“A man like this will not go where he has no will to go, will not do what he has no mind to do. Though the world might praise him and say he had really found something, he would look unconcerned and never turn his head; though the world might condemn him and say he had lost something, he would look serene and pay no heed. The praise and blame of the world are no loss or gain to him.” Daoist Immortal Zhuangzi Anyone who penetrates the empty mind ground instantly realises the ‘Dao’ (道) of reality. After-all, this perception of inner ‘void’ will always accompany the enlightened person as they traverse the materiality of the external world. One is neither ‘attached’ to the bliss-like nature of the inner void – and neither are they ‘hindered’ by the attractive nature of the external world! Perception, moment by moment, is a continuous ‘integration’ of form and void so that there is no contradiction or paradox present in everyday experience. This is why chopping wood and fetching water are prime examples of expressing the genuine and true ‘Dao’. Enlightenment within the Chinese Ch’an School is a living reality. It is not a dead teaching once known but now no longer understood. Chinese scholarship does not adhere to the various trends of interpretation extant in the West (or Japan) - as the Chinese people know their own culture. In my view it is the Cao Dong School that expresses the Chinese Ch’an School with the greatest scientific precision. The other four schools of Ch’an are all excellent in their own ways, and certainly contribute greatly to the reality of the living tradition of ancient Indian Buddhism (Dhyana) as it was transmitted into China. However, from the perspective of integrating the native Confucianism of China with the ‘foreign’ religion of Indian Buddhism – the ‘roundel’ system devised by Master Dong and Master Cao is nothing less than an Ingenious device for explaining the inner mind, the outer body and environment – and how both integrate and operate in the enlightened state! The Cao Dong School is the personal (and preferred) lineage of Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) - even though he agreed to ‘inherit’ ALL Five Schools of Chinese Ch’an (and did not discriminate in anyway). His root teaching was the Cao Dong School and this is what he passed-on to his personal students and disciples. This is known within China as Master Xu Yun had thousands of such descendants, but it is a reality he seldom discussed in public or talked about in his biography. A Ch’an monastic, for example, must be ‘lower’ than the lowest lay-person – so that he or she can act as a supportive foundation for all lay-Dharma practice! By following the Vinaya Discipline a Ch’an monastic learns to be like the broad earth found in the ‘Classic of Change’ (Yijing), so that the ‘divine sky’ of an expansive consciousness can be correctly cultivated in the sincere Dharma student. Charles Luk (1898-1978) inherited this Cao Dong teaching from Master Xu Yun and was tasked with transmitting it to the West. Charles Luk taught hundreds of people in the West, and I am sure he transmitted the Dharma to a number of discerning practitioners. However, Charles Luk taught my teacher - Richard Hunn (1949-2006) - who lived in the UK. One of the first instructions Richard Hunn gave me was that I was to spend at least ten years studying the ‘Book of Change’ (Yijing) - reading the profound text daily. I tended to read a single chapter ascribed to each of the 64 hexagrams and continued to repeat this cycle until the thinking (and symbolism) of the Yijing penetrated deep into my being! This is how I developed the inherent understanding of how the Five Ranks of Prince and Minister operates within the Cao Dong School. The understanding of these five roundels is either misunderstood in the West, or only superficially grasped. Most people simply ignore it due to the influence of the Japanese Soto Master – Dogen – and his emphasis on ‘just sitting’ - but he must have studied and understood this device as a Dharma-Inheritor! By looking into the empty foundation that is beyond perception and non-perception – a Cao Dong practitioner is literally looking into the profound essence of the single roundel that contains all roundels! After-all, what other possible explanation could there be? On top of this, the Cao Dong Masters drew the ‘thunderbolt’ as a means to explain this interconnectivity and how a genuine student tends to experience an unfolding mind as it develops. Some state that this ‘thunderbolt’ may be influenced by the imagery associated with Tibetan Buddhism. A Western (and Japanese) tendency is to view the five roundels as indicating five ‘ranks’ through which a practitioner traverses – from the lowest to the highest – as if each roundel represents a coloured belt in Judo. This is not the case at all. In the ‘Book of Changes’ there are 64 chapters – but no single chapter is considered ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’ to any other! Each of the 64 chapters exists as part of the other 63 chapters – perfect in its placement, situation and function. This is exactly how the Five Ranks interact with one another. All are contained within each – and there is never an implication that a practitioner moves from one self-contained level to another! Just as consciousness is infinite – the Cao Dong roundels represent an insight into the bottomless nature of human awareness. The Buddha, of course, stated that enlightenment is that conscious awareness which exists just beyond (and behind) the ability to ‘perceive’ (form) and ‘non-perceive’ (void). Chinese Ch’an does not go beyond this.
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Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) certainly understood the paradox of looking into the fabric of our minds – to ‘see’ beyond that which we look with and that which we look at and through. This process, for a Ch’an Master at least, was not considered a contradiction. This Chinese Ch’an method was and still is viewed as the true essence of the message of the historical Buddha (born in India)! Furthermore, the Chinese Ch’an School considers itself unique in preserving the ‘true’ transmission of the historical Buddha free of all the later modifications, distractions and pollutions that entered the various Buddhist communities. Contemporary Western scholars, of course, consider this attitude to be flawed and its assumption to be wrong. According to Western scholarship (which takes its cue from Japanese Buddhism), this ‘Chinese’ attitude is ‘ahistorical’ and nothing but a culturally bias fabrication. According to Japanese researchers (whose work stems from the 1868 Meiji Restoration) - genuine Buddhism ‘died-out’ centuries ago in China and has never recovered! How strange it must seem to them then, when they encounter Master Xu Yun’s biography (amongst many other eminent Masters) who assert the exact the opposite! Indeed, Master Xu Yun considered many practices associated with Lamaism to be ‘corrupt’, and repeatedly asserted that the immorality and barbarity of the Imperial Japanese Army in China (1931-1945) was the product of the moral corruption of Buddhist practice in Japan. As most Westerners cannot read either the Japanese or Chinese script, they remain unaware of the War Crimes advocated and committed by various Japanese Zen teachers before and during WWII (much of it anti-Western in nature as well as being anti-Chinese) - who later became very famous in the US and lived lives of relative luxury after the War! How strange it seems that very few people have read of how Master Xu Yun heavily criticised a group of Chinese Buddhist monks who had been to Japan and returned home eating meat, drinking alcohol and with wives and children in tow! Although it is true that our minds should be that distracted by worldly matters, at the same time it is equally true that when engaging in worldly matters, the engaging itself must be morally pristine. Of course, there are people living in Japan who are aware of these contradictions and who do seek to make amends and put historical wrongs right. In the heart of those dojo that teach genuine Zen-Ch'an all of it ‘dissolves’ into irrelevance when the correct Dharma is cultivated. I remember how respectful a delegation of Shaolin monks was treated in Japan a few years ago – particularly when they visited a small dojo whose founding ancestor had visited the Shaolin Temple on Song Mountain many hundreds of years ago! The visiting Shaolin Master studied the Chinese Transmission Documents carefully stored away and guarded in Japan – and finally declared them entirely genuine! The name and location of the dojo – together with its historical details – were taken back to the Shaolin Temple and entered in the Records of Genuine Transmission! Although truth maybe difficult to attain at times, this does not mean that we give-up the task of pursuing it. Truth must prevail over falsehood and that is all there is to it!
