Zen Master Hakuin’s Instructive Admonitions

 

There's a great piece of writing by Zen Master Hakuin titled "Reply to an Aged Nun of the Hokke Sect." In it, Hakuin reveals his fundamental ecumenical view as a Zen Buddhist when speaking to a nun of the Nichiren Sect of Buddhism, called the Hokke or Dharma Flower Sect from their emphasis on the Lotus Sutra. When we awaken to mind, the One Mind, we know without doubt that every religion is about the fundamental mind-source. This is sometimes simplistically stated as "all rivers empty into the sea." But the cliche reveals the truth of the One Mind. As Hakuin says elsewhere, “Then, by dipping his finger in the water and tasting it, he will know in an instant what sea water tastes like the world over, because it is of course the same everywhere, in India, China, the great southern sea or the great northern sea.”

 

The letter can be found in “The Embossed Tea Kettle: Orate Gama and other works of Hakuin Zenji” translated by R.D.M. Shaw, D.D. and also in “TheZen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings” translated by Philip B. Yampolsky.

Here I have cherry-picked excerpts of the instructive admonitions that Hakuin provides in this letter.  This is Yampolsky’s translation, slightly edited, available in many places on the internet..  

 

<><><> 

Zen Master Hakuin’s Instructive Admonitions Excerpted from His “Letter in Answer to an Old Nun of the HokkeSect”

 

This One Mind, derived from the two characters Myoho (妙法 “Wonderous Dharma”) mentioned above, when spread out includes all the Dharma worlds of the ten directions, and when contracted returns to the no-thought and no-mind of the self-nature. Therefore, such things as "outside the mind no thing exists," "in the three worlds there is One Mind alone," and "the true appearance of all things," have been preached. Reaching this ultimate place is called “the Lotus Sutra,” or “the Buddha of Infinite Light;” in Zen it is called “the Original Face,” in Shingon “the Sun Disc of the Inherent Nature of the Letter A,” in Ritsu “the Basic, Intangible Form of the Precepts.” Everyone must realize that these are all different names for the One Mind. […]

The ancestors of the various schools encourage sitting in meditation and, although they advocate the recitation of the sutras, isn't this recitation merely a device to make us reach the state where the mind is unperturbed, pure, and without distractions? The founder of Eihei-ji (Dogen) has said: "If one practices and holds to it for one day, it is worthy of veneration; if one fails to hold to and practice it for a hundred years, these are a hundred years of regret." It is enough to make one shed tears at the regrettable and wretched state of understanding in which, while possessing the difficult-to-obtain body of a human, a person does not cultivate in himself the determination to practice. Instead, like a dog or a cat or some beast that has no understanding at all, he allows his whole life, one so difficult to encounter, to rot carelessly away, and returns to his old abode in the three worlds of suffering, without having learned a thing. […]

To do this one must raise the great ball of doubt. […]

It is nothing more than to see into your own mind. And what is this "own mind?" Don't look for something white or something red, but by all means see it at once. Courageously and firmly establish your aspiration, raise up the great vow, and night and day investigate it to the end. For investigating the mind there are many methods. […]

Make each inhalation and exhalation of your breath the [koan]. Recite it without ceasing with intense devotion. If you recite it without flagging, it will not be long before the mind-nature will truly be set as firmly as a large rock. Dimly you will gain an awareness of a state in which the One Mind is without disturbance. At this time, do not discard this awareness, but continue your constant recitation. Then you will awaken to the Great Matter of true meditation, and all the ordinary consciousnesses and emotions will not operate. It will be as if you had entered into the Diamond Sphere, as if you were seated within a lapis lazuli vase, and, without any discriminating thought at all, suddenly you will be no different from one who has died the Great Death. After you have returned to life, unconsciously the pure and uninvolved true principle of undistracted meditation will appear before you. You will see right before you, in the place where you stand, the True Face of the Lotus, and at once you body and mind will drop off. The true, unlimited, eternal, perfected Tathagata will manifest himself clearly before your eyes and never depart, though you should attempt to drive him away. […]

Opening the True Eye that sees that this very world is itself the brilliance of Nirvana, one reaches the state where all plants, trees, and lands have without the slightest doubt attained to Buddhahood. What is there among the good fruits of the worlds of men and devas that can be compared to this? This is the basic vow that accounts for the appearance in this world of the many Buddhas of the three periods. […]

