This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Well, good evening. So nice to be here this evening with you. And my name is Ed Sadezon, and it's my pleasure to share the seat with my good friend David Zimmerman. I have the mic, so I'm introducing him. And yesterday, for those of you who are not participating in the practice period, we opened the fall practice period here at City Center with an opening ceremony in the morning. And then we had an orientation last night. And David and I are sharing the practice period. And so it's been a pleasure to do both those ceremonies with him. And we're sharing this talk.

[01:00]

The title of the practice period. I need to get a little closer here. I can't see this. Yeah, let's try that. We're going to keep experimenting here. In my old age, my eyes have gone crazy on me. Oh, yeah, that's much better. Thank you for your patience. Actually, the best thing is just to sit here and listen to the chiming clock. Maybe that's what we all should do. Gives me a chance to look around and see my old and new friends. And my friends online, we have quite a few attending this practice period, and welcome to you. And I appreciate your participating from afar.

[02:01]

So the title of this practice period is An Appropriate Response, Encountering Suzuki Roshi's Teachings on the Blue Cliff Record. Our study for these 10 weeks will be to select koans from the Blue Cliff Record and accompanied by Suzuki Roshi's insightful commentary. Our endeavor will be to turn and illuminate these koans and bring their ancient teachings to life. How might our study of them help us meet the challenging circumstances of our contemporary times with wisdom, compassion, and an appropriate response? The title comes from a koan in the Blue Cliff Record, Yun Men's An Appropriate Response. And this is the koan. A monk asked Yun Men, what is the teachings of a whole lifetime? Yunman said an appropriate response.

[03:08]

Some translations are an appropriate statement. The teachings of a whole lifetime refers to the teachings given by Shakyamuni during his lifetime. So the question was, what are the teachings of Shakyamuni's whole lifetime? So Shakyamuni taught for, I think, 49 years. I believe, didn't take any vacations to Hawaii, just continuously teaching. I think the Tripitica has like 20,000 pages. So what is a good summary of all of that teaching? And Yun-men, famous for his short responses, said an appropriate response. So I think that typifies... Chinese Tang Dynasty teaching, Koan teaching, summarizing a vast amount of teaching into something short and incisive that we can work with.

[04:21]

So they had a very good way of sort of turning all of that into a phrase or two words that you could carry with you and wonder. What is an appropriate response? Is that an appropriate response to this moment, this place? Well, that's good. I understand that I should make an appropriate response to my circumstance and my time, but that's not so easy to do. So how do we do that? And is that the entire teaching of Buddha's way? So obviously there's more to it than that, and we will... I'll say some more about that later in tonight's talk after David talks a little bit about the Blue Cliff Records. But that kind of summary of something important characterized this Tang Dynasty period in China. But it also is true today.

[05:23]

We have little sayings that come up that are current. I remember... a famous saying from the early days of Tassara. This is from David Chadwick after a lecture that Suzuki Roshi gave. He said, Suzuki Roshi, I've been listening to your lectures for years, but I just don't understand. Could you just please put it in a nutshell? Can you reduce Buddhism to one phrase? Everybody laughed. Suzuki Roshi laughed. And then Sri Yuktesi said, everything changes. And then he asked for the next question. Not bad, right? How can you summarize Buddhism in its entirety? In one phrase, everything changes. Earlier this year, I taught a class, an eight-week class on impermanence.

[06:25]

really a deep subject. We spent a lot of, this is eight 45-minute lectures on impermanence. Everything changes. Everything's impermanent. And yet, somehow, this story of David Chadwick and Sigur's response runs in my head more than those lectures on impermanence. Because it's like, everything changes. Everything, what does that mean? Every part, is there anything that doesn't change? I mean, it's simple enough and yet kind of a profound thing to live with. So it becomes a koan to the extent that you notice that going on. Everything is changing all the time. So another example of koans from this period is Avimala Kirti's Gate of Nonduality. So I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Vimalakirti Sutra, a wonderful sutra. It's about 160-page long, very beautifully written, complex.