Even my Daoist friends in China tend to view immortality as a long life lived well (usually 100 hundred-years) - rather than taking the concept literally. Keeping mentally and physically fit are subjects we all must a) study and b) participate in - as we are all living human-beings progressing through our lives. We know from the science of genetics that our life-spans can be determined even before birth (with a number of people dying at aged 27-years of ‘natural causes’, etc), but we also know that our choice of life-style can, in many cases, move the genetic bench-mark to a certain extent. A healthy life-style tends to delay death – whilst an unhealthy existence tends to bring death nearer. This was known thousands of years ago and is the reason traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) advocates ‘prevention’ of illness (and accident) – rather than the ‘cure’ of a specific ailment. Although TCM can (and often does) ‘cure’ symptoms today – this was not the original function of its ancient underlying Chinese wisdom. Many ancient cultures, such as the Sumerian, the Greek, the Indian, the Egyptian, the Jewish and the Celtic-Druids, etc, developed various medical systems. Chinese medicine developed into a broad and all-encompassing subject premised upon the well-known concepts of the eight trigrams (gua), yin-yang (shade-sunlight), the Five Phases (Wuxing), qi (vital force) flow and psychological and physical exercise! Even within modern China today, TCM shares a common scientific foundation with Chinese engineering and construction – with Chinese doctors often qualified also in engineering (before specialising within the field of guarding the well-being of the human-body rather than designing and constructing material objects). This demonstrates that there is a common cultural foundation throughout Chinese cultural thought – although modern (Western) medicine is also studied and applied throughout China. Some people (and illnesses) respond more effectively to TCM – whilst other ailments and injuries are more easily cured with modern medicine. Sometimes, a very clever and precise combination of both types is used. This is the case with regards to Covid19 – the Chinese State is responding with a strict modern medicine approach to contain and eradicate the illness at source – whilst individual patients, although also treated with modern medicine sometimes choose TCM – or TCM is recommend by a modern doctor, etc. As individuals, we must take action to guard our health in mind and body the best we can within the society we live. Within the past, Ch’an Masters living in the remote areas of China often sustained themselves through will-power alone as they had no choice. A poor diet coupled with exposure to the elements probably made them very physically weak whilst they made their mind-attention very strong. Many even went as far as eating tree-bark and drinking rain-water for long periods. Their physical poverty was irrelevant to the spiritual training they were undergoing. Very few people in Old China had access to adequate clothing, housing, food or medical treatment, etc, and virtually no one expected to have these things outside of the nobility (about 10% of population). How is this level of ‘non-attachment’ to be achieved? In many ways, the Chinese Ch’an tradition emerged out of the harsh or stark culture of feudal times and has survived into the modern times. Although things are very different within China today, the examples of Vimalakirti, Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng, Master Han Shan and Master Xu Yun, etc, demonstrate that this attitude of ‘non-attachment’ is applied equally in all situations – regardless of whether there is deficient or plentiful material supplies in the environment. A person may inhabit an ill or injured body – whilst possessing a ‘pure’ and ‘shining’ mind. Many people whose bodies manifest various types of disabilities often realise the empty mind ground and no longer consider themselves limited to the condition of their bodies (or situation of their life circumstances). There is a book published in 1965 in the West entitled ‘Three Pillars of Zen’ by an American Zen teacher named ‘Roshi Philip Kapleau’. Philip Kapleau was a good friend of Charles Luk (1898-1978) and was always respectful toward his translation work and the memory of Great Master Xu Yun (1840-1959). He included in his book the extraordinary story of Iwasaki Yaeko (岩崎八重子) - referred to throughout the book as ‘Yaeko Iwasaki’. This 25-year-old young woman in Japan trained in Zen meditation under Harada Roshi (原田 大雲祖岳) in 1935 – much of the interaction taking place via the written word (in the form of posted letters). Although she began her Zen training carrying-out the usual 25-minute stints of seated meditation in the traditional Zazen position, (followed by 5-minute rest periods practicing ‘walking meditation’ before starting again) in the seated Zazen. However, she soon developed a long-term illness (tuberculosis) that prevented her from going-out into the world and participating in seated Zazen. She was so weak she could not even perform Zazen in the privacy of her home – at least not in the usual physical manner. This new situation did not deter her or her Zen teacher. Yaeko Iwasaki read Great Master Dogen’s ‘Shobogenzo’ at least seventeen times whilst lying in bed over a five-year period. This was her immersion into the essence of the Soto (Caodong) School of Zen – whilst Harada Roshi guided her through the Koan-practice associated with the Rinzai (Linji) School of Zen! (Harada Roshi was actually trained in both the ‘Soto’ and ‘Rinzai’ traditions). Yaeko Iwasaki was given the Koan ‘Mu’ to contemplate and penetrate day and night – awake or asleep whilst lying in her sick-bed. No matter what moment of the day it was, or how she felt at a particular moment – she was tasked with manifesting ‘Mu’ clearly (like a ‘hua tou’) - until its essence (the empty mind ground) manifested and became ‘clear’! As her father had died suddenly, and given that her health was deteriorating rapidly, a very real and profound ‘fear’ of death acted as the key motivation for her continuous Zen-practice regardless of circumstance. A sense of desperate urgency was very much present as she did not know how long she had to live – only that her life could end at any moment without warning! This dramatic situation is exactly like the Zen story that states that a Zen-practitioner must desire enlightenment as strongly (and irrationally) as a drowning man demands air! When human-beings are placed in dangerous or highly unpredictable situations – quite often a ‘heightened’ sense of awareness is achieved that interprets the world from an entirely ‘new’ perspective. Yaeko Iwasaki had an alert and bright mind that was inhabiting a body that was a) not functioning properly and b) as a consequence, was close to shutting-down entirely. The biological situation was precarious to say the least. Although still a young woman, Yaeko Iwasaki was going to die without living a full-life and experiencing so many things common to many people. This was a very sad situation – but ‘sadness’ had to be replaced with ‘clarity of thought’ and ‘self-pity’ had to be transformed into a ‘positive’ and highly ‘focused’ Zen-mind that would stop for nothing regardless of existential situation! As her life-force (qi) began to ebb-away – Yaeko Iwasaki achieved a total and full enlightenment! Her story should serve as an inspiration for us all!
