Reply to "There is No Zen, Only Zen Teachers"

Zen teacher Barry Magid has recently written an essay titled,
"There is No Zen, Only Zen Teachers"

It is an interesting and thought provoking piece, obviously heart felt. But I am not enamoured with it and find it to be lacking in depth. I'm sure I'm not the intended audience so these critical comments should be taken with large doses of salt. We're all Buddhists here so my criticism is not intended to disenfranchise Magid's views but to put them in another perspective.

Essentially, Magid's essay is about evaluating Zen in America, but the task of actually doing the evaluating becomes sort of lost. Magid seems to be saying that evaluating the depth of Buddha Dharma is too difficult a task, so he is satisfied with a simple Buddha Dharma. All the great Zen masters from Baizhang to Torei Enji have said that we need to be able to discern the deep from the shallow, the live from the dead, whether one is facing forward or backward, etc. This is not the evaluation or judgment of "good and bad" but the discrimination of vertical and horizontal.

I suppose my main objection to Magid's essay is that his vision of the Dharma is too prosaic and simplistic. Since Layman Pang described the Dharma in verse saying, "Miraculous and wondrous, Hauling water and carrying firewood.", people all over have grasped onto the water and firewood while ignoring the miraculous and wondrous. If I have any point at all, it is to see the Dharma not only in the water and firewood but also in the miraculous and wondrous, and in the activity that merges them: the hauling and carrying.

Magid's article is in the blockquotes with my comments interspersed in brackets.

In response to the scandals enveloping certain Zen teachers, most notably these days, Eido Shimano and Genpo Merzel, I sometimes hear it said that, flawed as these individuals are, they nonetheless have played an important part in the transmission of Zen in America, and we must not “throw the baby out with the bath water.” This attitude is also being retrospectively applied to the case of Maezumi Roshi, who, while it is admitted he was an alcoholic and womanizer, is nonetheless honored as the founder of the now flourishing White Plum Asangha. Along with the baby and the bathwater there are many metaphors that are deployed to try to separate out the pure untainted teaching from the flawed personality.

[GW: What is the “pure untainted teaching”? In zen, there is no such thing. Do I need to recite the examples? Isn’t the pure and untainted teaching that in his 45 years of teaching Buddha did not say a word? In zen, “purity” is both a medicine and a disease and only in the appropriate application is the difference made.]

One student of Eido Shimano suggested to me that he was like a brilliant conductor who is able to create unique orchestral music; why should we be preoccupied with his personal life?

[GW: No question that such misguided students can benefit form guidance.]

Maezumi Roshi’s daughter has recently published in Sweeping Zen a defense of her father’s and of Genpo’s Dharma, a teaching we are admonished not to discard despite their personal transgressions – a defense that is, to my mind, tragically ironic, given that she herself was the baby almost literally thrown out by her father, while his Dharmic bathwater has been so devoutly conserved.

[GW comment: Which the baby, which the bathwater?]

In Dharma centers, as in families where incest has occurred, there is on the part of the abused person the terrible conflict between the experience of the parent as loving caretaker and the parent as an abuser. Our minds can rarely tolerate holding onto both images at once. An almost inevitable response is to either deny the abuse and so preserve the good parent or to totally demonize the abuser and erase the good that they did.

Our challenge is to acknowledge both sides without splitting the person in two and at the same time, not try to split off the good from the bad and imagine we can have one without having to come to terms with the other. A person’s character is not so divisible that one aspect is not implicated in the others. Very often, it is our virtues, or our most basic human needs, that taken to an extreme become our vices. Charisma, real talents and insights that make us attractive and valuable to others, a need for love and to give love, an ability to lead and a capacity to manipulate, a role that encourages idealization and the tantalizing promise of having what everyone is seeking — it is in just such human packages that the Dharma is manifested and transmitted.

[GW: Yes. indeed, we need to acknowledge both sides whenever there is sidedness. But is character really the issue? That seems to be the crux of the problem. There are some who maintain that Buddha Dharma is all about character. Others who say that the Dharma can not be ascertained by characteristics. Certainly our Zen family goes along with the Diamond Cutter Sutra when it says that the Tathagata is not perceived by the possession of attributes or characteristics. Is the Dharma then to be perceived by such characteristics as "good character"? This is one of the deep questions of Buddha Dharma that those in the shallow waters have not yet plunged into.]

Just what is this precious Dharma, so separable from the character and conduct of the teacher, supposed to consist of?

[GW comment: Isn’t this the question, “What is the essence of Buddhism?”, that is asked in so many koans? Zhao Zhou’s “Cypress tree in the courtyard”, Dongshan’s “Three pounds of flax.” Linji’s “Ka!” are all answers to this question about what this precious Dharma consists of.]

Is the Dharma some pure gem-like flame that is transmitted from generation to generation irrespective of the nature or quality of the human candle that carries it?

[GW: Yes.... and not exactly.]

Does it have some unchanging essential nature that exists apart from and is unsullied by its transitory human manifestation?

[GW: Yes.... and not exactly..]

Is it not the very meaning of the Buddha Dharma that no thing has such an essential nature?

[GW: It is the very nature of the Buddha Dharma that no thing has an essential meaning, and even the Dharma does not have an essential meaning as the term is usually objectified.]

That emptiness and interconnectedness are inescapable aspects of our nature is the message that has come down to us from Shakyamuni.

[GW: When seen as “aspects,” concepts like emptiness and interconnectedness can be both leading and misleading.]

The self (or the soul), in most cultures before and after the Buddha, has been imagined to be a non-material essence contingently connected to and potentially separable from its material vehicle, the body. Shakyamuni’s realization was that the self and all existence was empty of an unchanging essential nature. We are irreducibly the product and manifestation of the flux of cause and effect which extend infinitely and incalculably in all directions.

[GW: Okay, that’s a fun way to say it. Any verbal formulation has its limitations, and we can enjoy such formulations for what they are worth.]

What then is this Dharma we, as teachers hold, maintain and transmit?

[GW: Good question. This Dharma is not a formulation. ]

In all cultures there is art, music and religion. All cultures have a conception of the good, the true and the beautiful. Yet there is no essential element common to art, music and religion across all cultures. There is no single definition of the good, the true or the beautiful that has applied throughout history. Poetry, for instance, comes down to us in the West from the time of Homer and Sappho. We can recognize what they have written as poetry even though the poetry of many modern poets would not be recognizable as poetry to them. The same is true of Western art and music. Abstract art would have been considered an contradiction in terms in cultures where art was synonymous with the mimetic.
Art, music, poetry – and I suggest religion, including the Buddha Dharma – are “transmitted” generation to generation, the way all culturally defined activities are, embodied in the practices of the makers and the participants.

[GW: To equate Buddha Dharma with art, music, poetry and religion is the narrow-minded (i.e., small-vehicle) view of Buddha Dharma.]

Art, ultimately, is simply what the artists of a certain time and place create.

[GW: This is exactly why Buddha Dharma is not like art. Buddha Dharma is not what Buddhists of a certain time and place create.]

Artists, musicians, priests, teachers all occupy their respective cultural niches and the products of their activity are inseparable from the lives they lead in the making of it.

[GW: Buddha Dharma is not something that occupies a cultural niche. Buddha Dharma is not the possession of Buddhist artists, musicians, teachers, or priests.]

There is no Platonic essence of capital A “Art” that one generation of artists transmits to the next. Artists learn from, imitate, challenge and subvert the art of their contemporaries and predecessors. Dharma teachers likewise learn from, imitate, challenge and subvert the teaching of their teachers. The nature, the meaning of, the Dharma in any generation is nothing but the teaching, the behavior, the lives of those who are teaching and living it at any given time.

[GW: I suppose there are Dharma teachers who view teaching the Dharma like teaching art, but I see that view as “nothing but” a narrow-minded (i.e., shallow) view of the Dharma as “teaching, behavior, and lives.” Shallow Buddhism is still Buddhism, but it is still shallow Buddhism. The nature of the Dharma should not be confused with meaning. The nature of Dharma is not limited to being “nothing but the teaching, the behavior, the lives of those who are teaching and living it at any given time.” That’s like saying the nature of the entire Cosmos is nothing but the teaching, the behavior, the lives of those who are teaching and living it at any given time. A teacher expresses the nature of the Dharma in the way that a blade of grass expresses the nature of the Dharma. But I wouldn’t say that there is no Dharma without a teacher any more than saying there is no Dharma without a blade of grass.]

The Buddhism of America both is and is not the Buddhism of Shakyamuni, and our Chinese and Japanese ancestors. There is no Zen, only Zen teachers.

[GW: Of course the attempt here is to be cutely ironic by turning Huangbo’s statement on its head. Huangbo said, “In all of the Great Tang, there are no zen teachers.” When someone asked what about all the teaching in the monasteries and temples, Huangbo said, “I did not say there was no zen, only no zen teachers.”]

