[This document was originally distributed on Internet as a part of

the Electronic Buddhist Archives, available via anonymous FTP

and/or COOMBSQUEST gopher on the node COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU

The document's ftp filename and the full directory path are given

in the coombspapers top level INDEX file.

This version of the document has been reformatted by Barry Kapke

and is being distributed, with permission, via the DharmaNet

Buddhist File Distribution Network.

[Last updated: 26 April 1993]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLUE CLIFF RECORD CASE 2

This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious

issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful

way.

All copyrights to this document belong to John Tarrant, California

Diamond Sangha, Santa Rosa, Cal., USA

Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young

St., Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SESSHIN TEISHO

John Tarrant Roshi

February 7, 1993

Camp Cazadero, California

BLUE CLIFF RECORD, CASE NO. 2

Today I'm going to read an old story, a case, from the Blue Cliff

Record.  This is Case No. 2.  The case comes with an Introduction and

before it by a teacher called Wang-wu (???).

Introduction

Heaven and earth are narrow.  Sun, moon and stars all at once go

dark.  Even if blows of the staff fall like rain and shouts roll

like thunder, you still haven't lived up to the task of the

fundamental vehicle of transcendence.  Even the buddhas of all ages

can only know it for themselves.  The successive generations of

ancestors have not been able to bring it up in its entirety.  The

treasury of teachings of the whole age cannot explain it

thoroughly.  Clear-eyed students cannot save themselves completely.

When you get here, how will you ask for more instruction?  To say

the word, `Buddha,' is trailing mud and dripping water; to say the

word, `zen,' is a face full of shame.  Superior people who have

studied it for a long time do not wait for it to be said.  The

incoming (???) beginners simply must investigate it and understand

it.

The Case

Chao-chou teaching the assembly said:  The Great Way is not

difficult.  Just avoid picking and choosing.  As soon as words are

spoken, this is picking and choosing.  This is clarity.  This old

fellow does not abide within clarity.  Do you still hang onto

anything, or not?

At that time a certain student asked:  Since you don't abide within

clarity, what do you hang onto?

Chao-chou replied:  I don't know either.

The student said:  Since you don't know, teacher, why do you,

nevertheless, say that you do not abide within clarity?

Chao-chou said:  It's enough to ask about the matter.  Bow and

withdraw.

Please sit comfortably.

I've chosen this koan, today, because it is not one of the more

spectacular and brilliant koans.  It's subtle rather than flashy and yet

it shows the great old master at work and a fairly sincere student

pressing him hard in an earnest inquiry into the way.

`The Great Way is not difficult.  It just avoids picking and choosing.'

This is from the beginning of a poem called "Faith in the Heart," "Trust

in the Heart-Mind," by the Third Great Ancestor, third in line from

Bodhidharma, Bodhidharma being number one, that starts off

The Great Way is not difficult.

It just avoids picking and choosing.

Just don't love or hate

And everything will be clear.

So you can tell the point that the poem is making here, which becomes

very clear in meditation.  As you're sitting on your cushion if you grab

onto anything, if you push anything away, suddenly everything you touch

sticks to you.  It's like Brer Rabbit and the the tarbaby.  If you start

hanging onto your thoughts, you can't let go of them.  If you try to

push them away, you can't let go of them.  So there you are stuck

holding onto the tarbaby.  We see, too, the emptiness of the things that

we're attached to.  How a thousand things fill the mind, but none of

them is substantial or real.  A thousand passions arise, but if we don't

act on them, they fall away, too.  Amazing that something that seemed so

important suddenly is not so important. Our weariness that seems as if

it will overwhelm us suddenly is gone and we are full of energy.

`The Great way is not difficult.  It just avoids picking and choosing.'

There is a Taoist flavor to this saying.  The sense of following the

water path through life.  The water if it runs into a stone, it just

makes its way around.  The water is clear and has no attachments which

is why we have a little bowl of water on the altar.

Chao-chou has brought up this saying which he was very fond of and he

often liked to bring it up.  And then he said that as soon as we speak,

that is picking and choosing.  If we are clear, we hang onto the

clarity.  This old student doesn't even hang onto that.  Do you still

hang onto anything, or not?  So we could say that the greatest method of

meditation is that whatever comes up, just don't cling to it.  Whatever

comes up, let it go.  If you can do this, you'll find the way home very

quickly.  But it's hard.  Things stick to you.

So, there was a student in the audience who said, "Since you don't abide

within clarity, since you don't hang onto or cling to clarity, do you

still hang onto anything, or not?"  "What is it that you hang onto?"  So

he's pushing the question straight back at the teacher.  In a way not

much point.  There is a slightly philosophical quality to this question,

which somehow makes it lose its force, but it still is good to ask.  You

can see that his student has a certain strength and wants to come out,

and wants to engage with life.  It's better to ask and be a fool than

not to ask and be a fool.  Because if we get something going, who knows,

we may learn something.

Since you do not abide within, live within, clarity, what do you

hang onto?

Chao-chou replied:  I don't know either.

This is one of the famous `I don't knows' of zen.  Yamada Roshi,

actually he was passing this down from Yasutani Roshi and I don't know

who he was passing it down from, there are many kinds of not knowing.

There's plain old ignorant not knowing.  "Show me the way to San

Francisco."  "Oh, I don't know."  The ignorant not knowing.  Then

there's the kind of wise not knowing.  Yamada Roshi used to call it true

blindness when you are blind to the things that delude you.  You are

blind to the attachments and the brambles of the world and Chao-chou is

illustrating this kind of not knowing.  The same as famous Bodhidharma

when the emperor asked him, "Who is this standing before me?" and

Bodhidharma said, "I do not know."

In your meditation if you ask yourself, `who am I?' `where have I come

from and where do I go after I die?' and you do not know the answer,

that is fine.  That is better than thinking you know.  We then stay with

and become absorbed in that not knowing.  Then we allow the question to

come out in the midst of our absorption. It is like a single tree on a

great plain.  The question arises and we confront it.

So the student went on.  He was a persevering student.

He said:  Since you don't know teacher, why do nevertheless say

that you don't dwell within clarity?

Chao-chou said:  It's enough to ask about the matter.  Make your

bows and withdraw.

Again, I think there's nothing really wrong with this student's

question, but the whole thing was beginning to fall into the eeds, the

whole conversation was beginning to get lost.  Chao-chou decided that

there was nothing to do except put an end to it, put a limit on it.

He was a very old man at this time.  I'm not sure how old, but we know

that he taught for forty years from the time he was about eighty.  So he

was older than anybody in this room.  Some of his contemporaries were

famous for their loud shouts and using the stick, things like that,

extravagant behavior, dancing in response to a question.  Chao-chou was

to old and feeble to do any of this, but at the same time he was greatly

admired for his ability in meeting people.  He always found a way to

meet people even though he was so old and his voice so soft and he had

hobble around.

He was a very resolute sort of person.  He used to give teisho in a

chair, which was traditional in China, and one day the leg of his chair

broke through age and maltreatment and neglect.  He had somebody tie a

branch of firewood to it to hold it up.  He wouldn't let anybody spend

the time away from meditating to carve him a new chair leg.  He spent

years with this chair tied up with a piece of firewood giving teisho.

So he had a unique spirit that you can see in this koan.  He was not

very much attached to circumstances himself.  He didn't mind if his

chair leg broke. He just immediately reacted and responded.  So when you

meet an obstacle, it is good to remember the Great Way is not difficult,

it just avoids picking and choosing.

One of the great important discoveries for me was that I had to love the

path itself.  That when I did not know and I would go to my teacher not

knowing.  For a long time I really wanted so badly to know that I wasn't

really even in the room with the teacher. I just passed through with the

wind.  In fact, he didn't let me stay very long.  I remember going to

see Yamada Roshi.  I thought it was very special to get to see Yamada

Roshi so perhaps I would get enlightened when I had dokusan with him.

So I meditated very hard before hand.  Then I went into see Yamada Roshi

and kneeling began to ask him about Mu.  And he looked at me, and he

took a deep breath, and said, "Sit down."  He sat me down and gave me a

long talk about, "You must become one with Mu.  In every moment of the

day, each breath must become Mu."  Which was exactly what the Tanto was

saying all the time in sesshin.  I didn't get enlightened in my

interviewwith him after all, but I always remember his kindness.  I

began to understand, too, that for him it was fine that I was working on

Mu, and so it had to be fine for me, too.  He could even enjoy that I

was working on Mu, that I really didn't have a clue which way was up.

Chao-chou has very much that quality, doesn't he?  The Great Way is not

difficult.  It just avoids picking and choosing.  Right now is where we

avoid picking and choosing.  We have been meditating so well and then

our meditation goes all to hell.  (A little rhyme.)  And the pilot wants

to say, "But I'm meditating so well."  Yes, and who knows that when your

meditation disintegrates and falls apart, that might be a very important

time for your practice.  Be patient with yourself.  You just patiently

gather and it falls apart; and we gather and it falls apart.  It is not

for us to choose and decide about this.  All we need is our inner

sincerity of the heart, the sincerity of the horror, the whole being is

thrown into the zazen.  And that is enough.  Gradually, then, we become

one with zazen.  We have to become one even with the obstacles.  We

can't try to push the obstacles away and say, "No, I will become one

with the joyful and serene paths."  We have to love the whole process.

