This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Are we in? If anyone can't hear at any point, please make yourselves seen and heard. Big arm motions might help. Otherwise, you know, call out. Okay? So, so happy to see

[01:01]

Those of you who arrived yesterday here, Rick, long journey. I think there were some other long journeys in this room, but I'm not sure who, so we'll find out later. Anyway, so happy you're here. So how are we? You know, my thumb thing, fists in the air, everybody, how are we? Pretty good. A little variation. That's good. Variation is good. So your nature update for the day. Venus and Jupiter are visible in the morning sky in the east. When we... I don't remember when it was, but it was dark. And it was this morning. And you could look over and see a very bright Venus and Jupiter pretty close to it.

[02:06]

They're heading for being conjunct this coming Sunday, the 27th. I think that's Sunday. So keep an eye out for Venus and Jupiter in the morning, getting closer and closer together. And the forecast is pretty clear between now and then, so it should be good. As Norman said, we did go out to see the eclipse. We walked out to the flats in the pouring rain, didn't see a thing, missed the building, you know, the, what do you call it, the room where we all met the other night. We walked right by it. and turned around, and anyway, we stood on the porch looking around and didn't see the eclipse. We walked back, and right when we got to the clearing where we have work meeting, that's where we began to see it.

[03:13]

So we didn't have to go out to the flats, or maybe our timing was just so. But the remarkable thing about an eclipse, I mean, it's just a moon that's kind of messed up and reddish-brown. But the remarkable thing is that the stars get so bright. It's kind of like if you... I was not at the place where the solar eclipse occurred a couple of years ago, but people who were there said, in the middle of the day, during the eclipse, you can see the stars. So that's what's remarkable to me about this eclipse. Suddenly the sky is very dark, and the moonlight, which is so bright, which we saw this morning, isn't there, but yet there's the moon. Anyway, I'm the kind of person that gets excited about stuff like that.

[04:18]

Today, and perhaps for the next couple of talks, I'm going to talk about Huinang and the Platform Sutra. For some of you, this may be a new topic, but for many, it will seem like, you know, singing songs around the campfire. Everybody knows the words, but the song... Always is fun to sing again. It always sounds good. It's always got some new energy. Like Home on the Range. Tanya, do you know Home on the Range? We'll get to that. The Platform Sutra... of Hui Nong. Hui Nong is the sixth ancestor, Daikan Eno in our morning chant.

[05:22]

It is foundational. It's a foundational text in Zen. It's the only text in Chinese that's called a Sutra. And it holds lots of important teachings and important instructions. It's referred to directly and indirectly in many koans and in Dogen's work. And it is user-friendly. You can just pick it up and read it, which is nice. However, before I talk about Huenang and the Platform Sutra, I'd like to tell you about amoeba, amoeba. They are single-celled organisms classified as protists. Protists is kind of a catch-all kingdom of creatures that mostly have one cell and a nucleus.

[06:34]

Unlike bacteria, which are one cell, but they don't have a nucleus. So, other than this one cell and having a nucleus, and it's one cell most of the time and having a nucleus the organisms in this kingdom are wildly different from each other and scientists are constantly debating and reclassifying some want to call amoeba its own kingdom that's how weird it is and this is I just want to say a note about science, which is one reason I like science so much. Science is a human activity. It's a human approach to understanding the world, to understanding ourselves and our place in the world. And it's an expression of the human mind.

[07:39]

It's the way humans see and hear. and think. So studying science, one can think when is studying amoeba. And there's something about amoeba that we are studying. But when we study science, we're really studying how humans work. That's one reason I like it, anyway. So amoeba are weird. They're diverse. And they're very, very common. As single-celled organisms, they evolved maybe three and a half billion years ago, you know, give or take a couple hundred million years. It's hard to say. It was a long time ago. Slime mold is in the amoeba group.

[08:41]

and is considered by some scientists as a good possibility for the origination of the animal kingdom. So when I taught seventh grade, you know, sometimes I would have evangelical students, not that many in Mill Valley, but a few, and they would say to me when we're studying evolution, Mrs. Fisher, did we really evolve from monkeys? And I would say, not so much. Really, we evolved from slime mold. Which is probably pretty true. Animals evolved about 750 million years ago, three quarters of a billion. So several billion after the one-celled creatures. And the first animal to evolve, we're pretty sure, is the sponge. I love sponges.

