Dharma Talk, April 15, 2013: Origins of Ch'an in China

Download: http://www.riversidechan.org/lectures/Dharma_Talk_20130415.mp3

We're going to talk a little bit about the origins of Chan in China. This is not the definitive historical perspective. I’m kind of pulling together several forces to give a little bit of a background of where Chan Buddhism comes from. It's not something that all of a sudden somebody said, “Oh you know, the Buddha taught specifically Chan Buddhism or did he teach Theravadin or Tibetan or any thing that came out of that. Everything is kind of a natural evolution or progression as it goes through.

Chan comes from China. But it’s really interesting that as we follow the progression, you will see that it maintains its distinct Indian flavor as it came from India into China. The word Chan means Dhyana which is the Indian work for practice. Zen comes from the word Chan. Zen shows up much later historically as Chan moved its way towards Japan. You can say that there are components of Chan all way back to the Buddha and one of his first disciples, Mahakasyapa.

There is a very often told story where the Buddha at a congregation was sitting there very silently. Everyone was wondering what’s wrong with him or why he was so quiet. Then he just picks up a flower and twirls it. As he's twirling this flower, everyone was looking at him going, “This is very odd.” Only Mahakasyapa noticed him twirling the flower and just smiles at him. There was this sense of a mind-to-mind connection there - a sense of “it's not in the words;” there’s something more beyond that, that is there, that one make a connection with.

That's very important because at that point in time, that is really you could say - the essence of Chan. It’s really where Chan began - this idea of this twirling and direct mind-to-mind transmission. Does that mean that Chan is mysterious or Buddhism is mysterious? No, it really isn't. It’s every day and mundane but it's something that we cannot get from looking simply from a conceptual viewpoint. It’s something beyond that. So from the very beginning, this is what the Buddha was teaching.

It was interesting because as Buddhism came to China, it came from the Indu Aryan Valley. This area had its own deities, it came from Hinduism which is pantheistic, and it had certain connections with let’s say Hindu theories but it was unique in other ways because it did not rely on the sense of any kind of deities.

As it came into China, it ran into the big boys in China which were what? Taoism and Confucianism. As it ran into Taoism and Confucianism, it’s very interesting because when it came to China, it had already been tested. There was already the Yogacara school, there’s already incredible, incredible masters - for instance, Nagarjuna and Kandikirti(?) and they had all stood up to debate/able to refute other theories, other philosophies, other religions, other approaches; they were very adept. This Buddhism had been pared down, really worked and it was shining and bright and strong that when it encountered something, it hit it like a buzz saw because whatever it encountered, it could undercut their theories. It didn't do so in a violent way; it did so in the exercise of wisdom.

That part of it was what really attracted Chan to me to me in the first place; that it was in one part very simple, mundane and ordinary but it cuts through everything. It just chops through anything that you have; any obstructions, everything, was gone. It couldn't withstand it. I had been practicing from many different viewpoints; viewpoints from study with Chi-gong masters of studying the mind, but not wisdom. Buddhism came in with this really deep wisdom.

So when it encountered Confucianism and Taoism, there was probably modifications made to Confucianism and Taoism more than to Buddhism although there were times when they were running somewhat parallel in terms of ideas, for instance of emptiness, until the Chinese realized that the  emptiness wasn’t the emptiness that the Buddhists were thinking about. It was deeper, deeper emptiness. Not something like an empty bottle, but more like something transcendent; something that went beyond their idea of any kind of a pure ego or purifying a life-in-being or a personality. It’s beyond that. When Confucianism and Neoconfucianism encountered it, Buddhism could stand up.

Actually there was one master; his name is Sushi, a Neoconfucianist around the 12th century. He cautioned his students not to debate with the Buddhists. “Don’t debate with Buddhists!” he said, “lest they be seduced into the Buddhist mind-boggling dialectics and thus defeated.” This was also noting that okay, we have to separate ourselves from that, otherwise, we are just going to be absorbed into Buddhism. So there was some kind of a brake - “Do not to listen to them anymore; they’ll confuse your mind.”