The Dharma transmits a teaching about what are presented as foundational, inescapable facts about existence, namely that no “thing” (including the thing we imagine is our “self”) has a separate existence, and that no “thing” is unchanging or stands outside the web of cause and effect.

[GW comment: A “teaching about inescapable facts about existence” is not the whole of the Dharma, not the Dharma itself, only a teaching about the Dharma.]

But the Dharma is not presented as a treatise in physics, it is passed down to us as having a religious, ethical and moral implication.

[GW comment: The moral and ethical teachings of the Dharma are not mere implications, yet neither are they to be mistaken for the complete Dharma. The oil (sila, morality) in the lamp is needed for the wick (samadhi) to hold the flame (prajna), but if there is no wick and no flame, the lamp is not a functioning lamp no matter how full of oil it is.]

It posits that our personal suffering, and all the greedy, grasping, violent behavior in which we indulge in order to escape our suffering, can be fundamentally altered by a deep realization of the emptiness and impermanence of the self along with all other “things.” So the Dharma really puts forth two propositions: one about the nature of reality at a very fundamental and abstract level; and second a claim about the potential for relieving suffering and ending misconduct when the first is fully realized.

[GW comment: The notion of the Dharma as propositions is the view of the Dharma at the beginning stage when one has no practical understanding of the Dharma. The abstractness put forth as the Dharma is only abstract for those who find it difficult to understand. Once one sees one’s nature the Dharma no longer appears to be abstract at all. The question of relieving suffering and ending misconduct have to do with karma and there is a profound mystery to be looked into about the relationship of seeing one’s nature and karma. The koan of Baizhang’s (Hyakujo) Fox is one of the karma koans which is a door to this.]

The Buddha Dharma is transmitted by and within the form of life of those who realize and practice it.

[GW comment: Yet the Dharma should never be confused for such forms of life.
From the Diamond Cutter Sutra:

If using form to see me,
Or using sound to seek me,
Indeed the person travels the wrong way,
And is not suitable to see me

The body of the Dharma (Dharmakaya) is not to be found within cognition.]

Traditionally, this was a monastic lifestyle, a model that essentially claimed this is how life would and should look if we all realized the truth of the Dharma.

[GW comment: Originally there was no monasticism, only drop-outs from society taking up the homeless life who were wandering mendicants like the Buddha and known as sramanas. Over time, after the death of Buddha and due to various social and political conditions, monasticism developed as the Buddhist sramanas became institutionalized bhiksus and their seasonal rainy season retreats became year-round living establishments. But all the while, evenn though monastics were the specialists, there was never a time without Buddhist lay practitioners of various degrees of involvement, practice, and realization.]

That form of life, which one might imagine manifesting fully and spontaneously as the expression of realization, became, through the precepts and the rules of monastic order, a vehicle for manifesting and bringing about that realization. As such, it could fulfill those dual functions well or badly. That is, the monastic community could, or could not, succeed in modeling a non-self-centered life ( short hand for a life based on the realization of the emptiness of self-nature) and secondly, the monastic life could, or could not, succeed in promoting the actual experience of realization among its members.

[GW comment: The idealization of monastic life must be brought back to earth with the emphasis that the “could or could not” means the “form of life” really is not the important factor at all.]

When we look at how the Dharma has been transmitted in America, we see that the forms of life involved have changed in many important ways, including the attempt to integrate Zen practice with lay life. So how’s that going?

[GW comment: Its going as good as it ever has.]

What does the misconduct of teachers say about how that’s going?

[GW comment: We had better remember when embarking down this line of reasoning that a correlation is not proof of causation. Also that there was no such golden age of monasticism where all teachers were entirely free of misconduct.]

What we have to evaluate is a whole package, a whole historical moment, which only abstractly and artificially can be separated into parts.

[GW comment: The whole package can not be evaluated by standing on one side or the other, but only by standing on the zero point of the scales of evaluation.]

When we look back, for instance, at the history of the American Civil War, we see on one hand horrific carnage and loss of life, and on the other, a series of events that, in the name of preserving the Union, also resulted in the ending of slavery. What does it mean to ask “Was it worth it?” Was the Civil War a “good or just war?” In some sense, the question asks us to perform a thought experiment in which we are to imagine whether or not the good outcome, the ending of slavery, could have been accomplished without the terrible loss of life the actual war entailed. If we think we can easily imagine there was a non-violent, political means to end slavery that was ignored or not considered, we may say the war was a terrible mistake. But if we think, no, slavery wouldn’t have ended in the United States for another generation or two or three, how can we weigh the cost in life against that goal? If we are pacifists, no cause can justify such bloody means. But perhaps we long for is a utilitarian calculus that will give us an answer, what price is fair?, reasonable?, sane? to pay for the end of slavery?

[GW comment: Unfortunately “the end of slavery” is a bit of an illusion as white supremacy has not been ended and the civil war is now a civil cold war that remains alive and smoldering. ]

In the Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” we are asked to consider whether the whole order and existence of the universe is “worth” the painful death of a single innocent child.

[GW comment: Yes, this is a great koan. Yunmen said that from the perspective of after awakening, “Every day is a good day.” But how can it be a good day with innocent children are killed? The answer to this can not be found by evaluation! Not even if the evaluation is an evaluation of the whole package!]

In fact, we cannot choose, we cannot have one without the another and we must accept life, including the death of innocent children, as a whole.

[GW comment: So if we must accept life as a whole, where then is the room for the evaluation as a whole? Isn’t evaluation the art of accepting and rejecting?]

When I think of the state of the Dharma in America, I find I must say yes to it whole, which is to say I admit that its history, like all history, is a tragic whole.

[GW comment: The first Noble Truth: Life is suffering.]

There is no Zen apart from Zen teachers.

[GW comment: This seems like a non sequitur having no connection to what preceded it. In fact, though there are no Zen teachers without zen, it does not follow that there is no Zen apart from Zen teachers, in the sense that Zen is not dependent on the presence or absence of Zen teachers.]

There is no pure part to split off and honor while distancing ourselves from its failures. There is no way to say that the transmission of Zen to the West is “worth” the abuse of a single student. Isaiah Berlin adopted as a title for one of his books a quotation from Kant which he translates, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing has ever been made.” The Dharma, here and elsewhere, can be no exception. The lives of our teachers are crooked, sometimes in an endearing way, the way Suzuki Roshi could call himself a crooked cucumber, but also sometimes crooked in a way that is actually criminal. The realization of emptiness and interconnectedness by human beings does not, it seems, reliably transform them into something more than human.

[GW: Hw could it? There is an old Zen saying, “Pure gold refined a hundred times doesn’t change its color.”]

(It doesn’t, I’m sorry to say, even reliably turn them into good human beings). The fantasy that it always does, or even could, is one of the most effective curtains behind which our modern day Wizards of OZ can hide.

[GW: If you meet the Wizard on the yellow brick road, kill him.]

Anyone who tells you that Zen or any other practice will once and for all totally transform character is lying to you, and maybe to themselves as well. And it’s no good to claim transgressors aren’t “really” enlightened. Enlightenment just isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. (I’ve met too many Zen teachers to think otherwise.)

[GW: Well what is enlightenment cracked up to be? Zen teachers with shallow enlightenment abound. Deep enlightenment can crack up a person too, when there is no good teacher around.] .

If somewhere out there, in some temple in Japan or on a mountaintop in Tibet, there is a teacher who is “really” thoroughly and totally enlightened, it almost doesn’t matter. That would make practicing Buddhism like buying a lottery ticket. One in ten million get the big jackpot.

[GW: Well, that is the story of Buddhism, and to deny it makes it questionable whether one understands the Buddha Dharma.]

No thanks.

[GW: “No thanks” to the Buddha Dharma? Wow! Okay, then, but perhaps one with this attitude should be careful about claiming to teach the Buddha Dharma. Addendum on 3-5-11: I just came across this line from Zen Master Huangbo: "Of the 1000 people or 10,000 people within this gate, only three or five get it." ]

I want to know and work with the students I have, with their occasional garden variety “kenshos,” (like my own…) and find out what this practice does and doesn’t do for people like me.

[GW: Yes that is great. There is no denying that everyone finds out for themselves what their practice does and doesn’t do for them.]

The practice of Zen is a beautiful, transformative, profound, imperfect, unreliable, corruptible, abuse-able, culturally conditioned tradition and way of life of which I am part and which I am responsible for maintaining and passing on.

[GW: The forms of practice can be “passed on” but the practice of Zen is not in any particular form more than another and so in that sense can not be passed on.]