Do not lament about how far away it is. Is there anything nearer than to see your own eyeballs with your own eyeballs? Do not be afraid about how deep a thing is. If you try to see and hear it at the bottom of a deep chasm or in the depths of the sea, then you may well fear how deep a thing is. Is there anything nearer than to see your own mind with your own mind, to use your own nostrils to smell your own nose? Although the world is in a degenerate age, the Dharma itself is not degenerate. If you take the world as degenerate and cast it away without looking back, you will be like someone who enters into a treasure mountain yet suffers from hunger and cold. Do not fear that because this is a degenerate age [awakening] cannot be accomplished. […]

Although the numerous Tathagatas who have appeared successively in the world have expounded Dharmas as numerous as the sands in the Ganges, they have all appeared solely for the purpose of opening up the Buddha's wisdom to all sentient beings. No matter what Dharma you practice, if you don't seek to open up the Buddha's wisdom, you will never be able to come into accord with the vow of the many Buddhas. The opening up of the Buddha's wisdom is to make clear the Wondrous Dharma of the One Mind. There is nothing more regrettable in this degenerate world than to discard tidings of this Wondrous Dharma of the One Mind and to just go along as one pleases. […]

The Unconscious in Buddha Dharma

            As we in the West are discovering the teachings of Buddha Dharma about mind and consciousness, we are confronted with the necessity of rediscovering our own repressed traditions of the study of the psyche, consciousness, and the unconscious.

Western explorers of the psyche discovered the unconscious in the 19^th century.  The Buddhist explorers of mind, through their deep meditation, discovered the unconscious over two thousand years ago.  Since then, the Buddhist admonition to “turn the light around and shine it on yourselves,” as stated by Linji in the 9^th century (or “take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward on your self,” as Dogen restated it in the 12th century, or “to personally turn around to face inward” as Hakuin restated it in the 18^th century) is the direction to study the unconscious by introspection.  In Buddhism, the unconscious is called the storehouse- or treasury-consciousness (Skt. alayavijnana) and the fruit of this introspective study was the Mahayana Sutras.    

In the 20^th century Carl G. Jung explored the unconscious more than any other psychologist. He identified two layers or poles of the unconscious, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious (the later he also called the impersonal, transpersonal, or universal features of the unconscious). [CW 7, §§ 102, 103, 445, & 452. See note.]  The first layer consists of those elements, features, or aspects of the unconscious that are acquired during one’s own lifetime and experience.  Jung emphasized that the deeper layer of the collective psyche is inherited, and he called this the region of the archetypal contents where these “primordial images are the most ancient and the most universal ‘thought-forms’ of humanity.” [CW 7, §§ 104.]  In Buddhist terminology (using agricultural metaphors of the time, as we would use computer metaphors for the mind today), the personal features are those seeds (Skt. bija) of the storehouse consciousness that are “planted” (continuing the cultivation metaphor) during one’s lifetime, and the impersonal features in the storehouse are the seeds placed there “from past lives” as immeasurable in number as the grains of sands of the Ganges river.   

Jung found that the personal unconscious contains all the material that was once conscious, e.g., memories, repressed material, subliminal sense perceptions, etc., while the collective unconscious contains “all the material which has not yet reached the threshold of consciousness.”  [CW 7, §§204 & 441.]  These structural elements of the deepest unconscious are the archetypes. They are psychic structures that are just as inherited, as impersonal, and as collective as the physical structures of our bodies, e.g., our bilateral symmetry,  our circulatory, skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems, etc..  As our individual bodies are unique expressions of these universal forms, so to are our individual consciousnesses unique expressions of the universal forms of mind.

In the Five Skandhas, one of the Buddhist’s schematic representations of mind, the structures of the unconscious are called the first four skandhas with consciousness designated the Fifth Skandha.  Early Buddhism through such schematics of mind as the Five Skandhas and the Eighteen Dhatus tacitly recognized that there is an unconscious dimension to mind, but it was the later Ekayana/Mahayana development of the schematic representation of the Eight Consciousnesses that made the unconscious explicit in Buddhism with the eighth storehouse consciousness as the storehouse of all the seeds that are present in mind either as submerged or as not yet conscious. Jung’s reference to inherited primordial “universal thought-forms” corresponds directly with samskara, the Fourth Skandha, which is often translated as “mental formations.”