[07:30]

It's one of the great Mahayana sutras about layman Vimalakirti. And those wonderful Tang Dynasty teachers came up with a koan, which is the following. Vimalakirti asked Manjushri, Manjushri is the Bodhisattva wisdom, what is the Bodhisattva's method? of entering non-duality. Manjushri said, according to my mind, in all things, no speech, no explanation, no direction, and no representation, leaving behind all questions and answers. This is the method of entering non-duality. We always talk about non-dual thinking. How do you experience non-duality? Then Manjushri asked Vimla Kirti, we have all spoken. How should... Now, you should say, good man, what is Bodhisattva's method of entering into non-duality? Vimalakirti was silent.

[08:31]

So that's the whole koan. That's their summary of the Vimalakirti Sutra. They call it Vimalakirti's thunderous silence. You can't say anything about the method of entering non-duality. Even Manjushri, the wisest of them, I mean, of course, what Manjushri said was wonderful, but Vimalakirti was even better. Well, that's something to ponder, this whole question of how do you enter the Dharma gate of non-duality, a summary of a beautiful chapter in the Vimalakirti Sutra. So we know what a koan is. It's become sort of part of the English language, a paradoxical antidote, a riddle. used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logic and reasoning, leading to usually a deeper insight into your own nature. So the Japanese term koan actually comes from a Chinese word, gonghan, which means public case.

[09:42]

So the Chinese were very practical, so they adapted koan. terms in Chinese to the spiritual language, and these were public cases, and it was kind of an expansion of court cases, and in court cases you have commentary on court cases, so you have an original ruling in commentary on court cases. So these koans are sort of like something that's public. There was an interchange between a student and a teacher, or two students or two teachers, and that then got written down as a public thing that was more than just this personal interchange, and people added commentaries on it, and then it became kind of part of the Koan literature. And David's going to describe how that beautifully occurred over several centuries in China to create the Blue Cliff Records. But I want to talk a little bit before he gets into that about encounter dialogues between teachers.

[10:44]

and students, because the encounter dialogues are really where the koan started, an interchange between a student and a teacher. And these encounter dialogues, I gave you one, David Chadwick talking to Suzuki Roshi about everything changes. Here's another one from Sashin Atasara. During one Sashin Atasara, it was very cold. And in the unheated zendo, after a lecture, a student said, Roshi, I thought you said that when it got cold, we'd figure out how to stay warm within our zazen. Probably most of you don't know the old zendo down at Tassara. It burned down and they built one up in the nice sun by the garden. The old zendo at Tassara is where the student dining room is now, for those of you that have been to Tassara. In the winter, it had a linoleum floor that was basically just sitting on the ground, you know, very close to the stream.

[11:47]

It was freezing in there in the wintertime. So I can really understand the student asking that question. And what did Suzuki Roshi say? Suzuki Roshi answered, it's just not cold enough yet. When it gets colder, you'll start to figure out how to get warm in your zaza. Well... That's a very, like it was an encounter between a student and a teacher, a very reasonable question that turns into a Zen question. And this also happened in the old days. This is a very famous koan in the Blue Cliff Record, which I think I'll be giving a talk in one of the classes down the road. I'll explicate on this talk, this koan. So here's this koan. This is Dengshan. He was founder of Soda Zen in China. And he said... A monk asked Dengshan, when heat and cold come, how can we avoid them? Same question. When it's too hot, how do I solve that? When it's too cold, what do I do? How can we avoid that?

[12:48]

Dengshan said, why don't you go to the place where there is no heat or cold? The monk said, what is the place where there is no heat or cold? Dengshan said, when it's cold, the cold kills. When it's hot, the hot kills you. So again, same thing. Monk is too cold sitting in the Zendo. Ask the teacher, what do I do about this? And he tells you, go to that place where there's no cold or heat. Where is that? When it's cold, the cold kills. Well, we'll deconstruct that a little bit at the class. But just another example. This is just a kind of an encounter between a student and a teacher of a very real thing. But what it turns out to be is there's a whole issue of preferences. And why do we always want the world to be different than it is? It's too cold. It's too hot. My soup is too spicy. It's too sugary.

