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.

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"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."

Before and After the Full Moon

...

Before the full moonrise, six sensory dusts.

After the full moonrise, one Dharma rain.

When the full moon sets, still just singing in the rain.

It's a One Vehicle Day

~
I have finished the first draft of my English translation of Guṇabhadra's Chinese translation of

THE SUTRA OF

QUEEN ŚRĪMĀLĀ’S LION’S ROAR

 

Wherein Is Articulated The Severance Of All Doubts, The Certainty Of The Complete Meaning, And

The Entrance To The Way Of The One Vehicle

I've written the following dedication for the translation.

Dedication Of The Lion’s Roar

 The Lion’s Roar of the Tathagata pervades the whole universe,

resounding right here – now.

We give thanks to The World Honored One,

To Queen Srimala,

to all the generations and ancestors

of the lineage of the One Vehicle, and

to all the True Children of the Tathagata

for protecting and handing down this Lion’s Roar.

We sincerely and humbly dedicate the meritorious-virtue

arising from receiving, maintaining, reading, and reciting

this Lion’s Roar

to all beings everywhere,

so that they may Accept the Real Dharma

and directly and personally be able to hear and proclaim this Lion’s Roar.

*

All Buddhas throughout space and time,

All Awakened Beings, Great Beings,

The Perfect and Complete One Vehicle.

Separately, I composed the following verse in praise of the One Vehicle. 

Ode to the One Vehicle

Wanderers in the Way,

Hear the One Vehicle  (Ekayana) of the Tathagata’s lion’s roar.
Everyone of the multitude of beings in every case has Buddha Nature
And without exception are led to enter the Way of the One Vehicle.

That One Vehicle

Always abides in the Dharma realm,
Always silent and always illuminating.

The immeasurable and innumerable expedient methods of the Buddha Dharma,

Indeed in every case, are for the reason of the One Buddha Vehicle.
Directly pointing to one’s own mind immediately reveals true nature,
And opens the knowing and seeing of the Buddha.

Great master Bodhidharma transmitted the lineage of the One Vehicle of Southern India

Without self and without other,
With the worldly and the sacred one and the same,
Only the Bodhidharma lineage transmits the inheritance by means of mind.
The mind is the fountainhead of the Dharma.

Grreat Master Huineng instructed to use establishing no thought as the lineage.

Those who see the essence of no thought see the lineage,
Then thought after thought in every case is the One Buddha Vehicle.
If that mind is entirely extinguished,
There is no vehicle as well as someone in the vehicle.

If you want to choose the One Vehicle,

do not hate the six dusts. 
All things are completely the evidentiary things of the One Mind.
The One Mind is completely the One Mind of all things.
All things completely then are True Mind.
By flowing unobstructed, consequently all things are wonderful medicine.

The true mind of root enlightenment is like the brightness of the mirror.

There are no appearances that can be obtained.
Therefore all things are like appearances in the mirror.
The essence of the one true heart-mind
Is indeed one’s own essence of true suchness.

That which is Dharma knows one’s own nature.

That which is Dharma knows the real truth.
That which is Dharma knows the One Vehicle.
In every case consider the Dharma of the One Vehicle as the real truth

The deep necessarily includes the shallow;

the shallow does not reach the deep.
Likewise, the One Vehicle necessarily includes the various vehicles;
While the various vehicles do not reach the One Vehicle
Because the various vehicles immediately are the One Vehicle,
Those who gain the One Vehicle
Gain the unexcelled unified equality-enlightenment (anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi),
Always abiding in the Dharma-realm,
Able to touch and yet immediately to pass through.

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.

The Great Pattern of the Dharma

Seeing patterns is what the word Dharma means. I have always thought that
it was a bit of a mistake to interpret Dharma as "the Law" rather than "the
Pattern" because people in the West will think Buddha's Law is like God's
Law, something decreed rather than something recognized. Dharma means the
Law in the sense of the Laws of Nature or the Laws of Physics, not the laws
of society or laws handed down by a parental god figure. And the laws of
nature and physics are the determination of patterns of regularity, or lack
thereof.

The Buddha Dharma is the pattern recognition regarding human awakening. The
Dharma is the body of the Laws of Consciousness and of how the
discrimination of mind creates the variegated patterns of illusion and
delusion and how the suffering created by the illusions and delusions may be
overcome by the freedom of seeing how the patterns of daily life are
manifesting the Great Pattern of the Laws of Consciousness.

