to disappear. He's going to come back to it.

Then Huineng in section 46 goes on to say, he lists 36 pairs, and there are 36 pairs taken right out of the traditional Abhidharma, the mainline Abhidharma. And I've suggested two or three here of the pairs, conditioned and unconditioned, mediated and unmediated is a possibility there. Substantial, phenomenal, and non-mediated. Substantial, phenomenal, and pure, empty. Pure and defiled. Dharma body and physical body. Dharma body is the complete non-formless, the formless body of the Buddha. The physical body is the form body of the Buddha. This is a pair. They should be addressed in connection to each other.

Now, I didn't find this particular pair in the last pair I mentioned here, in the Abhidharma, because they're Chinese. The other pair is yin and yang. Now the Chinese, the Buddha, the Indians never said anything about yin and yang. But they're Chinese. Everything is yin and yang. And actually it works. It may not be what the Indian said, but the pair works well in that context. But here's the proviso. Why does this work? The last thing he says, "In speaking with others, remain free of appearances when you explore appearance. Remain free from emptiness when you enter into emptiness." This goes back to the one practice, samadhi. So he's applied the one practice, samadhi, to teaching. And this is stillness in the midst of movement, movement in the midst of stillness.

Now, where do we go with the encounter dialogues? This is the last historical note I'll give you before we move on to the text. All of the ways that the dialogues are described. This was a collection of the best responses of all the great teachers over the past 200 years are collected in one text called Records from the Ancestors' Hall. It's a huge collection and it's in common everyday speech. It's the oldest text we have and it was found in the United States. It's collection of all, it's like a collection of the best jokes of the 20th century. These are the best comments of Zen masters of the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries. And then it gets broadened into the transmissions of the lamp, the lamp records that comes later. That's when the literati get a hold of it and turn it into beauty. The literati didn't like that. They liked beautiful language. The common language was, you had to clean it up. It just wasn't right. But that's the way the original discourses came out.

Every way that they're talked about, and this is where Pamela takes full responsibility for this discussion from now on, were addressed in terms of legal terminology. The metaphor was completely legal. This is why I like to see they're called public cases, precedent, that are presented publicly in a court of law or in a dharma hall to be addressed in a particular circumstance and either revised or invoked to make a decision about how to proceed. And the objective with each new case is in this new circumstance, how does that previous posit by a wise teacher apply in this case, or does it not apply? And do we have to modify the case?

So you see, Mumonkan is the most aggressive of Buddhist lawyers that you can imagine. He constantly says, the Buddha was just feeding people horseship. He says essentially that in a few places. Here is what it really means. And so Mumonkan, always, or Wumen, goes beyond what was said before. So this is a very dynamic form of speaking that is not asserting absolute truths, but readdressing rhetoric rhetorically, dialectic in a constantly changing environment and context.

How did the Chinese take the teachings of the sutras? It was a different context and a different language. The Chinese went to great lengths to change that. They had to. They had to fit it into a new context. The Japanese Dogen did the same thing with Chinese teachings. And you only have to look around at what's happening in American Buddhism to see that we're doing the same thing. We're not losing the precedents.

The precedents are still there. We can go back to the precedents. But we need to respond to them. And that's what the discourse records are doing. They're setting a rhetorical style for responding to precedents without asserting an eternal truth that is unchanging. So it's a dialectical rhetoric.

How was this used in China? We don't know before the 10th or 11th century, but it was used in Dharma talks in the monasteries. The abbot would have to go up to the hall. That's what it's called, shantang, to ascend the hall. And he would have to give a Dharma talk using precedents. The basic source of material for the Dharma talks was precedents with these discourse records that we have. Not meditation, but the discourse records.