[13:49]

It's whatever it is. It's never exactly right, is it? Or is it? Maybe it's always exactly how it should be. It's certainly exactly how it is. But we don't ever seem to... exactly be willing to settle into that and these koans sort of point you at that fact what's going on in your mind that you never can actually be completely satisfied with your life as it is even for a moment so i thought i'd share one encounter I had with Suzuki Roshi. This is a kind of encounter story. There was a... In the old days, the baths were across the stream, and you would cross over that nice bridge, and there was a room which had a big tub in it that was like a big bathtub, and you would wash off in the bathtub before you went into the big plunge where all the hot water was.

[14:58]

And when the students would wash off, you'd all sort of jump in three of you at a time in the tub. So you could, you'd all wash off real quickly and then go in the hot tub. So I'd been there maybe three days. I was an absolutely new student. I just driven my VW van in there. I was new student, just trying to figure out what was going on. But Zika Roshi was there the whole time and I was totally fascinated by him. He was just somehow seemed so present all the time. So I was on a different schedule that day because I was doing dishwashing. of my favorite things to do so i was off going to the baths early and i rushed to the baths and turned around the corner and there right in front of me was zuki roshi completely undressed sitting on a little wooden stool he had and he was chilling the tub tub up with water and i was so struck i just i'm like wow he's right there and he looked up to me and he said do you want to take a bath

[16:01]

I said, yeah, because that's what I was there for. But I wasn't sure, am I supposed to go in there and wash with him like all the others, like we used to do as students together? So I said, well, I could just go over into the plunge. And Suzuki Roshi said, well, we usually wash off before we go into the plunge. Or usually we do. So I said, well, he's inviting me and I can, we'll just, just like I do with the other students, we'll get to know each other a little bit. This will be great. I go in, I'm taking off my clothes. He's puttering around. The tub is filling up. I've got all my clothes off. Still, I'm not too certain what to do. So I look at him and he mentions, get in the tub. So I jump in the tub. I'm sitting, I'm just getting into the tub and I look up and all of a sudden, she's completely dressed and walking out of the room. And it just hit me like I have kicked Suzuki Roshi, the Zen master, out of the bath he was drawing for himself.

[17:14]

Now, I was raised by a mother who, you know, I'm an Eagle Scout. I don't do things like that. You know, I'm supposed to follow the rules. You know, I don't run around kicking Zen masters out of the baths that they draw for themselves. I am. Just in terrible shape. He's walking pretty fast. This is all happening really fast. He turns around. It's like I'm looking at him walking out and all of a sudden he pauses like he has a second thought or something. He turns around and he looks at me and he says, don't worry. Turn around left. And he said it in a way that I didn't worry. And he said it in a way that somehow don't worry has been a koan in my life. The don't worry koan.

[18:18]

All the worrying you do about all the different things that happen. So it became a don't worry koan. So, of course, I'm sharing this now because I'm really proud about kicking Zen Master out of the bath. but I'm showing you how any circumstance can be turned into something that's a teaching moment. Suzuki Roshi turned that into a teaching moment because, I don't know why, because maybe that was more important to him than having a bath, which I would say was a great act of kindness. He could have easily said, son, this is the private dining time, the bathing time of the abbot. Why don't you come back later? Possibly. I really don't know whether it was the private dining time, private bathing time of the abbot, or whether it was just that he happened to be alone that afternoon there. Encountered events became the basis of all these stories in Zen. And I'm thinking, David, that I have...

[19:25]

I was going to go into a long discussion about the Genjo Koen and how the Genjo Koen is essentially our Koen of the present moment. And it's the same as these. These Koens are all examples of the Genjo Koen. But I don't think we have time for that tonight. We'll have to do that at the class on Tuesday. So I think I'll give David a chance to tell us all about the Blue Cliff Record or anything else that occurs to you. No, I'm done. I'm sitting in a bath. You probably want my mic, too. Good evening, everyone. Even though I never met Suzuki Roshi, I am encountering him every day. So thank you, Ed.

[20:27]

And for my contribution tonight, I'm going to provide a brief historical introduction to the Blue Cliff. And it just provided us a little bit of a background on encounter dialogues, which were the forerunners to koans. And it's interesting to know how the trace, how hundreds of rather personal, idiosyncratic, and in many instances just baffling, exchanges between students and teachers or Dharma peers over thousands of years ago were collected and passed on down through history as teaching devices. So these conversations, these personal relationships thousand years ago are now teaching devices for us. So your relationships now with each other, with your teacher, They may be teaching devices, future koans, for people a thousand years from now.