Zen is the Heart of the Vehicle of Oneness: A survey of Ekayana Buddhism - Introduction

[This is the first draft of the introduction to an essay I'm working on. (c) 2008]

Introduction To Ekayana

The thesis of this essay is that Zen is the heart of Ekayana Buddhism, that is, the Buddhism known as the One Vehicle or more accurately the Vehicle of Oneness. While many have heard of Zen Buddhism and of the major branch of Buddhism known as Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Buddhism, within which Zen is usually located, and heard also of the Mahayana charge of Hinayana (Small Vehicle) views against opposing branches of Buddhism, few in the West have heard, fewer still have appreciated, and even rarer have been those who realize the meaning of Ekayana Buddhism. By Zen I do not mean Zen as a religious institution but the Zen of awakening that is the unity of meditation (dhyana-chan-zen) and wisdom (prajna) within the context of one's straightforward daily activities (sila). The primary purpose of this paper is to inform English speaking Buddhists about the importance and centrality of Ekayana Buddhism as it relates to their own Buddhist practice in whichever tradition they find themselves. Secondarily I hope to speak to non-Buddhists who are wondering how Buddhism relates to their own spiritual practice.
Though the Ekayana is Shakyamuni's true and direct Dharma, the basic problem is that even most Buddhists have failed to see and acknowledge the central role of Ekayana. This is a problem of failing to see the forest for the trees. This problem is explained by the Ekayana as being the result of that essential aspect of consciousness that divides the world into the images of separate categories and things and turning this divisive mental process onto Buddhism as well. Thus, instead of having a clear appreciation of Ekayana Buddhism and how it functions as the complete unification of Buddhism, we have Buddhist sectarianism and arguments over the centrality of one sutra or another, the methods of one sect over another, or even sometimes the nature of the goal of Buddhism itself. The history of Buddhism is in large part a history of the resurgence of the Ekayana spirit and its subsequent re-fracturing when the spirit is overtaken by the religious politics of the day.
There are certain myths in Buddhism and Buddhist studies that Ekayana does not accept. Among them are the notions that Hinayana and Mahayana are irreconcilable, that Chinese Buddhism is not based on Indian Buddhism and that the Chinese development of the sects of Tiantai, Huayan. Zen, and Pure Land are inherently different from each other or have different goals. And there are beliefs about Buddhism in Buddhist studies circles that make no sense without an understanding of Ekayana. For example, it is often said and commonly believed that Zen and other forms of Buddhism "look to Hua-yen for their philosophical foundation." (Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, p. xii) However, this implies a sectarian reliance that doesn't make sense. It is not that Zen looks to Huayan as a separate school for its philosophy, but that both Huayan and Zen are parts of the Ekayana as a perennial spiritual movement within Buddhism. The teaching of the Huayan Sutra may be said to represent the grand philosophical aspect of Ekayana while Zen presents the direct practice aspect of Ekayana. In this way, all of the Ekayana Sutras and their schools of study (not just the Huayan) are the lobes of the brain-mind of Ekayana as Zen is the heart-mind.
A caveat: One of the most primary ways we learn is by assimilating strange ideas and images through metaphors relating to something we are already familiar with, e.g., body parts like brain and heart. The downside of that learning method is that we may take the metaphor too literally and come to falsely believe something about the strange new thing that is not true simply because the idea is contained in the transitional metaphor and not in the new thing. For example, someone who had never before seen or heard of a lion or tiger may learn something accurate about a lion or tiger by being told it is like a very large house cat. But then the person would be misled upon taking the metaphor to mean that the usual lion or tiger was as docile as the usual house cat. Metaphors are good for making strange things familiar, but they are not substitutes for the facts themselves.