But the reason being is because it was tried-and-trued before it had gotten to China. It had 500 years of being sorted out so it too was a big boy on the block coming in. It wasn't that it was bucking heads. It was allowing these other disciplines to absorb some universal truths from it. It came in and there were times of turmoil there that enabled Buddhism to grow in China. It came in under the guise of Madhyamaca and Yogacara School, Madhyamaca being the Middle Way. These schools came in and there were other schools of thought.

Chan wasn't there in the beginning. Chan was there in terms of the ideas that were there and the ideas that were advanced of True Nature, of the idea of apparent reality, absolute reality that came in, the ideas of consciousness only, all the way through until we get to the point of the Tathagatagarbha sutras which mention the Buddha-nature, or more succinctly put, Buddhadhatu. Buddha-nature sounds like something very soft, “It’s Buddha-nature; it is not a personality trait. It is Buddha-nature” That’s really indefinable unless it’s something that there is a direct experience of. It is that awareness that’s there that operates through the consciousness.

The Yogacara School bringing in the concept of the Eight Consciousness of Alayavijnana and how that the seventh consciousness, this discriminating consciousness is constantly kind of messing everything up - what they would call “perfuming the seventh consciousness.” It wasn't so much perfuming; actually, it’s really stinking up the place because it was operating based on the ego. The Alayavijnana was ultimately pure. It wasn't perfumed. It wasn't affected by it but all of these schools of thought brought method of how to identify mind.

From there came the Huayen and the Tientai schools and they each brought their ideas in to the Chinese school of thought. Tientai and Huayen schools were very intellectual in their ways. They are very sophisticated and very similar to the Yogacara School or Madhyamaca School in terms of their analysis, presentation and philosophical sophistication, in terms of looking at things, all of the things that wouldn’t make it necessarily palatable to the masses but were incredible processes of thought with respect with what mind is.

In this approach, the Buddhist school is extremely rich. From these approaches of the Tathagatagarbhasutra, the Queen Shrimala sutras, from the Mahaparanirvana sutra and the like, we began to see this development of Buddha-nature. We talked about last week of the Tathagatagarbha womb or the Buddha’s womb. The Buddha’s womb isn’t a womb where a fetus grows or where like a baby Buddha grows. Quite to the contrary, you could say it's the womb that allows everything to appear in apparent reality. Everything comes from that. When we get to look at things and we begin to recognize that consciousness operates within this womb, then we begin to not try to look at consciousness as the source of mind. Quite to the contrary, we begin to use our investigative abilities to bring the mind to rest directly in mind itself where it would naturally want to be.

It's like if one is flying a kite and the wind is blowing. The wind blows because every time you think of something, the wind blows and keeps the kite up. But at one point in time when one no longer thinks, the kite will naturally just settle itself down. Shifu, Master Sheng Yen used to analogize this to “catching a feather in a fan.” How would you catch a feather with a fan? You couldn’t be chasing after it, right? It would blow all over the place. One simply settles the fan underneath and allows the feather to sink and eventually just lands on the fan.

When we do that, we’re operating out of wisdom and out of that also comes compassion, a very great compassion. It’s an interesting way of looking at things but if we comfort our meditation practice with this type of attitude, then we’re not too far from it. We start already in a better place, a better attitude, a better understanding of what we’re doing when we’re sitting on that cushion and letting everything just come to rest. When we are navigating this world, coursing the deep Prajnaparamita, or in some cases in our life, it's the deep do-do, then we are calmer and able to do things. When we accord our mind in this way, very interesting things happen.

I’m going to deviate a little bit from talking about the history for a moment to kind of give you an example of something that happened to me once at a retreat. I was interviewing people with Master Sheng Yen during a retreat. During a retreat, they have time where you can have an interview with a master. He’d asked me to sit in on the interviews. So he sat in the big chair in the middle. The Abbot of the New York area was sitting to his left and I was sitting to his right. We noticed that there was this bug that was flying in the room. It made a lot of buzzing noise. He hadn't called anybody in but he just watched it go buzzing all over.

He looks over at me and says, “Gilbert,” (and I know what he’s going to say) and I said, “Yes?”

“You have to catch it and let it out.”