A primary problem we have to face directly in Western culture, as we meet, accommodate, appropriate, and acculturate the Buddha Dharma, is this question of the unconscious, because in Western culture, as it is dominated by the scientism dogma stating that only the physical exists, the mind does not exist, and “the psychic” has had its relation to mind stripped away and is considered as nothing more than superstitious supernaturalism or hallucinatory imagination.  

The fact is that the study of the psyche is the study of mind “from the inside” while the study of neurophysiology is the study of mind “from the outside” as a brain.   The West is deeply confused about this distinction.  The two approaches to mind are not the same, and while there is value in correlating the discoveries made from each perspective in this field of study, the study from the outside can never and will never replace the need or importance of the study from the inside.  This study “from the inside” is exactly what Buddhism calls “turning the light around and shining it inward on ourselves” and points directly to the appeal that Buddhism has in the West for those who long to escape the domination of the field of the study of mind by the physicalist dogmas of physicists and other practitioners of the physical sciences.  

[Note: Jung quotes from The Collected Works of Carl G. Jung, Vol. 7. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. ]

[Edited 3/11/17]

Connected blogs:
Zen is the Art of Imagination

Linji on Turning the Light Around

Here's a passage from the Record of Linji that I have finished translating today.  This comes from near the end of the untitled Part One.   Various translators insert their own titles like "Discourses" or "Ascending the High Seat," but since the text itself does not have a title for the beginning section which is the largest section, I have not added one. Part Two is titled "Examining Differentiation" and Part Three is titled "Record of Travels."


The Record of the Words of Zen Master Linji Huizhao of Zhenzhou.
Collected by Huiran, a minor teacher of the inherited Dharma, dwelling at Sansheng. 

Greatly Virtuous Ones, what object are you searching for that you go splashing about on the land toward the various directions, treading on until your feet are [flat like] planks? 

Broadly, there is no Buddha that can be sought; there is no Way that can be accomplished; there is no Dharma that can be attained.  To seek outwardly for a Buddha with characteristics gives you unassociated appearances.  Desire to be conscious of your original mind.  It is not to be united with, likewise it is not to be separated from.

Drifters in the Way, the true Buddha has no shape; the true Way has no essence; the true Dharma has no characteristics.  The three things are blended harmoniously and united in one locus.  Since this discernment is not attained, you are called out as the multitude of beings who create bustling karma consciousness.

Question: “So what is the true Buddha, the true Dharma, and the true Way? We beg you to come down to open and reveal it.”

The master said, “That which is Buddha is the mind’s purity. That which is Dharma is the mind’s radiance.  That which is the Way is the clear light that is everywhere unhindered.  The three are exactly one, and in every case are empty names and have no solid existence.  Thus for the person who correctly studies the Way, from moment to moment mind is not interrupted.

When on his own, Great Master [Bodhi]Dharma came from the Western Land, he only searched for a fundamental person who did not receive people’s delusions. Afterwards he encountered the second ancestor who then understood at a single word and for the first time knew that previously he was a fellow who vainly used effort.

This mountain monk nowadays sees the locus as ‘not separate from the ancestors and Buddhas.’ If you attain within the first phrase, you become a teacher of Buddhas and ancestors.  If you attain within the second phrase, you become a teacher of humans and heavenly beings.  If you attain within the third phrase, your own deliverance is not completed!"

Question: “So what was the intention of [Bodhidharma] ‘coming from the West’?”

The master said, “If there was an intention, then his own deliverance was not completed!"

[The questioner] said, “Since there was no intention, say how did the second ancestor attain the Dharma?”

The master said, “That which is which is attainment is no-attainment.”

[The questioner] said, “Since it’s supposed to be no-attainment, say what is the basic meaning of no-attainment?”

The master said, “As you chase around everywhere seeking, mind is not able to rest. Wherefore the ancestral masters declared, ‘Bah! You disciples with a head going searching for a head.’  Put down your words, then turn the light around and shine it on yourselves.  Transformed by not separately seeking, you know that mind and body and the ancestors and Buddhas are not separate.  You will get down to having no affairs.  This method is called 'attaining the Dharma'.”

