Good evening. Very nice day here at Green Gulch. Unfortunately, we're in a drought. So all these beautiful days are a little tainted by the lack of rain. We're already on high alert for not using water probably throughout the summer. So I'm going to hit the bell and we can all sit together for a few minutes and we'll talk about long ago. Bodhidharma. So now welcome back for those of you who are returners, many returners, sorry, once returners.

[05:54]

For those of you arriving, sometimes new people come and I just wanted to that you know that we're looking at a text called The Transmission of Light, which is written by a Japanese Zen master descendant of Dogen Zenji, who is basically collecting stories about the Zen ancestors. And he starts his narrative, the 53 stories with Shakyamuni Buddha. And then he talks about the transmission of light or the transmission of Dharma from one of these teachers considered to be a Zen ancestor to the next, to the next, and so on and so forth. So we've gone through the first several ancestors, Shakyamuni Buddha to Mahakashapa, and then to Ananda. And then we went forward to Nagarjuna, that's called the second Buddha, second century genius philosopher who's been incredibly influential in helping to explain emptiness teachings. And then we looked at the Yogacara teachings with Vasubandhu's 30 verses.

[07:01]

So now these two streams of philosophical commentary and thinking, which has been what monks have studied for centuries in the great universities of India, these teachings are now beginning to travel, and they're traveling along the Silk Route. My understanding of what was going on there in the Silk Route is there was pretty much a Buddhist kingdom that ran all along the Silk Route, and each of these little oases had temples and monks, and they would do prayers for the merchants. And monks gave good luck. So one of the things that oftentimes a camel caravan would bring monks along with them and their texts and their amulets and so on for safety. So one of the ways that Buddhism moved out of India and into China and other places in East Asia was with the merchants as part of a trade. providing blessings and safety. And they brought their texts with them.

[08:02]

So this went on for a great number of centuries. So at this point, we're looking at the arrival of Zen, the story we call Zen, into China. And the famous carrier of that tradition is Bodhidharma, who is probably legendary. apocryphal narrative about Bodhidharma. It was a very long time ago. And his arrival in China, however, is, you know, quite famous. It's in artwork, it's in text, it's in stories, stories I'm going to share with you now in the collection of koans. Bodhidharma is the Zen master who came from India to China. I mean, that's as far as I ever knew when I arrived at Zen Center, that was the truth. And so a lot of this later Scholarship has, you know, put a little dent in the truth, but it's made it more interesting truth out of it. More interesting way that human beings have of carrying narratives to their generations that follow, you know, through stories.

[09:11]

We have lots and lots of stories and all traditions have carry stories of their ancestors. So this is the story of our ancestor. So it was just a few weeks ago that we entered into a study of the arrival of Northern Indian Mahayana Buddhism into China with Bodhidharma. So before I go back into the mythical formations of our Zen ancestors legend, I wanted to bring just a little bit of historic evidence concerning the arrival of these great wisdom teachings into China. So as I've said earlier, there are these two major lines throughout human storytelling. One of them is, we could say, is mythical, mythos. the mythical stories of the Greek gods and all of our own Christian mythical traditions and Jewish mythical traditions of the ancestors. So that's one way we convey stories by myth, Arthurian legends. And so there are many, many, many myths. And the other side is historical scholarship, which is somewhat new.

[10:14]

I mean, this is more of our kind of modern view of how to look at things from looking at the written record, finding history, what the antecedents to that writing are, where it likely happened first and who did it and how it got there and that sort of thing. And bringing a sort of scientific scholastic view. to these very wonderful texts. And so Zen certainly has been a subject of a great deal of research and fascination since they found these caves in China, the Dunhuang Caves. There were so many texts were brought out of the caves about 100 years ago. And lots of scholars have just been going through these texts and coming up with all kinds of new information. So this is the logos side, the logical side. So there's mythos and logos. And so before I go back to the mythos side, I thought I'd share with you a little bit more from the logos side or the historical research side of how Zen and Buddhism came into China.

[11:14]

So there's a great deal of evidence, apparently, according to scholars, that Buddhism first arrived in China through these Indian missionaries who were traveling on the Silk Route rather than one theory was they came by sea, by ocean. and the other that they came along the Silk Route. It seems that most scholars now agree that it was via the Silk Route, that most of this material travel into China. And it was about the first century of the Common Era that the very first texts, Buddhist texts, came into China. This period was called the Han Dynasty, H-A-N, the Han Dynasty. So these earliest forms of Buddhism were mixed up very early with the Taoist teachings. So someone asked, I think it might have been one of you about Taoism's connection to Buddhism. And I did read a little bit into that. There certainly was an intimate connection. In fact, they were pretty much being translated as if the terminology that Taoists were using was the same terminology that Buddhists were using.

[12:18]

For example, the word nirvana, Sanskrit word nirvana, was translated into the Chinese word wu-wei, meaning immortality. So... How the Taoists were looking at spiritual life and the idea of immortality, life everlasting and so on, certainly wasn't a Buddhist concept. But that was already becoming a kind of understood equivalency in these early years of the arrival of Buddhism. So Buddhism appealed to the Taoists in this emphasis on cultivating inner wisdom of inward wisdom. inward looking, you know, looking at the mind and cultivating your inner life. And it also appealed to the Confucianists because of the emphasis in Buddhism on morality and on ritual. So these two native traditions were not initially offended too much by the arrival of the Buddhists. So there's a wonderful traditional account. that has been recorded in Chinese literature, the popular legends, Chinese legends regarding how Buddhism came into China.

[13:26]

According to one of the most popular ones, it was Emperor Ming of the Han. So this would be about between 28 and 75 of the Common Era and just the beginning of Common Era. This Emperor Ming was responsible for introducing Buddhism into China. And there's this story that comes from a text that I can't pronounce, but it's Mouzi Li Houlon, something, that's how it reads, M-O-U-Z-I-L-I-H-U-O-L-U-N, which is a text that was written by a Confucian in the second century who converted to Buddhism. So he writes this legend about the Buddhism arriving in China. This is a little different than Bodhidharma. In the olden days, Emperor Meng saw in a dream a god whose body had the brilliance of the sun and who flew before his palace. And he rejoiced exceedingly at this. The next day, the emperor asked his officials, what god is this?