I am going, “You have to be kidding me…” (laughs…) because this thing was moving very, very fast. So fast I couldn't even tell where it was. Wherever I go, instantly it knew I was going towards it. At one point, I entertained the notion of trying to catch it on the glass but my wisdom enabled me to see a smeared spot on the glass which would not look too impressive in front of your master. Knocking it out of the air would not work, so I spent some time chasing it around the room (probably to Shifu’s entertainment). (laughs…)

It went all over the place. There is nowhere I could get it. So I sat back down on my chair waiting for Shifu to call the people in (comfortable in the belief that he could see that I could not save this bug and that there was no way that I was going to be able to catch it without having to separate it from a few legs and wings and some body parts). So I was sitting there and he doesn’t call anybody in. He just looked straight ahead.

And he says to me, “Gilbert, (at this point I was cringing) if you do not catch it and let it out, it will die!”

So I’m going, “Oh, my… what am I going to do? There is no way I’m going to catch it.”

So I got up again and watched it and it landed on Shifu’s chair, this beautiful, beautiful dragonfly. I've never seen one before but it had little tufts of white cotton on its wing, like a fairy. It was very incredible, beautiful, beautiful dragonfly. It’s there and I am looking at it and then I cupped up my hands together like this, like making a little bowl. I looked at it and I said, “Please, let me help you!” (laughs…) And it flew into my hands. It landed in my hands and it stayed there. They opened the door and I let it out, and not another word was said.

This is Buddhadharma. This is the Buddha-mind - what we can be capable of. It is a sentient being. In a way, this gives strong faith to our practice. This is a very unusual occurrence that happened that really defies description. It happened exactly as I told it to you. I didn’t embellish it one bit. It's something that is beyond words and there’s just this connection there and that was what he wanted to show me. There are lessons there that have nothing to do with sitting on the cushion. That one has to open their heart, have wisdom, compassion – what we call Karuna, beyond Metta. Metta is loving-kindness. Karuna is the term that we use to describe what one Kwanyin Bodhisattva does, which is the strong wish to take away the suffering and in the world.

This is just an amazing little story but the reason I told this to you at this point is because it points to mind and if you can see mind in that, you could see it anywhere. This is what, when Bodhidharma came over, he wanted to share. Not the Buddha-nature because the Buddha-nature was already here. The Buddhadhatu is within each one of you. He could not bring that with him. It’s already there. What he wanted was a key to open that up so that you could experience that as well.

In this experience is a very interesting point because one of the basic tenets in our practice is Anatman. Remember what Anatman is? No self. Anatman is no self in the way we think of self, in the way we think in our limited consciousness - there’s no self. But there is self. The Buddha taught that. He taught that especially in the Mahaparanirvana sutra, that there is self, but this self is the self-nature of mind. What all these practices do is point it towards the self-nature of mind. It is not a self, like a polished up in a suit going-to-church-on-Sunday self, all cleaned up. It's not like that. You're never going to polish yourself up that much to get it. It’s not going to happen. The self-nature of mind is beyond that. To paraphrase a Japanese saying, “It’s beyond birds, bees, blossoms and bugs.” It has all those things incorporated into it. It’s far beyond what we have.

Stan is a person that works with animals. He speaks their language. I wouldn't doubt if he could talk to them and understands them in their way and what they say, right?

Student: Sometimes.

Gilbert: In a way, yes. I mean you can feel things. Other people can feel the plants. They know how plants are. It’s in the different things that we do that we make a connection. This mind touches everything. It just doesn't touch human sentient beings, it touches everything. It is why I was able to make the connection with this wonderful dragonfly. These kinds of things, they come. Very interesting; why did Shifu know I was ripe for that kind of a lesson?

Once when at one retreat when our retreat center was very primitive, we have screens and during the summer, it was open to the outside. Once I was sitting and meditating, I saw a bug come up right into the room. I was facing the bug which has just come through the door. I said, “Bug, don’t come here (because in the morning I saw how many bugs they’ve cleaned off the floor). If you come here, for sure you're going to die! So I would suggest you turn around and go back.”

Now when I started talking to the bug, he had stopped. When I told him to go back, he turned around and went back outside. When I told that story at the retreat, people were scoffing at me, “this is so stupid.” But Shifu didn’t; he nodded. He saw that I got it. The thing is that’s what I want you to do too. You've got to think outside this bone box. Touch everything. It is not that you were at one with the environment, like your personality is at one with the environment. Mind is the environment. Mind is you, but if you think you are mind, you can never pass through. You would not be able to. You cannot build a castle with a wisp of smoke.