 [From CBETA T47n1985_p0501c22 to p0502a13]

NOTES: 

"Drifters in the Way" is my translation of 道流 daoliu.  The salutation 道流 daoliu is difficult to translate and has a double entendre. The character 道 dao is “the Way,” and 流 liu has the primary meaning of “flow, stream, current” (as either a noun or verb) and includes the connotations of “spread, float, drift, wander, meander,” as streams do or as things in streams do.  Related Buddhist terms are “the stream of wisdom”  and “the stream of the passions.”  So 道流 daoliu  is literally “Way–stream,” “Way-flow,” “the steam of the Way,” or “the drift of the Way,” which, when used as a salutation to address the audience members, means "You Who Are in the Stream of the Way" and can be translated as "Way Streaming Ones," “Way Streamers” or “Way Flow-ers” or “Streamers or Floaters in the Way,” etc. 

As this water image is perceived as somewhat clumsy in English, most translators use “Followers of the Way.” I don't like “Followers of the Way” for several reasons. First, because it has the connotation of "following behind" and not being personally immersed in the stream of the Way. Second, the term "follower" loses its root connection to the early water image used for the term designating beginning disciples, srota-apanna, 入流, i.e., Stream Entrants. I take it that Linji's use of the term 道流 daoliu for the Mahayana disciples in his assembly is harkening directly back to this earlier water based term for the sravaka disciples of the Early Schools.   

As a stream meanders in its way, it could be translated as “Meanderers of the Way.”  As a stream “seeks” lower ground as the gravitational direction to flow toward, the term 流 liu also has the connotation of “to seek, to search for,” so 道流 can be more loosely translated as “Seekers of the Way.”  But because 流 liu also means to drift in the flowing stream or current, and because the word drift captures the meaning of another favorite term of Linji's, 無事 wúshì, in Japanese buji, "to have no affairs" which also appears in this section, my current preference for translating 道流 daoliu is "Drifters in the Way." 

Also, it sounds cool to me and evokes personally pleasant nostalgia imagery from my childhood. For example, Paul Butterfield's "Drifting Blues."  And the popular phrase "drifting and dreaming," as used in poetry, song titles, and lyrics, combines the word "drifting" with another important word in Buddhism "dreaming," as when in the Diamond Cutter Sutra the Buddha says that the bodhisattva views this world as a dream. 

Lastly, of interest to Buddha nerds, there is a double entendre that occurs because the term 流 liu is sometimes used as a synonym for 漏 lou (flowing, running, discharge) to translate the Sanskrit technical term asrava, derived from the image of the foaming liquid that overflows a pot of cooking rice, and means “outflow” or “leakage” and is sometimes translated as “defilement” because the activity of the mind that objectifies an external environment is called “outflowing” and imagined like the outflowing, leakage, or discharge of fluids like pus, snot, or sweat from the body, and this leaking mental excretion is the source of the mind’s defilement as its mistaken perceptions about the world. So Linji’s double entendre lies in his slyly calling his audience “defilers or leakers of the Way” as he is teaching them about the Way.

<><><>

"Turn the light around and shine it on yourselves" is a colloquial way of describing the technical term asraya-paravrtti which means to "turn around or turn back to the seat, basis, or resting place" of what we call the light of knowing, consciousness, or awareness.  

Variations of the phrase "turn the light around and shine it on yourselves" are now well known in Western Zen communities. Whether sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, this is the essential method of practice in Zen and the common denominator of all Zen lineage schools.  This central teaching is found in the works of most of the Zen masters, such as in works after Linji of Dogen's 13th c. "Fukanzazengi or Rules for the Universal Recommendation of Sitting Meditation," and Hakuin's 18th c. "Zazen Wasan or Song of Zazen," as well as in works before Linji such as the 8th c. Chinese Zen foundational text The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor Huineng and Sengcan's famous 6th c. Zen verse "Inscription on Faith in Mind." Asraya-paravrtti or "return to the basis" is found as the phrase "return to True Suchness" and "return to the root" in the important 6th c. work <大乘起信論> "Treatise on the Mahayana Arousing of Faith" translated into Chinese by the Indian scholar-monk Paramartha.  