When we can do that with our whole hearts, then we're very near to the

gate.  We will find that we're not even in a hurry anymore and the world

starts to appear before us.  When we do kinhin, we realize that the

whole world is coming toward us and all we have to do is accept it and

meet it.

Please continue in this way.  Trust your own sincerity.  You have begun

to gather some attention in your zazen.  Do not be too concerned about

what comes to meet you.  Just love your walking and love the path and

become one with it over and over again. That will be enough.  Please

keep it up.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

End of record

This document was originally distributed on Internet as a part of the

Electronic Buddhist Archives, available via anonymous FTP and/or

COOMBSQUEST gopher on the node COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU

The document's ftp filename and the full directory path are given in the

coombspapers top level INDEX file.

This version of the document has been reformatted by Barry Kapke and is

being distributed, with permission, via the DharmaNet Buddhist File

Distribution Network.

[Last updated: 26 April 1993]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLUE CLIFF RECORD CASE 3

This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious

issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful

way.

All copyrights to this document belong to John Tarrant, California

Diamond Sangha, Santa Rosa, Cal., USA

Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young

St., Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"This fire runs through all things."

SESSHIN TEISHO

John Tarrant Roshi

February 8, 1993

Camp Cazadero, California

BLUE CLIFF RECORD, CASE NO. 3

This is the third case of the Blue Cliff Record, "Master Ma is Ill."

Introduction

One device, one object, one word, one phrase.  The intent is that

you'll have a place to enter.  Still this is gouging a wound in

healthy flesh that can become a nest or a den.  The great function

appears without abiding and fixed principles. The intent is that

you'll realize that there is something transcendent that colors the

sky and covers the earth, yet it cannot be grasped.  This way will

do; not this way will do, too.  This is too diffuse.  This way

won't do; not this way won't do either.  This is too cut off.

Without treading these two paths, what would be right?  Please test

that sightless view to see.

The Case

Great Master Ma was sick.

The temple superintendent asked him:  Teacher, how is you're

venerable health these days.

The Great Master said:  Sun face buddha; moon face buddha.

There is a poem that goes with this case, too:

Sun face buddha; moon face buddha.

What kind of people were the ancient emperors?

For twenty years I have suffered bitterly.

How many times have I gone down to the blue dragon's cave

for you?

This distress is worth recounting.

Clear-eyed students of the way should not take it lightly.

Please sit comfortably.

This old story tells us how the great teachers used every opportunity to

serve us and to teach.  Ma-tsu, actually, was dying and he died, I

think, a few days after this interchange. But he immediately met the

student's question with an amazing saying:  `How are you doing?  How are

you feeling?'  `Sun face buddha; moon face buddha.'  The story is that

the sun face buddha lives 1800 years, and the moon face buddha lives for

a night and a day.  It's a legend from an old sutra.

Ma-tsu was one of the great early masters of zen in China.  He lived

through the eighth century for about seventy years.  He lived from 709

to 788.  There's an interesting story of himself. He studied with Nan-

yueh, who was a student of the sixth ancestral teacher.  He's in the

Rinzai line.  Most of the teachers up until his time had one student who

carried on the way, or maybe two.  He had 139 enlightened successors by

all accounts.  Maybe they varied some in quality, but still quite an

impressive number.  When he went to study with his teacher, whenever he

had free time he would go into the zendo and meditate.  People still do

this today, of course.  Somebody noticed this and drew it to the

attention of his teacher Nan-yueh.  So he went down and questioned him

and said:

Oh, great one what are you aiming at by sitting there in meditation

like that?  What do you want?

Ma-tsu said:  I want to become a buddha.

The teacher then picked up a ceramic tile and began to rub it on a

rock very vigorously in the dojo, right there.  This got the

student's attention and Ma-tsu asked him:

What are you doing?

He said:  I'm polishing it to make it into a mirror.  (Old Chinese

mirrors were usually metal, bronze.  They were very highly polished

bronze.  It would be very hard to polish a tile into a mirror.)

Ma-tsu said:  How can you make a mirror by polishing a tile?

The teacher said:  Granted, rubbing a tile will not make a mirror.

How can a sitting meditation make a buddha?

Ma-tsu said:  Then what would be right?

The teacher said:  It's like the case of an ox pulling a cart.  If

the cart does not go, should you hit the cart or should you hit the

ox?

Ma-tsu couldn't say anything.

The teacher went on to say:  Do you think you are practicing

sitting meditation or do you think you are practicing sitting

buddhahood?  If you are practicing sitting meditation, meditation

is not sitting or lying.  If you are practicing buddhahood, buddha

is not a fixed form.  In the midst of everything that is changing

you should neither hold on nor push away.  If you keep the buddha

seated, this is murdering the buddha.  If you cling to the form of

sitting, this is not attaining its inner principle.

Ma-tsu heard this teaching as if he were drinking ambrosia.

He bowed and asked:  How should I concentrate so as to merge with

formless absorption so as to become utterly one with my meditation?

The teacher said:  Your study of the mind ground is like planting

seeds.  My expounding of the essence of reality is like the

moisture in the sky.  Circumstances are good for you, so you will

see the way.  (He was right, too.)

If the way is not color or form, how can I see it?

The reality eye of the mind ground can see the way. Formless

absorption is also like this.

Ma-tsu kept asking.  (He had access to his teacher so he kept

going, kept pushing.)

Is there becoming and decay, or not?  (Do things come into

existence and fall away, the way symptom (???), or not?)

One sees the way as becoming and decaying, compounding and

scattering.  That is not really seeing the way.  Listen to my

verse.

Mind ground contains various seeds.

When there is moisture, all of them sprout.

The flower absorption has no form.

What decays and what becomes?

When Ma-tsu heard this his understanding opened.  His heart and

mind were clear.  He served his teacher for ten years day by day

going deeper into the matter.

This meeting took place in the 730's of our era.  A few years ago.  A

few years before we were born.  Ma-tsu was one of the greatest teachers.

Nan-chuan, who was Chao-Chou's teacher, was his student and Pai-chang,

who was Huang-po's teacher, was his student, too.  Many of the great

people studied with him.

So he comes tottering out into the courtyard and the temple

superintendent, (I think he was an accountant, actually, who kept the

temple books), said:  How is your health?  How is your venerable health?

He's asked him very courteously because Ma-tsu was old and revered.  Not

so old for a zen teacher, really, he was in his seventies.  He says:

Sun face buddha; moon face buddha.

Just before he died it was arranged for Yasutani Roshi to hold a Jukai

ceremony.  Many people who had wanted to take Jukai with him for some

time and hadn't came to the assembly, including Aitken Roshi and Anne

Aitken.  Yasutani Roshi was very sick and Yamada Roshi asked him:  How

are you doing?  He said:  Yesterday it was very hard to breathe, but

today I'm doing a little better. He came and did the Jukai ceremony and

then he went off to stay with his sister and a few days later he died.

At his memorial service, at the service for his death, Yamada Roshi gave

a teisho on this case.  Sun face buddha; moon face buddha.  How is your

health these days?  Yesterday I was very short of breath, but today I'm

doing a little better.

Ma-tsu, whether he was sick or well, was not in itself a very disturbing

thing.  He was grounded in this present moment.  Just as we all are the

minute we come home.  If you are not grounded in this present moment,

then it is a very hard thing and you suffer.  If we are not grounded

like this, the mind chases around after a thousand things and when we

get sick, it is a great misfortune.  We keep longing for something that

we cannot have. But even if you get well, if your mind chases around

like this, it is also a great misfortune and you keep longing for

something you cannot have.  No human state is constant.  (author's name

???), whose great guided tour of hell, his memoir of Auschwitz, says

that it is well known that complete happiness is not possible for human

beings because there is always the thought of losing whatever we have.

And he said few people follow it further to see that absolute

unhappiness is also not possible because there is always something to

worry about that pushes out even extreme unhappiness.  Suffering pushes

out previous suffering.  The desire for food pushes out grief.  Things

like that.  So if you want to be free of being pulled around like this,

it is not easy but it is possible and it is a great thing to do.

You can tell that when Ma-tsu studied with his teacher, he worked very

hard at his meditation and he was eager in questioning.  He really

wanted to understand.  His teacher told him how to become absorbed in

this moment and in his koan.  That is what we must do today.

His teacher taught him, also, not to rely too much on technique.

Anything you cling to sooner or later will change.  Anybody who has sat

this far in sesshin has found this.  You just find a method that really

works and then you sit down after the next kinhin and it doesn't work

any more.  How amazing!  What is wrong?  If you want to be free the way

he was, then you have to not cling to any particular method, but you do

your best.  Method is always something that is sort of coupled together.