Japanese Zen Master ‘Dogen’ (道元)[1200-1253], visited Song Dynasty between 1223-1227 CE. His name is written in traditional Chinese script as ‘Dao Yuan’ - which can be literally translated as ‘Way Essence’, ‘Path Foundation’, or ‘Journey Origination’, etc. In reality, the intended meaning of this Dharma-name implies a synthesis of all three meanings, and probably means something like ‘Correctly Following the Profound Path that Leads to the Origination of the Essence’. From a Chinese Ch’an perspective, this suggests the psychological ‘realisation’ (or ‘returning’) to the ‘empty essence’ of the heart of all material reality. This would correspond with the third position of the Cao Dong ‘Five Ranks’ teaching – or the realisation of ‘relative’ enlightenment. This signifies the permanent breaking of the ridgepole of habitual (volitional) ignorance that is the driving force behind cycle re-becoming and the perpetual experience of human suffering, and is said to be ‘beyond’ the worldly already. This is the enlightenment of the Hinayana School beyond which nothing else is expected. Within the Mahayana Ch’an School, however, and particularly within the Cao Dong lineage, the fourth and fifth positions of the ‘Five Ranks’ symbolises the ‘expansion’ of the mind’s awareness, and the ‘integration’ of the ‘form’ and the ‘void’. Without ‘realising the ‘essence of the void’, however, (as the name ‘Dogen’ suggests), none of this can be successfully achieved.
Dogen’s direct Zen teacher in Japan was Master Myozen (明全 - Ming Quan) - a Dharma-name which means ‘Bright Expansion’ (or ‘All-embracing Brightness’) - referring to the state of ‘complete’ Ch’an enlightenment. Myozen was of the ‘Rinzai’ (Linji) lineage of Zen. Within Dogen’s biography entitled ‘Shari Soden-Ki' the following details are recorded: ‘Within a month after Dogen thus began pursuing the Way under Ju-Ching at T’ien-t’ung Mountain, a tragedy occurred. On the twenty-seventh day of that month in the first year of Pao-ch'ing (1225), Myozen died at the Liao-jen Hall. He had fallen ill on the eighteenth day of that month, at the age forty-two. It was in the third year of his stay in Chia. Despite the grave illness of Myoju Ajari, his teacher on Mt Hiei, Myozen had decided to come to China for the sake of the Buddha Dharma, rather than remaining to take care of his ailing teacher for the sake of the teacher-student relationship. Thus, he went to Ching-fu Monastery in Ming-chou to study under Miao yun, and then to Ching-te Monastery on T’ien-t;ung Mountain, studying under Wu-chi Liao-p'ai and Ju-ching successively. According to Shari soden-Ki, Myozen passed away in a perfect posture of meditation sitting. Not only the monks of the Mountain but laymen from the vicinity gathered to mourn his death. During the memorial service, held on the twenty-ninth day, the cremation fire radiated five colours, and three white pearls were found in the ash. In utter awe, the crowd worshipped this strange occurrence. When the bone fragments were picked up, they amounted to over 360 pieces. Throughout the Great Sung, people revered the deceased monk upon hearing of this event. A statue was erected on T’ien-t’ung Mountain in memory of Myozen.’ Takashi James Kodera: Dogen’s Formative Years in China, Routledge, (1980), Page 57 ‘The master (Dongshan) went out Yun Ch’u and together they crossed a stream. The master asked: ’Is it deep or shallow?’ Yun Ch’u replied: ‘Not wet.’ The master said: ’Rough fellow!’ Yun Ch’u asked: ‘Is the water deep?’ The master replied: ‘Not dry.’