The medium is the message:

[GW: Who says? An assertion like this calls for the counter assertion that the medium is not the message which is why they are distinguished. In Zen, the medium is horizontal like the eyes and the message is vertical like the nose and they intersect at the zero point of solitary brightness going in and out of the face.]

there is no Zen apart from Zen teachers and Zen students, doing what they do.

[GW: Even if all the Zen teachers and Zen students were to perish, there would still be Zen.

Dharma Transmission and Enlightenment

A questioner asked,

i wanted to clarify something.
first there is kensho.
then there is enlightenment or completing a koan course [which i think is the ten faiths, resolute faith that does not backslide, sudden enlightenment and seeing one's true nature]. what is the equivalent in soto?
and some proportion of people [usually three or four for each teacher] who are enlightened under a master and receive dharma transmission from them.

is that right? at what point might one arouse bodhicitta?
thanks for an answers...

With respect _/|\_, this is somewhat scrambled up.

first there is kensho.

No “first” about it. In one way we can say first there is "sho" (nature, 性) as we all come from the root of our nature, then there is "kensho" (seeing the nature, 見性), when after the trip through delusion (called growing up and being socialized) we are able to see our nature, but even that conceptualization is too time bound to be grasped literally, because time itself is our nature and seeing time in its true suchness is kensho, too.

In terrms of self-consciousness, first is ignorance. For without ignorance there is no arising of the function of self-awareness or self-consciousness. There is no "one" or "first" until discrimination arises, and the acceptance of discrimination at its literal face value is what is ignorance. And ignorance is a parent to kensho, for without the ignorance of self-consciousness there is no birth of kensho.

In terms of practice, before seeing the nature (kensho) there comes all the various intimations, suggestions, and intuitions of the nature which arouse the faith to look for the nature, and these are usually called the beginnings of bodhicitta (heart-mind of enlightenment). The encouragement of bodhicitta is called the arousal of bodhicitta.

then there is enlightenment or completing a koan course [which i think is the ten faiths, resolute faith that does not backslide, sudden enlightenment and seeing one's true nature].

“Completing a koan course” is not synonymous with enlightenment, and vice versa. I’m not clear what the list (from the ten faiths to seeing one’s true nature) is supposed to represent. Is it being suggested that each of the items of this list is an equivalent of enlightenment or that the list represents the stages to enlightenment or what?

Like the word “love” that can be applied to our feeling for a piece of chocolate cake or to our most cherished intimate relationship, the word “enlightenment” has a range of application. Here is one system of four degrees of enlightenment: (1) bodhi (enlightenment), (2) sambodhi (evened or leveled enlightenment, (3) samyak sambodhi (unified and leveled enlightenment, and (4) annutara samyak sambodhi (unexcelled unified and leveled enlightenment).

Most people’s initial kensho is usually just to the first degree, but in some cases can penetrate even to the third degree, but it takes sustained repetitions of kensho to actualize the fourth degree of being unexcelled, i.e., nothing more supreme. In Buddha’s life story, this sustained repetition of kensho is told through the story of Buddha’s deepening of his awakening over several weeks immediately following his initial awakening at seeing the morning star, and in those weeks assaying how awareness functions at all levels of consciousness as his meditations ran through the various [i]jnanas[/i]. Only after this ultimate degree of bodhi realization can it be said that one has realized annutara samyak sambodhi.

It looks like you are equating inka--the certification given upon completing training to be a fully independent teacher--with enlightenment, and that is thin ice at best.

what is the equivalent in soto?

I’ll let the Soto teachers be more specific on the procedural aspects of Soto Dharma transmission, but essentially, the enlightenment in all Zen lineages is only one enlightenment, as it is the enlightenment of the one mind of true suchness, or alternatively the true suchness of the one mind. The distinctions of how the practical “churchy” affairs of “Dharma transmission” for the maintenance of the institution of Zen are concerned and conducted are of secondary importance at best, compared to having a Dharma transmission. So there are differences in how different Zen lineages bestow “Dharma transmission” for the sake of continuing their lineage, but those differences are superficial. Dharma transmission is “bestowed” by some in “pieces” or “stages” and by others all at once. Dharma transmission is a worldly expression that is for the benefit of human beings living in ignorance in order to give us the faith of bodhicitta.

The Dharma itself is not “transmitted,” in the same sense that Yunmen (J. Ummon) said “I didn’t say there is no Zen, but in all of the Great Tang there are no Zen Masters.” Though we speak of the Dharma being historically transmitted from master to master, and from country to country, the True Dharma is not something that comes and goes from India to China or across the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans. The Dharma is ubiquitous like the atmosphere, sky, Earth, or space depending on the metaphorical context.

and some proportion of people [usually three or four for each teacher] who are enlightened under a master and receive dharma transmission from them.

There are no number requirements. It is said that if a teacher finds one-half of a student to whom the Dharma is transmitted, that is enough, but of course it is better to find a single student who is twice the teacher. Some Zen masters found no one they had confidence in to transmit the Dharma so their lineage terminated with their death. Other rare teachers had 70, 100, or more Dharma transmissions. It is told that Mazu Daoyi (J. Baso Doitsu) had up to 139 Dharma heirs.

is that right? at what point might one arouse bodhicitta?

As discussed above, the bodhicitta arises spontaneously in intuitions and intimations and so the point to “arouse” it is to encourage it when it arises. Any remembrance of (i.e., turning the heart-mind toward) bodhicitta is the arousal of bodhicitta. Turning awareness toward “Who is the one remembering bodhicitta” is one style of koan method of arousing bodhicitta. Reciting the Nembutsu is another way of arousing bodhicitta as long as the focus of the recitation is turned around to “Who is the one reciting Buddha’s name.”

In the sense that enlightenment at the root is birthless, so is bodhicitta birthless at our root and thus is never lost or destroyed. But in our ignorance we forget about the root and travel the dark roads of birth and death. Any remembrance or reflection of bodhi while traveling on the dark roads is an arousal of bodhicitta.

_/|\_
Gregory

Moon Light Escapade

A poem by me for you.

In the dark

The dew collects on the hundred grasses.

Then the rising full moon

Lights the garden,

Reflecting on the glistening blades

Cutting through the moon shadows.

The tips of my shoes

Are shining too.

-g

Quotes for Linji's Memorial Day

Zen master Línjì Yìxuán (臨濟義玄; W–G: Lin-chi I-hsüan, J: Rinzai Gigen) died in 866 CE and January 10th is the traditional memorial day for this great teacher.

Here are some excerpts from the Record of Linji. One of the central images that Linji uses is "solitary brightness" (孤明); it is used to describe our Buddha nature in a personal and intimate way to prevent the externalization or objectification of our true suchness, that is to avoid dividing our true suchness into internal and external or subject and object. Another such technique the master used to turn students from objectification is the well known Linji admonition to "kill the Buddha."

The translation is mine.

Said on ascending the hall, "Upon the ball of red flesh there is a singular true person without rank. It perpetually goes in and goes out of the gates of the faces of you people of various classes. To those who have not yet borne witness, observe, observe.”
At the time there was a monk who came forward and asked, "So what is the true person without rank?”
The master descended from the meditation dais, grabbed and stopped him, and said, “Speak! Speak!”
As that monk was deciding what to discuss, the master opened his hold and said, “What a dry shit-stick is the true person without rank.” Then he returned to the Ten-foot Square (i.e., the abbot’s room).

"Greatly Virtuous Ones, your ancestors knew that the fundamental person who receives and plays with light and shadow is the root source of all the Buddhas and every place is a lodging place for Wanderers in the Way to return to. Indeed your physical body (rupakaya) of the Four Great Elements cannot listen to the Dharma and understand and explain the Dharma. The spleen, stomach, liver, or gall bladder cannot listen to the Dharma and understand and explain the Dharma. Empty space cannot listen to the Dharma and understand and explain the Dharma. Indeed, what listens to the Dharma and understands and explains the Dharma? Indeed before your eyes, all the way through to the bottom, is the solitary brightness that never has one particular piece of form. Indeed, this is the one who listens to the Dharma and understands and explains the Dharma."

"Wanderers in the Way, as it is now, the solitary brightness before the eyes goes all the way through the earth to the one who is listening. This person in every place is not hindered and moves unobstructed through the ten directions and three realms by oneself. When one enters every situation the differences are not able to turn around or change one. The one realm that consists of the inner space thoroughly enters the Dharma Realm. Running into Buddhas, one talks to Buddhas; running into ancestors, one talks to ancestors; running into hungry ghosts, one talks to hungry ghosts. Turning towards every place, hiking the lands of the nation teaching and converting the many beings, yet one is not once separate for a single thought moment (ksana). In accord with the place, the clear and clean light penetrates the ten directions, and the 10,000 things (dharmas) are One Suchness."