It is like a stick that props up a fence that somebody hasn't managed to

really fix up.  Sooner or later the fence will fall down, but that's

okay.  We use method and try to become one with our circumstances right

where we are.  There's really no other choice in life that has any

opening to it.  All other ways lead to death and darkness.  We may take

a bit of a detour on the way there, but that's only human (???).  So if

you want to find life and light, there is no other way than by entering

circumstances.  You will find that you're always separated from your

meditation and you have to find, by any means you can, a way to become

one with it.  And when you become one with it, the whole world will

change.  The distance between heaven and earth is just that. Turn--a 360

degree turn.

It is said that before you do zazen the trees are trees, the hills are

hills, and the rivers are rivers.  Halfway through your practice the

trees are not trees and the hills are not hills and the rivers are not

rivers.  This is the moment when you really get taken up into your

meditation and you see that there is no basis for anything.  All the

things that we thought were substantial are not.  They all come out of

our own hearts.  But then, fortunately, practice continues and we find

that trees are trees and rivers are rivers again.  Hills are hills.

Everything is changed by that magical transformation of awareness.  The

great magic in life is awareness and attention.  There is nothing else

as powerful and nothing else as revealing as giving our attention to

what we are doing.  Finally, the green shifts of light (sheaves of

life???) come.  Then everything you do will sing and you will hear the

trees singing and you will see the hills walking.

It's important to continue using each thing that comes up.  HAH!! Each

thing that arises.  Just enter it right here and everything will be

changed.

Please keep up your zazen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

End of record

This document was originally distributed on Internet as a part of the

Electronic Buddhist Archives, available via anonymous FTP and/or

COOMBSQUEST gopher on the node COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU

The document's ftp filename and the full directory path are given in the

coombspapers top level INDEX file.

This version of the document has been reformatted by Barry Kapke and is

being distributed, with permission, via the DharmaNet Buddhist File

Distribution Network.

[Last updated: 26 April 1993]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLUE CLIFF RECORD CASE 4

This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious

issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful

way.

All copyrights to this document belong to John Tarrant, California

Diamond Sangha, Santa Rosa, Cal., USA

Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young

St., Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SESSHIN TEISHO

John Tarrant Roshi

February 9, 1993

Camp Cazadero, California

BLUE CLIFF RECORD, CASE NO. 4

This is the fourth story in the Blue Cliff Record.

Introduction

Under the blue sky in the bright sunlight you don't have to point

out this and that any more.  But the causal conditions of time and

seasons still require you to give the medicine in accordance with

the disease.  Tell me, is it better to let go or is it better to

hold on?   To test that like this (???).  Look! (???)

The story

When Te-shan (sp???) arrived at Kuei-shan (???), he carried his

bundle, (his pilgrim's bundle), with him into the teaching hall

where he crossed from east to west and from west to east.  He

looked around and said:  Nothing!  No one! Then he went out.

But when Te-shan got up to the gate of the temple he said: Still I

shouldn't be so hurried.  So he reentered the hall with full

ceremony to meet Kuei-shan.  This time Kuei-shan was sitting there.

Te-shan held up his sitting mat (???) and said:  Teacher!

Kuei-shan reached for his whisk whereupon Te-shan shouted, shook

out his sleeves and left.

Sei-to(sp???), the poet who collected these stories, added a

comment:  The critical examination is finished.

Te-shan turned his back on the teaching hall, put on his sandals

and departed.

That evening Kuei-shan asked the head of the temple:  Where is that

newcomer who just came?

Oh, at that time he turned his back on the teaching hall, put on

his sandals and left.

Kuei-shan said:  Hereafter, that young fellow will go to the summit

of a lonely peak, build a grass hut and go on scolding the buddhas

and reviling the ancestors.

Suei-to added the comment:  He's added frost to snow.

Please sit comfortably.

Zen seems to produce great characters.  Good story material.  Te-shan

was one of the great characters in zen history.  He was originally a

scholar who lived in the far north where there wasn't too much zen.  He

was a great student of the Diamond Sutra so he was known as the Diamond

Master, Diamond Chou (sp???).  His name was Chou.  He heard about the

zen tradition in the south. He had very much the idea that enlightenment

came after eons of practice and many, many, many lifetimes.  The zen

people in the south said you can do it in this lifetime.  He heard about

this teaching of the southern school and resolved to go and quell these

barbarians and demons immediately.  The person who wrote the Blue Cliff

Record said, "You can see what a fine, fierce fellow he was just from

this."

He was never beaten in an argument and so he put all his sutra

commentaries in his bundle and traveled south, maybe a thousand miles on

foot, probably earning his way by teaching as he went. Finally, he came

into zen territory and he stopped at one of the famous zen tea ladies'

places.  He sought to buy refreshments from this old woman.  The Chinese

slang word for refreshments means to refresh the mind.  So he walks in

and asks her if he can refresh his mind.

She says, "Your reverence, what sort of literature do you have there in

your cart?"  Actually, he has a cart full of his writings and

commentaries on sutras.

He says, "Notes and commentaries on the Diamond Sutra."

She says, "Well, your reverence, I hear that the Diamond Sutra says,

`Past mind cannot be grasped.  Present mind cannot be grasped.  Future

mind cannot be grasped.'  Which mind does your reverence wish to

refresh?"

The Diamond Sutra Master was dumbfounded and couldn't say anything.  He

was stopped.  You get a blow on the head and everything stops time and

space.

But as Wu-men (sp???) says, he did not expire completely under her

words, however, but asked, "What should I do?"

She said, "Down the road there is an old fellow called Lung-tan (sp???).

You should pay him a visit."

Maybe Lung-tan was a teacher; maybe a friend.  We don't know. Lung-tan

means dragon pool.

He arrived at Lung-tan's temple and, apparently, although he had just

had the wind knocked out of him, he got it back pretty quickly because

he banged on the gate and said, "This place is called dragon pool, but

there's no pool and I don't see any dragons around."

At which Lung-tan, who was an old man, looked out and said, "Yes."

The story is then is that he attended on Lung-tan.  He came into the

temple and settled and then that night he went to see Lung-tan in Lung-

tan's quarters and he questioned him sincerely far into the night.

So you can see that there is something interesting about Te-shan because

though he came full of his conviction, full of words and thoughts and

full of his conviction to destroy people like Lung-tan, as soon as he

was blocked and stopped, he sincerely turned around and decided to seek

for knowledge.

He questioned Lung-tan sincerely far into the night.  It grew late and

Lung-tan said,  "Why don't you go to bed?"  Te-shan made his bows and

lifted the blinds to withdraw, but was met by darkness.  Turning back he

said, "It is dark outside."  (Many people have commented it's dark

inside, too.)  Lung-tan lit a paper candle and handed it to Te-shan.

Te-shan was just about to take it and Lung-tan blew it out.  At that

moment Te-shan had sudden realization and began making bows.  He didn't

leave at all.  He made bows.  Lung-tan said, "What truth do you see that

you make bows?"  Te-shan said, "From now on I will not doubt the words

of an old teacher who is renowned everywhere under the sun."

The next day Lung-tan at teisho time took the high seat before the

assembly and said,  "I see a brave fellow among you.  His fangs are like

the saw trees (???); his mouth is like a blood owl.  Give him a blow and

he won't turn his head.  Someday he will climb the highest peak and

establish our way there."

Then Te-shan rode up in his cart with his notes on the Diamond Sutra

right in front of the zen hall and built a big fire with them saying,

"Even though you have exhausted the abstruse doctrines, it's like

placing a hair in vast estates.  Even though you have learned all the

secrets of the world, it's like letting a single drop of water fall into

an enormous valley."  And he burned up all his notes.

Then, making his bows, he took leave of his teacher.  He had a total of

one night's training; however, it was a rather intense night, I think.

Then he went off on pilgrimage.

One of the first stories we have of him after that is the story I told

you in the beginning.  Carrying his pilgrim bundle he goes to Kuei-shan,

who was, perhaps, considered the great teacher of his time, known for

his subtlety and non-dramatic style of teaching.  He was very subtle and

penetrating.  So he goes into his hall and you can tell he hasn't

changed very much, really, because he walks straight in carrying his

pack into the meditation.  Walks from east to west and west to east.

Thump, thump, thump; thump, thump, thump.  Looks around and says,

"Nothing!  Nothing!," and leaves.  Didn't think much of this place.

(???)                actually says, "Mu!  Mu!"  The Mutra Veka (sp???)

is a book that's been built up in layers over centuries and there's some

notes from this part of the layers. This is Suei-to, the poet, I think,

who says, "He's a frog carrying a board.  A wild fox spirit."  Somebody

carrying a board on his shoulder can only see out of one side.  The

board blocks the other side of the view.  "You board carrying fellow,"

he says of himself (???).  Anyway, so he's got all this vigor and that's

his presentation.

One of the first questions when you meditate with this koan is what does

he mean when he walks across the hall like that and says, `nothing;

nothing; nothing' and walks back again?  Suei-to, the poet, says, "He's

full of zen, but for what?"  You can see that he's absolutely full of

his enlightenment experience.  It's just burning in him and he's very

excited by it.  He's demonstrating it in his own way.