To be introduced now to Ekayana may seem strange to many if not most Western Buddhists who have heard frequently of Mahayana and of the debate over the uses of the term Hinayana, and who even may have heard of Vajrayana (Diamond Vehicle), but have not heard the term Ekayana before or having heard it not really registered it as a term of significance. This sense of strangeness might be reduced by learning that Ekayana is a little like Gnosticism within Christianity; it is an essentially ecumenical movement within Buddhism that refuses to allow itself to become a separate sect and so, to deal with the sectarian mentality of human beings, it appears within all the sects to greater or lesser degrees. In other words, while there are the sectarian divisions known as Zen, Pure Land, Huayan, Theravada, Vajrayana, etc., just as the word Buddha means the Awakened One, the threads that weave the tapestry of the Ekayana movement will be found throughout Buddhism wherever an individual in a particular sect has had a real and genuine awakening which is the one goal shared throughout all Buddhism.
Another caveat: to see Ekayana Buddhism as the "One Vehicle" or "One Path" does not mean what it may seem to imply if taken narrowly: that Ekayana is an exclusive form of Buddhism. For example, those Buddhists who are already familiar with the term Ekayana, or the One Vehicle, through the Lotus Sutra may be surprised to learn that the Ekayana doesn't mean believing in the Lotus Sutra as the one and only best teaching of Buddha. This mistaken belief about Ekayana -- taking it to mean only one framework of belief based on one sutra as the "One Vehicle" -- is as mistaken in the Buddhist context as the mistaken notion that taking Jesus as personal savior is the only "one Way" in the Christian context while denying that every other view of Christianity has any legitimacy. Such narrow mindedness is best known under the label "fundamentalism" which, as a human dilemma, affects Buddhism just as much as it affects every other religion. Taking one sutra or another as "the One Vehicle" is the mistake of literalizing the Ekayana and seeking the Buddha's Dharma of Ekayana in the words of the Buddha and not in the practice, realization, and manifestation of Buddha's awakening.
Woven in the history of Ekayana are several common themes which may be outlined as: (1) Buddhism is the religious science of the One Mind, (2) the One Mind is known by many names such as Dharmakaya (the body or essence of Dharma), Buddha-nature, Tathagata-garbha (the womb of the One-Who-Comes-Thus), Sunyata (Emptiness), Alaya-vjnana (the Storehouse of Consciousness), etc., (3) since all the teachings of Buddhism, including both Mahayana and Hinayana, are essentially teachings about the One Mind they must be taken as an organic whole and this reconciliation of apparent oppositions or contradictions within Buddhist teachings is the synthesis of Ekayana, (4) as all beings share equally the One Mind there is an absolute basis for human equality, (5) realizing this absolute basis of the One Mind is not accomplished as an intellectual pursuit but must be accomplished by experiential practice, and (6) since all people share This One Mind there is no fundamental distinction between monk and lay practitioner in the potential for -- or actual realization of -- awakening in Buddhism.
The Ekayana has played a crucial role at every stage in the outward movement of maturing Buddhism from its birthplace in the borderlands between India and Nepal. Ekayana was central to the development of what became known as the Mahayana when Buddhism spread to Southern India and northwest into Kashmir and across the Hindu Kush where it met the Silk Road in what is now Afghanistan and Central Asia. The Ekayana also played pivotal roles in the transplantation of Buddhism to China, Korea, and Japan. Now that Buddhism has come to the West, and especially with an emphasis on lay practice, it is necessary for Western Buddhists to at least understand and appreciate -- and hopefully realize -- the meaning of Ekayana for Buddhism to become meaningfully alive within our Western cultural framework. It should not be a surprise that the religion of Buddha's enlightenment has met fertile soil in the West today where we can see the ecumenical spirit of Ekayana working unconsciously in the Western Buddhist communities as it touches those aspects of the Western psyche that are Ekayana in spirit and grounded in the psychological and philosophical traditions of gnosis, the Age of Reason, and the Western Enlightenment. When individuals awaken and express their awakening, which then comes to a shared awareness in a living community, then that is the presence of the living Ekayana of Buddha Dharma.