Then there was entering the chamber. That's what we call doksan. Entering the chamber. That happened on a regular basis in Buddhist monasteries in the Song dynasty. One monk or a group of clerics would enter the master's hall, the abbot's hall, and they would do precedent analysis. They would be trained in the rhetoric of precedent analysis. And after 10 or 20 or 30 years, it became internalized. And it was a style of rhetoric that existed in Chan and Buddhist monasteries for the next thousand years. It actually waned a little bit in the 15th and 16th century. The Japanese reintroduced it with Natuwa Kihom, I think, you know, who's, can't think of the master in China in the 17th century who reintroduces this process. Well, it'll come back to me as these things do.

So there we are. What are we looking at in the doksan in the record that I gave you to read? We're looking at what was called a house style. There were five houses in Song, Zen Buddhism. Each of the houses had a style. The word in Chinese for style was wind. So what was the wind of the Soto lineage? The Cao Dong lineage. What was the wind of the Linchi or Rinzai lineage? What was the style of rhetoric? They all used the dialectic rhetoric, but they had different styles.

And so as you read the discourse records you see, or even in the record of Dongshan, you see one master saying, well, I'm not your teacher. You should go over and see Linzi, Rinzai. He should be your teacher. You shouldn't stay here with Suzuki Roshi. You should go to someone else. You should go to a Rinzai teacher. You should go to Eiken Roshi. He's a Sambokai teacher. So they all recognize the effectiveness of different winds and individuals had affinities with specific winds.

So if you read the entire record of Dongshan, you'll get a sense of what Soto wind was in the 10th and 11th century. Doesn't mean it'll stay that way, but I think in some ways it does. My impression is it still holds on to this Dongshan approach. It was also used as a method for verifying the readiness of a student to become an avid or to take over a teaching position. And that's what happens in, Joel, remind me of what's that thing that we were talking about yesterday where Peter Shearson gets up in response to questions from the entire audience when he becomes Shiso. Yeah, it's like- To form a verification. Yes, exactly. It's said that the assembly verifies the Shiso's understanding of the teachings.

So they- But they do it ritually. The Shiso has gone through the cases. The Shiso has studied the precedence. That's what he does with his teacher in Sun. When you go into the masters in the Abbott's chamber, you're being trained in the precedence. Okay, go ahead, Joel.

In very different ways. I mean, literally in Rinzai and Senbukai Oh, yeah. with the Koan syllabus. In Soto, in my experience, you're being trained, but it's sort of like, it's sort of less formal. You don't know you're being trained. You just know that you're confused all the time. And then after a while, you're no longer confused and can sort of play with the teacher in that way. The teacher says some incomprehensible thing and you can learn to say some other incomprehensible thing and you have a dialogue. And so there's very much that training in that style. But I think in Soto, it's sort of more freewheeling as opposed to maybe it's some, you know, the Senboko, whatever it is.

Lin-Yu, that has to be the end of our discussion. You have to read the whole Dongshan record and say, this is the style. Well, I'm talking about the 20, 21st century style here that I've experienced. I was afraid you were. I know, isn't that terrible? I'm sorry. I can't, you know, get it right. No, you told me what I needed to know. It's the Shiso ceremony and how you train someone for Shiso in the 20th century. May not be how it was done in the 12th century. Of course. And the 11th century. But I think it's similar. I think it's pretty close. I get the feeling. It's certainly the Soto style. I mean, that you see all the time. Like the record of Dongshan, I don't understand all the stuff, but I recognize the style. It addresses the same issues in something like the same way.

There's one time I went through, there's the Chinese, what is it? There's a thing going through each teacher. I went through all the Soto teachers and they're all my favorite Koans. And when I looked at Rinzai Koans, they were much different. You have a different wind blowing through your sails. And you have a Soto wind on your sails and other people have a Rinzai. Exactly. Definitely.

Actually in my dissertation, I took all of the records of Rinzai and Dongshan and I did something very statistical. I used the pre-computer age of creating these categories. And attempting to determine what the style was. And I came up with a suggestion, but I won't go into that today about what the difference between Rinzai and Soto is. But I wanted to see if there was a difference in styles. And I think I put my finger on it in my dissertation. That doesn't help you meditate, but at least it indicates that there are different styles and they have a different approach. I'm looking forward to that. Okay, go on.