[09:46]

I'll talk more about sponges later, but, you know, I'm a scuba diver, and I like to take pictures. And the great thing about sponges is that they don't go away. So I have a lot of sponge pictures. Sponges clean up the ocean, period. They have some help. but they clean up the ocean. So if ever you run out of things to be grateful for in life, be grateful for the sponges. They're doing awesome work out there for the last 750 million years. But back to the amoeba, billions of years old. One interesting thing about amoeba is that they're one-celled organisms that multiply through mitosis.

[10:47]

What that means is that you can look at them as immortal. They don't die on their own. They don't have like a life cycle. They come to the end of their life cycle and die. They divide. And then there's two daughter, what's called daughter cells, and they go off and they divide. So, depending on how you look at it, the amoeba is immortal. You can kill them, especially if you're a seventh grade science student. I used to order lots of organisms from the science catalog around this time of year, and each year I'd bring some home along with a microscope and drag Norman away from his poetry to look at amoeba. And, you know, it's hard to look at amoeba without loving them.

[11:51]

Norman too loves amoeba. But what I want to tell you about them is how they move. They don't have a specific shape. When they want to do something or go somewhere, they shape-shift. And they move from the inside out. A single amoeba looks like a bag of particles. In fact, when you first look in the microscope, you don't know what you're looking at. All you see is schmutz, a bunch of particles. And then you might see... a stream of particles moving along, and you realize that there's a boundary around the sack of particles that you're looking at. So the stream of particles moves from the inside out to, say, form an arm to grab some food.

[13:00]

Or it from the inside out to form a foot to go over there. In other words, they form appendages from the inside out as needed. Like, if I need a piece of food and it's over there and I'm an amoeba, I just sort of send my body from the inside out over there grab the food, I don't even have to bring it back. I can just digest it right there and then sort of incorporate it back into my body. And if I want to go over there, I just grow a foot and then sort of shape-shift off in that direction. To me, this is inspiring. And it brings to mind Avalokiteshvara of many hands and eyes and ears.

[14:11]

And I'm the kind of person who thinks, surely Avalokiteshvara doesn't have a set number of eyes and ears and arms, because what if one more person needed her help? So I'm thinking that she acts like an amoeba, responds to need, by growing an arm, by growing eyes, by growing ears, especially with the increase in the human population over the last hundred plus years. You know, for most of our human history, our population has been, you know, gradually increasing but hovering around a half a billion, sometimes more, sometimes less. until, of course, the Industrial Revolution. So, I'm thinking that Avalokiteshvara has had to adapt. So, amoeba also inspire me because they work from the inside out.

[15:25]

They respond to what is needed from the inside out. And this is a useful image for me in meditation. I call this the amoeba way. Fully alive, sensing what is needed, working from the inside out. I thought we might take a minute on the amoeba way. Allow the body to fall into the earth with the earth's gravity. When air is needed, allow the air to lift up from the inside the upper body.

[16:32]

What is needed? What is needed? So Hui Nung, the sixth ancestor, Daikan Eno, his years were 638 to 713. So he lived to be 75 or so.

[17:43]

His father was an exiled official. He'd been exiled for 20 years when Hui Nung was born. Huy Nung's mother was illiterate, possibly from a hill tribe in what is now Vietnam, according to Red Pine speculation. He was born 1,500 kilometers from the capital, which indicates that his father had committed a serious offense. because officials were exiled, the distance was proportional to the seriousness of their offense, and 1,500 kilometers was the max. More serious than that, they were killed. So we have no idea what anything about Huy Nung's father, what he could have done, but 20 years before...

[18:52]

Huynang's birth, 618, was the beginning of the Tang dynasty. So Huynang's father may have fallen on the wrong side of the victors. He may have been an official in the Sui dynasty, the previous dynasty. We don't know. Anyway, Huynang's father died when Huynang was young, maybe about three years. So Hui Neung was raised by his mother. He grew up poor. He grew up selling firewood to help support his mother and himself. One day, while selling firewood, he heard someone reciting the Diamond Sutra. And something awoke in him. He asked the person where he had learned this, and the person told him from Master Hong Run, some distance, 1,500 kilometers north on the Yangtzu River.

[20:03]

Wei Nung traveled for 30 days to get to Hong Run's monastery. At their meeting, I'm going to read this to you, oh, if I can see. Hongren asked, where are you from and what do you hope to get from me? I answered, I, Huynang, answered, your disciple is from Lingnan, a commoner of Xinzhou. The reason I came all this way to pay my respects is I want to be a Buddha. I don't want anything else. Well, that's clear.