[14:30]

The scholar Fu Yi said, your subject has heard that in India there is somebody who has attained the Tao and who is called Buddha. He flies in the air. His body has the brilliance of the sun. This must be the god that you dreamt of. So then the emperor sent an envoy to southern India to inquire about the teachings of the Buddha. And Buddhist scriptures were said to have been brought back to China on the backs of white horses, after which the White Horse Temple was named. And also along with the books came two Indian monks. One was named Dharma Ratna and one was Kashyapa Matanga. So these are the first Buddhist monks and the first texts that are said to have appeared in China. There's a fresco in these Dongguan caves, some of you know something about that, that portrays Emperor Wu of Han, this emperor, worshiping statues of a golden man. A golden man that was brought, so the statue of a golden man that was brought to China in 121 BCE, so this is even longer ago, by a great general,

[15:40]

during one of his campaigns against nomads there. So it looks like some Buddhist art may have made it into China even earlier than this story about the emperor. It was when the texts were translated, there's actually some concrete evidence rather than narratives and myths or, you know, apocryphal stories about how things happen. They actually have the texts and they have them dated. They know when they were written. So Buddhist texts, which included very basic doctrines, basic teachings from the early canon, from the Abhidharma, and also teachings about meditation practices, were basically found in about 148 of the Common Era. They arrived with a prince who became a monk. His name was An Shigel, and he had enough wealth and enough prestige to to establish temples and sponsor translation projects in China.

[16:41]

So this is beginning to, you know, kind of like us here in California, we've got our first little organization here on the coast, you know, Zen Center, and we have another couple little temples here and there. So we're kind of in this business of propagating. of Buddhism. So I was talking to a friend today and she said, you know, you're foreigners. What you're doing is foreign. You're bringing a religion. You're importing a religion from another culture into... And I thought, that's true. I hadn't really thought about that. I'm basically representing a foreign religion, which was one of the reasons that the Chinese were suspicious of Buddhism. This is a foreign religion. What are you doing bringing this here? So... Mahayana Buddhism became more widely propagated over time through another monk, a Kushan monk. Kusha is an area, a Buddhist, part of the Buddhist empire, basically, of Oasis.

[17:42]

His name was Loka Sema. Sloka Sema came from Gandhara. So that beautiful Buddha we have at Tassajara is a Gandhara Buddha. And so is the one in the city center. They're absolutely beautiful stone figures that are from this area called Gandhara, where a great many Buddhist kingdom, great many beautiful stone. They have kind of Greek features in a number of them. They're sort of at a crossroads of where trade between Asia and Europe was quite active. So Gandhara produced some of this very beautiful So this monk, Loka Kashema, arranged for some translations of many, many texts, including the 8,000-line Prajnaparamita from which our Heart Sutra is derived. And again, the emphasis here was on the ascetic practices, meditation, dwelling in the forests, and concentration, focusing and entering into samadhi.

[18:44]

So deep concentration states. So these are all becoming part of what eventually opens out into what's called Chan or Zen. And one other important piece of this true story of Chinese Buddhism has to do with another famous translator whose name is Kumara Jiva. Kumara Jiva apparently was an amazing gifted intellectual who had been captured. He was from... Kucha, another Buddhist kingdom. Apparently he was actually Chinese, but he lived in Kucha. When Kucha was taken over by the Chinese, Kumrajiva was a prisoner and he was kept in prison. Then they realized, this is in the fourth century, they realized they had this brilliant scholar monk and they let him out of prison and actually he became a very well-regarded member of the royal household and he was given permission by the emperor to set up a translation, what do you call it, team.

[19:49]

And he had many different scholars were brought in from all over, different parts of East Asia were brought in to help. And eventually they translated so many of the Mahayana Sutras, many of which, many of these translations, and again, this is the fourth century, are still... used today. They're considered the most beautiful, the most fluid, the best translation into Chinese of many and haven't been redone because they were so well done these many, many centuries ago. So among those sutras that were translated by Kumrajiva and his team of translators was the Diamond Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, the Vimalakirti Sutra, and then Nagarjuna's Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, which we looked at some a few months back. So these are all available now in China, at this time in China. And again, this is the fourth century. So it's quite a while ago. So these early Buddhist texts, which were coming in a little bit piecemeal, wasn't like a certain school arrived and they set up a temple and had their teachings and their texts.

[20:55]

Various texts from various locations arrived in China piecemeal. So... Each one of them pretty much became the kind of seedbed for a kind of school to grow. So there was the Pure Land School around the Pure Land Sutras. There was the Tendai School around the Lotus Sutra. And there was the Huayan School around the Flower Ornament Sutra. So these schools had chosen among these many texts, one particular text for their focus. That was kind of emblematic of Chinese Buddhism for a very long time. Lots of schools focusing on one particular Mahayana text. So there's one other figure of great historic importance. And we talked about him earlier on. There was a film, I think maybe some of you may have watched it. And that's Swan Song, who is the seventh century pilgrim who traveled from China. This is his traveling outfit. Traveled from China to India.

[22:00]

I forget how long it took him. Quite a while. And on foot. And he went to, he was determined to find the original source of these teachings. So I had to sneak out of China. It was not legal to leave China. And... He arrived eventually in Nalanda University, the great university, Buddhist university, and he studied there for many years and became quite well versed in traditional teaching. In particular, he studied the Yogacara teaching. So Yogacara did make its way into India. I mean, Bodhidharma is also credited with bringing Yogacara teachings in the form of the Lankavatarasutra. Swansong also brought these amazing texts back with him. He came back, I think it was 17 years later, and by then he was quite famous. Word was out that this monk had traveled this great distance. And so he was basically greeted with heroes when he returned rather than being punished for having left in the first place.

[23:05]

He became a great hero in China. And again, the emperor sponsored him with the translation team. And so he came back with 700 Sanskrit texts with statues and drawings and many other Buddhist ritual implements. So this was a huge impact in this very famous monk bringing back to China. As I said, his primary interest, Swansong's own primary interest, the Yogacara school, And so as a result of that, there did come into being in China a school around the Yogachar teachings called the Fajang school, and it didn't last terribly long, but it had a tremendous influence on other schools of Buddhism, including, of course, Zen, which did come to dominate Chinese Buddhism a few centuries down the line. One other small interesting note is that the first printed book was a Buddhist book that was printed in China, block print book, which was the Diamond Sutra, so the Prajnaparamita Sutra in the ninth century.