"Wanderers in the Way, true love is a great difficulty; the Buddha Dharma is a deep mystery. If you are able to understand, you are capable in every situation. This mountain monk, in the past, for today, and in the future speaks to lay it bare. Those who study, after all, are not at the meaning. 1,000 times, 10,000 times, the bottom of the feet step to ford across the blackness that darkens situations. Without one particular piece of form, all the way through is solitary brightness. When the faith of students is inadequate, then they turn to the names and phrases of superior beings to understand. The years mount up to half a hundred, and they only manage to draw near to home carrying a dead corpse from shelter to shelter traveling under heaven. Depend on it; there is a day that demands the money for their straw sandals."

"Wanderers in the Way, as you long to obtain the Dharma of Suchness, only do not give birth to doubts. By the standard of expansion, it pervades the entire Dharma Realm (Dharmadhatu). By the standard of contraction, a strand of hair cannot stand. All the way through the solitary brightness has never in the past lacked a little. The eye does not see it; the ear does not hear it. What object can be aroused? A man of old said, “The standard of saying it resembles a singular object is not on the mark.” You should only look into your own home (family, lineage). What more is there? Speech also is without end. Each touches power by oneself. Cherish it."

Dharma Currents #1: Introduction to the Middle Way

With the new year, I want to start blogging, hopefully more consistently at regular intervals, on a recurring theme that may be broadly characterized as "Buddhism in the Current Age of Scientism" or "Dharma Currents" for short to play on the stream imagery. The idea is to explore how Buddha Dharma is relevant to today's world, including the political landscape, that is, a world that seems too fixated and caught between the horns of the polarity of religious theism and scientist athesim.

I see Buddhism as the third way in its traditional sense of the Middle Way as the path of synthetic resolution of the polarized mindset that forces our thinking about life into an either-or frame work. The human mind every where is subject to the mind's inherently polarizing influence in the very structure and function of consciousness, but the Western World's frame of reference, of Greco-Roman-European derivation, for religion and philosophy is bound up in the historically relevant context of the structures of opposition that have grown out of the theism-monotheism-atheism streams of thought. Today the West is still under the spell of theism so that people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris are viewed as "the three horsemen of atheism" traveling widely to preach the virtues of atheism and the vices of theism.

There are many people, and I am one, who feel dissatisfied with the dialogue as it is framed and see the debate as caught between a rock and a hard place. Buddhism, however, naturally flows between the rock of theism and the hard place of atheism, and for those in Western culture who see the barrenness and inadequacy of both theism and atheism, Buddhism is the natural solution to rescue spirituality from the theism of modern religions and to rescue rationality from the atheism of scientism. It is this recognition of the position that Buddhism takes in this debate that led Albert Einstein, the preemeninant physical scientist of the 20th century, to declare that Buddhism is the historically closest religion to his conception of the cosmic relition that humankind is yearning for.

There is a frequently cited quote attributed to Einstein that says,

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense of arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. . . Buddhism answers this description. . . If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.

This quote is found in several slight variations and is sometimes challenged as legitimate because its source has not been identified. However, if it is not a direct quote, then I take it as an accurate paraphrase at least, based on the following excerpt taken from Einstein's article printed in the New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4 which contains all the important particulars of the condensed quote:

"Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
"The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
“The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another."

The essential points of Einstein's view of a science that has not left spiritual values or appreciation behind include (1) no dogma, (2) no anthropomorphic God, (3) a cosmic religious feeling, (4) experiencing the universe as a single significant whole or meaningful unity, (5) leading to freedom from the prison of individualism.

It should be clear to the honest observer that neither modern theistic religions nor modern atheistic scientism fit this bill of particulars. However, Zen Buddhism does fit Einstein's bill in every particular.

Similarly, Carl G. Jung, the Einstein of Psychology in the 20th century, also found kindred spirit with Zen in his scientific inquiry of the mind in which he discovered again and again that any attempt to remove the spiritual values from science were bound to fail and create only a dead dogma. When Jung was near death he was reading Charles Luk's Ch'an and Zen Teachings: First Series in which the first section presents discourses of Zen Master Hsu Yun (Empty Cloud). Jung directed his personal assistant and friend Dr. Marie-Louse von Aranz to write to the author. In the letter (dated September 12, 1961) von Aranz wrote

"He was enthusiastic.... When he read what Hsu Yun said, he sometimes felt as if he himself could have said exactly this! It was just it!."

Buddhism, and most essentially Zen Buddhism, is "just it!" when it comes to expressing the comprehension of the reality of life and death in a manner that is not inconsistent with the most insightful scientists of the physical and psychological sciences of the 20th century. However, in the later half of the 20th century, science itslef has become entraped in a form of dogma that has become scientism as expressed through the anti-theist preaching of the above name three horsemen of atheism, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. This view of scientism is scientific materialism in which the literalized objectification of the material world is taken to a limit of phyical appearances but no further. There are, to be sure, still scientists today who, like Einstein and Jung, do not subscribe to this atheistic scientism, however, they are hard pressed to get recognition beyond the walls of their academic towers, while the mainstream media and popular culture claim for their own a scientism of physical things sanitized of all spiritual or psychological dimension.

For people of the West who see the superstious silliness of anthropomorphic gods and their dogmas, yet who also sense the irrationality of an anti-spiritual scientism with its dogma of atheistic materialism, Zen Buddhism provides a context and method for discovering the real and profound dimension of a religion of meaningful unity liberating us from the prison of our individual and separate existence.

BOYCOTT AMAZON!

With the news that Amazon.com has kow-towed to jingoist Joe Liberman and disassociated itself from any connection to Wikileaks, it is time to boycott Amazon.com. An organization as strong and successful as Amazon that is so afraid of a fascist like Liberman doesn't deserve any support from the progressive community. If you ever wondered how the Communist scare and Joe McCarthy got started, this is how. If people don't stand up to the anti-democracy forces in our own government then people like Joe Liberman are able to use their fascist fear mongering to undermine our democratic freedoms. Without the ability of heros like the whistleblowers who give us the truth, we will not have either liberty or democracy. What we have learned from the Wikileaked documents is that it is our own government that is the anti-democratic global force.

I went to Amazon.com to terminate my account and give notice that I will be boycotting Amazon until I hear that they have changed their policy about Wikileaks. However, the first thing I discovered is that Amazon does not make customer feedback easy. I could not find any "contact" links prominently displayed on my account pages. I couldn't find any way to notify Amazon about my dissatisfaction with their policy against Wikileaks, and I couldn't find any way to terminate my account. If you know of how to terminate an Amazon account please post it here to share with others.

Thanks.

P.S.
Okay, I found the contact us link on the "help" page. If you are an Amazon customer you can contact them through this link. Here's the message I sent them.

I want to terminate my Amazon account because of Amazon's policy of bowing to Joe Liberman's anti-democratic scare tactics and because Amazon is not supporting Wikileaks in its time of need.. Wikileaks deserves a medal not to be removed from the cloud. Please tell me how I can terminate my Amazon account because from now on until I have heard that Amazon has changed its policy on supporting freedom of information I will no longer support Amazon.

They say they will respond within 12 hours so I'll post their response when I get it.

The Platform Sutra, 1st Section of Chapter 10

Here's my recent translation of the first section of Chapter 10 of the Platform Sutra of Huineng. This section is especially noteworthy because it is an outline instructing how to explain Zen. Since at the time there was nothing known as the "Chan" (Zen) school or lineage, Huineng called his school "this Dharma Gate."

Huineng's direct teaching about the functioning of the opposites as mutually causative and conditioned became highly condensed and concentrated in the Zen school through the interactions of questions and answers. Huineng's admonition to "not leave your own nature" when responding to student's questions created the context in which the Zen master's pithy and brief responses directly pointed from the condition of one-sidedness inherent in the student’s question to the nondual nature. The recorded collections of these interactions became taken up by others for inquiry into the one-sidedness of mind that each interaction pivoted upon and is how koans came into usage as a methodology.

_/|\_
Gregory



Platform Sutra of the Dharma Treasure of the Great Master Sixth Ancestor
六祖大師法寶壇經

Tenth: Handing Down Instructions

The master one day summoned the people of the gate, of the rank of Fahai, Zhicheng, Fada, Shenhui, Zhichang, Zhitong, Zhiche, Zhidao, Fazhen, and Faru, saying, “Your rank is not the same as the rest of the people. After my nirvana, each [of you] will become the teacher of one region. I now teach you to explain the Dharma, so the lineage does not lose the root.

“First, [you] must raise the three sections of the Dharma Gate, [next] take up the functions of the 36 paired opposites arising and sinking, then leave both extremes. In explaining everything, do not leave your own nature.

“If there is a person asking you about the Dharma put forth words to exhaust the polarity, and in all cases take hold of the Dharma of the paired opposites and the mutual causation of their coming and going, getting to the very bottom and wiping out the Dharma of duality, while still being without leaving or dwelling.