Note from Charles Luk: ‘This dialogue between two enlightened masters is very interesting in that it reveals the absolute. We have seen elsewhere that the Dharmakaya is beyond all mathematics, including al dualism such as ‘deep’ and ‘shallow’ and ‘wet’ and ‘dry’, for it is inexpressible and inconceivable. Within the Chinese Ch’an literature in China, when a Master is asked about their daily practice, or the manner in which they lived, they all responded with the idea that they ‘adjusted themselves to circumstances’. As many wore tattered clothing, many appeared to be nothing more than wandering beggars, rather than eminent Ch’an Masters – and eminent Ch’an Masters were exactly what they were. Imagine a seeing homeless person sat near a cash-till (outside a bank) in the modern UK – and being told he is a very learned archbishop employed by the Church of England! Conventional religion – even amongst some Buddhist schools – often insists upon mimicking the very status symbols of the secular world it claims to be ‘transcending’ and ‘leaving behind’. Some priests even wear ‘designer’ robes designed to ‘stand-out’ in a crowd of the rich and famous! This is an example of being ‘subsumed by circumstance’ - the exact opposite of the Ch’an idiom of ‘adjusting to circumstance’. The inherent ‘sickness’ of conventional existence is that the attachment to externals which hinders the spiritual development of ordinary people, becomes accepted as ‘normal’ or even ‘expected’ behaviour in many failing religions. A religious or spiritual path which fails to ‘transcend’ the very ignorance its founder claims to have overcome – is now only a ‘religion’ in name only! The following extract is translated from the Imperial Selection of Ch'an Sayings (Yu Hsuan Yu Lu). This is a collection of fourteen volumes compiled by emperor Yung Cheng, the third emperor of the the Qing Dynasty who ruled from 1723-1735AD. Before becoming emperor, he took the name Upasaka Yuan Ming and practiced the Mind Dharma extensively. And when emperor, he used to hold imperial Ch'an weeks which produced both enlightened lay people and monks alike. Of the fourteen volumes, twelve are dedicated to the sayings of Ch'an masters, one volume to the sayings of the emperor himself, and one for the sayings of his brothers and sons. 'Master Teh Ch'eng arrived at Hua Ting in the Hsiu Chou district. He sailed a small boat, adjusted himself to circumstances and passed his days receiving visitors from the four quarters. At the time, as no one knew of his erudition, he was called the Boat Monk. One day, (Ch'an master Teh Ch'eng), stopped by the river bank and sat idle in his boat. An official (who was passing) asked him: 'What does the Venerable Sir do?' The master held up the paddle, saying: 'Do you understand this?' The official replied: 'I do not.' The master said: 'I have been rowing and stirring the clear water, but a golden fish is rarely found. Of course. ’adjusting to circumstance’ involve ALL possible permutations of reality and not just that which involves ‘free movement’. Sometimes. ‘adjusting to circumstance’ can involve the most ‘disciplined’ of existences – such as living in a monastic community that functions through the following of an all-inclusive ‘Rule’ that regulates physical behaviour, and the type of thoughts the mind can generate (or ‘not’ generate), whatever the case maybe. A prime example of community discipline is: ‘Gaoan said: The great body of the leader has the community for its house; distinctions are made appropriately, disbursal is suited to the vessel, action is concerned with the principles of peace and well-being, gain and loss are related to the source of the teaching. How could it be easy to be a model for the people? I have never seen a leader who was lax and easy-going win the obedience of the mendicants, or one whose rules were neglected try to present the Ch'an communities from becoming barbaric and despised. In olden times, Master Yuwang Shen sent his chief student away, Master Yangshan Wei expelled his attendant. These cases are listed in our classics, and are worthy of being taken as standards. Nowadays everyone follows personal desires, thus ruining the original guidelines for Ch'an communes to a great extent. People nowadays are lazy about getting up, and many are deficient in manners when they congregate. Some indulge shamelessly in their appetite for food, some create disputes in their concern for getting support and honour. It has gotten to the point where there is nowhere that the ugliness of opportunism does not exist. How can we ever have the flourishing of ways to truth and the full vigour of spiritual teaching that we Look for?’ ‘Adjusting to Circumstance’ has an ‘internal’ aspect – and an ‘external’ aspect. The ‘internal’ aspect involves a practitioner fully realising and understanding the ‘form’ of material reality (which includes the body inhabited), and the ‘void’ which is the empty mind ground. The Buddha describes ‘form’ as penetrating and fully understanding the concept of ‘perception’, whilst the Buddha describes the realisation of the ‘void’ as penetrating and understanding the principle of ‘non-perception’. When the ‘form’ and ‘void’ are fully realised and understood, (using the Cao Dong ‘Five Ranks’), then both concepts are ‘integrated’ so that no difference can be found anywhere. The ‘external’ method of ‘adjusting to circumstance’ involves a permanently ‘still’ mind that does not move, being fully ‘integrated’ with each and every circumstance of the outer world that traverse across the ‘senses’. Simply described, method 1) involves the body ‘integrating’ with the realised mind, whilst method 2) involves the body ‘integrating’ with the external (material) world! As Spring transitioned into Summer (in 1945) - the Great Maser Huaixi (淮西大师 - Huai Xi Da Shi) wrote an article which made the following observation:
‘One morning, after eating (watery) porridge for breakfast, Master Xu Yun casually commented to a nearby monk: “It is my opinion that the Japanese invaders will definitely fail. I had a dream last night and saw the Japanese kneeling in defeat and asked to surrender to the Chinese government.” Soon after Master Xu Yun made this statement, the Japanese Imperial Army – which had raped and pillaged its way across China since 1931 - announced its unconditional surrender. Acting in accordance with the British, Americans and the Chinese – the Soviet Red Army had entered Northeast China (i.e. the Japanese puppet State of ‘Manchuria’) and like a giant tidal-wave had swept the usually stubborn and fanatical (Japanese) Kwantung Army out of existence! As Master Xu Yun usually took no notice of current (worldly) events, it is interesting that he made this comment. Of course, he was aware of the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, as he had lived in the Southern areas of China at the time, and had been amongst the ordinary people who had directly experienced this Japanese barbarity. Indeed, the common people often said that wherever Master Xu Yun was sat in meditation – the Japanese bombs would fail to penetrate! Master Xu Yun was ‘other worldly’ and yet he had to live in this ‘real’ world. He possessed a sharp-mind and despite his compassion, he did not suffer fools lightly. He was a strict task-master who taught his disciples and students through the use of a harsh wisdom and pure discipline. He would ensure that the mind and body would be purified through ‘correct behaviour’ of body, and that greed, hatred and delusion would be uprooted from deep within the mind. Like any good Ch’an master – he could sense arrogance, pride and ignorance, as well as hidden motives and black hearts lurking within potential students. As this corruption is even more prevalent today, not tolerating this ‘klesa’ is a mark of any competent Ch’an teacher. Chinese Language Reference: http://www.youcin.com/shijie/152650210.html By Daniel Scharpenburg - Lineage Inheritor I want to share a quote from you. I’m going to share from this text, Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi by Dan Leighton, and it’s a book I really love. Hongzhi was a Ch’an Buddhist teacher in the 1200’s, that’s the main thing you need to know.