[24:11]

So these books were becoming highly valued and were being distributed around to a great many parts of ancient China. So by the time of the Song Dynasty, So there was a Tang. So it had with the Han, that's way back when. Now we have the Song Dynasty, which is between the 10th and the 13th centuries. John had become very useful. It had now created its own dominant personality in China and had become very useful by the government to strengthen its hold or its control of the country. You know, it's very handy to have. The Tibetans did the same thing. The Tibetan, I think he's called an emperor, the king of Tibet, brought in Buddhism to help pacify the kind of wild bond people who were running around doing things on their horses. So he basically wanted to bring something in that would kind of temper this energetic population. Same thing in China.

[25:13]

These monasteries were very... good places to kind of store a lot of that, you know, extreme energy that flows in cultures, particularly young males have a lot of that kind of energy. So either you put them in the army, that's one way to do it, or you put them in a monastery, that's another way. But either way, you're getting training, you're getting some discipline, and you're getting some way of behaving in the culture, which is useful to the culture, as opposed to just kind of running around and having small little, you know, gangs or whatever you do, creating kind of chaos. So this is one way the government can try to bring some controlling influences. So Chan became that in China. And it was during this Song period, the 10th to the 13th century, that this idealized version of Chan was completely finished. It crystallized into the full story. And that's where Bodhidharma's story came. now appears as part of the mythos.

[26:15]

And it's become solid. It's now as if true. There's no other truth. And this is the golden age of Zen that the Song Dynasty has now written down and printed and published and distributed throughout China. And it's basically an idealization of the Tang Dynasty. And Bodhidharma was the Tang Dynasty, great master of the Tang. Just going a little bit further historically, by the time of the Ming Dynasty, we're getting a little closer to my own knowledge of China, basically by the porcelain. So we have a Ming Dynasty, 14th century to the 17th century. The Chan School was so firmly established in China that all the monks were either from the Linji branch, the Rinzai branch, or the Chaodong branch, which is the Soto branch. That's us. Zen Center is Soto branch.

[27:16]

And so these are the two main players in China as they became also in Japan. And they're kind of like that here too. We have these two of the folks I know. I know a number of people who've studied Rinzai Zen. And then of course, I know a lot of people who've studied Soto Zen. And these both have now arrived here in the West, further West. So there's so much more. It's fascinating history, the history of Buddhism in China. And of course, all of you are welcome to be your own scholars and look up whatever of it you like. So at this point, I think I'll just turn back to the mythic side, the story of how Chan came to China with this narrative of Bodhidharma's journey to the West and how the two main pieces of that being his transmission of the Lankavatara Sutra the Yogacara teachings, and also his transmission of the Tathakata Garba teachings, which are sutras that talk about the Buddha nature, that in each of us, basically, there's this Buddha nature.

[28:23]

And all we have to do is clean off the mess. And there's the Buddha right there. It's already here. We just need to stop blocking the Buddha's view of how the world really is and how we really are. You know, this very mind is Buddha. I read that to you from Bodhitarma's Bloodstream Sermon. This very mind is Buddha. So this primary teaching is very powerful and it's instructional. It's like, okay, now meditate on that. You know, like somebody said, that's a little refrigerator magnet. You said, what would Buddha do? You know, you're already Buddha. So what would Buddha do? How would Buddha handle the situation? Someone once said, I remember years ago that Buddha Classical Buddhism or early Buddhism starts with ethics. So there's three components of early Buddhism. There's ethics, shila. There's concentration, samadhi. And there's prajna, wisdom. So almost every sutra that the Buddha gives in the early Pali Canon, you have those three things.

[29:27]

You have ethics, you have concentration, and you have wisdom. Someone said early on that, well, Zen kind of turned these around. You start with wisdom. in the Zen school, you're already Buddha. Now, concentrate on that, and you will see that ethical deportment is the only conclusion that a Buddha can make. If you're the Buddha, and everything you're going to do when you recognize that through your samadhi, your concentration practices, will be of a non-dual nature, will be of alignment, as the Buddha was, with the star and with all things, as not separate. And therefore, as all things are myself, I care for them all as I do for myself. So that's one way of understanding the emphasis in the Zen school. You start off with, you're already Buddha. It's not someplace you have to go. You're already there. By the beginning of the 6th century, Chan, which is the name of Zen in China, Chan and Zen,

[30:33]

has been characterized this way as a separate transmission outside the scriptural teaching that did not posit any written text as sacred. Zen points directly to the human mind to enable people to see their real nature and become Buddhas. So I think I talked about that a bit last week, too. It's like what's happening in Zen is kind of turning away from studying scriptures, sitting in the library, you know, bowing and chanting Buddha's name and doing all these various things, these ritual actions to accumulate merit, that the emphasis now is on your living response to the situation you're in, particularly the situation of facing a Zen teacher. You know, here's a very special situation that you can put yourself in of what do you do when you're face to face with someone who has been face to face with someone who has been face to face with someone who has been putting their life energy into studying and trying to understand the meaning of this, of these teachings and of trying to live that way of life.

[31:39]

So, you know, this is kind of very intimate. It's very, there's a lot of emotion that goes along with that. It's not particularly safe feeling to be face to face with another human being. It doesn't matter who it is. So here we have a school or a tradition which is basing its entire transmission story on meeting with one another, coming together and meeting with one another. Now here we call it doksan, doksan. You go and you meet with a teacher and you talk about it, whatever it is, whatever is coming through you as your spiritual inquiry. that's what you have this opportunity to talk about. And I can say quite honestly, it is some of the most wonderful, fascinating and engaging conversations of my life are those conversations that people are able to bring in to the Doxalan room.