Finally, where do I wanna go from there? Kinda cut off what I was doing there for a minute. Oh, I'm talking about the legalistic approach to presenting these discussions. That's the case study approach and it applies also to medicine. Medicine in a medical school, one looks at cases and evaluates the effectiveness of different practices. This is a whole body of study, how case studies work in progressing in dealing with issues, legal issues and so on. So it's very open. It allows for a multitude of options. Not all are acceptable, but many are. And one is constantly pushed to look for options or reevaluations of previous precedents.

So that opens the door for teachers today or teachers over the last thousand years. They're not definitive statements. What's being transmitted is a rhetorical style within each house. The Dongshan style of rhetoric is different from the Rinzai style of rhetoric, but they're both open to reinterpreting. Dongshan reinterprets the precedents as well, but he does it in a different way than Lin Chi does. So that's what we're looking at. That's what we'll look at in the next session and the rest of today is how that happens.

So the beauty of it is completely open. It opens the door. We don't have to accord with, the Buddha said this, therefore it's true. Or we, not we, teachers. And part of the process is we may be missing this in America at the moment, but there are people who've been with a experienced teacher for a period of decades in many cases and have developed that particular rhetorical style that's with that house, associated with that house.

So we go now. Oh, there's a great essay. I have to give you the name of the essay that explains how the case system works. And you'll like it because it's about the dog and it's about non-sentient beings. Where did I write that? I can remember, oh, here it is. Yeah. The title of this essay is, Does a Dog Have Buddha Nature? This is the title. Does a dog have Buddha nature? The rest of the title is, It Depends on What Day It Is. Because Joshua, actually in a later discourse, says a dog does have Buddha nature. Well, he doesn't say a dog, he said bamboos have Buddha nature. Bamboo and chrysanthemums. That was a common metaphor that was being used at the time.

So on one day it worked. And think of the guy with the finger up, the one finger zen. His student copies him, he cuts his finger off. So the student said, oh, okay, that's it, it's emptiness. So he looks back at his master and the master holds the one finger up again. He's not attached. To the definitive truth of emptiness or phenomenal reality. Master reminds him, okay, we're back to the one finger truth again. That's my explanation of that. That's my interpretation of that thing. We can go into that later.

Let's look at Dengshan. Let's look at case number three. And if you have the case, if you have this book, it's easier to read just the case without trying to separate it from Leighton's explanation. So does someone wanna read the first paragraph of case number three? Who has the book? Does everyone have the book? I'm trying to sell more copies. If you don't have it, buy three. I don't get any, incidentally, I don't get any. I got $10 at one point and that's the end. In royalties, so I'm not selling the book. Who has the book? Okay, good. Susan, haven't heard from you for a while. Why don't you read the first paragraph on the bottom of page, it's the first page, 23.

Next, the master made a visit to the book. Next, the master made a visit to, you're going to have to pronounce this for me. Don't worry about it. Okay, Kui Shan and said to him, I have recently heard that the national teacher, Chong of Nanyang maintains the doctrine that non-sentient beings expound the Dharma. I have not yet comprehended the subtleties of this teaching. Kui Shan said, can you, Akari, Akarya, remember the details of what you heard? And read down to the end of the ancient Buddhist. Are we talking about page 24? Yeah. Okay. Yes, I can, said the master. Then why don't you try to repeat it for me, said Kui Shan. The master began. A monk asked, Kui Chang, what sort of thing is the mind of the ancient Buddhists? The national teacher.