Then he goes and he thinks, "Well, maybe I was a bit hasty."  So he

comes back again.  This time, time has passed and Kuei-shan is sitting

in his seat and everybody's there.  So he walks in and goes as if to

make bows to the teacher, which is a standard practice of meeting, and

he says, "Teacher!"  And he has a rather vigorous style.  Kuei-shan

reaches for his whisk, which you sort of wave in a ceremonial manner

when somebody bows, a sort of blessing.  Te-shan shouts, "HAH!"  and

flourishes this thing and walks out.  So then this is his presentation.

Kuei-shan just puts down the whisk again and stays sitting there.

One of the things to look into here is what did both of these people

mean.  What was in both their hearts in this interaction? Suei-to says

about Kuei-shan sitting there with his whisk, "He watches this fellow

with cold eyes.  He's the kind of man who would grab a tiger's

whiskers."  So he likes the way that Kuei-shan just sits there very

quietly is his response.  He, too, just sitting there showing the

dharma.  Just the way as you just sit on your cushion through the long

afternoon whether you know it or not, you are completely embodying the

buddha nature and the way. It's very important to remember that.  It's

very important to find out how you're embodying the buddha nature and

the way as you sit here.

Te-shan turns his back on the teaching hall, puts on his sandals and

leaves.  He doesn't waste time and hang around as you can tell.  He left

his teacher after meeting him for one day.  Burned his notes after one

experience.  He interacts with the person who is considered the greatest

teacher of his age and this is the sum total of his interaction.  And he

leaves again.

Kuei-shan asks the head monk, "Who's that newcomer who just came?"  The

head monk says, "At that time he turned his back, put on his sandals and

departed."  Kuei-shan says, "He will go to the summit of a lonely peak,

build himself a grass hut and go on scolding the buddhas and reviling

the ancestors."  Why does he scold the buddhas and revile the ancestors?

What's this have to do with anything?  Suei-to adds the comment, "This

is adding frost to snow."  It's kind of obvious already.

Te-shan's life was perhaps more interesting than he ever wanted it to be

because he also lived through a period of great persecution.  He

actually went off and lived in obscurity for about thirty years just

practicing the way and teaching a few people.  No big assembly or

anything.  Then an emperor came to power who decided to destroy buddhism

and went around destroying temples and killing buddhists with vigor.

Lots of massacres and so on in 845.  Te-shan went up in the mountains

and hid in a cave, waited it out and meditated.  Spent his time in a

cave.

There was another great teacher who ran a little ferry boat at that

time.  He became invisible within the people.  That emperor eventually

passed away, as emperors will, and the next emperor restored the

monastery and was looking for somebody to head the temple.  He heard

about the person who later became known as Te-shan, whom we know as Te-

shan, and kept inviting him to come and take over this temple and be a

famous teacher.  He invited him.

Repeatedly and the master did not come.  The messengers would come and

couldn't find Te-shan, or Te-shan would politely say his health was poor

and he couldn't possibly make the journey.  Then the emperor sent

somebody who arrested the master for having violated the laws regarding

tea and salt and dragged him to the prison and dragged him into the

emperor.  The emperor said, "This is the way to get you to stay in that

temple."  So that's how he came into his temple.

The emperor had him dragged before him and Te-shan said, "There's

nothing in the self, so do not seek falsely.  What is attained by false

seeking is not real attainment.  You just have nothing in your mind and

no mind in things.  Then you will be empty and true, tranquil and

sublime.  Any talk of beginning or end will all be self-deception.  The

slightest entanglement of thought is the foundation of the lower worlds.

A momentarily aroused feeling is a hindrance for ten thousand eons.  The

name master and the label ordinary person are merely empty sounds.

Exceptional form and common appearance are both illusions."

Then what he did was settle down and he became known as a rather stern

teacher.  He was the person who said, "If you say yes, I give you thirty

blows; if you say no, I give you thirty blows." He was rather hard to

approach.  But, you know, in his own life he became just like Kuei-shan.

People would say something to him and he'd just sit there and that would

be his answer.  So he, too, became so full of zen he hardly even had to

say anything. His students, he had Hsueh-fang, Wai-feng (sp???), and

Yen-t'ou. He had great students.  The beginning of the koan tradition

coalesced around him.  People debating all the stories back and forth.

That's how books like this came down to us.  He was an ancestor of

Hsueh-tou who collected this book.

So you see we are in an ancient tradition of putting up with a lot of

inconveniences for the sake of the dharma and really following it to the

ends of the earth.  If you really want to find your true face, if you

really want to know who you are, then it is worth it to go to all this

inconvenience.  It is worth it to cross your legs and sit still and see

what happens.  When you let everything become quiet, then the world

truly reveals itself in all its splendor.  Not only this world, but you

see through all worlds.  You can only do this by perseverance and a kind

of love.  It is always said that it takes great doubt, great faith and

great perseverance to attain the way.  Each of them is important.  If

your doubt is not great, then you are kind of lazy about really trying

to penetrate.  You just have trivial cynicisms and doubts.  They don't

count.  Great doubt is to really inquire into this life and to find that

it has no basis at all.  Great faith is a kind of trust that if we

inquire, it will be worth it.  Great perseverance you know all about.

We just continue and we take another step.  There's always one step that

appears in front of us and it's very important to find out what that

step is and then to take it.  If you have a problem in your zazen, bring

up that question.  What is the step I must take? Then you will see and

then you must take it.  It will reveal itself clearly to you if you ask

sincerely.

Each person has her or his own spirit.  The tea lady had her spirit.

She was waiting there quietly and she saw somebody good come along and

she trapped him and then she pushed him out. Huang-po did this with Lin-

chi (Rinzai).  He came to Huang-po and Huang-po trapped him and then

pushed him off to a person (???).  Each person has his own style.  Lung-

tan waiting in his temple.  Te-shan went roaring about the countryside

and that was his style, that was his way of presenting the dharma.  You

must find your own path and be faithful to it.

Please, at this time in sesshin as the river tends to widen out and get

serene and slow, it is important to have courage and go forward.  Don't

just float along on your raft.  Please keep it up.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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[Last updated: 26 April 1993]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLUE CLIFF RECORD CASE 5

This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious

issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful

way.

All copyrights to this document belong to John Tarrant, California

Diamond Sangha, Santa Rosa, Cal., USA

Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young

St., Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SESSHIN TEISHO

John Tarrant Roshi

Camp Cazadero, California

February 10, 1993

BLUE CLIFF RECORD, CASE NO. 5

This is the fifth story in the Blue Cliff Record, "Hsueh-feng's Grain of

Rice."

Introduction

Whoever would uphold the teaching of our school must be brave

spirited with the ability to kill someone without blinking an eye.

Only such a person can become a buddha right where they stand.

Therefore, such a one's illumination and function are simultaneous.

Locking up and opening out are equal.  Principle and phenomena are

not two and he or she practices both the provisional and the real.

Letting go of the primary she sets up the gate of the secondary

meaning.  If she were to cut off all complications straight away,

it would be impossible for late coming students of elementary

capabilities to find a resting place. It was this way yesterday.

The matter couldn't be avoided. It is this way today, too.  Faults

and errors fill the skies.  Still, the point is as a clear-eyed

person, she can't be fooled one bit.  Without clear eyes lying in

the mouth of a tiger one cannot avoid losing body and life.  As

a test I cite this.  Look!

The Case

Hsueh-feng, teaching his community, said:  Pick up the whole great

earth in your fingers and its as big as a grain of rice.  I throw

it down before you.  It's in a black lacquer bucket.  You can't

find it anywhere.  Beat the drum.  Call everyone to look for it.

The Poem

The ox head disappears; a horse head emerges.

In the mirror of Hsao-chi (???) there's absolutely no dust.

He beats the drum for you to come and look, but you don't see.

When spring arrives, for whom do the hundred flowers bloom?

Please sit comfortably.

The person who wrote the Introduction was Hsuan-wu (???), whom everybody

who does a koan lineage at all is descended from.  He was one of the

great late Chinese masters in our tradition, just before our tradition

came to Japan.  All of the entire Rinzai line is descended through him,

the entire Rinzai line through Japan.  He said, "Only if you can kill

someone without blinking an eye, can you become a buddha right where you

stand."   This may be a little alarming for pacifist buddhists.  What do

you think he means?

There's a kind of inner resoluteness that is needed to really achieve

anything, whether it's in work, or in love, or in the dharma.  We have

to throw everything away and just concentrate on this one thing and let

everything else die, everything else goes dark.

He also points out that if Hsueh-feng were to cut off all complications

straight away, "It would be impossible for late coming students of

elementary capabilities (he means us) to find a resting place."  In

other words he's saying, Hsueh-feng is bending down a little bit, but

it's okay because he's gotten people like us who wouldn't understand him

if he didn't.  The truth is that every time we open our mouths we're

wrong.  We move from it.  There's an old saying, that if you say the

word `buddha,' you should wash out your mouth with soap.  Hsuan-wu's

comment reflects this spirit.  But still sometimes you have to say,

`buddha, buddha.'  Another teacher was asked, "How do you avoid saying

the word buddha?"  He said, "Buddha, buddha, buddha."