[32:40]

And anyway, if you haven't done it, if something you haven't done yet, it's certainly a a part of life that I think one should experience, you know, like riding a bike maybe or something like that. So through these teachings, this kind of teaching, like this separate transmission outside scriptural teachings, Chan became known as face-to-face, warm-hand-to-warm-hand school. It was now all about the living exemplars and that this living exemplars This model of how to be this idealized awakened being is something that was then inherited and transmitted from generation to generation. And just as we endeavor to do to this very day, you know, we have, I showed you the lineage transmission documents, which are called the transmission of the Buddha mind seal, you know, or as Kazan calls it, the transmission of light.

[33:43]

So, it's sort of like skipping the middleman in some ways, skip the texts, you know, that's fine, you read the text, that's really good. You want that background in Dharma study, that's extremely helpful. No one said don't read the text, don't read the scriptures. All the monks I know, Japanese monks, well-trained, have gone to a university and studied Buddhism scholastically, so they have very good education. You know, I wish we had such things here for our students to start off with. to really get that classical education in Buddhism. And then you go into this monastic training, you know, with already having a kind of full understanding of the classical teachings. So back to Bodhidharma. And I had said to you that I was going to share these stories about Bodhidharma's arrival in China that are printed or told in these two very well-known texts, collections of koans.

[34:49]

One of them is called the Blue Cliff Record, and the other is called the Book of Serenity. There's a big difference between these two collections that's interesting. The Blue Cliff Record is primarily a Rinzai lineage of teachers who've collected these stories. Not all the teachers did, in the Blue Cliff Record or Rinzai, but the view of what's going on in the stories has been written by a Rinzai teacher. Whereas the Book of Serenity is a collection of stories by a very well-known Soto Zen teacher by the name of Hongzhi. And I'll say a little bit about him in a minute. So the Blue Cliff Record, and the Blue Cliff Record looks like that. It's a collection of 100 cases. This one was translated by Thomas Cleary and his brother, and with a foreword by Maizumi Roshi, who was the Japanese Zen master in Los Angeles, passed away some years back.

[35:54]

So this text is 100 cases that was compiled in the Song, Song China, by a monk or teacher by the name of Shui To. T-O-U. Shui is H-S-U-E-H. Shui Toh. So Shui Toh in the 11th century collected these cases and he wrote little verses to go along with them. So he didn't do a lot other than he collected the cases and wrote some verses about them. About a century later, another Chan master by the name of Huan Wu, it's Y-U-A-N-W-U, So this is Tao, T-O-U, N-W-U. These are the Rinzai teachers. He then expanded each of the stories by adding commentary and by adding an introduction to each story and then by commenting on the verses that were written by Shui To. So the original stories, the koans themselves, which are taken from Buddhist sermons or sutras,

[36:56]

They're taken from collections of earlier anthologies of conversations that Buddhist teachers had with one another. There's a whole bunch of stuff running around that these Zen teachers collected, made into a collection that they thought were the best ones, and then made comments of them. So the combination of the story and then Shuitos, who collected them, he made some pointers to the story, some suggestions about how to understand them and wrote verses. And then Huan Wu wrote this introduction. and made some remarks and commentaries of his own. So those two teachers, along with the original stories, are what make up the Blue Cliff Record. So each of the stories is treated by each of these teachers, one with a verse and the other one with some commentaries. So that's basically who we're hearing when we're reading these stories. Now, Dogen Zenji is said to have... the night he was going to leave China, so he had gone to China to study, he found his teacher there, Ru Jing.

[37:57]

That's how he became a Soto Zen lineage holder, was through Soto Zen master Ru Jing in China. And the night that Dogen was supposed to leave To go back to Japan, he was given a copy of the Blue Cliff Record. And it's said, the story is that he spent the night copying this, handwriting a copy of it. He thought it was such an amazing collection. So the first collection, the first time the Blue Cliff Record came to Japan, it was with Dogen's collections from his trip to China. So these collections, interestingly, also served to further... create this identity of Chan or Zen as the school of the patriarchs. It's this living succession of human exemplars holding conversations with one another. As I was saying, as opposed to a school of doctrine or a school of philosophy or a school of scholastic interpretation. So this is the school of direct experience of the enlightened mind and

[39:00]

by whatever means necessary. So whatever the Chan master does to try to help the student to awaken to their own mind, their own Buddha man, their own Buddha nature, is kind of fair game, you know. And that's part of what we're seeing in these stories is like, well, that was outrageous. You know, that little thing they did. No one is, well, there is a little bit of hurting going on, but stories are kind of a little, yeah, how about that one? But most of them, there's not a lot of physical harm done to the students. They're really just sort of kind of shook. And the way they're holding on to ideas or holding on to certain kinds of impressions of themselves or impressions of the teacher, whatever's going on there that's delusional, that is clouding this awakening, this awakened presence, is... you know, is what the teacher is trying to blow away, is to get out of the way for the student, so the student can be freed. So the Blue Cliff Record has an opening verse.

[40:03]

It's called the Preface to the Blue Cliff Record, which is quite nice. A boundless wind and moon, the eye within eyes, inexhaustible heaven and earth, the light beyond light, the willow dark, the flower bright, ten thousand houses, knock at any door, There is one who will respond. Knock at any door. There is one who will respond. Dharma doors are boundless. I vow to enter them. It's one of the phrases that we chant. So here's the case, number one, the highest meaning of the holy truths, which is about Bodhidharma coming to China, according to the Blue Cliff Record. So the first thing I'm going to read to you, it's about a paragraph long, is called The Pointer. And this is by Hu. I've got to go back to these names again. This is written by Huan Wu.

[41:08]

When you see smoke on the other side of a mountain, you already know there's a fire. When you see smoke, you know there's a fire. When you see horns on the other side of a fence, Right away, you know there's an ox there. To understand three when one is raised, to judge precisely at a glance. This is the everyday food and drink of a patched-robed monk. Getting to where they are able to cut off the myriad streams, the mind streams, getting to where they can cut off the mind streams, they are free to arise in the east and to sink in the west, to go against or to go with. In any and all directions, they are free to give or to take away. But say, at such a time, whose actions are these? Look into Shui Tao's trailing vines. Okay, so this is called the pointers. Kind of get you thinking. It's kind of prime the engine of like what you're about to hear in the rest of the case.