“The three sections of the Gate of the Dharma are the shadows, realms, and entrances. The shadows are the Five Skandhas, one by one: form (rupa), feelings (vedana), conceptions (samjna), doings (samskara), and consciousness (vijnana). The entrances are the Twelve Ayatanas: the external Six Dusts are, one by one, color (rupa), sound, fragrance, taste, touch, and thing and the internal Six Gates are, one by one, the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and idea. The realms are the 18 Dhatus, which are the Six Dusts, the Six Gates and the Six Consciousnesses.

“The ability of one’s own nature to contain the 10,000 things is called the containing Storehouse Consciousness (alayavijnana). If considering and measuring arise, then consciousness evolves and comes into being as the six consciousnesses (vijnanas) emerging through the six gates viewing the six dusts. Thus are the 18 Realms in all cases following from the function of the arising of one’s own nature. If one’s own nature is wrong, then 18 wrongs arise. If one’s own nature is right, then 18 rights arise. If it is the function of evil, then it is the function of the multitude of beings; if the function of virtue, then it is the function of Buddha. What category is the cause of the functioning? The cause is that one’s own nature has the Dharma of paired-opposites.

“In external phenomena of the insentient, the five paired-opposites are:
the pair of heaven and earth;
the pair of the sun and moon;
the pair of the bright and the dark;
the pair of the shady and the sunny (yin and yang, negative and positive); and
the pair of water and fire.
These are the five paired opposites.

“In the language of the characteristics of things (dharmalaksana), the twelve paired-opposites are:
the pair of language and things (words and thingness);
the pair of existence and non-existence (having and being without);
the pair of having form and being without form;
the pair of having characteristics and being without characteristics;
the pair of having leakage and being without leakage;
the pair of form and emptiness;
the pair of motion and stillness;
the pair of clean and muddy;
the pair of the worldly and the sacred;
the pair of monastics and laity;
the pair of old and young; and
the pair of great and small.
These are the twelve paired opposites.

“In the arising and functioning of one’s own-nature, the nineteen paired-opposites are:
the pair of long and short;
the pair of wrong and right;
the pair of stupidity and wisdom;
the pair of foolishness and intelligence;
the pair of disturbance and samadhi;
the pair of kindness and malice;
the pair of morality (sila) and wrongdoings;
the pair of straight and crooked;
the pair of true and false;
the pair of rugged and even;
the pair of afflictions (klesa) and enlightenment (bodhi);
the pair of permanence and impermanence;
the pair of compassion and cruelty;
the pair of happiness and anger;
the pair of giving and stinginess;
the pair of advance and retreat;
the pair of birth and cessation;
the pair of the Dharma body (Dharmakaya) and the physical body (Rupuakaya); and
the pair of the transforming body (Nirmanakaya) and the reward body (Sambhogakaya). These are the 19 paired-opposites.”

In the words of the master, “If one can untie and use this Dharma of the 36 paired-opposites, then it is the Way that threads though the Dharma of every sutra, and [one’s] going out and entering are then separate from both extremes.

"In the active functioning of your own nature and in conversations with people, while outwardly in appearances, separate from appearances; while inwardly in emptiness, separate from emptiness. If you wholly attach to appearances (i.e., the view of materialism), then your perverted views broaden. If you wholly grasp emptiness (i.e., the view of nihilism), then your ignorance broadens.

"People who grasp emptiness have slandered the Sutras [by saying] “direct words do not use written words.” Since they say “Do not use written words” these people too are not united with [their own] speech, simply as this speech then is the appearance of written words. Again, to say, “The straight Way is not established by written words,” then this “not established” are both words and are written words. On seeing a person who explains, then immediately they slander the other’s words as being attached to written words. You who are ranked [as Dharma heirs] must know self-delusion like this is able repeatedly to slander the Buddha’s Sutras. Do not desire to slander the Sutras; the hindrances of the sin are countless.

“If [one] attaches to external appearances and then seeks the truth in the activity of things, or [one] widely establishes places of the Way (i.e., temples, monasteries, etc.) and explains the mistakes and suffering of existence and nonexistence, people who are like this are unable to see the nature for accumulated aeons.

“Yet to listen to and take refuge in the practice of cultivating the Dharma, while [you] also cannot not think of the 100 objects, nevertheless, in regard to the Way is an obstruction of the nature. If [you] listen to explanations and do not cultivate, [you] cause people to flip-out and give birth to perverted thoughts. Yet taking refuge in the practice of cultivating the Dharma without dwelling in appearances (without stopping appearances) is giving (dana) of the Dharma.

“You who are ranked [as Dharma heirs], if you awaken in accord with this explanation; in accord with this functioning; in accord with this practice; and in accord with these doings; then you do not lose the root of the lineage.

“If there is a person asking you about a meaning, and asks about having one, go to the paired opposite of being without one; if asking about being without one, go to the paired opposite of having one. If one asks about the worldly, use the paired opposite of the saintly; if asking about the saintly use the paired opposite of the worldly. The mutual causation of the Way of dualities, gives birth to the meaning of the Middle Way. So, for a single question, a single pair of opposites, and for other questions the single [pair] that accords with this fashion, then you do not lose the principle.

“Suppose there is a person who asks, ‘What is taken for and called darkness?’ Reply and say, ‘Light is the proximate cause and darkness is the contributory cause. When light is ended, then there is darkness. By the means of light, darkness manifests; by the means of darkness, light manifests. Their coming and going are mutually proximate causes and become the meaning of the Middle Way.’ Other questions are without exception like this. You who are ranked among the descendents transmitting the Dharma, by relying on this teaching of turning around the characteristics you do not lose the taste of the lineage.”

[End of first section of Chapter 10.]

Yongjia's Song of Confirming the Way

Here are several versions of the opening lines of Yongjia Xuanjue’s “Song of Confirming the Way” (A.K.A. “Song of Enlightenment,” 證道歌, C. Zhèngdào gē, J. Shodoka,) comparing my translation with six others.

The title is interesting to me, especially because I don’t understand how or why it has been translated as “The Song of Enlightenment” and become most widely known in English with that title. It may be D.T. Suzuki’s responsibility as this is the title he used in his book Manual of Zen Buddhism. Suzuki often took such liberties with translating text in order to achieve his proselytizing goal of making the Dharma accessible for English speakers. The character for enlightenment or awakening (覺) is in the text but not in the title. The title begins with the character 證 which means “to confirm, certify, testify, evidence, or prove,” and any of these terms are valid translations. The second character is 道 which means “the Way, the Tao” and appears in the opening lines with the phase “person of the Way” or “man of Tao” etc. The third character 歌 means “sing, song. chant, praise,” etc. Because Yongjia’s verse is not only about his own testimony of the Way confirming the Way for us, but also about how each of us can confirm the Way for ourselves, I have chosen “Confirming the Way” as the best translation for 證道.

Yongjia Xuanjue (Yung-chia Hsuan-chueh, J. Yoka Genkaku)( d. 713) was a dharma successor in both Tiantai and Zen lineages. He was heir to the Dharma of Tiankong, the 7th Ancestor of Tiantai, and heir to the Dharma of Huineng, the 6th Ancestor of Zen. He had mastered the meditation practice of samatha-vipassana (stopping and insight)(C. zhi guan, J. shikan) in the Tiantai lineage. After having a profound awakening when reading the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, he then completely realized the true suchness of mind with his inquiry of the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra. He was advised to get confirmation of his awakening by visiting the 6th Ancestor of Zen, Huineng, and he did so. His encounter with Huineng is memorialized in the Platform Sutra of Huineng where it is related that Huineng confirmed his awakening and invited him to stay overnight at the temple of Caoxi. In Zen circles he was thus known as “the overnight enlightened one.”

There are no stanza breaks in the original Chinese, so each of the translators inserts breaks where is seems appropriate to them for the ease of the reader. Some of these ancient verses have an obvious format such as couplets or quatrains, but I don’t see an obvious structure to the “Song,” so any breaks must be inserted based on the content and not the structure. It seems to me like the stanzas vary into 2, 4 or 6 lines. Since the different translators vary the stanza lengths, for now I have not inserted any stanza breaks in my translation here, leaving it to the reader to decide where breaks should occur if at all.

Here are the opening lines in Chinese [from T48n2014_p0395c06(00)] used for my translation.