[21:31]

So how will you act? How will you meet each other? How will you encounter each other now, knowing that that might be the case? You're giving birth to Zen of the future. And the Blue Cliff Record, Heikigan Roku, as it's known in Japanese, and in Chinese it's Biyan Lu, is in many ways a collective effort. It's a culmination of a historical process over several hundred years. And the collection was assembled and composed by two great Zen ancestors, Shueiro Changzheng and Yuan Wu Keiku. I believe it's pronounced. They actually never knew each other. They lived 100 years apart. And Shuedo, his Japanese name is Secho Jikan.

[22:34]

He was born in 1980, 1980, sorry, 980 and died in 1052. He was the fourth patriarch or the successor in the Yunmun school. So there were five principal schools of Zen. at the time. And he lived in Southeast China. He had a Confucian education before he became a Buddhist monk. And that Confucian education instilled in him a very deep appreciation of literary scholarship. And Shuedo's enlightenment experience, it embodies his approach to Zen. And you'll often see this in many of the koans. Someone has an enlightenment experience. The flavor of their enlightenment carries through their teachings over and over again. So according to the description written on his funeral pillar, one evening he was just hanging out with his teacher, having a cup of tea.

[23:36]

His teacher's name was German Guelzo. And he asked his teacher... The ancient masters didn't produce a single fault. So where's the problem? And German, as the Zen teachers did at that time, hit Schwedo with this ceremonial whisk. You saw this morning, Ed had a ceremonial whisk. I had one yesterday. So he hit him with this fly whisk. And when Schwedo opened his mouth to respond, like, what? What are you doing? What are you hitting me for? His seizure hit him again, right? And those two whacks of the whisk triggered Schwedo's awakening. Now, it was just that easy all the time, right? You know, Ed, would you hit me twice on the head and maybe I'll wake up now? Yeah, too late. Okay, he's ready.

[24:37]

He's ready. Maybe tonight it will happen. So in this story, we see how Schwedo lived out... his own encounter dialogue, right? He asks his teacher a precocious question, like I'm sure all of you do. You go into, you know, you're hanging out with your teacher, maybe in the courtyard, maybe, you know, practice discussion. And in response, the teacher hits him. And the purpose of the hit is to interrupt Schweder's habitual and intellectual thinking. So this is the characteristic, a lot of the Tang and later somewhat the Song Dynasty engagement. How do we cut this intellectual thinking that we get ourselves stuck in and get to the immediate moment? And so it was through Schweder's own active participation, you can say, in a real-life koan encounter, a living koan, that he gained his insight.

[25:40]

And Again, his insight became the basis of his Dharma writings. And you'll see it, the flavor throughout his commentaries in the Blue Cliff Record. So in the early Song Dynasty, and this song started in 960, the previously early transmitted encounter dialogues, these were all just passed down orally, from the Tang era before, where they were written down finally. So the teachers and maybe the students took notes and they wrote them down and they collected them over time. And they were grouped together in a collection of basically biographies of the various Zen teachers. And so the first iteration of the Blue Cliff record took shape when Schwedow carefully collected a hundred of these brief excerpts of the biographies of Zen teachers. including these encounter stories. And he not only collected these 100 cases, he preferred cases, that term, but he also wrote a verse, which you could say a poem for each of the case, which in Japanese is called jakugo, or capping phrases.

[26:59]

So you've probably heard that, capping phrases. And his were typically very succinct. They were acerbic and often very humorous. and kind of trying to illuminate certain points in each of the cases. And they were also very complex because Schwedow's writing style, he used a lot of symbolism and allusions to Chan history and Chinese secular literature of the time, which makes it very hard for us now in contemporary times to actually understand a lot of the references that are in the cases. In those days, they'd get it just like that. You know, we'd say, you know, anyhow, they would get it very quickly. We wouldn't have to kind of go back and study like we have to do. So, Suedo, while he wasn't the first to write an ode or a verse to the cases, he was a very skilled and original writer. And this made his commentary stand out. So, they became very well appreciated.