He said, “Illumination has no emotional afflictions. With piercing, quietly profound radiance, it eliminates all disgrace. Many lifetimes of misunderstanding come only from distrust, hindrance, and screens of confusion that we create in a scenario of isolation.” That last sentence is very wonderful, I think. I don’t want to get hung up on the fact that he said, “many lifetimes of misunderstanding.” I think we could easily get hung up on that, and just be thinking about reincarnation/rebirth, and I don’t want to get caught up in that. I want to talk about how our misunderstanding comes from distrust, hindrance, and screens of confusion that we create in a scenario of isolation. We misunderstand things because we are in a scenario of isolation. We think of ourselves as limited, and as separate from the people around us. We don’t always realize other people are having the same struggles we do. That’s how we create this scenario of isolation, we think we’re alone in our suffering, and that’s not true. We’re all having suffering, we’re all having problems. We’re all having similar problems, really. That’s the scenario of isolation that we’ve created. Ram Dass - who is a Hindu spiritual teacher, not a Buddhist spiritual teacher, but he’s someone I like a lot - said, “We are not alone. Not because there are many others, but because there are none.” I like that. It’s saying that we’re all in this together, we’re all struggling. We all have sickness, old age, and death. That’s a very important thing to remember, and I think we forget that when we get mad at each other. We forget that we’re all suffering, we’re all experiencing sickness, old age, and death. Every human being on this planet, regardless of their views, regardless of whether or not they agree with us on things, regardless of whether or not they do really awful crimes. We’re all struggling with old age, sickness, and death. We’re all seeing people we love get old and sick, and die, and we’re all getting old and getting sick and dying. We’re all in this together. It’s sort of like we’re in a burning building, and instead of trying to get out, we’re fighting with each other about who’s going to get out first. Life is like a burning building. That is what the scenario of isolation is and, again, we make that ourselves. We are filled with distrust because we’ve all been kicked in the heart sometimes. Maybe we’ve all been kicked in the heart a bunch of times, but we’ve definitely all been kicked in the heart a few times. We’ve all been kicked in the heart, and that makes our heart closed, and it’s hard for us to trust others. It’s hard for us to love others. We tend to sort of project that and think, “Well I was kicked in the heart by this person; therefore, I’m going to get kicked in the heart again. Everyone’s going to let me down.” A lot of the time, that doesn’t serve us. When we bring baggage from our previous experience into our present experience, that often does not serve us. That’s not to say we shouldn’t learn from the past, because we should, but we shouldn’t live in the past. We need to live in the here and now, and to do that is to not revisit bad things that were done to us in the past over and over. We don’t want to live in the past, and we don’t want to keep getting hurt by the same experience in the past over and over, we want to take our experience and we want to learn from it, and we want to move on. I make that sound really simple and easy, and of course it’s not, but that’s what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about not getting caught up in distrust. We’re talking about having an open heart. We’re talking about practices that help us learn how to open our heart so that we aren’t stuck behind a screen of distrust all the time. We are confused, and we often don’t see the world as it really is. We see the world through a filter. I like to think of those old-timey 3D glasses when I was a kid that aren’t around anymore, where it’s red on one eye and blue on the other eye. When you put those on and you’re not watching a movie, you just see the world and it looks kind of messed up. I like to think that’s what our perception is like. Into every experience we are bringing all of our neurosis and all our baggage. We’re bringing that into every experience in our lives, and we’re not seeing the world as it is. We’re seeing the world as we are, or as we expect it to be. That’s what we’re talking about - screens of confusion. Rarely is the world what we expect it to be. If we can put down our screens of confusion and be in the present moment and just see the world as it is, just for a few minutes, I think it can really transform our lives. Now I’m going to talk about hindrances. The screens of hindrance that we have. I’m going to talk about that as what we call the poisons - greed, hatred, and delusion. I’m going to zero in on hatred, because I think that is something that we all struggle with. Maybe hatred isn’t the right word, and we could call it ill-will, or we could even call it anger, I think. We think of hatred as something really extreme and that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about when we wish harm on another person, or when we delight at another person experiencing harm. I’m especially talking about when we let our anger get the better of us. Is anger ever helpful? I want to first of all say that I think our language around anger is really good. By that I mean, we often say, “I’m angry,” and I think that’s really reflective of what anger is like a lot of the time. “I’m angry” means that anger is taking over my being. I’m not Daniel if I’m angry, I’m angry. I’m not a person if I’m angry, I’m just that feeling of anger. It’s dominating my thinking. It’s making me sweat, it’s maybe making me turn red, it’s making me lash out at things that aren’t related to what I’m angry about. It’s dominating our thinking. We say “I’m angry” because anger has that tendency to just dominate our thinking and shove everything else out. We could instead use the language, “I’m experiencing the emotion of anger.” If we’ve got a handle on our anger, we’re not angry, it’s not dominating our thinking, we’re just experiencing the emotion of anger. An example of what I mean. If you’ve had small children you know there are times that, for no reason, they push back. When you tell them to put on their shoes, or put on a jacket, or finish their dinner. Whatever you’re doing, there are times when kids push back for no reason. And that is irritating. There are times when children push back, and I become angry. There are times when I don’t become angry, but I experience the emotion of anger. When I become angry, I’m going to yell at them, and the secret truth is that yelling at them doesn’t really accomplish very much. Maybe some kids respond really well to being yelled at, but the kids in my house do not. They push back harder, and it escalates. That is unskilful anger. It is unskilful anger if it escalates. It is unskilful anger if I yell at someone and they yell back, or I yell at a child who’s not listening and they don’t listen even harder. That doesn’t help anybody. That is a situation where becoming angry is not useful. I don’t always remember that, but I try to always remember that. I think we could have all sorts of experiences like that in our lives, outside of children. Of course we could have difficult co-workers, or of course sometimes we get angry at our significant others. That’s natural. If you’re around someone all the time, or you’re very close to someone, you’re going to get angry at them sometimes. The question that I want to ask, and I’m wondering if we can answer is: Does it help? Does it help us? I know I’ve heard people saying, “I had a right to be