But Shifu, he built an entire university in a very short time, simply through wisdom and compassion. So it’s very powerful, very alive; it's very dynamic. This is what Bodhidharma and all those who brought Buddhadharma from India to China had in their hearts. It was something that they wanted to share. This is why I go to different places because I want to share that. That's why it was able to withstand when Buddhism reached China. It was able to hold up to Confucianism and Taoism. Not that I’m saying that Confucianism and Taoism are bad. I wouldn’t say that about any philosophical thought or religions unless it's based on some form of hate or destruction. It was able to survive. It was able to take on a Chinese flavor as went through to understand but it always retained that uniqueness of the Buddha-nature. It kept that.

As it was going through, there were various ways in which it came. Bodhidharma indicated that there were two ways to enter in: one, with practice, and the other was principle. In the principle, what he was talking about was that one studies the principle. You study it not in the way of a scholar, although you can study it like a scholar. But if you study from the viewpoint of a scholar, what ends up happening is that you’d only scratch the surface. As you scratch the surface in this way, you don't really see the Buddha-nature. You just are able to see the finger pointing at the moon but that's it.

Some people when you read their writings on Buddhist philosophical thoughts, you know that they do not have any direct realization of their own. It reads as what it probably is about trying the thesis but it comes up short and empty because it tries to box it into traditional philosophical thought - comparing it to this and comparing it to that. That won’t get there. 

One wonderful lady at the retreat this weekend said, “Well, the philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.”” I went, “Ah, Descartes, was a loser. (laughs…) He would last about 20 seconds in front of Nagarjuna before Nagarjuna would cut him off at the legs.” It’s such a ridiculous thing that can be easily refuted. It’s a self-proving thing.

So I went on to tell her about a comedy group called Firesign theater. They had a parody on Shakespeare's play where they were searching for the rightful King Edmund. So this one comes up and says, “I am the rightful King Edmund!”

The other goes, “Well, how do I know you are the rightful King Edmund?”  

He pulls out this rusty, trusty dagger to prove it and he handed it to him.

The guy goes, “skaeps eh ohw fo eh ma I…

The other guy goes, “No, turn it over!”

“Oh!” It says, “I am he, of who he speaks!”

And he goes, “Well, that’s good enough for me!”

It’s Descartes… that’s in case some of you got lost in the smoke there and missed that part. (laughs…) It’s Descartes and it’s really a ridiculous statement because Nagarjuna would ask him, “From where did that thought come from?”

It was this wonderful Buddhist approach of looking at things clearly and seeing things in this called, Clear Light of Wisdom. It’s not the way we want it to be but it’s the way it is. From the Theravadins all the way through, we’re all Buddhists in that way. The Theravadins write books saying, “That’s the way things are.” So I’m going, “That's the way it is!” The way things are; that’s the way you should see things. Not the way that you want to see it, but the way it is. When you see things in this way, the world begins to make sense.

If not, it becomes clouded and one begins to credit deities or blame deities for all their travails. Especially in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, when at the end of the fight, the guy points up, “I’d like to thank the big man upstairs for letting me beat this guy senseless.” What was he like? Was he Muslim or what? Was it a Holy Crusade that he didn't believe in God either? These are ignorance.

I'm not capping on Christianity. I'm just saying that when people approach their religions in this way. They should rather approach them in the proper way. Christianity has all the wisdom that’s there. They talk about if you plant the seed on the road or on fertile ground, it will grow in a certain way or it won’t grow at all – the parable of sowing and reaping. That’s Chan too. That’s wisdom and that’s good. This is the way we see things because right there in the Bible, it is really saying the way things are. So it this is the way we look at things. From India comes in Paticcasamuppada - causes and conditions never fail and the 12 Causal Links. It begins to give a whole network of explanations as to why things are the way they are. This is what we look at.

