This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. From the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Chinese Zen Ancestor. Good friends, do not depart from deceptions and errors, for they are... themselves the nature of true reality do not depart from deceptions and errors for they are of themselves the true nature of reality so when I read this I got thinking that it might be a good idea to reveal at this time one of the long hidden truths about Zen itself before continuing to talk about the Zen ancestors.

[01:01]

As you may recall, in the past few days, I have mentioned several times a number of teachings given by the ancestors having to do with letting go of our toys. You know, our attachment to toys, for example, our favorite views, stories, and opinions. The long-hidden truth is that the Zen ancestors, for the most part, are precisely that. They are toys. In fact, we could go so far as to say that much of the Zen tradition is a kind of campy version of Toy Story 2, the movie, which is also delightful and intended to bring joy and benefit to humankind. So the reason I am telling you this is because it is true. The lineage, warm hand to warm hand, that we chant each morning going back as it does 2,500 years to Shakyamuni Buddha, and including the arrival in China of a red-bearded barbarian who tears off his eyelids in order to not go to sleep, and of a sixth ancestor for whom there is only the scantest of historical evidence,

[02:23]

are in fact nothing more or less than stories. They're well-crafted products of the human mind, albeit good ones, just like Buzz and Woody. Buzz and Woody. Thank you. Or Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, if you prefer. We love them. I do. I love them. And even though, I must admit, I was pretty unsettled when I first heard this news from the scholars about the facts of the Zen lineage a number of years ago. And my teacher, Reb, also acknowledged that he didn't even want to hear about it. Don't tell me that. So what is it all about? Well, there are a number of myth-busting books out these days about the Zen tradition. The best of them, from my point of view, is by Professor John McRae, and it's called Seeing Through Zen, which is kind of a double meaning.

[03:29]

You can see through Zen and also seeing through Zen, which, unlike a lot of the earlier scholarship on this topic, is actually rather easy and interesting to read. So the point that Dr. McRae makes, quite sweetly, himself being a great fan of the Zen tradition, is that even though... That part of the Tang Dynasty, known as the Golden Age of Zen, 7th to 10th century, is a fabrication of the Song Dynasty, 10th to 13th century, through the magic of something called retroactive attribution, which basically means making up things about the past. Most history is, in fact, exactly that. Even though, as the professor says, there is nothing wrong with a good story. So in fact, this conflict between mythos and logos, between myth and logic, or heart and mind, have been running side by side in their respective bids for dominance over human culture for thousands of years.

[04:38]

The church and science, astrology and astronomy, herbal medicine and pharmaceuticals, and so on. Fact and fiction. What seems most likely to have happened in the making of our Zen story is that by the time of the Song Dynasty, there was a large urban Buddhist intelligentsia that utilized storytelling to promote certain values and to establish lines of authority for continuing to promulgate those values. For example, the emptiness teachings over the mind-only teachings, the sudden enlightenment over gradual enlightenment, the descendants of the Southern School of Zen over those of the Northern School of Zen, who were all bidding for donors. And at that time, the Northern School had been doing much better than the Southern School, which would be ours. So there's a word you may know called apocryphal, meaning writings considered not to be genuine, which applies to the Platform Sutra.

[05:43]

In fact, it applies to most of the Mahayana Sutras. in their claim to be the literal word of the Buddha. And in particular, the Prajnaparamita Sutras, which, as I told you, were said to have been successfully stored under the ocean by a dragon for over a thousand years, being thereby a very good example both of Apocrypha and of a very good story. So the main point is that we really are in the realm of human imagination, always. The who, what, how, when and where of things is much less significant than is our search for liberation from thinking itself. What truly matters to us is coming to understand the workings of imagination itself. the very thing that all of these imaginary teachers were teaching, thereby using a thorn to take out a thorn until all the thorns and all the toys are gone.

[06:53]

So having said that, I will now turn back to the delightful and categorically apocryphal Platform Sutra. of the larger-than-life Chinese Zen ancestor Hui Nong. The fact that the basis of the mind is without any wrong is the ethics of one's own nature. The fact that the basis of the mind is without disturbance is the meditation of one's own nature. The fact that the basis of the mind is without ignorance is the wisdom of one's own nature. When we understand our own nature, we do not set up ethics, meditation, or wisdom, since our own nature is without wrong, disturbance, or ignorance. And in every moment of thought, prajna illuminates, always free from the attributes of things.