Hsueh-feng said, "You pick up the whole great earth in your fingers and

it's like a grain of rice in size."  Beautiful, isn't it?  There are

many, many examples of this kind of insight in our tradition.  The first

transmission story is of Shakyamuni holding up a flower.  The story is

that everybody gathered at vulture peak in India for him to give a talk,

a teisho.  When the time came and the drum was beaten and everybody got

ready, he didn't say anything.  He just held up a flower and twirled it

around. The zen story goes that Mahakasyapa was in the audience and he

cracked a smile.  Then Shakyamuni said, "Okay, I'll give you the

transmission.  You recognize me."  That was the first zen story about

transmission.  Although the events took place in Buddha's time, the

story came much later.  Blake's famous lines, almost a cliche, really,

come to mind:

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And heaven in a wild flower.

To hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

I think in sesshin we know that eternal hour.  You walk outside

meditating under the trees, the flowers and the rain and the leaves and

the birds.  All of them go on forever and the path goes on forever from

before birth and after death.  The whole world is here walking under the

trees, sitting in the dojo this long afternoon.

Hsueh-feng's biography is worth recounting so I'll interrupt the case to

recount a little of it.  He wanted to go off and study zen at the age of

nine, but his parents had doubts about the wisdom of this course at that

age.  At the age of twelve he went to a temple and met a teacher and

refused to go home.  So he stayed there.  He studied for many years.  He

first studied the precepts with the precept master.  Later on he studied

zen.  He was about twenty-four when buddhism was persecuted.  He dressed

in disguise.  In old China people's orientation, you might say, was

indicated by their dress.  There was Taoist dress and buddhist dress and

Confucian dress.  He wore Confucian dress and went around visiting

secret zen masters at that time.  Then later on the persecution was

lifted again.  Some suspect this time always sounds like the twentieth

century.  I think the koan tradition sprang up in response to conditions

rather like the ones we have regrettably experienced in our time.

His first teacher died and he travelled around quite a long time. He had

a close friend called Yen-t'uo (Ganto) and they used to travel together

a lot.  They were both rather restless, particularly Hsueh-feng, and he

would go around everywhere.  He had a rice tub and a spoon and he would

be the rice steward in every temple.  He would travel around from temple

to temple and he'd stay a few years and then go back to another master.

Then he'd decide maybe the first master was better and he'd go back to

him.  He went like this.  He actually visited Tou-zu (sp???) three times

and he visited the great Te-shan, perhaps the great teacher of his time,

nine times.  He eventually wound up with Te-shan, who was the great

figure of the last case who studied the Diamond Sutra and came down to

teach the barbarians that zen was wrong and stayed to perpetuate one of

the great zen lines.  He was over forty by the time he finally met Te-

shan and is generally considered to be a successor of Te-shan.  Te-shan

was over eighty, quite old, quite long in the tooth.  He stayed there

for several years with his friend Yen-t'ou.  Although they were friends,

Yen-t'ou was younger.  Yen-t'ou was already very deeply enlightened.

Hsueh-feng would struggle along.  He had had little experiences that

would keep him going, but he couldn't really set his heart to rest.

This was a matter of great concern to him. He was known as the sweating

horse of zen.  A man of effort.  He started when he was twelve and here

he has just met his true teacher when he was forty, twenty-eight years

later.  Think of this next time you complain about the time it is taking

you to do koans.  He's just meeting his teacher now.  He stayed with

that community for some time and there are a number of koan stories

about him there.  He doesn't really seem to have connected with his

teacher immediately.

The story goes that he was traveling on pilgrimage between training

periods with his friend Yen-t'ou.  As they were crossing a mountain

pass, they were snowed in a little place called Tortoise Mountain in a

village that was in Hunan (???) in a little hut.  There's nothing much

you can do when you're snowed in except meditate and sleep.  So Yen-t'ou

slept and Hsueh-feng meditated.  Every now and again Yen-t'ou would roll

over and open his eyes and look at Hsueh-feng sitting there meditating

and then he'd roll over and go back to sleep.  Day and night Hsueh-feng

meditated.  This went on for several days.  Yen-t'ou sat up and said,

"What are you doing sitting there like a wooden buddha by the roadside?"

Hsueh-feng said,  "My heart is not yet at rest." Which is a very

beautiful reply, I think.  He had an awareness of who he was and where

he stood.  I think this sort of admission to ourselves is very

important.  To see who we really are is always the beginning of

something good.  Just like discovering our secret greed, or secret

tendency to tell lies, or something in yourself.  When you notice it,

you begin to feel shame.  The beginning of generosity and change in you

is happening.

Then what happened was that Yen-t'ou said, "Bring out what you know and

I'll test you."  Hsueh-feng told his story.  When he arrived at Te-shan,

he said, "Does this student have any share in the matter handed down

from antiquity as the fundamental vehicle?"  It's a rather fancy way of

putting it, but I think you can get what he's saying.  Do I have the

capacity to be enlightened in this life?  Do I have any connection with

all those old stories?  If you tell stories about something that

happened a thousand years ago, people say, `well, that happened so long

ago and doesn't apply to me.'  If you tell stories about things that

happened a generation ago, people say, `that happened in the last

generation and doesn't apply to me.'  If you tell stories about things

that happened last week, people say, `it is not now.'  Our potential is

really always the same, but Hsueh-feng doubted.  He knew that he did not

know that in his bones. So he asked his teacher that.  Te-shan, even

though he was eighty years old, managed to stagger up and strike him a

blow and said, "What are you saying?"  He had an insight at that time.

He described this sort of thing to his friend Yen-t'ou.  He said, "When

Te-shan hit me, it was like a bottom falling out of a bucket."  Yen-t'ou

gave a great shout, "KAH!" (he was known for his shout) and said,

"Haven't you heard it said that what comes in through the gate is not

the family treasure.  You must let it flow out from your own breath to

cover heaven and earth, then you will have some small portion of

realization."  With this shout and these words Hsueh-feng was suddenly

greatly enlightened.  He bowed and said to Yen-t'ou, "Older brother,

today, Tortoise Mountain has finally attained the path."  That's often

translated today `In tortoise mountain I have attained the path,' but

actually he says, `Today, the whole village, the whole mountain, the

whole world has attained the path.'  It is a very beautiful way of

putting it.  So you can see that Tortoise Mountain is the whole world

just like this grain of rice that we hold up.

His friend Yen-t'ou, who was known for his shout, died and sort of

disappears from history.  He returns later because Hakuin was fascinated

with him and how such a wise teacher could die so young.  He died in his

sixties, his late sixties.  He was run through by bandits, guerillas.

Just the usual casual mayhem at the time of civil war.  He had sent his

students away and he sat meditating in his temple.  They rode into the

temple and speared him.  And he had said, "When I go, I will go with a

great shout." For miles around villagers heard this great, `Aaahhh'

lion's roar and they knew that Yen-t'ou had gone.  Years later Hakuin

meditated on this and met Yen-t'ou, actually.

But Hsueh-feng became a very humorous and great teacher with maybe 1500

hundred students himself.  A sample of his humor is, "Everyone.  The

whole great earth is the eye of a monk."  You see it's that same

enlightenment experience, isn't it?  Tortoise Mountain is the universe.

Tortoise Mountain gets enlightened.  A grain of earth is the whole

world.  A very great enlightenment experience at work here.  He says,

"Everyone, the whole great earth is the eye of the monk.  Where will you

go to take a shit?" So here he is.  His humor is at work again.  He

says, "The whole great earth, though it is just a grain of rice in size,

I throw it down.  It's in a black lacquer bucket.  You can't find it

anywhere."  Then he says, "Daniel, beat the drum.  Call everyone. We'll

look for it."  Imagine everyone going out to look for that grain of

rice.  Where do you think that grain of rice is?  Is it still here?

Someone asked another teacher, Yung-feng (???), about this, and he held

up his staff and he said, "Do you see Hsueh-feng?"  Hsueh-feng's humor

seems to have passed down through the generations.

The verse goes, `An ox head disappears; a horse head emerges.' Very

interesting.  Something disappears; something appears.  When we really

realize and we really see that grain of rice, you will understand what

he means.  Something disappears and a horse head emerges.

`In the mirror of Hsao-chi there is absolutely no dust.'  The mirror of

Hsao-chi refers to the Great Sixth Ancestor who is considered to have

written a sutra.  The only sutra written in relatively recent times.

The long story is that he was a semi-literate rice pounder; a workman

working around the meditation hall.  It was the time when the Fifth

Great Family (???) Teacher asked everybody to compose a verse expressing

his understanding. A great tradition, actually.  There was a person of

great learning and accomplishment in meditation, who was the most senior

student who was Hsuen-sueh (???), who wrote:

The body is the enlightenment tree.

The mind is like a bright mirror stand.

Polish it again and again diligently,

and there will be no dust at all.

Do not let there be any dust.

People were reading this aloud and admiring it as an expression of the

depth of meditation and Hui-neng asked somebody to write down on the

wall for him his own verse:

Enlightenment is basically not a tree.

The mind mirror is not a stand.