永嘉證道歌
唐慎水沙門玄覺撰
君不見。
絕學無為閒道人。
不除妄想不求真。
無明實性即佛性。
幻化空身即法身。
法身覺了無一物。
本源自性天真佛。
五陰浮雲空去來。
三毒水泡虛出沒。
證實相無人法。
剎那滅卻阿鼻業。
若將妄語誑眾生。
自招拔舌塵沙劫。
頓覺了如來禪。
六度萬行體中圓。
夢裏明明有六趣。
覺後空空無大千。

#1. Trans by Gregory Wonderwheel

“Yongjia’s Song of Confirming the Way”

Composed by Sramana Xuanjue of Shenshui of the Tang

Don’t you see?
The person of the Way who renounces study and is without activity and idleness,
Does not get rid of erroneous concepts and does not seek truth.
The real nature of ignorance is immediately the Buddha nature.
The empty body of changing illusions is immediately the Dharmakaya
Complete awakening to the Dharmakaya is without a single object.
The root source of one’s own nature is the true Buddha of heaven.
The drifting clouds of the five skandhas emptily come and go,
The water bubbles of the three poisons vainly arise and sink,
Confirming that the character of reality is without person or thing
Is the state that extinguishes the karma of falling into the Avici Hell.
If this is using false words to deceive the multitude of beings
Then by myself, I call for pulling out my tongue for eons of dust and sand.
In the Tathagata Zen of complete sudden awakening,
The essence of the six paramitas and the 10,000 practices are within its fullness.
Inside of a dream, it is clearly clear there are six destinies.
After awakening, in empty emptiness there is no Great Chiliocosm.

#2. Trans. by D.T. Suzuki, in Manual of Zen Buddhism, from http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/mzb/mzb04.htm

YOKA DAISHI'S "SONG OF ENLIGHTENMENT"

1. Knowest thou that leisurely philosopher who has gone beyond learning and is not exerting himself in anything?
He neither endeavours to avoid idle thoughts nor seeks after the Truth;
[For he knows that] ignorance in reality is the Buddha-nature,
[And that] this empty visionary body is no less than the Dharma-body.

2. When one knows what the Dharma-body is, there is not an object [to be known as such],
The source of all things, as far as its self-nature goes, is the Buddha in his absolute aspect;
The five aggregates (skandha) are like a cloud floating hither and thither with no fixed purpose,
The three poisons (klesa) are like foams appearing and disappearing as it so happens to them.

3. When Reality is attained, it is seen to be without an ego-substance and devoid of all forms of objectivity,
And thereby all the karma which leads us to the lowest hell is instantly wiped out;
Those, however, who cheat beings with their false knowledge,
Will surely see their tongues pulled out for innumerable ages to come.

4. In one whose mind is at once awakened to [the intent of] the Tathagata-dhyana
The six paramitas and all the other merits are fully matured;
While in a world of dreams the six paths of existence arc vividly traced,
But after the awakening there is vast Emptiness only and not even a great chiliocosm exists.

#3. Trans by Lu K’uan Yu (Charles Luk), from Chan and Zen Teachings, Third Series, p. 116-118.

“Yung Chia’s Song of Enlightenment”

Have you not seen a man of Tao at his ease
In his non-active and beyond learning states
Who neither suppresses thoughts nor seeks the real? To him
The real nature of ignorance is Buddhata
And the non-existent boy of illusion is Dharmakaya.
After his awakening, his Dharma body owns not anything,
For each thing in essence comes from his true self-natured Buddha;
The five aggregates are just floating clouds that aimlessly come and go,
While the three poisons are but bubbles that appear and vanish.

When the real is attained, neither ego nor dharma exist,
And in a moment the avici karma is eradicated
If knowingly I lie to deceive living beings, my tongue
Will be pulled out for aeons uncountable as dust and sand.

When at once awakened, the Tathagata’s Ch’an is perfected in self-substance
By any of the six paramitas or myriad methods of salvation.
When dreaming, clearly there are six worlds of existence,
When awake, not even the great chilocosm can be found.

#4. Trans. by Robert Aiken Roshi, from http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/ZenPages/Daily-Zen-Sutras.html#SHODO

“Song of Enlightenment”

There is the leisurely one,
Walking the Tao, beyond philosophy,
Not avoiding fantasy, not seeking truth.
The real nature of ignorance is Buddha nature itself;
The empty delusory body is the very body of the Dharma.

When the Dharma body awakens completely,
There is nothing at all.
The source of our self nature
Is the Buddha of innocent truth.
Mental and physical reactions come and go
Like clouds in the empty sky;
Greed, hatred, and ignorance appear and disappear
Like bubbles on the surface of the sea.*

When we realize actuality,
There is no distinction between mind and thing
And the path to hell instantly vanishes.
If this is a lie to fool the world,
My tongue may be cut out forever.*

Once we awaken to the Tathagata Zen,
The six noble deeds and the ten thousand good actions
Are already complete within us.
In our dream we see the six levels of illusion clearly;
After we awaken the whole universe is empty.

#5, Trans by International Institute For The Translation of Buddhist Texts, Dharma Realm Buddhist University, From http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/VenHua/Song%20of%20Enlightenment.htm [The original is in all caps, so I haven’t put it into regular case not knowing where they would use initial capitals.]

“SONG OF ENLIGHTENMENT”

HAVE YOU NOT SEEN PEOPLE WHOSE STUDY HAS ENDED, WHO DO NOTHING, WHO ABIDE IN THE WAY AT EASE?
THEY DO NOT BANISH FALSE THOUGHTS, THEY DO NOT SEEK THE TRUTH,
THE TRUE NATURE OF IGNORANCE IS THE BUDDHA NATURE;
THIS EMPTY BODY, AN ILLUSORY TRANSFORMATION, IS THE DHARMA BODY.
IN THE DHARMA BODY'S ENLIGHTENMENT, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THING;
AT ITS SOURCE THE INHERENT NATURE IS THE BUDDHA OF DIVINE INNOCENCE,
THE FIVE SKANDHAS, LIKE FLOATING CLOUDS, EMPTILY COME AND GO;
THE THREE POISONS, LIKE BUBBLES OF WATER, RISE AND SINK, UNREAL.

WHEN ONE IS CERTIFIED TO THE CHARACTERISTIC OF REALITY,
THERE ARE NO PEOPLE OR DHARMAS,
THE KARMA OF THE AVICHI IS CANCELLED IN A KSHANA.
IF I WERE DECEIVING LIVING BEINGS WITH UNTRUE WORDS,
I'D INVITE UPON MYSELF THE RIPPING OUT OF TONGUES FOR AEONS AS MANY AS DUST AND SAND.

WITH SUDDEN ENLIGHTENED UNDERSTANDING OF THE DHYANA OF THE THUS COME ONES,
THE SIX CROSSINGS OVER AND TEN THOUSAND PRACTICES ARE COMPLETE IN SUBSTANCE.
IN A DREAM, VERY CLEARLY, THERE ARE SIX DESTINIES;
AFTER ENLIGHTENMENT, COMPLETELY EMPTY, THERE IS NO UNIVERSE.

#6. Trans at Dragon Flower Zen Meditation, from http://www.dragonflower.org/song.html

“The Song of Enlightenment”

Do you not know the ease of the man of the Way who has gone beyond learning, and whose state is "non-action",
Who neither suppresses thoughts, nor seeks the "Truth?"
To him the reality of ignorance is the Buddha Nature;
The empty illusory is the Dharmakaya.

When one who is awakened to the Dharma body, there are no objects;
The essence of all things comes from the self nature Buddha!
The Five Aggregates mere floating clouds aimlessly coming and Going;
The Three Poisons bubbles that appear and disappear.

When Reality is attained, there is neither ego nor object,
And within that instant, the karma of eternal suffering is wiped away.
If this is a lie to deceive living beings,
For ages as numberless as dust, let my own tongue be plucked out.

When the mind is once awakened to the Ch'an of the Tathagata,
The Six Paramitas are also fully perfect, as are the Ten Thousand Expedient Means .
In dreams, the Six Realms are vivid;
When one awakens, not even a Universe of Universes can be found.

#7. Trans by Yasuda Joshu roshi and Anzan Hoshin roshi, from http://www.wwzc.org/translations/shodoka.htm

“Shodoka: Song of Freedom”

Have you ever seen one of the Way?

Beyond action and beyond learning,
one is at ease,
not struggling against delusion
or grasping after the truth.

One sees the nature of ignorance
to be itself Essential Awareness,
and the illusion of one’s own body
is the Realm of Reality.

Completely realizing
the Realm of Reality to be objectless,
one finds oneself the source of all things
and one’s own nature to be Awake Awareness.

The five aggregates arise and decay
like aimless clouds,
the three distorted orientations come and go
like bubbles on water.

Realizing Suchness, neither self nor things exist;
in one moment cause and effect are liberated.

If anything I say is untrue
may my tongue be pulled out for countless eons.

In a single moment of direct awakening
to the Zen of Reality as a continuous presencing,
the six perfections and countless skillful means
are complete.

The six realms of existence are a dream,
in waking they are nowhere to be found.