[08:05]

What is there to set up? There is an old saying that there are no teachers of Chan in all of China, which means most likely not in California either. Which I take to mean that is the teaching itself, the Chan or the Zen, the Buddha Dharma, and not the teachers that has passed through the millennia unscathed and untarnished by human frailty. And yet with the ascendancy of Huynong as the personification of Zen and the declaration of his teaching as a sutra, a major change took place in the Buddhist tradition, a process that some scholars have called the humanization of Zen. Meaning that the emphasis is no longer on the sutras or on the iconography of the historical Buddha and the bodhisattvas, but rather on the stories of the living ancestors, the real human beings, the transmitters of the Buddha Dharma, or Dharma vessels, or as I prefer, Dharma plumbing parts, who pass the Dharma along from living generation to living generation, while hopefully taking seriously the very real danger of themselves as the source of all major leaks, which indeed

[09:35]

We are up until this very day. Even the Buddha said to his disciple, Ananda, as he lay dying, don't look at me, just listen to what I say. Ananda, you may think the word of the Buddha, of the teacher, is a thing of the past now that we have no more teacher, but you should not regard it so. The law and the discipline taught and described to you by me are your teacher after I am gone. The law and the discipline taught and described to you by me are your teacher after I am gone. I think human first is a pretty good motto for all of us in the faith traditions. We need to look at each other not only with eyes of compassion, I think that's the easier part, but also with skeptical eyes. We need to remember and to be reminded that we are human first. and that whatever else we might learn or achieve is an attribute of our practice.

[10:41]

Generosity, ethical deportment, patience, enthusiasm, concentration, and wisdom. These are our inheritance from those who came before us and to those who we are deeply grateful to. As an exemplar of Zen, Huynong himself, following his initiatory awakening experience, went to have himself checked out in a face-to-face meeting with the fifth ancestor. In that first encounter, the master asks the woodcutter, where do you come from? Huynong says, from the south. The master says, what are you seeking? Huynong says, I seek to become a Buddha. Hongren smiles faintly and says, Southerners have no Buddha nature. How can you attain Buddhahood? Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Painfully so. A probing pole, and we wonder if Wengen is going to bite.

[11:47]

Well, maybe not. He says, as far as people are concerned, there are Northern and Southern. But how could that apply to the Buddha nature? So the teacher knew that this was not an ordinary person, and as we know from yesterday, he sent him to the rice-pounding mill in the basement of the kitchen. So later on in the story, as you may recall, Hunggren reads Hway Nung's poem on the wall and knows that this illiterate woodcutter, and a layman, no less, has a splendid understanding of the cardinal meaning of the Buddha's teaching, vast emptiness, nothing holy. And yet, afraid for Huynong's sake, he says to the monks, who are all waiting eagerly outside in the hall, this is still not complete understanding. And then he asks the workman to paint over Huynong's poem. But then the story goes on. At midnight, Hongren secretly goes to look for Huynong down in the mill.

[12:54]

meaning that the abbot steps outside of the monastic institution, outside of the power dynamics of group relations, with their seemingly inevitable markings of status and authority, of rescue fantasies and codependency, and much, much more, which we as members of a living assembly are endeavoring to identify and dismantle, if we dare. which reminds me of that story of the little red hen. You know, we're going to have to first help to make the bread before we get to eat it, right? Isn't that fair? I hope so. So once the abbot arrives at the place where Poinong was working, he asks him, is the rice white yet? Is it clean? This face-to-face meeting at midnight becomes the model for dharma transmission as it continues to be practiced until this very day. by those of us who've been trained in the Zen tradition.

[13:55]

In fact, I'm going to be doing this ancient ritual for the very first time myself up at Green Gulch in a few months with Rai Ringombo. And it's, thank you. I'll let her know. Yeah, in a very secret ceremony at midnight inside the Red Room at Green Gulch Farm, for which many elaborate preparations right now are underway. so back at the mill, Huynong responds to his teacher's inquiry, it's white, the rice, it's white but hasn't been sifted. So the master then strikes the mortar three times, after which Huynong shakes the sifter three times and enters the master's room. The master says to him there, for the sake of the one great matter, of the appearance of enlightened knowledge in the world, the Buddhas guide people in accordance with their capacities.