[42:12]

And please... Be assured that no one just kind of reads these things and goes, oh, that's obvious. I mean, it's not obvious. It's like, what is this kind of, someone once said, you know, Zen is the school of the poets. And it's listening to poetry. It's using language in a way that kind of turns language on itself. It's a play of language. And the way words are chosen, it's not just arbitrary, but it has some potency, how these words are used. So this is the case about our Bodhidharma. Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma said, empty, without holiness. The emperor said, who is facing me? Bodhidharma replied, I don't know. The emperor did not understand. After this, Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze River and came to the kingdom of Wei. Later, the emperor brought this up to Master Zhe.

[43:15]

and asked him about it. Master Jura asked, does your majesty know who this man is? The emperor said, I don't know. Master Jura said, he is the Mahasattva Avalokiteshvara, transmitting the Buddha mind seal. So that was Buddha. You just ran into Buddha there, emperor. The emperor felt regretful, so he wanted to send an emissary to go and invite Bodhidharma to return. Master Zhe told him, your majesty, don't say that you will send someone to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him, he still wouldn't return. So this is the teaching that the students at Zen Center who become head monks called Xu So, they're given this, most often they're given this case to study Zen. during the time they're the head student. And then to bring up their understanding of the case during the question period that happens at the very end of their time, at the end of a practice period, which can be 90 days or 60 days.

[44:23]

60 days here at Green Gulch, 90 days at Tassajara, traditional 90-day Ango. Ango means peaceful abiding. The head monk... has that time to think about this, talk about this, ask their teacher questions about it, research it, whatever they want to do. But then when the final day comes, called the Shuso ceremony, the student is sitting up there in your robes, and you're given a fan that you hold in one hand, and in the other hand, you have a staff. And so you're... quite exposed you know both having done this ceremony i have a vivid memory of it it's one of those kind of kind of like trauma it sort of stays in your body forever so you have a staff in one hand and you have this fan in the other hand and people are asking you questions one after another and then so they they yell out for those of you who haven't been to one of these ceremonies it may be it can be 50 or 100 people in the room depending on what's going on um

[45:27]

So the students, one by one, will say, Shuso. And then you say, yes, or hi. And they ask you a question, a short question, like, what is Buddha? Or why did Bodhidharma come from the West? They might ask you that one. And then you have, you answer. You don't, you know, you can say, let me get back to you in a minute. You basically answer from that question. And then you hit the, you have a wooden question. uh like a piece of wood round piece of wood flat wood and then you hit your staff on the wood and when you're done with the answer and like boom and then the next person says she's so yes and then you do this person's question and then boom so it goes fairly quickly um it's it's like uh you know deer in the headlights situation like each question comes at you it's you don't know what they're going to say and you don't know what you're going to say it's completely coming from your time as meditator your time as a student all the things you've been doing that leads up to this being in this ceremony is now being called on

[46:39]

And it's always beautiful. No one's ever flunked the Shusos ceremony. It's always just the most wonderful, heartwarming, tender celebration of the sincerity of whatever the person says is just great. It's just absolutely great. So we do this. We do this for one another rather than to one another. But it's a very – so anyway, this story, this – The story about Bodhidharma and the emperor is the one that the monk will study in preparation for the ceremony. So I will read you just a little bit of the commentary on this case. And this is by Huang Wu. This is the other person who came along a century later and wrote some stuff about the koan. From afar, Bodhidharma saw that this country, China had people capable of the great vehicle, the Mahayana. So he came by sea intent on his mission Purely to transmit the mind seal, mind to mind, to transmit the mind seal, to arouse and instruct those who are mired in delusion.

[47:47]

Without establishing some written words, he pointed directly to the human mind. To see nature and to fulfill Buddhahood. So directly to the human mind, see your Buddha nature and become Buddha. Just like that. If you can see this way, then you will have your share of freedom. Never again will you be turned around, pursuing words, and everything will be completely revealed. Thereafter, you will be able to converse with Emperor Wu. And you will naturally be able to see how the second ancestor's mind was pacified. So this is the story. Next story we're going to look at when second ancestor is Bodhidharma's disciple, Hueca. And it says here that Hueca... came to the Bodhidharma, this is a footnote in this koan, the future second ancestor, a patriarch, said to him, my mind is absolutely disturbed.

[48:48]

Can you please help me? Help me pacify my mind. Bodhidharma said to him, bring me your mind and I will pacify it for you. Huayca came back. We don't know how long he was gone. Anyway, Huayca returned and he said, when I search for my mind, I can't find it. And Bodhidharma said, I have pacified your mind for you. And at that, Huayca was enlightened. This is a great trick to say, bring me your mind and I'll pacify it for you. But I can't find it there. All better. So these are some of the things I think, the reason I wanted to share this traditional text with you, some of these are quite iconic. phrases that you'll hear around the Zen camps, you know, bring me your mind and that kind of thing. These are really classic stories that get repeated. Without the mental defilements of judgment and comparison, everything is cut off and you are free and at ease.

[49:53]

Without judgment and comparison, you are free and at ease. What need is there to go on distinguishing right and wrong or discriminating gain and loss? Even so, how many people are actually capable of this? Emperor Wu had put on monks' robes and personally expounded the light-emitting wisdom scripture. He experienced heavenly flowers falling in profusion and the earth turning to gold. He studied the path and humbly served the Buddha, issuing orders throughout his realm to build temples and ordain monks and practice in accordance with the teaching. People called him the Buddha Heart Emperor. So this is the emperor that we're meeting with Bodhidharma. When Bodhidharma first met Emperor Wu, the emperor asked, I have built temples and ordained monks. What merit is there in this? Bodhidharma said, there is no merit. This guy is really, he was really tough on emperors. He immediately doused the emperor with dirty water.

[50:53]

So if you can penetrate this statement, there is no merit. You can meet Bodhidharma personally. So now tell me, why is there no merit at all in building temples and ordaining monks? Where does the meaning of this lie? Highest meaning of the holy truths. That was Emperor's next question. Emperor Wu held discussions with the Dharma master, with Mahasattva Fu, I don't know who that was, and Prince Zhao Ming about the two truths. The real truth and the conventional truth, or the ultimate truth and the relative truth. We talked about that some months back. These are the two truths. Nagarjuna makes, you know, much of his narration around understanding Buddhadharma has to do with the two truths. The ultimate truth, where you can't find a thing, and the relative truth, where things abound. And these are basically products of our imagination, the relative truth. And yet we need them. We need to use them. That's part of what our species does.