angry in this situation. This person was really awful to me and I have a right to be angry.” I don’t want to think in those terms. I don’t think it’s about having the right to be angry. Why is it about rights? It’s only about, “Is my response to this situation helping me?” Getting angry - and I want to advocate trying to experience the emotion of anger rather than getting angry - but in both cases I think we can really ask ourselves, “Is this response to the situation helpful to me?” Because it is a response. Getting angry or feeling the emotion of anger, feeling any emotion is a response to a situation. It’s not about, “I have the right to get angry,” because I think emotions by their nature, we always have a right to have a feeling. I don’t think of feelings as justified or not justified. I think that’s a silly way to look at emotions, because it doesn’t matter. Feelings are not right or wrong, they just are. Feelings just are. When they arise, we can try to manage them and try to kind of have a moment to pause and say, “Is this feeling helpful to me?” Or, “Is lashing out helpful to me? Or should I hold back?” Rarely does lashing out in anger help anyone. It almost always ruins whatever situation you’re in. It almost always escalates and makes things worse, and makes you less happy. I don’t want to make a huge blanket statement and say anger has never helped anyone; it would be unfair to say that. I do want to say that it very rarely helps anyone. It almost always hurts. I think maybe when we think we’re really one hundred percent right in a situation, then maybe lashing out gives us a feeling of pleasure at the time. I think that’s a thing that happens, but that kind of pleasure is fleeting. Ultimately it may give us a sense of pleasure but that doesn’t mean it’s helping the situation. That doesn’t mean it’s helping anyone. I think we need to be very careful, and I think that’s why in Buddhism, anger is listed as one of the three poisons. It can really ruin things for you. You can lash out for one second in anger and it can ruin things for a long time. It can ruin a friendship, it can ruin a conversation, it can ruin a relationship. Anger can do all those things, and that’s why it’s listed as a poison. It’s not listed as a poison because it’s always bad, it’s listed as a poison because when it is bad, it’s really problematic. It really hurts a lot. The truth is that extremes of all kinds hinder our ability to see the world clearly. You see what I did there? I didn’t say they prevent us from seeing the world clearly, and I didn’t say they make it impossible to see the world clearly. I am saying they hinder our ability to see the world clearly, and we need to have that in mind. I think if you drink three beers in a row, it hinders your ability to see the world clearly. It doesn’t completely destroy your ability to see the world clearly, but it hinders it. Probably a lot of things we put into our body do, right? If I drink a bunch of coffee in a row, it also hinders my ability to see the world clearly. I think we need to think about that. So that we know, and we can reflect and say, “Am I seeing the world clearly?” I will not say it’s not okay to be angry, but I will say that we need to have a lot of care. A lot of self-care around anger. If we start to tell ourselves that it’s okay to be angry, we could run into trouble. And again, it's not about good or bad, we have the experience of anger because we’re experiencing anger. We have the power to learn how to have a space in between what’s called stimulus and response. The stimulus is somebody doing something that upsets us a lot, and the response is how we handle that. If somebody says or does something that makes us angry, we can have that space where we think, “Am I going to escalate if I do something? Should I do nothing? Is doing nothing worse than doing something?” We can have that space to think about that, and try to be clear headed. Although it’s hard, we can try to be clear headed. It’s also suggested that anger is addictive, that it’s chemically addictive in our brains. That is kind of a scary thing to think about, right? It’s addictive because when we’re angry, we really think we’re right. We love to think we’re right. That gives us feelings that kind of bring a sort of pleasure into our minds. I think, “Because I’m angry, I must be right.” That’s kind of what we convince ourselves sometimes. Being right feels really good, therefore it’s addictive. And that is really dangerous. I think the more we give in to anger, the more we are likely to give in to anger in the future. There are these pathways in our brain, and we strengthen these pathways when we indulge them. The more we give in to anger, the more likely we are to give in to anger. The more we create space and try to strengthen our ability to see the world clearly, and the more we engage being in the present moment, the more likely we are to do those things, too. That is how the brain works. We want to strengthen those pathways that are helpful to us, and we want to not strengthen the ones that get in our way. Anger gets in our way. Not always, but often. During a written conversation with long-term ICBI Member - ‘Ben’ - probably around a year or more ago, he suggested that as a spiritual and humanitarian act of compassion, the ICBI should consider ‘universalising’ and ‘internationalising’ the Cao Dong Dharma Lineage as translated from Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) to Charles Luk (1898-1978), and then to Richard Hunn (1949-2006) and his disciple Adrian Chan-Wyles (b. 1967) - that is, myself. I thought this was a very good idea that encompasses the highest elements of both ‘lay’ and ‘monastic’ Buddhism, and which would further benefit the thousands of people who gain much comfort and inspiration from the Chinese Ch’an and Japanese Zen traditions. The Chinese ‘Cao Dong’ lineage, is, of course, the Japanese ‘Soto’ lineage transmitted to Japan from China during the 13th century by Master Dogen. Although I have written elsewhere about the historical, political and military realities manifesting within Mainland China during the 1930s and 1940s, these factual observations are not designed to negate or denigrate the Japanese Zen tradition, which is culturally relevant for the country and culture it serves. This is because the empty mind ground [心地 - Xin Di] (i.e. ‘non-perception’ in the Pali Suttas) underlies ALL reality without exception. When material reality manifests – it is simultaneously ‘perceptible’ (in the Pali Suttas) - bearing in-mind that the Buddha describes reality in the Four Noble Truths as arising from matter, sensation, perception, volitional thought and consciousness. As enlightenment within the Ch’an School is described as ‘being neither attached to void, nor hindered by phenomena’ - reality cannot be limited to the ‘void’ (idealism), or ‘phenomena’ (materialism). This is a reality express in the Five Ranks of Prince and Minister as preserved within the Cao Dong lineage. Therefore, anyone who sincerely puts into practice the Path of the Guild of Hui Neng (which includes and yet transcends the ‘lay’ and ‘monastic’ paths) may consider themselves ongoing inheritors of the ICBI lineage of Cao Dong as discussed and agreed with key lay and monastic Members of the Buddhist Association of China (2020). This transmission is separate and distinct from any ‘private’ arrangements or transmissions conveyed to specific individuals for various and precise reasons of spiritual development. This development depends entirely upon a self-monitoring ‘virtue’, ‘compassion’ and ‘wisdom’ and is only relevant if driven by a pure and pristine spiritual honesty. The mind must be clear and the heart must be all-embracing.