Originally there is not a single thing.

Where is there any dust?

The story is that Hui-neng actually was the first person to succeed the

Fifth Great Ancestor, but that's another story.

Okay, so, `In the mirror of Hsao-chi there is absolutely no dust.'  You

know what that is like when you are deep in meditation.  Everything is

crystalline and clear.  Hsuan-wu's (???) comments on this are, "Smash

the mirror and I'll meet you. First you must smash it."

The poem goes on, `He beats the drum for you to look, but you don't

see./When spring arrives, for whom do the hundred flowers bloom?'  Kind

of a good question to ask yourself.  For whom do the flowers bloom?  For

whom do the mushrooms push up out of the earth covered with pine

needles?  For whom do the birds sing if not for you?  Who is that one?

So now, here we are in the depths of sesshin, in the depths of samadhi.

It is important at this time to raise up your effort. It is easy now to

just enjoy sailing down the river as if you were on Cleopatra's barge,

but when you come to shore everything will be taken away from you again.

If you want something that can't be taken away from you, you must really

penetrate right now.  Please look into your heart and ask yourself the

question, what is it?  You will find that the question itself is a

marvelous palace that you can walk into.  Even that is not enough.  You

must keep asking yourself, what is it? what is it? going deeper and

deeper.  You can never really cross that barrier between the question

and complete unity, but suddenly it will be crossed.  It is beyond your

will and your intention, but the universe will do it for you if you are

sincere.  All we have to do is over and over again approach the gate

until suddenly we are flung through it without the use of our own hands.

Please, it's very important to persevere at this time.  Let's do it!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

End of record

This document was originally distributed on Internet as a part of the

Electronic Buddhist Archives, available via anonymous FTP and/or

COOMBSQUEST gopher on the node COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU

The document's ftp filename and the full directory path are given in the

coombspapers top level INDEX file.

This version of the document has been reformatted by Barry Kapke and is

being distributed, with permission, via the DharmaNet Buddhist File

Distribution Network.

[Last updated: 6 August 1993]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Blue Cliff Record case 6".

This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious

issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful

way.

All copyrights to this document belong to John Tarrant, California

Diamond Sangha, Santa Rosa, Cal., USA

Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young

St., Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993

----------------------------------------------------------------------

EVERY DAY IS A GOOD DAY

JOHN TARRANT ROSHI

(Teisho:  Day Six of the April '93 Sesshin at Gorricks Run, NSW,

Australia)

This is the sixth case in the Blue Cliff Record.

Yun Men said, "I don't ask you about before the fifteenth of the month,

try to say something about after the fifteenth."  Yun Men himself

answered for everybody: "Every day is a good day."

And Hsueh Tou's poem on the case:

He throws away one and takes up seven.

Above, below and in the four directions there is no comparison.

Passively walking along he stops the sound of a flowing stream.

Freely he watches the track of flying birds.

The grasses grow thick; the mists overhang.

Around Sabuti's cliff the flowers make a mess.

I snap my fingers.  How lamentable is shunyata.

Don't make a move.  If you move - thirty blows!

The fifteenth of the month is the time of the full moon and

traditionally the full moon is associated with enlightenment and

clarity.  So he's asking, "I don't ask you about before that time; what

about after that time?"  Nobody else could answer apparently, so he

answered for himself, "Every day is a good day."

When Aitken Roshi did his final transmission ceremony, Yamada Roshi came

to Honolulu to do the ceremony with Aitken Roshi's sangha and as part of

the ceremony Aitken Roshi had to give a teisho and also a public

dokusan.  During the public dokusan, Yamada Roshi sat behind him in a

chair with a kyosaku over his knees - all that psychic weight that

somebody who's been doing Zen for a long time accumulates.  The kyosaku

looks a very light easy thing to pick up and hit with.

Yamada Roshi was doing koan seminars with some of the senior students

and he asked us to come up and ask Aitken Roshi particularly difficult

and obnoxious questions in front of everybody.  And what he asked me to

do was to ask about this case, "What do you think about 'Every day is a

good day'?" So you can see from this that Yamada Roshi saw this as one

of the true tests of understanding. If you can really meet Yun Men you

will have such a heart at ease in a significant way.  This is not a

small thing.

Yun Men was a grand master of Zen whom Mr Blythe, as Aitken Roshi always

calls him, spoke of as being one of those great world figures like

Shakespeare or Goethe who come along once every five hundred years -

someone who is truly remarkable.  You can get a little bit of a flavour

from just this case alone. "Every day is a good day."  You're either

very foolish or you really know something if you can say that.  Yun Men

was not actually that easy-going a sort of fellow.  It wasn't "Have a

good day!" sort of consciousness that he was talking about.

He went to study with Mu Chou for some time, who was a very difficult

teacher, very old at the time and kind of cranky.  He had this secret

life in which he made straw sandals for the pilgrims and put them out.

He'd hide in his room all day making straw sandals and anonymously

putting them out for people who'd be on pilgrimage and wear out their

sandals.  There was something very touching about the sweetness that was

inside this tough old fellow.

But it was difficult even to get inside his room and people would come

to see him and he wouldn't even open the door for dokusan.  Yun Men went

three times and finally was admitted.  Something about his footsteps

must have improved his general field.  And the old teacher, who was in

his nineties, I guess, opened the door a crack, and Yun Men, being Yun

Men, thrust it open and jumped in.  And the teacher really grabbed him

and said, "What is it!?"  And Yun Men immediately became stupified the

way one does.

So again, there's this sort of creative stupidity that happens when

we're undertaking a great thing.  In any great shift in our lives we'll

find something of this I think.  But it's very pronounced in Zen that we

are really waiting for that apple to drop on our heads so we can

formulate some sort of new arrangement of the world.  So anyway, he

became dumb and his teacher, being a frail, helpless ninety-year-old Zen

master, threw him out, physically.  Yun Men didn't get his leg out fast

enough and it broke his leg.  He screamed in pain, and at that moment

gained enlightenment.  He was of the sudden school.

There's something very moving for me about everything involved here.

That the old man's harshness could have such a good result says a lot of

good things for both the old man and his student, I think.  The timing

was right.  And it wasn't like some simple little stress fracture.  Yun

Men walked with a limp for the rest of his life and had a hard time even

sitting in zazen.  But he stayed with his teacher for some more years,

deepening his insight until his teacher at about a hundred, thought he

was getting a bit long in the tooth to be teaching a real tiger, so he

sent him off to another teacher, too Hsueh Feng, actually. And he

studied with Hsueh Feng and became a successor in his line and one of

the founders of the koan lineage.

Even after he was enlightened, he went to Hsueh Feng and when he arrived

there he came forward out of the assembly, which took a lot of courage

in front of a thousand people.  The teacher would stand there and if you

had the courage you came out and spoke.  And he said, "Where is Buddha?"

Hsueh Feng said, "Don't talk in your sleep."  Again, just stupifying

him, I think - the same thing.  Not a harsh thing - sometimes people

think it's harsh.  It's not.  It's just a barrier put here.

Yun Men bowed and stayed there for three years.  One day Hsueh Feng

asked him, "What do you see?"  Yun Men said, "My view doesn't differ in

the slightest from that of all the sages since antiquity."  Something

happened in those three years.

And here's this great story about Yun Men, how he eventually inherited

the temple of a person called Ling Shu.  For twenty years Ling Shu did

not appoint a head monk.  He used to say things like, "Today my head

monk was born."  And later, "My head monk is tending oxen in the

fields."  And then he would say, "My head monk is travelling around on

pilgrimage."  And people didn't quite know what to say about this.

After a while I think some of them went, "Oh yeah." One day he ordered

the big temple bell to be struck and ordered everyone in the

congregation to assemble to receive the head monk at the gate.  The

congregation was dubious about this, but Yun Men actually arrived - he

came limping in.  Ling Shu immediately invited him into the head monk's

quarters to unpack his bundle. People called Ling Shu "the Knowing Sage"

because he knew this sort of thing. Somebody said, "This says a lot

about Ling Shu, doesn't it."  And I said, "No. It says a lot about Yun

Men."  The world received him.  His karma was right.

Once King Yiu, the Lord of Kuang was going to mobilise his army.  He

intended to go to the monastery personally to ask the master Ling Shu to

determine whether conditions were auspicious or not.  You get yourself

in trouble if you're a Zen master - whichever way you answer, something

bad will happen.  Ling Shu, knowing of this beforehand, sat down and

peacefully died.

The Lord of Kuang was angry about this and said, "Since when was the

master sick?"  And the attendant answered, "The master has not been

sick.  But he just entrusted a box to me which he ordered me to present

to you when you arrived, your majesty."  The Lord of Kuang opened the

box and took out a card which said, "The eye of healing Zen deities is

in the head monk in the hall."  The Lord of Kuang thereupon dismissed

his soldiers and invited Yun Men to appear in the world at Ling Shu

Monastery.  This is how Yun Men got himself a temple. Surprising things

do happen.