[28:01]

And like many of Zen teachers, Suedo keeps grappling with how to express truth that go beyond words and concepts. How to express immediate truth, direct truth, you know, suchness, in other words. And his approach was to challenge conventional thinking. So a lot of his writing is meant to throw the reader off, you know, unsettle the reader, to plunge them into a sense of uncertainty. of immediacy and urgency. And when you read the koans and the commentaries and the verses, you have a sense of that. It throws you off. It's kind of like you're thrown off a cliff, falling through space. You have nothing to grab onto. And this is a deliberate approach that actually many Zen teachers at the time would take in their writing and their commentary. And he did this again through his use of poetry, elusive symbolism, imagery, irony, sarcasm, misdirection, all the things that as we study the koans together, we'll see how that is done in the languaging.

[29:12]

So he completed his encounter stories or cases. He called them 100 odes. And this was sometime, he completed sometime between 1026 and 1038. And it's understood that they were widely circulated. at the time throughout China and well-regarded. And there was also some concern that their popularity brought some risk, that people would actually focus on the writing rather than the deeper message of the koans and the cases themselves. So it said that as Shuedo lay dying, one of his disciples requested a final teaching verse. Your poor teacher is dying. You go, please give me one final teaching for your last breath. And Shweta replied, my only regret is talking too much. Right? You know, it's the bane of every Zen teacher. The minute you open your mouth, you've said too much. You might as well just throw in the towel.

[30:14]

So, the second iteration of the blue cleft record, and the one that essentially what we've inherited today, was the work of... Yuan Wu Keikun, his Japanese name is Engo Kokugan. And he lived, Paxmi, again, like I said, a century after Shuedo. And he was also a successor in the Rinzai school. Or not also, but he himself was particularly a successor to the Rinzai school, which is the later iteration of the Yunman school. And Yuan's own awakening experience also was brought about by an encounter dialogue with his teacher. But in this case, it was unique. It was just not an encounter dialogue, but it was actually with a classic koan. So the two of them together triggered his awakening. So the story goes like this. Yuan was grappling with the meaning of a love poem that he had overheard, a particular love poem. And this love poem was about a noble woman who calls out to her maid just so that her lover can hear the sound of her voice.

[31:22]

So she wasn't calling her maid. She was just using this calling out to him as an excuse so her lover, whoever they were, could hear the sound of her voice. And as Yuan Wu was thinking about this, contemplating, and asked the question, why this? His teacher shouted at him a classic Zen koan phrase. Why did Bodhidharma come from the West, the cypress tree in the courtyard? Right? What's going on there? Right? And so the heart of Yuan's awakening was realizing that the true meaning of both the love poem and the koan phrase, which his teacher yelled at him, wasn't in the words themselves, but was transmitted in the tangible, physical sounds of the voices. In other words, the immediate experience.

[32:25]

of both the noble woman and his teacher. And so his insight was later that something that informs his commentaries, his way of reflecting on the various cases in the record. And Yuan Wu later wrote, if you use language and words to interpret language and words, you merely get the benefits of understanding, intellectual understanding, more. But you do not cross the Dharma gate. You do not enter into the Dharma gate. Hear clearly the words outside the voice. Do not seek anything in the meaning. So Yuan Wu studied Shuedo's work assiduously, and in time he gave a whole series of talks that were elucidating Shuedo's original collection of 100 Encounter antidotes and verses. And he, as he did, he would compose a pointer or a prologue, as well as two commentaries for each of the cases, along with a company verse.

[33:36]

And so the blue clef record, the original, came twice long, in some cases three times as long as it had originally been. And he never actually intended to publish his Dharma talks, his writings here. But some students begged him, you know, So eventually that happened, and they were shared more widely then. And Yuan Wu, he delivered these talks on Mount Chia, which is in modern-day Huan province, at a temple called Blue Cliff, because it has a blue cliff. And sometimes it's called Blue Cliff Cloyster, and this is how we got the title, Blue Cliff Record. which only was called Blue Cliff Collection. And so it was published in 1128, and it took about a decade for it to receive wide attention. But when it did, it said to cause a stir among Zen students.