[14:57]

Eventually, there came to be teachings of the ten stages and the three vehicles, of sudden and gradual, and so on. Moreover, the Buddha transmitted the real treasury of the right Dharma-I, the Shoguo Genzo, to Maha-Kashapa. So basically what Hongren is transmitting to Hui Nong is our story, our Zen story. And so he goes on. This then was handed on until it reached Bodhidharma in the 28th generation. He came to China and found great Master Huika. Then it continued to be transmitted until it came to me. Now I pass on to you the treasure of the teaching and the robe that has been handed down. Preserve the teaching well and do not let it be cut off. So this is our primary charge as so-called Dharma vessels of the Zen tradition, as the plumbing parts of our inheritance, is not to allow our lives to end before we've passed on the teaching to the next generation.

[16:08]

So at some point, you have to feel like you'd better hurry. Time is running out. Kneeling, Huynong receives the robe and teaching and then asks, I have received the teaching, to whom should the robe be imparted? Hongren replies, From ancient times, the transmission of the Dharma has been as tenuous as a dangling thread. A long time ago, when Bodhidharma came to China, people didn't believe in Zen. So he handed on the robe as an indication of the authentic teaching. As it has developed, the robe has become a source of contention. Therefore, Let it stop with you. Do not pass it on. And now you should run. Well, as I told you yesterday, it was a very good thing he did run because the monks were very angry and they chased after the illiterate woodcutter who had dared to realize the truth ahead of them.

[17:10]

They were jealous. From a Latin word meaning zealots. Zealots. Jealous. Rearing its ugly head. And, don't we know, because it's a terrible feeling, perhaps the worst feeling of all, to feel jealous of another person who's actually doing well. Eventually, after hiding in the forest for ten long years, Huinong returns to monastic life, receives full ordination, and finds his way back to his home temple where he attracts hundreds of students and lay followers. In that Huynong is claimed to be the founder of the Southern School of Chan, he instructs his students in sudden enlightenment. And although an historic figure named Huynong cannot be confirmed by the scholastic record, the legend of the Sikhs ancestor recorded in the Platform Sutra has been perhaps the most hugely influential text in the development of what we call Zen.

[18:13]

The Platform Sutra containing this entire story about Huinong, as I've been recounting to you for these few days, is named after the ordination platform where the Buddhist precepts are conferred. And it opens with this statement by Huinong. The master ascending the high seat at the lecture hall of Tafan Temple expounds the dharma of the great perfection of wisdom and transmits the precepts of formlessness. So here's the emptiness teachings being laid down. At that time, over 10,000 monks, nuns, and lay followers sat before him, along with county officials and 30 Confucian scholars, all begging the master to preach the Dharma of the great perfection of wisdom. So this teaching from the Platform Sutra, although apocryphal in its entirety, becomes the standard Zen understanding of precepts, of meditation, and of wisdom. In much the same way, excuse me for saying so, the Holy Bible has been for the people of the book.

[19:24]

Good friends, meditation itself is the substance of wisdom. Wisdom itself is the function of meditation. Be careful not to say that meditation gives rise to wisdom, or that wisdom gives rise to meditation, or that meditation and wisdom are different from one another. To hold this view implies that things have duality, the dotted line. The practice of self-awakening does not lie in argumentation. If you argue which comes first, you are deluded and will never escape the four states of phenomena, those being arising, abiding, changing, and ceasing. So I don't know if you remember, but these four states are the primary objects of observation in the practice manuals of the first turning teachings. And just as will happen to all the other primary insights of the early teachings, this text, as with the Heart Sutra, turned those practices and all their instructions completely upside down.

[20:30]

In the next paragraph, Foy Nung teaches a radically different approach to Samyak Samadhi as well. The Samadhi of Oneness is straightforward mind at all times, walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. The deluded person thinks that straightforward mind is sitting without moving and casting aside delusions without letting things arise in the mind. This they consider to be the Samadhi of Oneness. This kind of practice is the same as in sentience, that is, the same as being a rock or a tree. The true Dharma is something that must circulate freely. If the mind doesn't abide in things, then the Dharma circulates freely. I don't know if you all know, but that's the name Reb gave to his temple in Mill Valley, mind of no abode. And then he takes on the classic debate between those who teach the gradual method to awakening, wiping the dust off the mirror, and those who teach the sudden method, no dust and no mirror.