Zen Words on Words

Here's a selection of words on words from various sources including Sutras, Treatises, and koans.

Treatise on the Awakening of Faith in the Great Vehicle
(Mahayana-Sraddhotpada Shastra 大乘起信論 Ta-ch'eng ch'i-hsin lun)
Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 32, No. 1666
Chinese Translation by Paramartha
Translated to English from the Chinese by A. Gregory Wonderwheel

[I. The Two Doors of the One Mind]

The basis of the Dharma of the One Heart-Mind has two kinds of doors. How are the two stated? That which is first is the door of the Heart-Mind’s True Suchness (bhûtatathatâ). That which is second is the door of the Heart-Mind’s birth and death. Indeed, the two kinds of doors, each and entirely, fully include all things (sarvadharma). How is this meaning stated? Because it is considered that the two doors are not mutually separable.

[A. The First Door of the Heart-Mind’s True Suchness]

That which is the Heart-Mind’s True Suchness, then, is the great universal characteristic and essential Dharma Door of the One Dharma-realm (dharmadhâtu). That which is designated the Nature of the Heart-Mind is not born and does not die. There is differentiation of all the various things only by relying on deluded thinking. If one is free from deluding thinking, then one is without the whole objective realm of appearances. This is because all things have already come from the root free from the characteristics of verbal expressions, free from the characteristics of names and words, and free from the characteristics of the mind’s cognition, and in the ultimate equality they are without the transformations of existence and are unable to be destroyed. Because they are only the One Heart-Mind, they are called True Suchness. By considering all verbal expressions to be relative they are called unreal, yet because they follow deluded thinking one is unable to get it.
In that which is the true suchness of words, likewise, there are no characteristics of existence. Designating the limit of verbal expressions causes words to banish words. Here, in the embodiment of True Suchness there is no existence able to be banished, because of considering all things as completely True; likewise nothing is able to be established because of considering all things in all cases as identical with Suchness. One should know that because all things are unable to be explained and unable to be thought they are called the activity of True Suchness.




The Lankavatara Sutra
A Mahayana Text
Translated from the original Sanskrit by
DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI

XLII
Further, Mahamati said: Blessed One, is it not because of the reality of words that all things are? If not for words, Blessed One, there would be no rising of things. Hence, Blessed One, the existence of all things is by reason of the reality of words.
Said the Blessed One: Even when there are no [corresponding] objects there are words, Mahamati; for instance, the hare's horns, the tortoise's hair, a barren woman's child, etc. (105)—they are not at all visible in the world but the words are; Mahamati, they are neither entities nor nonentities but expressed in words. If, Mahamati, you say that because of the reality of words the objects are, this talk lacks in sense. Words are not known in all the Buddha-lands; words, Mahamati, are an artificial creation. In some Buddha-lands ideas are indicated by looking steadily, in others by gestures, in still others by a frown, by the movement of the eyes, by laughing, by yawning, or by the clearing of the throat, or by recollection, or by trembling. Mahamati, for instance, in the worlds of the Steady-Looking and in those of Exquisite Odours, and in the Buddha-land of Samantabhadra the Tathagata, Arhat, Fully-Enlightened One, the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas by steadily looking without a wink attain the recognition of all things as unborn and also various most excellent Samadhis. For this reason, Maha- [92] mati, the validity of all things has nothing to do with the reality of words. It is observed, Mahamati, even in this world that in the kingdom of such special beings as ants, bees, etc., they carry on their work without words.

LXI
Again Mahamati said: It is said by the Blessed One that from the night of the Enlightenment till the night of the Parinirvana, the Tathagata (143) in the meantime has not uttered even a word, nor will he ever utter; for not-speaking is the Buddha's speaking. According to what deeper sense is it that not-speaking is the Buddha's speaking?
The Blessed One replied: By reason of two things of the deeper sense, Mahamati, this statement is made. What are the two things: They are the truth of self-realisation and an eternally-abiding reality. According to these two things of the deeper sense the statement is made by me. Of what deeper sense is the truth of self-realisation? What has been realised by the Tathagatas, that is my own realisation, in which there is neither decreasing nor increasing; for the realm of self-realisation is free from words and discriminations, having nothing to do with dualistic terminology.
LXV

Further, Mahamati, the Bodhisattva-Mahasattva who is conversant with words and meaning observes that words are neither different nor not-different from meaning and that meaning stands in the same relation to words. If, Mahamati, meaning is different from words, it will not be made manifest by means of words; but meaning is entered into by words as things [are revealed] by a lamp. It is, Mahamati, like a man carrying a lamp to look after his property. [By means of this light] he can say: This is my property and so is kept in this place. Just so, Mahamati, by means of the lamp of words and speech originating from discrimination, the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas can enter into the exalted state of self-realisation which is free from speech-discrimination.


Blue Cliff Record
Translated by A. Gregory Wonderwheel

Case 65. One Outside the Way Questions Buddha

Raised: One outside the Way questioned Buddha, “I do not question with words; I do not question without words.”
The World Honored One was respectful a long time.
The one outside the Way said in praise, “The World Honored One’s great compassion and great pity have opened my clouds of confusion and allowed me to gain entry.”
After the one outside the Way departed, Ananda questioned Buddha, “What did the one outside the Way have in the place of evidence and accordingly the words ‘gaining entry’?”
Buddha said, “Like a fine horse of the world, he sees the shadow of the whip and goes accordingly.”

Blue Cliff Record
Translated by A. Gregory Wonderwheel

Case 84 Vimalakirti Sutra’s Non-Duality
摩經不二

[Yuanwu’s] Appended pointer says:

Just say, does this person also possess eye(s) or not? If you are able to judge this person, then I approve that you have come to personally see the people of old.


Raised:

Vimalakirti asked Manjusri, “How do those ranked as being bodhisattvas enter the Dharma gate of non-duality?”
Manju(sri) said, “So this is my idea, in everything (sarvadharma) to be without words, without explaining, without instructing, and without knowledge, and to leave aside all questions and answers, is the act of entering the Dharma gate of non-duality.”
Thereat, Manjusri asked Vimalakirti, “Each and every one of those equally ranked and myself have explained already. You who are virtuous and equally ranked explain, how do those ranked as being bodhisattvas enter the Dharma gate of non-duality?”

Xuedou said, “What did Vimala(kirti) say?”
Repeating he said, “Investigate and expose completely!”


Gateless Checkpoint
Translated by A. Gregory Wonderwheel

Case 6. The World Honored One Picks a Flower

The World Honored One a long time ago at a convocation on top of Spirit Mountain* picked up a flower and showed it to the multitude. At that time all the multitude were thus silent. Only Arya Kashyapa gave a broad smile and laughed a little.
The World Honored One said, “I possess the storehouse of the correct Dharma eye, the wonderful heart-mind of Nirvana, the formless true form, the subtle Dharma gate, not established by written words, transmitted separately outside the teaching. I hand it over and entrust these encouraging words to Kashyapa.”

Wumen says: Golden-faced Gautama acted audaciously. He shelved the good to be cheap. He hung a sheep’s head and sold dog meat. How many are ready to say this is peculiar? But supposing at that place and time the great multitude had all laughed, how could he have put forth the storehouse of the correct Dharma eye in a living transmission? If Kashyapa was not caused to laugh, how could he have put forth the storehouse of the correct Dharma eye in a living transmission? If you say the storehouse of the correct Dharma eye can be imparted, then the golden-faced old mister gives deceiving advise at the village gate. If you say it is not imparted, then verily how can it be that Kashyapa alone was approved?

The Ode says:
As the flower was picked and raised,
The python’s tail was already revealed;
When Kashyapa cracked a smile,
People and gods [devas] were collected in the net.

[* Spirit Mountain is the euphemistic name for Vulture Peak (Mt. Gridhrakuta) where the Buddha taught several important sutras including the Heart Sutra and the Lotus Sutra. In Chinese lore the vulture is sometimes called the “spirit eagle” because it eats the dead, and a sort of euphemistic tradition developed of calling the site “Spirit Mountain” instead of Spirit Eagle Mountain or Vulture Peak.]


The Platform Sutra of the Dharma Treasure of the Great Master Sixth Ancestor
Translated by A. Gregory Wonderwheel

Chapter 10 Handing Down Instructions

"In the active functioning of your own nature and in conversations with people, while outwardly in appearances separate from appearances; while inwardly in emptiness separate from emptiness. If you wholly attach to appearances (i.e., hold materialist views), then your perverted views broaden. If you wholly grasp emptiness (i.e., hold a nihilist view), then your non-illumination (ignorance) broadens.