[34:38]

So many people who read it were very excited about it. They were very inspired by the collection. And it actually inspired other collections, such as the Book of Serenity and the Mumong Kong, who came approximately 100 years after the Blue Clef record. But the success of Yuan Wu's Blue Clef collection actually didn't please everyone, and especially one person in particular, one of his students. And his student's name was Dawi Zonggao. And Dawi was also a successor in the Linji School of Zen. And he became to be known as a fierce critic of what he called the heretical Chan School of Silent Illumination of the Saodong School, which is the Chinese precursor to Japanese Soto. So basically, he didn't like Soto Zen. He was a big critic of Soto Zen. And his other claim to fame was introducing huato practice.

[35:43]

And huato is a method of meditating on what's called the head or the core word or phrase of a koan in a way to become one with it, right? And so you've heard of the phrases mu, right? You know, what is mu? Yeah. or just someone, you know, Rinzai students, that's usually the first koan that they're given. And they walk around just kind of, you know, yelling and embodying Mu as much as possible. And there's other phrases, huato phrases, such as, what is it? What is this? Who am I? What was my face before my mother and father were born? And things like that. And it's still a very common practice in Rinzai and Korean Zen. So story goes that sometime, After Yuan Wu's passing, his teacher died, he noticed that students were engaging in too much intellectualization and literary commentary about the koans of his master. So rather than delving into the heart of the koans to try to find their own meaningful encounter and insight with them, many of the students would simply memorize Yuan Wu's interpretations and then recite them verbatim.

[36:55]

which was apparently kind of the fashion of the time. That's what you did with classics. You just memorize them and recite them verbatim. So what did Dawi do? Well, he burned the original wood blocks of the Blue Cliff Record. And then he collected as many of the copies of the Blue Cliff Record as he could, and he destroyed those too. So this would be like, you know, Ed, student of Suzuki Roshi, takes Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, too many people referring to it, they're holding it up, they're reciting it, and so on. So Ed destroys the original copy of the Bluetooth record, or sorry, of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, and every book that he could find, every copy he could find. Pretty radical, right? It would, it would. So... And he did this, he was saying, he did this to rescue his disciples from delusion.

[37:56]

So, and it wasn't that he was throwing koan practice away by burning the blue-gloaf record. He was rather attempting to help practitioners to access the true power or jewel of each of the koans, you know, which is their capacity to point us back to our true nature. So it's not up here, it's in your heart of being. So how do you get to that? And so regardless of what you think of Dawi's approach, apparently Yuan Wu's collection of koans was banned about 28 years later by the government and subsequently disappeared from public discussion. But like many banned books, it went underground and it didn't surface again for 150 years. So in 1300, due to the efforts of layman Zhang Mingyuan, and Zhang collected all the surviving manuscripts that he could find out of the Buclef collection, and he restored the book to basically its near-original version.

[39:10]

There were a few of the pointers of the introductions that Yuanru had wrote, about 20 cases that couldn't be restored. But otherwise, it's pretty much back to the same. And then not too long after, what was the timing? Oh, actually, this was in 1227. Jogen was the first person to introduce the Blue Cliff Records to Japan. And he was 26 years old. He had just completed four years of study in China, and he was preparing right the night before he left. I think I had mentioned this yesterday. He stumbled upon this. He was so impressed with the Blue Cliff record that he decided to stay up all night, hand-copying all that. So if you believe that story, there may have been some help.

[40:13]

some supernatural help with that. And his collection is known as the Ichiya Hikigan, so the One Night Blue Cliff Record. Oh, dear. I think I'll stop there because we're at our time. So I have more to say. Ed had more to say, but words are just words. And we have 10 weeks to say it. So we're going to continue to climb the blue cliff together, find a way to scale these koans to enter into the cliff itself. The blue cliff, you could say, is not only the teachings, the ancestors' words, There are also the blue cliff is reality, and the blue cliff is our own being.

[41:18]

So how do we enter into the heart of our own being and discover the jewel waiting for us within? And then once we have encountered that jewel, how do we share it with the world? How do we share it with each other? So this is what we'll be exploring. or these next 10 weeks. Thank you very much. We are sorry for having gone a little over. Thank you, Ed, for sharing this talk together. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:15]

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