[21:35]

Just this is it. Once enlightened, there is from the outset no distinction between the two methods. Those who are not enlightened will for long kalpas be caught in the cycle of transmigration, in the endless circling called samsara. Gradual, sudden. Sudden, gradual. Round and round they go. Good friends, in this teaching of mine from ancient times up to the present, all have set up no thought as the main doctrine, no form as the substance, and non-abiding as the basis. No form is to be separate from form even when associated with form. No thought is not to think even when involved in thought. And non-abiding is the original nature of the human mind. Sounds a lot like someone else we know, Master Dogen, for example, a direct Dharma successor for all he knew of this great Chinese teaching, Master Huenong.

[22:39]

The Dharma must be practiced. It has nothing to do with recitations. If you recite it and don't practice it, it will be like an illusion or a phantom. The Dharma body of the one who practices is the same as the Buddha. Practice, realization are one. So here's one last snippet from the Platform Sutra, which I, by the way, highly recommend you read. It is a bit like reading the Bible. You see all these very familiar sayings that you've heard over and over again in lectures. So this sutra actually fell out of favor at Zen Center for a number of years. I remember reading it when I first came in. I didn't hear anyone talk about it for a really long time. And I think it's because we found out that it was apocryphal. And so it's like, well, I'm not going to read that sutra if somebody made it up. It's like, well, you're making everything up. So I think we finally got over it, and we're starting to read it again. And it's really quite wonderful, actually.

[23:43]

I enjoy reading it, and I think you will, too. So these are the teacher Huynong's final words. Be the same as you would if I were here and sit all together in the meditation hall. If you are only peacefully calm and quiet, without motion, without judgments of right and wrong, without staying and without going, this then is the great way. After I have gone, just practice according with the Dharma in the same way that you did when I was with you. Were I still to be in the world and you went against the teachings, there would have been no purpose for me staying with you at this time. And after finishing speaking these words, the master at midnight quietly passed away. He was 76 years old. So four generations later in the 9th century, a descendant of Huynong split off... from the mainstream of the now-dominant Chan tradition in China and created a lineage of his own.

[24:48]

His name was Dongshan, in Japanese Tozan Ryokai. And it's his name, along with that of his disciple Sozan, from which we have inherited the name of our school, Soto, Sozan Tozan. When Dongshan was a little boy, he followed a teacher and recited the Heart Sutra, Prajna Paramita. When he came to the point where it says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, he suddenly felt his face with his hands and said, but I have eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and so on. Why does the scripture say they don't exist? The tutor was amazed and said, I'm not your teacher. And then he directed Dongshan to a Zen master who initiated him. He was fully ordained at the age of 21. There are lots of ways to understand what's going on here, as there are with all these stories. So the interpretation I like best is that our lineage is the lineage of the guilty ones, the ones who are called on to admit their opinions and their beliefs.

[25:57]

If we don't admit them, we will be imprisoned inside of them forever. So we are called on to acknowledge who we think we are and what we think is going on here, you know, like right here at Tassajara. which I personally find utterly amazing. And that's because you guys tell me everything. Which reminds me of a Shosan ceremony years ago when Reb was the abbot, and it's the same ceremony we're going to be having tomorrow evening together, when the teacher sits up there in front on a throne of sorts and answers questions one by one in front of the whole assembly. So at that time, this young monk... came forward and said to Reb in a somewhat challenging tone, who do you think you are sitting there? Pause. We all inhaled. Reb responded kindly, who do you think I am? The young monk had no reply.

[27:01]

So there is one other possibility, as Reb suggested on another occasion, and that is... In declaring, I have ears, eyes, and nose, that Dongshan, our founder, wasn't all that bright. However, to his credit, he did have independence of mind, which, as it turns out, is indispensable for seeking the truth. From the Fukan Zazengi, The bringing about of enlightenment cannot be fully understood by discriminative thinking. Indeed... It cannot be fully known by the practice or realizing of supernatural power either. It must be deportment, beyond hearing and seeing, beyond having or not having ears, eyes, nose, and so forth. Is it not a principle that is prior to knowledge and perception? This being the case, intelligence or lack of it does not matter. Between the dull and the sharp-witted, there is no distinction. So I personally always found it somewhat of a relief in reciting that section of the teaching since none of us will ever know if we are dull or sharp-witted because such comparisons are without basis in the realized mind of a Buddha.