Adrian Chan-Wyles (Shi Da Dao) - (4.10.2020) Buddhist Association of China The Three Essentials of the Chan Tradition are: great faith, great doubt, and great determination.
I’m going to talk about them and I’m going to share some verses from a text from the Korean Tradition, The Mirror of Zen: The Classic Guide to Buddhist Practice by Master So Sahn. It’s a text I really like a lot, and I’m going to share with you some verses from it that go into what I’m talking about, The Three Essentials. This is the most revered text in the Korean Chan tradition and I highly recommend it. I’m going to share a couple of verses from this text and I’m going to unpack them a little. First, Verse 13, “You should meditate with total determination. Like your life depends on it. Only with great determination can you penetrate great doubt.” The author is saying determination is what helps us get through doubt. He’s saying we have to be diligent. Those who only practice a little are not likely to get very far. We have to be determined to get into our practice and stay there. If we’re not determined, if we don’t have a great determination, then when we start to think, “Oh, this isn’t working,” we’re going to stop practicing. We all go through those phases where we start to think, “This isn’t really doing anything for me, I don’t believe in myself, I’m not sure if meditation even works.” We all go through phases like that, and it’s great determination that keeps us going, because we need to keep going. It is hard. There are many things around to discourage us, and it just takes determination. That doubt that we’re talking about that we’re trying to penetrate is doubt in ourselves, mainly, but also doubt in the practice. Like, “Not only am I not good enough to do this,” on the one hand but also, “maybe this doesn’t work,” on the other hand. Those are the two kinds of doubt that we’re wrestling with. That’s what So Sahn, in this text, is saying. We need great determination to handle our great doubt. He goes on to say in Verse 14, “There are three essential things in your practice. They are great faith, great determination, and great doubt. If any of these practices are missing, it’s like a table missing a leg.” So, he just said we need to get around our great doubt, but then he also goes on to say that great doubt is essential in our practice - and it is. In all of these I think there is a good side and a bad side, so I’m going to talk about The Three Essentials now, that’s what this list is: great faith, great determination, and great doubt. These are called The Three Essentials of Chan practice, and by some they are considered to be the greatest and most important virtues that we could possibly have. Great faith means a few different things, but really to me, it means having faith in our mind and our ability to recognize our true nature. We might bring baggage to the word faith, and we probably do, so I like to think of this as faith in yourself. Some people like to use the word confidence, and I think that’s a really good substitute. If faith is a word you struggle with, I think we could say confidence, determination, and doubt. Confidence. We might have baggage with the word confidence too, though, right? You might think of a confident person as kind of a jerk, so I don’t know if there’s really a good answer. The point is it means faith in yourself, holding onto the belief that Buddha nature is present within you, that you are good enough. Just reading these Buddhist stories and knowing that Buddha was a man and we can do that too, because he was just a person like us. That’s an aspect of faith, too. Just knowing, “Why not me? I can do this,” and really believing that you can. Because you can. When it seems impossible to keep practicing, you can. We can still get to where we need to go, we can still bring ourselves back to the cushion, we can still try. And that’s what great faith is. Great doubt is sometimes compared to the scientific method. It means, “Don’t believe anything unless it makes sense. Unless we can determine the truths for ourselves.” All of our beliefs and our practices should be examined and re-examined, and accepted or rejected based on our judgment and our experience. We shouldn’t be doing something just because a spiritual teacher told us it works, we should be doing it because it makes sense and we see little bits of progress in it. Great doubt kind of tempers our great faith. We don’t want to have a sort of blind faith where we aren’t looking at the results of things, where we aren’t seeing what’s happening, and where we’re sticking to things just because we were told these are the good things. We don’t want that. We want great faith, but we want it to be coloured by great doubt. We don’t want to do things that don’t work, we don’t want to waste our time. And ideas that we find unhelpful should be rejected. We shouldn’t believe things because someone told us, that’s really important in the Chan tradition, and in most Buddhist traditions, actually, but especially Zen. We don’t follow our religious teachers blindly, we want to check every belief against our own knowledge and experience. We need a healthy amount of scepticism. It might seem like great faith and great doubt are at odds, but the truth is we need a healthy amount of doubt to temper our faith or our confidence. We need that to help us. We don’t want to be overconfident or blindly faithful. We need a little bit of doubt to help us see things as they really are. That’s what great doubt is about, not going overboard with our faith. It’s about really seeing things as they are, and really caring about seeing things as they are rather than just being told what to see. I think the Buddha’s story is really reflective of this, he saw the dominant religious practices of his day and he didn’t think they were bringing anyone any real spiritual truth. He didn’t think they were doing anything, so he went into the woods and found some weirdo spiritual teachers and studied with them, too. And even with these weirdos, he still didn’t really feel like he was getting the spiritual truth. He found a little bit of calming down his mind, but he didn’t find any real spiritual truth, so he cast aside most of their beliefs, too. And that was his great doubt. He needed great doubt to create the practice that we call Buddhism. He had a great faith in himself and he needed a great doubt as well. Great determination, which I talked about a little at the top, I’m going to talk about again now, is our firm resolution to go forward in our practice. It’s about staying on the path, it’s about doing whatever we need to do to avoid getting discouraged. It’s about avoiding getting lazy, it’s easy to get lazy. It’s about cultivating so much patience and self-discipline that we keep doing what we’re doing, and we don’t get swayed away from the path when it’s not easy or when we’re bored. It’s really important to have great determination because it’s really easy to stop meditating, to stop practicing. It’s really easy to just not practice. And we need a determination to bring us back over and