Okay, let's see the setup. That's where we stop. Let's stop there for a minute. This is the setup. The mind of ancient Buddhists. Now he knows already, he's fishing, he's trying to pull the master out. And see if the master, this is like a Dharma dialogue. The ancient Buddhists, that was a term that was used for Huay Nang, for Bodhidharma. And then back into the Indian tradition. The Chinese made their own teachers Buddhists. The Indians did not. Mahayana to some extent, Mahayana did it a certain, not really. Their living teachers were not Buddhists. Their living teachers were Arhats and possibly Bodhisattvas, but not Buddhists. Living people, living teachers in China were the ancient, ancient Buddhists. So the entire tradition of the ancient Buddhists was the ancient Buddhists. So the entire lineage of Soto or of Rinzai, the previous teachers are all considered Buddhists because they had received the transmission in theory. So that's what he's asking. What's the mind of our teachers? Our lineage of teachers? So, go on. Tim, do you wanna read this? Oh, it won't work there. So keep listening. Tova, do you have it?

The national teacher replied. It's wall and tile rubble. Wall and tile rubble. Isn't that something non-sentient? Ask the monk. It is replied the national teacher. The monk said, and yet it can't expound the Dharma. It is constantly expounding it, radiantly expounding it, expounding it without ceasing, replied the national teacher.

Okay, hold there for a minute. If you looked at the note in that text, you'll notice that the wall and tile rubble is a direct quote from Zhuangzi, the Taoist teacher. And he goes further, Zhuangzi. The question is, where do we find the Tao? In Zhuangzi, where do we find the Tao? We find it in the grass. We find it in the crickets. We find it in the wall and we find it in wall and tile rubble. And we find it in shit and piss. That's what Zhuangzi says. That's where the Tao is. It's everywhere. He's talking about the Dharmakaya. All dharmas are present in the Dharmakaya, the Dharma body of the Buddha. So that's up to you to make sense out of this. I'm just telling you where that's coming from and what the source of that is. So now we get to the big question. Here's where I think we begin to get the pairs. Look for the pairs from now on. So Tova, why don't you read a little for me?

The monk asked, then why haven't I heard it? The national teacher said, you haven't. You yourself haven't heard it, but this can't hinder those who are able to hear it. What sort of person acquires such hearing, asked the monk. All the sages have acquired such hearing, replied the national teacher.

OK, so there are stop. There is your pair. Sages and ordinary people. Yeah. And Huynong talks about that in the abstract. Dongshan embodies it. He's not talking in the abstract. You say, well, yeah, they're sages and they're ordinary people. Now where do we go from that? And now it really gets tangled.

This particular anecdote bothered me for the longest time when I was translating because this doesn't make sense. Stop. Let me see something else. So this is where the two begin to come together from now on. So Bob, why don't you pick up the mantle? Do you have the book? Oh, you only have that one. OK. Any other book holders? Yeah, Joel?

The monk asked, "Can you hear it, Ho-Sheng?"

"No, I can't," replied the national teacher.

The monk said, "If you haven't heard it, how do you know that non-sentient beings expound the Dharma?"

The national teacher said, "Fortunately, I haven't heard it. If I had, I would be the same as the sages, and you, therefore, would not hear the Dharma that I teach."

"In that case, ordinary people would have no part in it," said the monk.

"I teach for ordinary people, not sages," replied the national teacher.

OK, stop here. Does that make sense? You following the rhetoric there? What's he doing? Anyone? There's a new pair here, or a play on the pair. He's saying he's not a sage. He's saying he's an ordinary person. At least that's one understanding. "If I had, I would be the same as the sages." So he's gone? Well, that's what he's saying.

So he's gone. Well, it's like what you said, that sages and ordinary people as a duality is a problem that they inter-are with each other, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say. So he's the national teacher. So you just said the teachers were Buddhists. And he's saying, "Fortunately, I haven't heard it." Presumably, he's Buddha, because he's the teacher. But "Fortunately, I haven't heard it. If I had, I would be the same as the sages. And you, therefore, would not hear the Dharma that I teach." Any other interpretations of that particular move? Other interpretations? I mean, other ways of explaining that.