Before the Zen Masters of China asraya-paravrtti was a staple of Indian Masters such as the 4th c. half brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu, as found in the later's "Trimsika-Karika or Thirty Verses."   At its earliest appearance it was given canonical authority in the Mahayana Sutras espousing the One Vehicle or Ekayana such as the Lankavatara Sutra or The Sutra of Going Down to Lanka, and The Sutra of Queen Srimala's Lion's Roar.
Without the actual experience of turning the light around to shine it upon ourseves, our understanding remains at the intellectual level only.  To Mahayanists, asraya-paravrtti is the true meaning of the purification (visuddhi) espoused by the Early Schools, because in returning the light of awareness to its source or fountainhead, the contrived dualistic delusions are cast off and the purity of not-two is realized.  Thus Linji said "Buddha is the mind's purity."  As Zen Master Hui Hai said, this is "the ultimate purity" because "it is a state of beyond purity and impurity."

Turning the Light Around

In Zen, the most important function of consciousness is "to turn the light around," also known as "to turn yourself about" or "to take the backward step" (Sanskrit paravrtti).  But because of the very bifurcation function of our underlying “sub”-consciousness (the manas level of consciousness) that enables us to have self-consciousness,  we immediately make a mistake about this pointing out of what we must do if we want to comprehend our nature, our great meaning in life. That mistake is to literalize, objectify, or reify the pointing finger of “turn the light around” and look to an “inside” compared to the “outside.”  There is nothing wrong with this, except that we then create objectifications of “inside” and erroneously call our subjectivity our “inside” and vice versa.  This is why people mistake Buddhism as a kind of “subjective idealism” when we speak of mind, because they think Buddhism uses the term ‘mind” to mean subjectivity, when that is not the case at all.  

In the Buddhist context, the phrase “turn the light around” means to become free of that fundamental bifurcation of making reality into two sides: the objective-subjective or external-internal.  To turn the light around doesn’t mean to turn the light from the objective to the subjective, or to turn the light from the external to the internal; it means to turn the light around from our own deepest mental activity of dividing reality into an objective realm verses a subjective realm, or an external world opposed to internal world. We are taking a backward step that steps back from our instinctive need to polarize and reify our dualistic imagination.  When we are able to turn the light of our awareness around from our habitual bifurcation process, our awareness penetrates or “sees through” that veil created by this deepest polarizing activity of our own mind to awaken to, witness, and confirm with our own realization the unity throughout the root, branches, twigs, and leaves of the living universe of awareness.

Let the Student Beware: There Are Different Degrees of Awakening.

Often Zen students, and even some Zen teachers, are confused about the Japanese terms kensho, "to see the nature" (Japanese けんしょう ; Chinese 見性 jianxing) and satori, "to awaken" or "awakening" (Japanese さとり; Chinese 悟 wu), and assume that the terms describe enlightenment as if there is only one kind of enlightenment.  In this way, some students may project onto the teacher the idea that because the teacher has experienced an awakening that is called kensho or satori therefore the teacher is fully enlightened and in some manner omniscient or infallible. This is a grave error on the part of the student, and if the teacher encourages such projections, then the teacher is putting the student into a straight jacket and chains.

 
In Buddhism (i.e., the Buddha Dharma), the Sanskrit term for the full enlightenment of the historical Buddha is anuttara-samyak-sambodhi (variously translated into Chinese as 阿耨多羅三藐三菩提;, 無上正等正覺, etc.).  Leading all beings to realize for ourselves this awakening is the goal or aim of every Buddha manifesting in every world. In discussing the Buddha's awakening, confusion arises when people misunderstand primary aspects of awakening: (1) that awakening is essential and indispensable to the path of the Buddha, (2) that awakening is sudden and immediate in that it transcends temporal-spatial perspectives, (3) that from a temporal-spatial perspective cultivation of the path takes place both before and after awakening, and (4) that there are different degrees of awakening. Here I want to mainly address the fourth point, that there are different degrees of awakening, with some comment about how the fourth point relates to the other three points.

The term anuttara-samyak-sambodhi reveals within itself four basic degrees of enlightenment:

(1)   bodhi: enlightenment, awakening, realization, etc.

