Please contact me at peter.j.ryan.zenlessons@gmail.com if you are curious about our meditation on Wednesday nights, our Buddhist Psychology classes, or the Focusing, Men's, Queer, and Adult Autism groups we hold throughout the month.
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Notes on our lineage
Yuzhou Juifeng Daoqian
I do not know much about Juifeng, but the dialogues and teaching style that is attributed to this teacher has a spirit and liveliness that appeals to me. Every so often I like to get to know a teacher from long ago (this one circa 870) by reading them for a few weeks and rewriting them several times until I feel intimate with it.
A trusted student hangs in there and asks clarifying questions, first asking about the attitude one should adopt towards meditation and receiving a dramatic, poetic illustration of one's unsettled mind. Juifeng then warns against the danger of letting words define experience, and the student adroitly acknowledges this as a crime, which is a typical Chan joke in these dialogue. There is tension here between the magnificent poetry and the warnings against letting words have power.
I take some liberties with the text (after all, it is my poem), but the crime and need for pardon is real enough, with no authority so powerful that they can undo our mistakes and delusions. Rather, it is entirely on ourselves to plunge into the experience of our vast selves and leave opinions and analysis behind.
Jiufeng again offers a turbulent lyric of intense beauty to end the dialogue, where the light of the sun, a great authority's forgiveness, and any other external reference can but fail to enter the inner chambers, that realm where we perceive directly Buddha nature.
1.
In time without end
what kinds of practice
might people engage in?
Animal Practice, Animal Practice
And what kind of practice
do animals engage in?
Time without end practice,
Time without end.
Oh! this is just like a long life
on a long road!
You should know (by now)
there are people who do not share a common fate.
2.
But not share what fate?
So many people live a long vital life,
But do they understand anything of it?
A flowing stream is life,
the body deep and silent.
Ten thousand waves
climb over each other,
pushing each other down,
to surge up ever higher
to the realm of transcendence.
A total expanse of clear emptiness
is a resting place, and nothing more.
3.For all that,
to take a sentence seriously
is merely pointing to the moon
and the words in that sentence
are mere moon words.
The great business
of this supreme, all-encompassing school
is no more than an emblem on a banner.
Moreover,
before these students of mine,
and these students of others,
have fancied themselves all virtuous,
and set up all these definitions
(which point to the moon),
before these discussions
of those very definitions,
would these students find something
to agree upon as a foundation?
No, they will be disputatious.
They will make distinctions
that set themselves up as priests
of rival sects with endless interpretations
that drift far from their bodies.
4.
So, do not use your tongue to express
a fleeting understanding.
Do not use the eye
to prefer a separate color.
Do not turn the ear
to establish the source of a particular sound.
What is before sound cannot be tossed aside,
what comes after a phrase
makes its form completely available.
From beginning to end,
utterly and completely,
everything that comes
is from your present body!
So, tell me, how is tranquility to be found
in eye, ear, nose, or tongue?
Do not merely calculate the deep meaning
of doing practice
as no limits have been reached.
No share of peace has made itself known;
you are as restless as ever.
As an ancient once said:
"to plan or calculate
a profound practice of Zen
is like intending to walk west
while walking east."
5.
But where would the pardon
(for such a ghastly crime)
come from?
The emperor is surrounded by fools;
he has no one
who can relate to him
the hunger and aimlessness
of the people!
Although the sun's rays are everywhere
they do not penetrate the inner chambers.
But what then is the distance
between the rays of the sun
and the inner apartments?
The waves of the most transparent water
roll over one another,
one after the other,
surpassing one other,
and drowning the others,
and the blue peaks of distant mountains
are saturated with blue.