[51:55]

We can't just abandon words and letters, but we need to use them skillfully and with full knowledge that what we're doing is basically a provisional or conventional or just simply talking. I'm just telling a story right now. That's all. No merit. There's nothing trailing me. It's all vanishing. As I move along, it all just disappears behind me. I have nothing to show for it. You know, just right now. It's all right now. And right now we tell stories like I'm doing right now. So Emperor Wu held discussions with these various masters about the real and the conventional, as it says in the teachings. But the real truth, by the real truth, we understand that it is not existent. So the ultimate truth is there is nothing. It is not existent. By the conventional truth, we understand that it is not non-existent. So now we have these, you know, the middle way between the extremes of there is something or there isn't something.

[53:00]

Not, there is, or there is not. Those are extremes. They're dualistic and they depend on one another. You don't have an is without an isn't because it wouldn't make any sense. You know, each thing that we propose in our language basically depends on In most cases, it's opposite. Light and dark, right and wrong, me and you, up and down, left and right, north and south. It's all relational. And that's where the meaning comes from. It comes from being in relationship with its opposite or many of its opposites. So this is the conventional truth. One is there isn't and the other is there is. So that the real truth and the conventional truth are not two. is the highest meaning of the holy truths, that they're not separate. So remember that from the Yogacara teaching, that the imputational and the dependently co-arisen, dependently co-arisen being the ultimate truth, just this is it, just what's happening right before your very eyes is it.

[54:04]

And then you start calling it names and making up stories. That's imputational. And when you realize those two are not the same, that's the thoroughly established, this ultimate truth. So this Yogachara teaching is trying to also help express that same thing in a little different way. You're making up stories. The ultimate truth, ultimate reality is not come along with a price tag or a descriptor. It's like those little planes that have banners behind them. Well, reality doesn't have a little banner trailing behind it telling you what it is. Or if it does, it's not the truth. It's not really what it is. So the real truth and conventional truth are not two is the highest meaning of the holy truths. And Bodhidharma could have said that. No, he didn't say that. So this is the most esoteric, most obtruse point of the doctrinal schools. Hence, the emperor picked out this ultimate paradigm to ask Bodhidharma. So the emperor's done his homework.

[55:06]

He knows there's these two truths. And so he's asking Bodhidharma, the Indian monk, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? So this is not a dumb question. Bodhidharma says, empty without holiness. No monk in the world can leap clear of this. Bodhidharma gives him a single sword blow that cuts off everything. These days, how many people can understand this? They go on giving play to their spirits, put a glare in their eyes and say... empty without holiness, you know. Fortunately, this has nothing to do with it. So my late master Wusong said, if only you can penetrate empty without holiness, then you can return home and sit in peace. All this amounts to creating complications. Still, it does not stop Bodhidharma from smashing the lacquer bucket. So all the talk that we do, all the complications we do, you know, here comes Bodhidharma with his big eyes,

[56:10]

And he meets the emperor with his studies and academic degrees and whatever else he's got going. And he tries to help the guy by breaking his lacquer bucket. And breaking the lacquer bucket is another one of those phrases in Zen. The lacquer bucket, which is pitch black, is a Chan metaphor for ignorance. It's like you have a lacquer bucket on your head. Pitch black. To have the bottom fall out of the bucket. is to become suddenly awakened. To smash the bucket means to become awakened or to enlighten others. So smashing the lacquer bucket is like the light all of a sudden is like, whoa, what did I have over my head? You know, what have I been carrying around? Sometimes I like the image of wearing your football helmet on backwards. You know, it's like you just now know what you're seeing is all kind of the wrong thing. So anyway, I'm not going to read more of this case because, first of all, we're out of time. But I want to share with you the other rendition.

[57:13]

It's in the Book of Serenity. This is the Soto Zen text, again, translated by Thomas Cleary. And it's a little different. It's a little different pointer. It's different people writing it. Swan Song, the, I'm sorry, Hong Zhur, who is a wonderful teacher and the teacher most often quoted by Dogen Zenji. And I would highly recommend you, if you don't have this book already, that you add it to your collection, Cultivating the Empty Field, my Dharma brother, Taigen Leighton. did this book, translated this with some help, and it's absolutely beautiful prose. It's the poetry of Hongzhu, he's the compiler of the Book of Serenity, is really quite beautiful. I've got a minute. I'll just read you one little couple paragraphs. He says, drop off your skin and accept your function.

[58:14]

In daytime, the sun at night, the moon, each in turn does not blind the other. This is how a patched rope monk steadily practices naturally without edges or seams. To gain such steadiness, you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas. If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil, you must just sit through it and let go of everything. Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly. Light and shadow altogether forgotten. Drop off your own skin and the sense dust will be fully purified. The eye readily discerning the brightness. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied. In the entire place, you are not restricted. The whole time you still mutually respond. Right in light, there is darkness. Right in darkness, there is light. A solitary boat carries the moon. At night, it lodges amid the reed flowers, gently swaying in total brilliance.

[59:15]

So Hongzhi is very highly regarded, intellectual, poet. He was a highly cultured Chinese teacher. And fortunately for us, because he's the one who revived the Soto Zen tradition, which was dying out. And Hongzhi, with his beautiful language and poetry, collected the Book of Serenity poem stories. He wrote his own stories and literally kind of single-handedly revised Soto Zen for the benefit of us, of us down here, further down the line. So next week, I'll read the case from Book of Serenity and also tell you the one final story about Bodhidharma, which is really a good one, about his transmission to his four disciples, which has a very important pointer in it. the practice of Zen. And I'll just do that next Sunday. So thank you so much for your kind attention.

[60:18]

If you have to leave, of course you may. And if you'd like to stay a little bit, I'm happy to talk with you at this time. Hello, Anshul. Hi, nice to see you. I think you're muted. There you are. I was wondering if you might be able to comment on the first koan that you shared where Emperor Wu asks the master in the court to bring back Bodhidharma. And I think the master responds that no matter how many people, if the entire country goes after him, we cannot bring back that man. Yeah.