(2)   sambodhi:  the “equal” or “altogether” enlightenment.

(3)   samyak-sambodhi: “unified” or “aligned” altogether enlightenment.

(4)   anuttara-samyak-sambodhi: “unsurpassed” or “unexcelled” aligned altogether enlightenment, also called the unexcelled completely perfect enlightenment.

Because there are these distinguishable degrees of awakening, Zen Master Hakuin related stories of his own multiple great satoris as well as many minor satoris.   The traditional depictions of training stages such as the Eight Jhanas, the 10 Bodhisattva Bhumis (Stations) or the 10 Ox Herding Pictures depict variations of the steps of cultivation both before and after awakening.
 
When we talk about step-by-step cultivation before awakening, we are talking about learning of and opening our mind to the possibility of awakening, developing our faith and confidence in awakening as a real experience, and taking the steps necessary to realizing awakening in our actual life. However, no matter how much we may wish it were so, there is no plain and simple formula for this step-by-step cultivation that is like a step-by-step process for learning to crochet or drive a car.  Because awakening is essentially an unraveling of or seeing through our delusions and bifurcated false conceptualizations, and because our delusions and bifurcated conceptualizations have both a social and individual component, the general formulations of the step-by-step cultivation before awakening can only address those socially shared aspects of our ignorance with the final unraveling of our individual delusions and illusions occurring in an unformulated process. That is why Zen teacher Robert Aitken would say enlightenment happens as if by accident, but that our training makes us accident prone.

When we talk about step-by-step cultivation after awakening we are talking about the realization of the different degrees of awakening from initial bodhi to fully matured and complete anuttara-samyak-sambodhi.  In Zen, the system known as Dongshan’s Five Positions (A.K.A., Tozan’s Five Ranks) is one such description of cultivation after initial awakening.

A Zen student should practice with a teacher who has at least an initial awakening kensho, and this is essential. A student may practice with another student who has not “seen the nature” but should not consider that fellow practitioner in the way as their teacher.  Students should only look to someone with a modicum of awakening, whether called kensho or satori, at their teacher.  However, students should not be deceived (by themselves or another) into thinking that all awakenings are equal and fungible or that training after initial enlightenment is unnecessary. This is why Zen Master Torei said:

Look! Why did the Buddha kindly, clearly, and in detail point out for you the stages of the Way? All of them are means to advance and progress in true training after Satori – the skillful means of no means, the grades of no grade. The same holds true for Tozan’s ‘Five Ranks’, for Rinzai’s ‘Four Positions of Person and Circumstance’, and his ‘Four Positions of Guest and Host’. All are stages after Satori. (From Yoko Okuda’s translation of The Discourse on The Inexhaustible Lamp of the Zen School by Zen Master Torei Enji.)

The words of the Buddhist scriptures and the Zen ancestors are the superbly skillful means of measuring the degree of our awakening.  To read the Sutras is to check our own understanding against the words of the Buddha, and if there is anything that we do not understand or comprehend, then that is the measure of the shallowness or depth of our own degree of awakening. This is why Torei said:

So as to test the Dharma-Gates you have attained to, you have to check them against the Buddha's Sutras and the Treatises (Shastras), and study these again and again in detail and with insight. Always ask yourselves whether what you have attained tallies with what is said in the Sutras and Treatises.

 

Zazen and Zen-Samadhi, from Bodhidharma to Hakuin

 In the Zen lineage from Bodhidharma to Hakuin, zazen, i.e., sitting meditation, has been described as the method of practice and zen-samadhi (Skt. dhyanasamadhi, C. 禅定, chanting, J. zenjo)  is described as the realization of practice.

Bodhidharma (5th/6th century)(From "Great Master Dharma's Discourse on the Nature of Awakening”):

            “If a person knows that the six roots (i.e., 6 sense organs) are not real, that the five accumulations (skandhas) are provisional names, and that seeking everywhere for their substance is necessarily to dwell without samadhi, then one should know that such a person expounds the words of the Buddha.  The sutra says, "A home in the cave of the five accumulations is called the courtyard of zen.  When the inner illumination is opened and unbound, then the gate of the Great Vehicle could not be brighter!" 