"People who grasp emptiness have slandered the Sutras (by saying) “straight words do not use written words.” Since they say “Do not use written words” these people too are not united with (their own) speech, simply as this speech then is the appearance of written words. Again, to say, “The straight Way is not established by written words,” then this “not established” are both words and are written words. On seeing a person who explains, then immediately they slander the other’s words as being attached to written words. You who are ranked (as Dharma heirs) must know self-delusion like this is able repeatedly to slander the Buddha’s Sutras. Do not desire to slander the Sutras; the hindrances of the sin are countless.


“Sayings and Doings of Pai-chang” (Baizhang)
Translated by Thomas Cleary

You must discern the words of the complete teaching and the incomplete teaching; you must discern prohibitive words and non prohibitive words; you must discern living and dead words; you must discern medicine and disease words; you must discern words of negative and positive metaphor; you must discern generalizing and particularizing words. (p. 37)


From The Record of Linji (Lin-Chi Lu).
Translated from the Chinese by Irmgard Schloegl

"Followers of the Way, do not seek for anything in written words. You will tire your heart and inhale icy air without profit."

Review of "Inquiry Into the Origin of Humanity"

Review of Inquiry Into the Origin of Humanity, translated with commentary by Peter N. Gregory.

Peter Gregory’s book, Inquiry Into the Origin of Humanity, has a wealth of information about the Buddhist and Chinese cultural context in which Guifeng Zongmi (Gregory uses the Wade-Giles form Kuei-feng Tsung-mi)(780-841) wrote his famous treatise. As truth in advertising, Gregory informs the reader that the book is intended for college students already acquainted with Buddhism or Chinese thought and for scholars of other fields. His goal is to use the framework of Zongmi’s treatise to construct a general introduction to Chinese Buddhist thought. As such, Gregory generally succeeds in his aim of presenting explanatory material to the academically minded who are interested in Buddhism. Though not intended for those with no background in either Buddhism or Chinese thought, I think Gregory’s commentary gives even those unacquainted with Buddhism enough context to feel moderately oriented.

Gregory’s forte is in providing references and quotes from other texts, especially those by Zongmi and the classics of Confucian and Taoist schools, which relate to Zongmi’s text. Yet, however well Gregory meets his aim of providing a contextual introduction to Chinese Buddhism, the reader should be aware that Gregory is, after all, an academic scholar whose frame of reference appears confined to the academy. For all of Gregory’s many and insightful connections between texts, Gregory’s overall result is that he misses the forest for focusing on the trees. His greatest error is that he fails to see that the essence and purpose of Zongmi’s work is to present a manifesto of One Vehicle (Ekayana) Buddhism.

Gregory recognizes that Zongmi’s treatise is in the framework of Buddhist doctrinal classification and that Zongmi’s use of that framework is uniquely practice-centered, but Gregory misses the point that the center and content of Zongmi’s practice is the Ekayana. Gregory views Zongmi’s practice orientation as being “based on Tsung-mi’s cosmogonic vision,” but for Zen master Zongmi it is the other way around: Zongmi’s cosmogonic vision is based on his practice experience. Gregory, as a philosopher, sees philosophy in Zongmi that isn’t there.

Zongmi too was a scholar, but he epitomizes the practitioner scholar rather than the academic scholar, and his aim is to present the One Vehicle of Buddhism so that people may know to “return to the root, and turn your light back upon the mind source” and recognize for themselves that the mind is the One Buddha Mind. Gregory consistently misinterprets Zongmi’s One Vehicle in terms of Tathagatagarbha doctrine. Gregory’s near obsession with Tathagatagarbha doctrine colors his discussion of Zongmi’s message throughout Inquiry Into the Origin of Humanity. What Gregory misses, is that just because Zongmi’s One Vehicle includes Tathagatagarbha doctrine doesn’t mean that Zongmi’s One Vehicle is any more determined by or informed by Tathagatagarbha doctrine than by the other Buddhists doctrines, such as emptiness or karma, that are also included within the One Vehicle. So the reader must be warned that whenever Gregory mentions “tathagatagarbha doctrine” that it must be taken with liberal doses of salt, revealing more about Gregory’s biased view than about Zongmi’s actual message.

For example, the term “tathagatagarbha” is only mentioned three times in Inquiry Into the Origin of Humanity, and each time is it only mentioned in passing as another label for the particular aspect of true nature that is being discussed, and it is not raised on its own as the content of Zongmi’s central teaching. What is Zongmi’s central content? In his own words it is “The Teaching of the One Vehicle That Reveals the Nature holds that all sentient beings without exception have the intrinsically enlightened, true mind.”

Zongmi’s position as both a Zen (Chan) master and Huayen master provided him with a unique perspective to appreciate the One Vehicle. however, Gregory misses the importance of Zongmi’s Zen context. The founder of the various Zen lineages in China was the Indian monk Bodhidharma, who was said to have taught the Lankavatara Sutra according to "the One Vehicle Lineage of Southern India." This is an important connection for understanding Zongmi’s treatise and is three-fold: first, the Lankavatara Sutra is one of the core scriptures upon which the Treatise on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana is based and Zongmi based his treatise largely within the context of the Awakening of Faith; second, the One Vehicle perspective of Bodhidharma, the Lankavatara, and the Awakening of Faith is the perspective that Zongmi used to release the One Vehicle teaching from the confines of those schools that associated the One Vehicle with a single sutra such as the Huayen or Lotus sutras. and third, Zongmi’s doctrinal classification of five stages is directly derived from Bodhidharma’s famous treatise called Outline For Discerning the Mahayana and Entering the Way By Four Practices and Contemplation.

Bodhidharma’s Outline presents Buddhist practice in the context of five categories that directly correspond to the five levels of Buddhist teaching outlined by Zongmi. Bodhidharma says that one enters the Way by two kinds of cultivation, that is, one enters by principle or by practice, entering by practice means entering by one of the four practices. The first four levels of Buddhist teaching in Zongmi’s outline correspond to the four practices described in Bodhidharma’s Outline, and the most profound teaching of the One Vehicle presented in Zongmi’s outline corresponds to what Bodhidharma calls “entering by principle” and says means “to rely on the lineage of awakening and to bear profound faith that the one true nature of beings is the same.” Thus Bodhidharma’s teaching of “One True Nature” is precisely what Zongmi is describes as “The Teaching of the One Vehicle That Reveals the Nature.”

Thus Zongmi’s innovation in the Inquiry Into the Origin of Humanity is not in creating from whole cloth the five categories of the teaching that he presents there, but in adapting the five teachings of Bodhidharma’s Zen that he inherited in his Zen training to the systematizing practices of doctrinal classification that were accepted in his day in the other Buddhist schools, and in showing how the five teachings are related to the creative process of consciousness which is, in fact, the creation of the universe itself as far as our awareness is concerned. Gregory fully appreciates the importance of Zongmi’s Buddhist “Genesis story” as being related to the importance of practice, but Gregory over emphasizes the question of the origin of humanity in the literal sense and thus sees Zongmi’s practice orientation to be “grounded on his cosmogony” when it is the cosmogony that is secondary and grounded in the practice.

As for the technical aspects of the translation, in my view, Gregory’s frequent use of brackets to insert words he feels should be implied is overdone to the point of distraction. The translator has a responsibility not to insert such material without brackets, so I am grateful when he uses them, but the overuse of brackets to insert the translator’s words just becomes evidence of the translator’s failure to translate the author’s words adequately. I also find fault in Gregory’s propensity to use different English words when translating the same Chinese word, as well as his using the same English word for translating different Chinese words. I feel an accurate translation should not mix and match the Chinese words with English words. The author must be presumed to be picking his words carefully, and as such the English words used to translate them should be used in correspondence to the Chinese so the reader of the English will know which words are used. If the same English word appears in two different paragraphs, the English reader should be able to know that the Chinese author used the same Chinese word in each paragraph, in this way the reader comes to learn how the author intended the words, not how the translator intends them.

Lastly, and least, I would quibble with Gregory on the translation of the title. I read the title as speaking about the “original person” not the “origin of humanity” and would translate the title as “The Original Person Debate” or “Treatise on the Original Person.” I accept that Gregory’s translation of the title is within the range of validity, however, it focuses on what Gregory sees as Zongmi’s emphasis on cosmogony, while I read Zongmi as being focused on directing each of us to realize our original person rather than our deluded person and that each of the deepening levels of the teaching is bringing us closer to the original person that is our true nature. .

In conclusion, while I am very critical of certain aspects of Gregory’s academic biases and his infatuation with Tathagatagarbha doctrine along with some of his translation techniques, I still recommend the book for its wealth of Chinese sources, with the caveat that the reader needs to read critically and not take Gregory’s interpretations of Zongmi as gospel. Zongmi’s sole goal is to bring us to the realization of the Teaching of the One Vehicle that Reveals the Nature and if the reader can keep this in mind while reading Zongmi, then the reading will be most beneficial.