I think this story is very interesting in a lot of ways - not so much

for that sense of the mystery of the dharma that floats around it like

dawn mist on the river, but we see the level of real issues that we have

to deal with through a Zen approach.  Zen is so obviously not something

that you can leave in a temple.

Ling Shu had this great warlord come to him, who obviously wanted to

declare war.  It's very hard to hold back a general when a general

really wants something.  He didn't want to get involved with this, but

there was no way that he could not be involved.  How to keep your

integrity in this situation is so interesting.  He had a solution which

seems sort of novel, but very successful, really.  He just sort of went

on, somewhere else.

But you can see the kind of courage and integrity he needed just to make

his way through this minefield.  He must have felt it to be such a

dangerous situation that it required his complete sacrifice.  So he had

to just let go of any plans he might have had to do anything else when

this great situation came up.  He had to just walk out and leave

everything to Yun Men.  Still, it seems he chose pretty well in his

successor.  But we find ourselves faced with real life situations like

this where we must choose and either choice is bad, and that's a great

situation for Zen wisdom to appear.

This whole issue of "Every day is a good day" brings up for me the issue

of "Well, what is enlightenment?"  It's an odd thing to try and describe

what enlightenment is.  A few months ago I gave a public talk in

Berkeley.  It was a fairly long talk, about forty minutes, I suppose,

and I probably spent about one minute of it speaking about

enlightenment.  But about 95% of the questions I was asked after the

talk were about enlightenment.  And so there's some sort of obsession

that can gather around this word, which is, I guess, OK.  We just have

to accept that and do something interesting with it.

To describe enlightenment I think means to find some language beyond it

in which it can be talked about, and I don't think that is completely

possible.  There is a language problem here.  But we can play with it a

little bit.  It seems that there are these great shifts in us which seem

to clarify us like this fire that suddenly illuminates everything.

Sometimes these shifts are very small but they seem great.  We hear a

child crying out and we hear that voice as if it's coming from inside

us.  We see a tree move and we feel that we just moved.  So even this

small taste of the great world of Zen is so interesting and compelling

that we tend to get very attracted to it.  And then some people have big

tastes, I suppose - a big mouthful of it.

We think of ourselves as the "sudden school", rather than the "gradual

school'. I still feel I'm not sure what this means.  When I see people

who obviously belong to a gradual school, somehow that helps me find out

what sudden school might be.  One of the ideas of gradual school is that

realisation happens over many aeons.  This is an idea that comes from

the sutras and so many, many lives are needed.   From that point of

view, a life is a rather brief span.  "It only took me eighty years to

pass my first koan.  Wow!"   The idea that you might get anywhere in one

life in terms of realisation in itself is a sudden school idea.

I think the other obvious use of the term "sudden" is that there are

these shifts in us that are utter.  There is an irreversible quality to

consciousness. It has its imperatives and its demands and once you have

seen something it's very hard to unsee it.  We can if we work at it and

drug ourselves, if we're rather self-destructive, but it's hard to un-

see something once we have seen it. Once you have a particular point of

view, it's very hard to go back.  And to shift points of view is a

matter of doing something entirely.  It's something that happens to us.

And that is the sudden thing as well.

But I think that everybody's path is unique. I've heard quite a lot of

enlightenment stories and I've witnessed quite a lot of enlightenment

stories, I suppose, many of which never happened.  Some of them are very

genuine and powerful, and there just doesn't seem to be any set way.

When you read the old accounts you'll find if you read a few of them

you'll get a very strong idea that there's a set way.

I was wondering why I don't teach the way some people I originally took

as models teach - you know, from the kensho factories of the world.  I

do respect the teachers.  Three Pillars of Zen was a book that was very

influential for me and for many people.  Yamada Roshi wrote a great deal

of that book.  He doesn't get credited, which is one of the problems

between him and Kapleau Roshi, but he wrote a great deal of that book

and collected those stories.  Yamada Roshi is someone I respect a great

deal.

So there's something good there but I realise that the kind of people I

want us to become are different from that.  I don't want us just to

value that blinding flash of insight.  I think it's because that's not

what I want for myself.  When I first began teaching, really I didn't

know anything else to want or anything else I was supposed to do.  I

think I really did value that a lot, and I still do.  But I valued it,

perhaps, in the wrong way - more than I do now, anyway. Now I still

value it, but it's like the background has appeared as well and I see

the background much more.

That is a sort of much wider thing, I think.  It's about this sort of

inner upheaval which even changes the cell membranes, we might say.  And

it is something that seems to just go on and on in us.  So there really

is that insight.  Sometimes it's a blinding flash, we might say, that

knocks us off our feet.  But sometimes it's not, and I don't care which.

I really can't bring myself to care which.  In myself or others, it's

the transformation that's interesting.

And there's an inner shift in what I call character.  You'll find that

character is an interest of many peoples at many times.  It's an old

Tang dynasty interest, a very old Chinese interest, actually.  It has

always been an interest of the Zen world.  This is something that is not

a matter of narrowness or piety in religion, a following of rules.  The

character is held together, mediated I think, by what I'm calling

integrity, which is what makes the precepts something that is

inhabitable and wide and full.  Without that, something too narrow

happens.  There is a clarity but the life is too narrow.  Somebody has

described it to me as "this narrow cone-like consciousness that squeezes

out wisdom drop by drop" in a tiny, rather meagre sort of fashion.  And

that's not enough.

So I'll tell a couple of enlightenment stories and see.  I have a friend

who was enlightened in a very classical way.  He sat very hard for a

long time and put side his life, as I did and some others of you have at

various times.  And he would sit and he really didn't get anywhere very

much except his sitting got better and samadhis got better, but he would

go in to dokusan and the Roshi would say, "What is mu?" and he would

say,"I don't know," and go out again, and there we were.

But he'd hear a sound and it would go through him and he would start to

shake. Or something would fall on the roof and his body would vibrate.

Or the sound would seem to be coming from inside him.  He thought that

was sort of propitious.

One day he was in the zendo. Many of us used to sleep in the zendo.  He

was sitting up at night and people were lying in their sleeping bags

around him, snoring.  And you know how people snore in different

overtones and it can be pretty loud.  I had a roommate once who used to

scream in the night and somehow it was right at sesshin.  It was good to

be his roommate.  I used to feel like he opened me up when he screamed.

I used to feel such compassion for him, and the only way I could offer

my compassion was just to hold that scream for him because he couldn't

hold it himself.  So my friend was sitting there sort of holding all

these snores, just having them pass through him.

In the teisho for some reason that nobody any longer remembers, the

Roshi had mentioned this phrase: "headless corpses and corpseless

heads".  And he'd be going "mu" and this phrase started to take over his

consciousness - "corpseless heads, headless corpses, corpseless heads" -

and he was sitting down there, all these people prone around him,

snoring and "corpseless heads, headless corpses".  So after a while he

decided to get up and go to bed.  He got up and went to bed.  He lay

down and he turned over.  He couldn't get comfortable, and he turned

over.  And at that moment, he said, the whole world turned over.

Everything shifted.  And he thought, "Oh that's nice," and he just went

to sleep.

I'm reminded of when the Dueno Elegies came to Rainer Maria Rilke, when

he was at the castle.  He was worried about a business matter and he

went out to walk on the balcony of the Dueno Castle, overlooking the

Adriatic.  Suddenly this great poem that he knew he had been ready for

his whole life began to come to him - it was the Dueno Elegies - at the

same time as the solution to the business problem.  So he went in and

finished his business letter, then sat down and wrote the elegies.

So my friend just went to sleep.  That was the right thing to do next.

When he woke up in the morning, everything was shining, everything was

glowing.  A very interesting thing is he went to his teacher and he

couldn't explain this to his teacher.  The teacher just rang the bell

and he left.  He said it took him maybe six months to begin to find a

language where the two of them could talk about this experience.  So you

can see you have to digest things, even in its most classical form.

There's a digestion period.

I'll tell you another story because I think it's a nice counteraction.

There's another friend of mine, a student of mine who wasn't even

working on koans, because she didn't really like performing very much.

She felt she couldn't get the idea of performing separated from the idea

of doing koans.  It was just too much like university examinations.

This is a common experience I think.  So why do koans?  So she wasn't

doing koans.  I couldn't ever completely work out what she was doing,

actually, but she was sincere so I decided when in doubt, don't worry

about it.  And it seemed all right.  It didn't make sense, but it seemed

all right so, what do I know?  I'm just the teacher.

She would meditate, and some years went by and she was sincere but her

life seemed a bit thin in a lot of ways.  She was just one of those

sincere Zen people that seems to have given up just a little too much

for Zen, not realising that that was Zen too, that they were giving up.

Anyway gradually - I guess hearing me talk about koans - I think she

herself just took up one of the koans.  It sort of leaked into her

consciousness.  It took her up a little bit.  But she really wasn't

working on koans and there was no sense for me that she was working on

koans, anyway.  She was just walking around and she was meditating and

then some pain from her early life came up - her father.  She was like

many of us in Zen who were not well-mothered or well-fathered and come

to the universe to do that for us.  There was all this pain about this

huge access of feeling.  She was really trained as a scientist and it

really wasn't her bag.