[61:19]

Yeah, well, he said, he told him, well, that was Avalokiteshwar, the great bodhisattva of compassion, you know, who doesn't go, doesn't come, doesn't go. The Tathagata means no coming, no going. So presence itself, a reality itself doesn't come or go. So the idea that you could bring back the bodhisattva of compassion, it's like, well, but he's here. Emperor Wu doesn't recognize it in himself. And Master Jur, who he's talking to, is also Avalokiteshvara. So the two of them are not, they're not awake, right? So they're missing. You can't go get awakened. You can't go get the awakened one and, you know, bring them back. You find it inside. It's your, it's right here, you know. You can't bring it back. You can only open your eyes and recognize it as you. It's yourself, Emperor Wu. But Emperor Wu said, I don't understand. And most of us would say that.

[62:20]

I don't understand. Can't you just go get him? And he can explain it to me. So that's my understanding of that. Yeah, I was thinking... the way I was interpreting that initially was that, that, that that moment is gone and that man is gone. It's a different person now. So there's no way that person can return or that, that moment can return. It has passed, but I appreciate. That's true too. That's true. That's the relative truth. And I, I, I gave you what would might be pass itself off as the ultimate truth. That, No going, no coming. The Buddha is always eminent, always in the present. This awakening is always in the present. No matter what's passing through, camels or monks or Avalokiteshvara, you're always right there in the illumination.

[63:25]

And so is everything, right? The womb of light, the womb of light is where we are together. And there's no, you can't get out of it. There's no out. How did you get in? I don't know. I don't know how I got in here. It's okay. I'm not complaining at the moment. I appreciate that. Nice to see you. Weston, I think maybe you might be next. Hi. Thanks so much. This has been really, these hours have been really wonderful. Oh, thank you. My question was about how Zen, and basically I'm wondering if Zen and the U.S., at least the societal interpretation that I get from the word pacify, what is, I guess my question is, how does Zen view pacification?

[64:32]

And I guess in particular, when you were relating the story about government kind of trying to tamper down aggression my understanding at least is that that itself would lead to like if if you are actually being controlled then there is a clarity that you are not seeing and i'm wondering if you could just expound on that a little bit yeah well that's our modern I mean, that's our, not modern, I don't know where we are. That's what we have to deal with right now, isn't it? I mean, we're looking at this very issue. Here's this beautiful spiritual practice that can help you to calm down. You know, this person can calm down and regain her sanity, you know, with about two periods of 40 minutes each. Every morning, I can regain my sanity for a period of time. And what an amazing thing. I mean, who knew? I wasn't taught that as a child. So here's this amazing gift of finding a way to be sane and clear-headed.

[65:39]

So I think the teaching, my understanding of the teaching, because I'm also quite interested in the challenges we're having around racism and gender and all the other things that we've inherited. I was talking to my friend today about the fact that, you know, there's no way here Buddhism is Here's this beautiful tradition has been planted in American soil. Well, when it got planted in Japanese soil at different conditions. And a lot of young male monks are the ones who carry it. And that's what happened there for hundreds of years. And there were nuns as well, but primarily it was the body of male monks in China. And they didn't have the same thing. They had their xenophobia, but they didn't have the racist issue. Now we plant this in America. And of course, we're going to grow some plants that include racism because that's where we are. So we're going to have to come to terms with how we relate to this beautiful teaching in the conditions in which it's finding itself now.

[66:43]

Buddhism is waking up in America of all places, you know, and we're all going like, oh, my God, we really need some help here to sort out the delusional states that people are. blatantly demonstrating. It's just, oh, my God, they can't really be saying that. Is that true? So I don't think pacification is about avoidance or about denial or about it's more like my understanding of the two parts of meditation is, first of all, you calm your mind and then you discern the real. So shamatha is calming and vipassana is insight. So you're not going to have much insight if you're going like this. It's going to look like that. And you're going to be angry and upset. But if you're calm, you have a shot at it. Maybe this would be helpful. Maybe I can have this conversation right now with this person.

[67:45]

And if I start getting twitchy, I'll calm down again. I don't want to create more anger, hostility, delusion from this location. I'd like to not do that. So that's up to each of us. Do we want to be avatars of peace and kindness and harmony? And if so, we need to calm down. So that's kind of how I think of it. And so pacify is step one, and then engage is step two. You're welcome. And this is our con. It really is. Thank you for bringing it up. Yeah. Yeah. Satish? Hi, Phu. Hi, Satish.

[68:47]

Good to see you. I wanted to see if you could comment on how the middle way would look like in day-to-day ordinary life if you practice middle way. End of the day, I have to practice somewhere in life. All the emotions, desires, ambitions, all that included a general ordinary life. Yeah. Well, I'm not a good person to ask. I sort of went crazy back there 40 years ago. I'm not going to do that kind of life. I don't think I'm suited for it. Get a job, work downtown. I did that. I tried it for a while. Yeah. And it was really hard and it was really painful. And then I thought, I'm going to go to a monastery. I think I might be better suited for monasticism. And I was. And as it turned out, I tried to hide there. I thought, well, that's that. I'm out of here.

[69:48]

But that doesn't work. You don't get to hide. So no sooner do you think you got it all figured out, then in comes the world and all this stuff that goes on in the world. All of a sudden, we don't have any money because everything's closed. It was like, oh, my God, what happened to my nice, safe space? So I feel like the middle way is not to get hysterical when the Zen Center is running out of money. That's my middle way. I'm just going, okay, well, what are we going to do, guys? We still have some options. We've got lots of options. And so hopefully everyone has some options that they can – kind of balance out the conditions right now, or maybe not so great, you know? So how do I work with those conditions in a way that doesn't create worse conditions for me? How do I find my way to something that's healthy or healing or soothing or in the direction of friendship, you know?

[70:51]

So we find community. Community is a wonderful, you know, Support for our life. I don't think being alone is such a great idea. And even though manos means alone, monastery, being alone with others. And I think that's basically true of all humans. We are alone. Each of us is born, you know, mostly one at a time. Maybe you got a twin. Most of us didn't. And then you're on your own to figure it out. All the way through, even though you have friends and you have jobs and you have all those things that you mentioned. It's my thing. It's your thing. You got to do it. And I will root for you. I will try to do what I can to support you and encourage you. But I can't do that much. I can't get inside your body and solve your problem, right? Only you can do that. So that's the manos part. I alone am the world honored one. That's what the Buddha said.