[28:17]

And as Dogen goes on to say, practice realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward in practice is a matter of everydayness. Ho-hum. Dongshan, on the other hand, had not yet given up and was therefore quite determined to attain enlightenment to the point of allowing his own mother to perish of grief outside his door, begging to be let in. Nice, huh? This was a very big deal in Confucian China, where filial piety was the supreme value that glued the society together. Fortunately for us, the story goes on to say that his mother then came to him in a dream and told him that his firm determination to practice had allowed her to become free of her delusional emotional attachments to her son, and thereby to be reborn in the heaven of satisfaction. So, although a very close call, as...

[29:20]

this being the founder of our sect and all, I think we might need to do a little rewrite of that particular story, since it is a story. Anyway, Dongshan called on a number of very famous masters of his day, Matsu's disciple Tan Huan and Zen master Guishan. Guishan endeavored to awaken Dongshan, who was being very troubled by a teaching story. This one. A monk asked a teacher, What is the mind of the ancient Buddhas? The teacher says, Fences, walls, tiles, pebbles. The monk says, Aren't those inanimate things? The teacher replies, Yes, they are. The monk asks, Can they teach? The teacher responds, They are always teaching, clearly, unceasingly. The monk says, Why can't I hear them? Only the saints, the Arhats, can hear them, replies the teacher. Can you hear it?

[30:21]

asks the monk. No, says the teacher. Because then I would be an Arhat and you wouldn't be able to hear my teaching. I teach sentient beings, not Arhats. So after Dongshan told this story to Guishan, Guishan stood his whisk up on end and said, Understand? Dongshan said, I don't. I really like this guy. Huh? So Guishan then says, words will never explain it to you. And then he directs him to go see Yunnan. When he arrives, he brings up the preceding story and asks Yunnan, who can hear the teaching of the inanimate? Yunnan says, the inanimate can hear it. Dongshan says, why don't I hear it? And Yunnan says, I think Reb might have been right. Yunnan holds up his whisk. Do you hear it?

[31:21]

Dongshan, being a very honest guy, says, no. What scripture contains the teaching of the inanimate? And Yunnan says, haven't you read where the infinite light scripture says rivers, birds, trees, and groves all invoke the Buddha and the teaching? At this, Dongshan was awakened. I think maybe he just ran out of arrows. Anyway, again, being an honest man, he says to the teacher, I still have residual habits that have not yet been exhausted. So Jungian asks him, what have you done? Meaning, what selfish things have you been doing about that? And Dungshan says, I don't even practice the Four Noble Truths. Jungian asks, are you happy? Dungshan says, yes. It is as though I found a jewel in a trash heap. So then Dongshan asks, what should I do when I want to see my true being?

[32:24]

Yunnan says, ask the messenger within. Dongshan says, I'm asking him now. And Yunnan replies, what does he tell you? So it sounds a little bit like ping pong, doesn't it? Face to face transmission, at least in the lineage of the not too bright ones. With that, Dungshan takes leave of the teacher to set out again on his pilgrimage. But before going, he asks Yunnan, if after your death, someone asks me how to describe the teacher's reality, what should I answer? Yunnan remains silent for a while, and then he says, just this is it. Just this is it. Dungshan still had some doubts, but later in his travels, he is greatly enlightened. when he sees his own reflection in the water as he crosses a river, and he says, just this person, after which he wrote a verse. Don't seek from others, or you'll be estranged from yourself.

[33:28]

I now go on alone. Everywhere I encounter it. It now is me. I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with beings as is. So this is the family lore of our Soto Zen ancestors. And many of these stories, I think, are probably familiar to you, but maybe others of them are not. But what comes through to me most strongly is the effort that these people each made, beginning with the young prince, Shakyamuni, to break out of the entrapment of their own emotionalized conceptualizations, the thinking-feeling as a single person. They traveled long distances on foot with little food and no shelter. They sought out teachers. They asked questions. They didn't settle for answers that didn't completely free them from doubt. They watched their own minds, gaining mastery over their actions of karma, their karmic actions of body and of speech, which reminds me of another story that I heard not too long ago, also attributed to the people native to America,

[34:37]

The grandfather is walking with his grandchild, and he says to her, there are two wolves inside of me fighting against each other. One wolf is very cruel, and the other one is kind. With wide eyes, the child asks, grandfather, which wolf will win? The grandfather replies, the one I feed. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[35:26]

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