But this came up for her and she felt that she wasn't supposed to be

doing this in zazen but she she decided she would just weep away in the

dojo because it seemed authentic and so she did that.  She came in to me

and she was talking to me and told me stories about her father whom

she'd hardly known - the little few stories she knew about her father .

That was what dokusan was all about.

Then that stopped and everything was still for a while and this koan

came into her mind and she walks into dokusan one day and she has this

crushed beer can in her hand.  I thought, "Well, this is interesting."

So she just walks into dokusan, just strides in and puts it on the

altar, laughing.  She'd found herself.

We were in this retreat centre and it was beautiful but it had been

trashed some - there was public access to some parts.  She'd been

walking around by the bay shore picking up beer cans.  She had been

moved to do this during sesshin - some mysterious thing.  She had

followed the impulse, in that case the right thing to do.  As she picked

one up she realised that it was Buddha and she was Buddha, and the tree

was Buddha and the beer can - everything was Buddha.  So she naturally

brought Buddha back to put on the altar.  She spent the rest of the

sesshin laughing - sometimes aloud in the zendo.  She was a very quiet

and reserved person, you know.

That's another kind of story and a totally different path, I think.  And

her path since has been different.  Her path hasn't been a rush through

koan work as my other friend did.  Her path has been somehow to get a

relationship that she liked in her life.  She's good at koan work; it

holds her and she will finish her koan work.  That's a very very

important thing.  But each koan she tries to relate to her world.

This is something that is still something of a mystery to us.  How do we

relate the great formal questions of the past to our actual questions,

our informal organically-generated questions of the moment?  I think we

are still working with this.  I was having a conversation with someone

here the other day and she was saying that only after you have solved

the koan can you see how it relates to your life and you can see all the

connections.  But when you are working on it it has no relationship to

your life and isn't this the problem?  There's something very

frustrating.

I think there's something happens there, where the koan seems to draw

our blindness to the surface in a way like a poultice used to.  I don't

know if people still use poultices any more.  The idea was that it would

draw the infection or the demon out of the body.  A koan sometimes will

do this.  Often we're in this place where the koan is this dry, helpless

thing that's just lying there on the floor and we have no relation to it

at all.  Zen practice becomes like that at some moments - this quite

useless thing.  What has this got to do with my life?

I think that's a moment when a great inner compartmentalisation that is

already there in us has somehow come to the surface and taken us over.

That is the way in which we keep the most important parts of our lives

out of our practice sometimes.  And this can't be right.  Like my friend

was trying to keep her whole thing about her early childhood (which

doesn't have to run her, but is also part of her story) out of her

practice but, maybe because she'd held it out so long, when it came in

it was of benefit.  It was a real thing when it came in.

So we must find a way to connect with the questions of our lives.  The

old stories and the old language are actually very helpful if we can

find a way.  So one of the first things we need to do in order to have a

good day, is to have a bad one, actually, I think. You know, until we

suffer, we don't understand about the need for enlightenment.  And so we

have to grow dark before we can grow light.  I really do think this is

true.

And before we can find oneness there needs to be a separation.  We

really do need to find out how dualistic we really are.  Wu Men says,

"With realization, all things are one family.  Without realization, all

things are separate and disconnected."  This is a very clear and

conventional view.   The next line in the poem is, "Without realization

all things are one family".  Yamada Roshi used to call this "pernicious

oneness".  And there's some way in which until that separation has

occurred within us, we can't then get the union.

So symptoms are very valuable.  The new name for dukha is "symptoms".

And if we have a symptom, this is why an illness can be a very creative

thing or some really neurotic, obsessive behaviour which we do and we

hide from everybody and we only do late at night when nobody's looking.

They're wonderful those things and we should bring them into our Zen and

look at them and bring our Zen into them because they're the form in

which the practice is trying to appear and the koan is trying to appear

in our lives in that form.

So until you've got a symptom, you're in trouble, I think really.  You

know you really need a symptom, preferably florid.  It doesn't have to

be florid - that's just my preference.  That's just clear.  But any

symptom will do.  And then we get our awareness into our pain and when

you can get the awareness into the pain you find the pain itself holds

the good day.

There's a story about one of the great masters of Korean Zen who set off

on a pilgrimage to China with some friends. There was no wisdom in Korea

and so they had to go off to China.  It was very difficult and his

friends turned back gradually.  He was crossing a desert - a frightening

place - alone, and after nightfall he came to this place where he could

camp and he stopped.  It was as if he was guided there and he stopped.

There was a tree there and there was a bowl with this delicious water in

it, this pure water.  He drank the water and he felt so, so supported by

the universe and aided by the universe and he felt his pilgrimage was

right.

So he went to sleep and he woke up in the morning and found that the

bowl was a skull full of stinking water with slime in it.  He began to

vomit, and as the vomit came out he became enlightened at that moment.

And he decided he didn't need to go to China any more and he went back

and became this wonderful teacher in Korea - that juxtaposition of the

extreme suffering and then suddenly switching into the extremes - the

beauty of the dharma and the rightness of the suffering, in that case.

This is a very strong feature of life, and I think when we're open to

that, we are open to the bodhisattva way.  One of the main errors I

think I make is believing that, because people are really a nuisance and

obnoxious and crazy, like most of us are some of the time, we will

continue to be that way.  But we have to be open to the possibility in

ourselves of that change occurring.  That very place that we're always

protecting with cynicism, or with fatigue, or depression or whatever

we're protecting it with - with being clever and with looking good -

that very place is the place of our change, and it's out of there that

the enlightenment will come.  That is the place where the koan really

dwells.  In some way we have to bring that out, and if we can see that

in others, that's great.

So, Yun Men's good day   When I asked Aitken Roshi about it in his

ceremony, he spoke about dying as being the good day - the moment, the

time of dying.  You can see that if you want to be a bodhisattva and

help others, you have to permit them to do things like die when it's

their time.  In our culture we tend to hook people up a lot to machines

at the time of death - more in the US than here, but still here.  And

for some people that's right because they have to live entirely within

the dream of the culture.  They can't live apart from it.  But for some

of us, that's not right.  We have to allow people their suffering so

that that moment of transformation can come, where we fully enter the

suffering and find it is good, and find that the gold is there.   We

don't even have to suffer I suppose really, to do this, but somehow the

tradition is that we do.  It says that without the great doubt it's hard

really to get anywhere.  And that suffering is the doubt.

Suffering is a doubt about our place in the universe, a doubt about the

nurturing quality of the universe for us.  And it's a doubt about our

line to eternity and whether eternity will really support us in getting

a job or having a baby or whatever it is - finding love, finding the

way, getting breakfast. Really.  For many people it's actually finding a

meal.  So that is the doubt and the doubt does seem to be necessary.

That's the symptom and the place of pain.

And then there's the great faith that's necessary, which is so

contradictory. But it is also so important.  And then there's the effort

- the great effort that's necessary - the third of the legs.  I always

feel there should be a fourth leg there.  And I think to me the fourth

leg is something to do with love.  You really need to love the way; you

need to love the doubt and the darkness and the light and the noxious

people you practise with and your own obnoxiousness and all that stuff.

So it is the doubt, I think, that we tend to omit sometimes and not

value when it comes, and not realise that if it becomes more

excruciating it's also closer to resolution.  If your pain in your life

and your situation is becoming worse, if not only do you lose your house

and your family and your job, but you also get thrown in prison, maybe

that's good.  OK?  And maybe many things are starting to culminate here.

Maybe there's a pattern that something is beginning to crystalise out of

solution, that something is appearing in the world; there is a shape

happening.  And then the faith and the sincerity have something to work

with - the effort and the faith and the sincerity.

In his verse Hsueh Tou says, "Around Sabuti's cliff the flowers make a

mess." Sabuti meditated so well that the devas, the gods, the nature

spirits started pelting him with flowers and Hsueh Tou thinks this is

all a bit much.  "Sit down and drink your tea.  Eat your porridge and be

quiet."  That's his attitude. "The flowers make a mess."  Yuan Wu says,

"Where is he, that stupid fellow?"

"I snap my fingers.  How lamentable is shunyata!"  You see, when he says

it's the emptiness that's lamentable, he's saying it's good to come out

and engage with the world here, that that is the field of enlightenment.

That is the reason that some teachers actually like to deal with lay

people.  Harada Roshi, who is really at least the modern founder of our

tradition, is said to have liked to deal with lay people.  He thought it

was so difficult to do it as a lay person that if you managed to do it

at all, you were probably in good shape. But, in another sense, it's

easier as a lay person because you're always fronted with the stuff of

life.  So it's harder to get that narrow, comfortable zone of

consciousness and get stuck in it, because something will always throw

you out. Some doubt will arise; a symptom will appear and that symptom

will save you.

So at this time of sesshin what I might say about the good day is that I

think it can relate to trust here, as well -  trust in the universe,

trust in this afternoon, trust in our meditation, trust in time so that

we don't become time-focused in the wrong way; trust in whatever is this

great process that is working in us, finding its own way to fulfilment,

if we get out of the way as much as we can and if we give it as much

sincere effort as we can.

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