over, especially when things are hard, when we’re bored. A lot of times, I like to compare meditation to flossing. Because flossing is something that we know is good for us, and we know we should do, and yet we don’t do it, right? At least we don’t do it as often as our dentist recommends. If we’re lucky, we do it sometimes. A lot of people don’t do it at all, right? Meditation is the same thing. We really know that we should be doing it. We should be doing it at least a couple times a week, hopefully more, but we don’t want to, so a lot of the time we don’t. We just don’t. We don’t want to do this thing that we know is good for us so we just don’t do it. It’s the same as flossing, right? We have to have great determination to keep coming back, again, and again, and again. Even when we really don’t want to. Even when we’d rather be watching Netflix, or even when we’d rather be doing something we should do, like cleaning our house. We’ve got to have that meditation practice as well. That is what great determination is for. That is why we really need it. It’s not just great faith and great doubt, although those are really important, we have to be determined to come back to the practice. Even though the practice seems really simple and in the greater scheme of things it doesn’t have to take up a lot of our time, we still have to be determined to do it because it’s so...boring. Maybe boring’s not the right word, but we feel like we deserve to be entertained all the time, I think, and what meditation is not is entertaining. We have to have determination and resolve to keep doing it again and again. When we don’t want to, that’s probably when we really need to. When we really find ourselves resisting a lot, that’s probably when we really need it. When ‘emptiness’ is genuinely ‘seen’ into (rather than ‘imagined’ as being penetrated), a practitioner of Ch’an cannot help but remain in a permanent state of spiritual rapture. This reality is continuously ‘loving’ and ‘humorous’. It is ‘full’ of humour, but what does this mean? Obviously, the presence of humour does not mean that everything is ‘funny’, as many things that pass in-front of the senses (and across the surface of the mind), are anything but ‘funny’ - and yet humour remains... Humour lightens perception and transforms experience. It defuses conflict and removes anger. Humour has no interest in greed, and does not take ‘differences’ too seriously, whilst acknowledging the validity of how things are distinctive in their own unique ways. Humour is peace, and peace is the way through which ‘emptiness’ is perceived. Surely, the cultivation of humour is preferable to the habitual presence of ‘fear’ and ‘indecision’. Being ‘British’ by accident of birth (or direction of karma), I was always struck by how ‘funny’ the Ch’an and (Japanese) Zen dialogues are! Everything seems to be ‘diverted’ away from the ‘obvious’. Many become frustrated when their habits of thought ‘demand’ that questions and answers should only be a ‘certain’ way - which are constructed in a predictable manner - so that the answers can be ‘guessed’. Is this really spiritual development? I think not. Such an approach is a ‘lazy’ manifestation of the same inner and outer status quo, the very same status quo that we are all attempting to ‘transcend’, or ‘see beyond’.
Of course, things are only ‘funny’ if we ‘sense’ the humour implicit in the situation. When the British academic - John Blofeld - sought out Master Xu Yun in 1930s China, one of the first things Xu Yun pointed-out was that the ‘reality’ he was seeking was not only ‘here and now’, but had been even in the UK! Not only this, but Xu Yun stated (on numerous occasions) that we must transform exactly ‘where we are’ and turn it into a ‘Bodhimandala’ - a sacred or holy place of intensive, spiritual activity. The activity intended is that of intensely ‘looking within’ here and now. A ‘drilling into’ material reality, no less, using the hua tou method. Wherever a Ch’an practitioner places his or her meditation mat, then that is where this great matter will be decided! Yes, we can spend time moving from here to there, and from there to here, but eventually we must all settle-down and face our klesic demons, so to speak. Change for change’s sake only draws-out the process for no reason. When master Xu Yun slept in a cow-shed, what did the cows think? More to the point, what did the monks think? Particularly those who sought-out more comfort and greater status? What about those visiting officials (with their airs and graces) who visited the Temple to meet what they thought was a ‘great’ spiritual being? A dishevelled Xu Yun would emerge from the hay-stack and ask what they wanted... When the tyrant Chiang Kai-Shek visited Xu Yun, Xu Yun did not care who he was. He spent the time telling him off for ‘forcing’ the Chinese people to embrace Western Christianity which he (Xu Yun) thought was not compatible with Chinese culture! Afterwards, Xu Yun would not let the matter pass, and actually ‘wrote’ a letter to Chiang Kai-Shek going over all the same points he had made! Part of Ch’an humour is a spiritual fearlessness. This obviously manifests in time, but is ‘timeless’ in essence. Ch’an humour is loving and wise. The underlying ‘emptiness’ of material reality is very different to the material reality that manifests within it – and yet there is no conflict or contradiction. Everything we need is ‘here’. It is the ‘method’ for seeing this that is required. When returning from Burma (Myanmar) with a large Buddha statue, the workmen with Xu Yun said that could not proceed as there was a giant boulder blocking the road which they could not collectively move. Xu Yun explained that he was a frail old man, and that they had been paid to carry the Buddha statue for him! As a weak and old man, how was he supposed to get the Buddha statue back to China if they could not perform simple tasks involving youthful strength? After contemplating the situation for a few minutes, Xu Yun picked up the boulder with ease and threw it to the side of the road, clearing a way through! The workmen were astonished, bowed to the ground and picked-up the statue and were on their way! The humour in this situation obviously made the boulder appear very ‘light’ to Master Xu Yu, who used the situation to clear the minds of the workmen. |
AuthorAdrian Chan-Wyles (釋大道 - Shi Da Dao) is permitted to retain his Buddhist Monastic Dharma-Name within Lay-society by decree of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, and the Chinese Buddhist Association (1992). A Buddhist monastic (and devout lay-practitioner) upholds the highest levels of Vinaya Discipline and Bodhisattva Vows. A Genuine Buddhist ‘Venerates’ the ‘Dao’ (道) as he or she penetrates the ‘Empty Mind-Ground' through meditative insight. A genuine Buddhist is humble, wise and peace-loving – and he or she selflessly serves all in existence in the past, present and the future, and residing within the Ten Directions – whilst retaining a vegetarian- vegan diet. Please be kind to animals! Archives
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