#end Introduction#

The outline of the essay continues with the following section headings:

Bodhidharma's Ekayana
Ekayana in Pali Scriptures
Ekayana in Mahayana Scriptures
Ekayana in Chinese Buddhism
Fazang's Ekayana
Huineng's Ekayana
Zongmi's Ekayana
Ekayana in Japanese Buddhism
Prince Shotoku's Ekayana
Hakuin's Ekayana
Ekayana Today

Bodhidharma's "Outline of Four Practices and Contemplation"

I recently completed a new translation of Bodhidharma's "Outline of Four Practices and Contemplation." It is also posted here and can be accessed through a link at my Buddha Verse pages.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

菩提達磨大師略辨大乘入道四行觀

Great Master Bodhidharma’s Outline For Discerning the Mahayana
and
Entering the Way By Four Practices and Contemplation

By Bodhidharma, (d. circa 532)

~~The Twenty-Eighth Ancestral Founder of the Dhyana Lineage of the Ekayana School of India
~~ The First Ancestral Founder of the Zen Lineage of China

Translated by Gregory Wonderwheel © 2008


Man enters the Way by many roads. But in summary we speak of not going beyond two kinds of cultivating. The first is entering by principle. The second is entering by practice.

"Entering by principle" means to rely on the lineage of awakening and to bear profound faith that the one true nature of beings is the same. However, to act as a guest in the place of dust and delusion is to hide and be unable to manifest completely. Still, if one renounces the false and returns to the true, contemplates on the wall to concentrate one's nature, is without self and without other, with the ordinary and the sacred one and the same and an immovably firm nature, and furthermore does not depend on written teachings, then one immediately takes part in a deep accord with principle without having discriminations. Being peaceful in this way is non-doing (wuwei) and has the name of "entering by principle."

"Entering by practice" means the four practices, and in the surplus and diversity of practices, know to enter among these. What are the four categories? First, the practice of retribution for wrongs. Second, the practice of according with conditioned causes. Third, the practice of nothing to seek. Fourth, the practice of corresponding to Dharma. What can be said?

“The practice of retribution for wrongs” means a person who is cultivating the practice of the Way. If you are in a time of receiving suffering, face yourself and think to say, “I’ve gone through past innumerable aeons (kalpas) abandoning the root and following the tips, existing in the various currents and waves, hating the many arising wrongs, opposing and harming without limit. Although I'm without offenses now, my former misfortunes ripen as the fruit of evil karma, and neither heavenly beings (devas) nor humans are able to see where they are given out. With a willing heart-mind I willingly receive it, all without complaint of wrongs.” A Sutra says, “Do not grieve when you meet with suffering," For what is the use of reasoning? Consciousness transcends reason. At the time this arises in your heart-mind you correspond with principle. Wrongs in their essence are progress in the Way, and for this reason the words are spoken, "the practice of retribution for wrongs”

Second, are those with "the practice of according with conditioned causes." All beings are without ego and merge with the karma of conditioned causes turning in place. Suffering and joy are received together, and every one follows from the conditioned causes of beings. If we are able to win the reward of honor or rank in affairs, it is our previous left over causes that are perceived. Now in this manner the gains of the conditioned causes are exhausted and going backward does not exist. What then do you have of happiness? While gain and loss follow conditioned causes, the heart-mind is without increase or decrease. The winds of joy do not stir the deep smooth flowing in the Way. For this reason the words are spoken, "the practice of according with conditioned causes."

Third, are those with "the practice of nothing to seek." Worldly people excel in confusion, as everywhere are the attachments of desire, going by the name of seeking. As people of wisdom realize the truth, principle then will reverse with the commonplace. A tranquil heart-mind is effortless. Form follows the turns of fortune. The 10,000 things are thus empty. Nothing to desire is joy, as virtuous merit and darkness always follow and chase each other. Dwelling in the Three Realms for a long time is like a house on fie. By having a body everyone suffers. Who gains peace accordingly? Understanding and passing through this point is the cause of renouncing possessing of all kinds and to still thinking without seeking. A sutra says, "By having seeking everyone suffers. Without seeking is immediate joy." To discern and comprehend without seeking is a true act of the practice of the Way. For this reason are the words, "the practice of nothing to seek."

Fourth, are those with "the practice of corresponding to Dharma." The Dharma is the action of seeing the principle of the purity of nature. By this principle all characteristics are thus empty, without taint, without attachment, without this, and without that. A sutra says, “The Dharma is without all beings, because it is free from the defilements of all beings. The Dharma does not have an ego, because it is free from the defilements of an ego." If a person of wisdom is able to believe in and expound this principle then he is in agreement with and in fact is corresponding to Dharma and practicing accordingly. Since the essence of the Dharma is not begrudging, the practice of body, life, and wealth is the bestowing of charity (dana). Without stinginess in the heart-mind, one is stripped and released by the three-fold emptiness [of giver, gift, and receiver]. Being neither dependant nor attached, and only acting to remove defilements, one corresponds to converting all beings and yet does not grasp characteristics. This is doing the practice by oneself, and repeatedly being able to benefit others, and likewise able to dignify the Way of Enlightenment. This is already [the Paramita of] charity, and the remaining Five are also like that. By acting to eliminate delusions, one cultivates and practices the Six Paramitas, yet nothing is practiced. This is the doing of "the practice of corresponding to Dharma."

The end of Great Master Dharma's "Four Practices and Contemplation"