I have a thought. Yeah, good. Occasionally, I have thoughts. I see. Keep the nians going. Lots of thoughts. What I see is that he's embodying the teachings of the Dharma. What I see is that he's embodying the ability to shape-shift so that his students can see it. So he wants to say, he wants them to see that he can be revered as a Buddha or a sage, and he also accepts his ordinary life. And he wants them to do the same, because they are all Buddha nature. He sees that all his students have Buddha nature, as he does.

I just love this. I love going from the 12 of those and the 8 of these and the 15 of those and just opening it up, because that's our great good fortune to experience the expansiveness and not be stuck in the numbers. But he takes the dualities, he uses the dualities to open beyond duality. Think of them as pairs, rather than the duality is the, in A is not B, is not A. And when the six patriarchs said, they're connected to each other. You can't have A without B and B without A. So then it's continuum. Yeah.

So one of the tricks in this rhetoric is to be able to shape-shift at the appropriate time. Now that's something we don't do as far as I know in contemporary practice. We don't play these shape-shifting games, except in the Shiso ceremony, but then it's very ritualized. Am I right?

Well, I think in Doksan you often wind up playing that kind of game. I'm with Joel on this. I think that the response is unique to every context all the time. So my response to you now might be on the same question, different tomorrow, because of context, because of what I'm meeting in a person in an event. And everything together. So I think it's happening not just at Shiso ceremonies. It's happening all the time.

Okay. I stand corrected. It's happening now. And it's nice to see it going on. These were public cases and they happened in front of people in the Sun Monasteries anyway. But yes, okay. I'm glad to hear that. But I've seen the game played spontaneously. Interestingly, in Korea, when I was with Professor Lancaster, my mentor, we were with a particular abbot at a Korean monastery. The Korean monk, the abbot, was very clear and making some statements. Professor Lancaster asked a question and they got into this kind of dual game. Now, I'd never seen Lancaster get into that. He never taught that way in any seminar that I was in. But he got into it with this particular Korean teacher. So I'd only seen it spontaneously picked up once before. But you obviously are experiencing it. So I stand corrected on that.

But in any case, it's rooted in the Sun dynasty in this 10th and 11th century dialogue that takes place. Formally and ritually, Zen monasteries were very ritualized. Most of the Buddhist monasteries are very ritualized. And they were all Chan by the 12th century, essentially. They were called Chan monasteries. But it was more a name than in fact. And they continued the traditional practice of mainline Buddhism. But they had a Chan abbot. All public monasteries in the Sun. Most, no, all public monasteries. I'll make the universal statement. Public monastery is one funded by the Chinese Empyrean. And they have some role in who's appointed the abbot and so on. Those are all called Chan monasteries, regardless of who's there.

So let's keep going. So we're playing on the pair of the Nirmanakaya and the Dharmakaya. The Nirmanakaya is the teacher, the one who speaks for ordinary people. That's the Buddha. That's Shakyamuni. The Dharmakaya is the formless, inexpressible body of the Buddha. Namely that all things tile, rubble, have Buddha nature. And if you remember the two poems, they depend on each other that Wei Neng wrote and Shan Xiu. Okay, let's keep going. See, where are we? "Then they are no longer ordinary people." So let's continue. Keep going. Who was just reading? Joel, were you reading? I think so. Yeah.

"So what happens after ordinary people hear you?" asked the monk.

"Then they are no longer ordinary people," said the national teacher.

The monk asked, "According to which sutra does it say that non-sentient beings expound the Dharma?"

"Clearly, you shouldn't suggest that it's not part of the sutras. Haven't you seen it in the Avatamsaka Sutra? It says the earth expounds Dharma, living beings expounded throughout the three times. Everything expounds it."

The master thus completed his narration.

Okay, that's pretty much worked out one through. One of the characteristics of these dialogues is it's clear that Dong Shan and Rinzai and all of the teachers are thoroughly well informed about the content of the sutra tradition. So this is a teaching outside of words, delivered by people who've read all the words that the sutras contain.