[71:53]

I alone. I've got to do this myself. And that will help others. If I free myself, that's one less person that has to be, you know, watched out for. So, yeah, I think it's just our adult life figuring out how to mature, you know, as far as we can get. Yeah. I mean, the only place where I found how to deal with Some kind of middle way in a samsara daily life is some parts of Bhagavad Gita. Ah, that's nice. Yeah, where it's one key verse is, it is in your right to do your duty, but not to expect the fruits of it. Do devotion to me. Do what is right, do it in devotion to me, regardless of the fruits of it. Yeah, that's very nice. And I think there's a lot of resonance with what the Buddha also felt.

[72:57]

I mean, it's all the same source, right? Yeah, it's like all along the yoga school of things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we have a saying. Gringoch, we had a T-shirt for a while that said, working hard, accomplishing nothing. I think that's pretty good. We do. We work hard. And then, you know, we start over. We just planted the first seeds for the... Farm season a couple days ago. Every year about this time. There's no rain. We're going to have a lot of trouble. And so we're, you know, what can you do? Well, I hope there will be some rain later. I hope so too. I don't know. We need to do some dancing or something, you know. Yeah. A couple of things before I end this. One, if you do come across any books about Middle Way, I'm interested in knowing about it. And because end of the day, as you said, I had to find my way.

[74:00]

And two, what your friends said about your importing a foreign religion. So, well, it depends where you start. Even Christianity was a foreign religion. What was the foreign religion? Christianity was a foreign religion. So it depends where you start. Absolutely. Yeah. And there weren't any people in California from my neck of the woods in those days. I don't know where my people were from, but we all moved around a lot. And yeah, no, I agree with you. It's mostly the, you know, kind of recent history of Zen coming to California. It's like, oh, yeah, I didn't grow up with Zen. I grew up with Christianity, me. And so I got pretty dipped in that. tradition for a long time as a kid. And now I've adopted for myself another way of practicing and understanding. So again, it's up to us.

[75:02]

What works for you is the most important thing. Thank you. You did give me a point about finding what's most helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Good. I'll think about that for a text that might be helpful to you, middle way. There are many, actually. So I'll find one that I enjoy. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Nice to see you all. All you familiar faces. More and more familiar all the time. How nice. Please take care. I hope you got your shots. You're all about the same right age. You got your second one already? You got it? Yeah, good. I got my first shot. So a couple more weeks, I know. May you all get shot soon and be well.

[76:04]

Take care. If you'd like to unmute and say goodbye, you're more than welcome to do that. Thank you, Fu, for your teaching. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Bye, guys. Bye, everybody. Here we are. There you are. There you are. There you are. The whole country is here. The whole world. Wonderful. Could I ask you a logistical question for 20 seconds? Of course. I was wondering if Green Gulch is doing the guest student program. I saw the city center had opened up a modified one. Not guest student, but we are taking apprentices again. So if you wanted to come for a while, that would be a possibility. The apprenticeship is the sixth month? Yeah, usually, because you're going to have to quarantine for a couple of weeks in order to come in, at least at this time. We have farm apprentices arriving, and then we're looking for kitchen apprentices and so on.

[77:09]

So we are beginning to... Bring in new people in about a month from now. So if you have time, please come. That's the secret sauce, time. Oh, yeah, I've got my whole life. Oh, yeah. So this is the old, I'm asking for a friend, though the friend is my son. When do they start? Tell them to apply now. Get a hold of Timo. Okay, he has to finish college first. You're telling me. Slow down. Take more, take more. So these would start before May, wouldn't they? Yeah, but we can start anytime. We're in such an odd situation that we're really in a desperate need for help and students and, you know, people who want to be here.

[78:10]

So I think we'll be very generous about start and stops and when it's okay to come in. Okay. Send him over. What's his name? His name is Henning. Henning. Oh, nice. Yeah, he was with me once. Yeah, I remember. I remember. Yeah. Great. he's definitely thinking about this as a possibility for a year or so. Well, it's a very good thing to do. I think, you know, I think it's a Thai young man who go to the monastery for a year. It's just part of this culture that young men are trained as monastics for a year. And what a great idea. I mean, it shouldn't just be the man, but boy, it's a great way to get some manners. Some settlement somewhere. Yeah. Take off your hair and put on an orange robe. Yeah. Thank you. Good night. You're welcome. Kate and Paul, we got a plan for you, by the way.

[79:13]

You two. Oh, really? Surprise. A surprise. Six months. Huh? Six months. No, you'll see. Not going to be that long. Not for eternity. Not for eternity. No, no, no. It's going to be in Healdsburg. Oh, yeah, that's right. Heaven's waiting room. That's what the Redwoods calls it. Heaven's waiting room. Who calls that? Redwoods. Where Grace lives. Okay, well, thank you. Okay, you guys. See you soon. Yes, thank you so much. This is great. These are great. I'm so glad you come. It really makes me happy. Yes, we're so happy you're doing this. Well, I'm happy. We're all happy. That's the whole point. Get everyone happy. Yes. Oh, it all sticks.

[80:13]

Good night. Good night, you guys. Thank you, Koketsu. Thank you, Fu. Good news. I'm getting the vaccine on Tuesday or tomorrow. Fantastic. I'm so glad to hear that. Everyone at Green Gulch get signed in or just I think so. Yeah, everybody, everybody that can. So I think everybody's bum rushing the place tomorrow. And my God, so much for you having to eat alone, huh? Yeah. I proposed to Timo that maybe we make a longer lunch break as a way of taking care of the wish to talk more because we always had silence meals. That's nothing new. But to actually have more time to talk would possibly be a way to go. It would be nice for the land and the farm because they just get such a short break. Well, that's it. I mean, we have to talk about that. I mean, what's the rush? Yeah. Well, you know, you talk to Sarah Oscar and, you know, the fields need to be tended to and, you know.

[81:14]

Yeah, I know. I used to be at the 10, so I know about the rush. You're panicked. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll see you tomorrow morning. All right. Yes, you will. Okay. Bye-bye.

[81:27]

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