[21:08]

The master scoffed, but you're from Lingnan and a jungle rat as well. how can you possibly be a Buddha? I replied, people come from the north or south, not their Buddha nature. The lives of this jungle rat and the master aren't the same, but how can our Buddha nature differ? So Hongran... according to the story, recognized the understanding, the extraordinary understanding of this jungle rat, but also knew that it would be dangerous for him to promote him because his monks were expecting to be promoted according to custom.

[22:15]

There may have been over a thousand monks in Hong Run's monastery. The Zen monasteries at that time, the Buddhist monasteries, were very, very large. And the Hong Run's monastery, many monasteries, were connected to the emperor in all kinds of twisty ways. It's not unlike the Vatican and the Pope in European history. So Hong Run felt a need to protect Huinang from possible harm that would come to him. So he was sent to work pounding rice, which he did for eight months. So pounding rice... One story says, one iteration of this tale says that Hui Nung was a very, he was a small person, he was very slight, and pounding rice was really hard work.

[23:22]

It meant, you know, walking around with a grinding stone. So he tied a stone to his body to increase his weight, and he would walk around and grind the rice in this way. So that's what he did for eight months. After eight months, Hongran decides that he wants to pass the lineage to a disciple of his. And so he sets up a poetry contest. He gathers his monks and asks them each to compose a verse expressing their understanding. Now, I'm thinking that if there were over a thousand monks, he probably didn't ask all of them to compose a verse. He probably asked the senior monks. But it doesn't say that anywhere that I could find.

[24:24]

But that would be a lot of reading for Holm Run to do if they all composed a verse. Anyway, the senior monks... kind of went back to their quarters and said, yeah, right, we're going to compose a verse when obviously the guy who's going to get the transmission is Shen Qiyo. So first of all, I'm not going to mess with Shen Qiyo and compete with him. And second of all, it's a waste of time. So all the monks are kind of deferring. They're kind of saying, no, no, not going to do that. So the whole job landed on Shen Qiyo's Shen Teo, in the meantime, found himself in a pickle. You know, his master says, huh, write me a poem expressing your understanding so I can find out who's going to be my disciple.

[25:26]

No pressure. And the story goes, at least this story, that he stews about it. He goes back and forth and says, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? If I do this, if I do that, it's all wrong. What am I going to do? Well, there is a certain wall in the temple that has been designated for a certain famous artist to come and create a fresco on this wall, a scene from the Lankavadara Sutra, which means a lot of arhats. painted on this wall. So that is the plan, and that project was going to start the next day. So Shenzhou says to himself, huh, I think I'll write my poem on that wall, and I won't sign it. That way, if it's a lousy poem, no one will know it's mine.

[26:27]

And so that's what he does, according to the legend. Well, When Hongran sees the poem, he calls all the monks to chant and offer incense, to remember the poem, to memorize the poem and recite the poem. But he calls Shenzhou to his room and tells him, though the poem will help monks in their practice, it doesn't express full understanding. Please go back and try again. Meanwhile, Huinang is grinding rice. He gets wind of the poem. He hears a monk walking by reciting this poem. I haven't told you the poem yet. And he asks the monk, oh, what poem is that? And the monk explains the whole thing. Huinang says, oh, please take me to see this poem on the wall.

[27:35]

so that I too can make an offering. So the monk agrees, takes Hui Nung to where the poem is written on the wall, and Hui Nung asks him to read him the poem again, and he does, and he thinks of his own poem. So he asks the monk, or another monk, to please write his own verse. which the monk does. Huyneng goes back to his quarters, to his rice grinding. And there's a bit of a stir over this new poem. Hongrong comes out and reads the poem, sees that this person does have the understanding that he's looking for, but says out loud, ah, this guy doesn't get it either, and goes back in his quarter. quarters. That night, he secretly calls Hui Nung to his quarters and gives him Dharma transmission.

[28:43]

He passes on the robe of Buddha, the bowl, and the Dharma. And, you know, part of the reason I wanted to talk about this story is because this event in six probably 680s or so, 670s. We still follow this today. When Dharma transmission is given, it happens in the middle of the night. It's a ceremony that we do in the middle of the night. It's personal, it's private, and it has a kind of quiet secret feel to it. And it harkens back to this story. So Hongran tells Huynang, okay, now you've got the lineage, you're the lineage holder, now you've got to get out of Dodge.

[29:49]

So he takes him, he takes Huynang down to the river, puts him on a ferry, tells him to travel south and to hide for about three years until things calm down and says goodbye. And Huynang says, more or less does that. There are a lot more twists and turns and there are a lot of versions of this story. Fact is, the story of Kuei Nang is undoubtedly more fable than fact. There's a lot of versions of the story. You can't help but notice that elements of the story resemble fables that you've heard all your life from all over the world. It's like Cinderella. Poor, ignored person turns out to be the one who attains blessings or whatever.