So it's a misunderstanding. It was popular when I was starting this practice that you really don't need to read the sutras. They're not important. You just have to experience your nature. The sutras were important to these people, to the Sun dynasty people. Later on, there were other traditions that made less use of the sutras. Zen traditions. Hakuin is the name I'm trying to think of. Hakuin. The 17th century Japanese Zen teacher. He made less use of the sutras in his practice of these dialogues. He practiced what was called the capping system of dialogues. You have one phrase that caps. And that was something that was more amenable to people who hadn't read the sutras and many who weren't even literate. They didn't have to be. You could cap a phrase in Hakuin's treated practice. So Dong Shan on the other hand did read the sutras.

We're getting to the conclusion. And I'll make one comment here. Some people have interpreted Dong Shan's comment in this particular case. As the fact that all of these Dong Shan is saying all of nature has Buddha nature. All of nature is Buddha nature. Contrasting it to human or civilized things. But wall and rubble are human produce. So in the next passage you'll notice he uses in the next that we didn't read. He goes on to the fly whisk. Which is made by people. That's not nature necessarily. The Chinese were less concerned about the distinction between nature and civilization. But they were. They still had the distinction. But less concerned.

And what is it he says. It comes up in the in number four. He quotes the Abhidhammachakra Sutra and this is the quote I like. On page 26. Union replied, "Haven't you seen it? It's in the Amitabha Sutra. It says water birds and tree groves. All without exception recite the Buddha's name." That's nature. That's wildlife.

The final statement there is the poem at the end. The gata at the end. And we'll end with that.

How amazing. How amazing.

It's so amazing to comprehend

that non-syntian beings expound the Dharma.

It simply cannot be heard with the ear.

But when sound is heard with the eye,

then it is understood.

And I'll leave you, Leighton has a nice comment on synesthesia. You're familiar with synesthesia. Is you can hear colors. You can see sounds. So when Bob was doing the shakuhachi at the beginning. Bob is doing what this, what this says. The sound is conveying the four vowels. And the four vowels can be heard in the sound of the shakuhachi. So it continues. The beat goes on. I love that, Bob. We talked about that yesterday. Bob gave me some food to think about.

So in two weeks from now, what I'd like to suggest is you look at the following five dialogues. And practice the same kind of analysis we just did on this dialogue. And I'll leave you to explain particular dialogues that interest you. And I'll leave you to explain the different types of dialogues that you can use. And I'll leave you to make sense of them in the way that Huy Nguyen said that we should make sense of them. Look for the pairs. Look for the other factors that have come up earlier in Huy Nguyen. This was the last question I put on the sheet. How does Huy Nguyen apply? How does his pedagogy apply? To these discourses.

I've used up my voice in this in the last four sessions. So you're speaking next time. Which five dialogues are we looking at? It's the ones that are listed in the syllabus. I think. Since I'm easily confused. I'll send out a message. Well, I can tell them to you beyond heat and cold. The white rabbit. The bird path. Those are the three I have. And there was one more today that we didn't do. No grass. No grass for 10,000 miles. And just this. Where was this at? Just this. Are there pages? If you look on the syllabus, it's checked. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, I'll send it to you. You've had it since the beginning. Oh, this one. It exists. The one that says Summer Sutras 2021. Yes. Well, that's what you call the syllabus. I don't know the terms you're using. Got them.

Okay. This was an incredible session. And Bill, I know your voice is almost shot, but just to. To pair it with our opening. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. To pair it with our opening. And this whole session, would you mind doing the valves? Oh. No, Bob already did them. We don't need to do them again. It's nice to have the little parentheses close. I did them in eight minutes. You get to do them in 15 seconds. I'll give you a bell. If you don't mind. Oh, that's okay. Yeah.

I give beans. I'm 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.

Shujo. Mohan. Say. No. No. Oh. It's a god. Oh. Oh. Oh. So you're being so numberless. How to save them. Desires are inexhaustible. How to put an end to them. The Dharmas are boundless. I vow to master them. away is unsurpassable. I vow to attain it.

I see we have another way to