`           To not bear in mind all things (sarvadharma),  therefore, is called doing zen-samadhi (dhyana-samadhi).  If someone understands these words, then walking, standing, sitting, and lying down are all zen-samadhi.  Knowing the mind is empty is called the act of seeing Buddha.  Because why?  For all Buddhas in the ten directions, in every consideration there is no mind.  Not seeing in (by) the mind, is called the act of seeing Buddha.

            To unstingily renounce the body is called Great Charity (mahadana).  The samadhi of detaching from the various activities is called Great Sitting Meditation (J. dai zazen).  Because why?  Worldly people are singly directed toward activities, and the Small Vehicle is singly directed toward samadhi.  Namely, to pass beyond the worldly people and the sitting meditation (zazen) of the Small Vehicle is called the Great Sitting Meditation. If those who act with this realization, in all the various appearances, do not seek to release themselves and, in all the various illnesses, do not cure their own errors, then this is entirely the power of Great Zen-Samadhi.”

Dajian Huineng (638–713)  (From The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor, Chapter 5, “Sitting Meditation (Zazen)”):

“Learned and virtuous ones, what is called zen-samadhi? Outwardly, to be free from characteristics is doing zen. Inwardly, to not be perturbed is doing samadhi. Outwardly, if one attaches to characteristics, inwardly, the heart-mind is immediately perturbed. Outwardly, if one is free from characteristics, the heart-mind is immediately not perturbed. The root nature by itself is pure, by itself is samadhi. Only by seeing conditions and thinking about conditions is one immediately perturbed. If someone sees various conditions and the heart-mind is not perturbed, this is real samadhi. Learned and virtuous ones, outwardly, to be free from characteristics is immediately zen. Inwardly, to not be perturbed is immediately samadhi. Outwardly, zen, inwardly, samadhi, this is doing zen-samadhi.

Dazhu “The Great Pearl” Huihai (second half of  8^th century) (From “Discourse On The Essential Gate Of Entering The Way Of Immediate Awakening”):

Question:“For a man to cultivate the fundamental root, what method (dharma) of cultivation should be used?”

Answer, “Only by sitting meditation (zazen) is zen-samadhi quickly attained. The Dhyana Paramita (lit. Zen Gate) Sutra says, ‘To seek the noble intelligence (arya-jnana) of the Buddha, then zen-samadi is necessary.  If there is no zen-samadhi, thoughts and ideas clamor and stir and spoil good roots.’”

Question: “Say, what is doing zen, and say, what is doing samadhi?”

Answer: “To not give birth to false thoughts is doing zen. Sitting to see the root nature is doing samadhi.  That which is the root nature is your unborn mind.  In that which is samadhi there is no mind that responds to the environment and the eight winds are not able to stir.  For that which are the eight winds, benefit and ruin, defamation and honor, praise and ridicule, and suffering and pleasure are called the eight winds.  If like this one attains that which is samadhi, even if one is an ordinary man, one then enters the rank of Buddha.”

Hakuin Ekaku (1686 - 1768) (From Ode to Sitting Meditation (Zazen Wasan)):

As to the zen-samadhi of the Mahayana, 

There is just too much to praise.
The several perfections such as charity, morality, and such;

Chanting Buddha's name, confession and repentance, austerities, and the like;

The many good deeds and various virtuous pilgrimages;
All these are coming from within it.

Also, a person succeeds by the merit of a single sitting

To destroy one's immeasurably accumulated crimes.
Where then should the evil appearances exist?
The Pure Land is then not far away.

This last quote is most interesting because in virtyually all translations of Hakuin's "Zazen Wasan" the term "zenjo" (zen-samadhi) is translated as "zazen" in order to make it easy for English readers. The fact is that the term "zazen" only appears in the title of Hakuin's "Ode to Zazen" and nowhere appears in the body. Unfortunately that kind of attempt to make the idea accessible for English readers leaves out the very essential nuance that is the difference between zazen as the activity of sitting-zen and zen-samadhi as the realization.

These great zen masters all directly stated the relationship between zazen and zen-samadhi. Today we hear a lot about zazen, but the recognition and realization of zen-samadhi is hardly spoken of.

I assert that without the realization of zen-samadhi, there is no true zazen, no matter how much zazen is talked about as a practice.