[31:01]

But in the case of this legend, It's even more than that. There's information that seems to suggest that the fable was created kind of as a political tool to gain influence by certain disciples of this one and that one. So it's full of political intrigue and fake news, the whole thing. It's pretty human. The Shen Qiu, the one who writes the first verse, is ridiculed in this story. He's shamed in this story. Fact is, Shen Qiu became a very important and prominent teacher as one of Hong Run's disciples.

[32:08]

He was... invited into, I think he was for a while the teacher of Empress Wu, Empress Wu of Liang. And so he was an important person in his time. He lived to be over a hundred. So we have some hints of this, you know, the telling of this story is, it doesn't remind us of fact. But still, after, you know, 1,300 years, 1,400 years, the story speaks to us. The story seems really personal. It's very compelling. And however it got to us, we find value in it. We find tremendous value in it. So let me read you the poems. So here's Shen Xiu's poem, the first one.

[33:23]

The body is a Bodhi tree. The mind is like a standing mirror. Always try to keep it clean. Don't let it gather dust. I'll read it again. The body is a Bodhi tree. The mind is like a standing mirror. Always try to keep it clean. Don't let it gather dust. Here's Wei Nung's poem. Bodhi doesn't have any trees. This mirror doesn't have a stand. Our Buddha nature is forever pure. Where do you get this dust? I'll read it again. Bodhi doesn't have any trees. This mirror doesn't have a stand. Our Buddha nature is forever pure.

[34:28]

Where do you get this dust? So these two poems, you know, in the history of Chan, They designated the Northern and Southern School, the gradual and the sudden awakening schools. But for us, I feel like these, that split, the Northern and Southern School, they both died out and they morphed into something else. Northern School went to Tibet. The Southern School changed and went to Japan, more or less. But for us, I feel like it's a non-issue, because these two verses are like my two hands.

[35:33]

They go together. They express the two aspects of our practice, which are one. You know, we have Shen Xiu, polishing the mirror. I mean, we polish mirrors all day long here at Tassajara. We spend a lot of time understanding how to do forms correctly and how to refine them. It's really what we do here. And we also let the forms go. We sit down on our cushion and let the forms go. We do both. We do both on our cushion and we do both as we're walking around working. So that, you know, I think we've all had the experience that, you know, we polish the mirror.

[36:39]

Everybody polishes the mirror because it's on your list of things to do. Polish the mirror, you know, whatever, do all the stuff. But ultimately we polish the mirror because we are mirror polishers. We are mirror polishers. That's what we do. You know, there's woodpeckers. There's mirror polishers. There's filter feeders that clean up the ocean. So mirror polishing and all the array of activities that we do is what we do. And what we do is we make lists. We are list makers and mirror polishers. That's how we work. So it's not that once I finish polishing all these mirrors, then...

[37:41]

I can not have any trees, not have a stand, and find my pure Buddha nature. It's not like within form you can reach around behind form to get to emptiness. Form and emptiness in our practice intermingle all the time. So I'd like to end reading a passage from Hui Nang.

[39:02]

You know, Hui Nang, the other interesting thing about, the wonderful thing about the Platform Sutra is that it contains many of our ceremonies, like the one we did last night, the refuges. the confessions all my ancient twisted karma I now fully avow that's from the platform sutra and and it you know it makes the point that okay I now fully avow it but that it's not like okay I'm done I'm done with avowing all my ancient twisted karma. No. It's time to avow my ancient twisted karma again on the next moment. I now do it. Not that I have to go through a lot of steps and twisty and turn this way and that way to get my ancient twisted karma avowed.

[40:07]

No. I can avow it right now, right on this moment. But it's not a magic trick. It doesn't disappear. It's back in the next moment. Hui Neng, the next time, on my next talk, I'll share with you Hui Neng's first, supposedly his first Dharma talk, in which he says, everyone is already enlightened, but we're a little confused. We've got stuff clouding our minds. But this, I'd like to read this, his refuges to end. I take refuge in the pure Dharma body Buddha in my own material body. I take refuge in the myriad fold transformation body Buddha in my own material body.

[41:15]

I take refuge in the future and perfect realization body Buddha in my own material body. So we have the opportunity with this teaching of the Platform Sutra to really move in, move into this practice hands and feet and weird little particles just move in and completely inhabit our body, our life, this moment. Our own material body. Thank you. 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.

[42:23]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[42:32]

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