Going back to Bodhidharma in terms of his practices, when you have a practice, the most important part of that is faith. You have to have faith in what you're reading. When you have faith in what you're reading, what happens is that you're able to penetrate what you’re reading. Out of that, Bodhidharma had a disciple named Tanlin which talked about Two Entrances and Four Acts. This is Bodhidharma's teachings; he said:

The entrance to the principle is to become enlightened to the truth on the basis of teaching. One must have profound faith in the fact that one and the same True Nature is possessed by all sentient beings, both ordinary and enlightened. This True Nature is only covered up and made imperceptible in the case of ordinary people by false sense impressions.

What are false sense impressions? When you smoke marijuana cigarette and you go, “Oh, this feels so good, I want to do it again.” You smoke a crack pot and you go, “This is great! I need it tomorrow” or when you get gratification by slapping somebody or insulting them or taking something from them. All these are false sense and something that's arising in the consciousness. When we look at this in the proper way and we have faith that if we read this, it will help us.  What happens is that you penetrate to the point where the mind itself rests while you’re reading.

It's a very interesting thing. You can sit there and read for two hours and feel like five minutes. It’s like five minutes but it was actually two hours simply because the consciousness is absorbed in the reading. It was totally a single-minded purpose of absorbing the reading, in the same manner as which one might absorb it through meditation, they call meditative absorption.

So then he talked about the other entrance way. The other entrance way is the entrance by practice. In the entrance of practice, he refers to the Two entrances and the Four Acts pertaining to practice. The first one is to accept all the suffering that is arising. What it means by accepting it, is that one through their wisdom recognizes that this is causes and conditions; that they recognize that the reason I feel the way I feel is because I put that into my mind. The reason that people don't like me is because I’ve been bad to them, or whatever it is. And we see these things very, very clearly.

The second practice is to accept the circumstances that arise and to remain unmoved. Okay you know, I have money problems; I have spousal problems; I have kid problems; I have work problems. You recognize those things are there but you don't let them define you. You don't let them move you. You do your best no matter what and you're able to try to go through those situations rather than succumb to them and make them worse.

“I don't have money,” well you don’t go rob somebody or go sell dope or do anything of that type. You solve your problem the best you can. If you can’t solve it, you're not moved by it. The practice of absence of craving, he says, “To be without craving, which is a source of all suffering.” I would differ one little bit there; the source of all suffering is ignorance. Craving is part of that ignorance, but ignorance in itself as to anger and desire are components of ignorance itself.

So when we recognize this, we make our mind absent of ignorance. How do we make it absent of ignorance? By practicing well, by incorporating our skillful means in the present moment, by incorporating what we have learned in the present moment, by setting the stage so that we can overcome the ignorance or craving that can come up, and you practice in accordance with the Dharma. All of these are really interconnected to eradicate wrong thoughts and the practice seeks perfection without having any practice. What’s that called Rick? What do you call practicing without having any practice?

Student: Following function.

Gilbert: Following function. We just follow function. What’s the function right now? My function is for me to talk to you. Later on, I'll probably pass out because I’m tired, but right this moment I’m following function.

So when we follow the function, we just are just moving along with the present moment. The Buddha is in the present moment. We eradicate wrong thoughts in the present moment. Sentha, do you remember what I call those unwholesome thoughts and wholesome thoughts are?

Student: Kusala are wholesome thoughts; Akusala are unwholesome thoughts.

Gilbert: Yes, Kusala for wholesome thoughts, Akusala for unwholesome thoughts. It has nothing to do with right and wrong. It has to do with attaching. Attaching is like craving. If you have craving, you are attaching to the thoughts. These are unwholesome thoughts. When we just simply have thoughts to talk, then it seems as though there's no thought at all. Gilbert talking right now has no thought, but the presenter has many, many thoughts; he’s just not attaching to them. It’s like waves moving through. When one is able to present this way, one is simply following function.

All of this comes to mindfulness. We are mindful of what's going on. Why, because from the very beginning, from the Sakyamuni Buddha, he taught mindfulness - what mind is. The Four Noble Truths, how mind is affected; how suffering comes up, and how in fact there is no suffering. When we look at that, we realize why because we're studying mind. That's what we do; we study mind. How can we possibly have a realization of mind without studying it? You’d think that somebody's going to come and bonk you on the head and all of a sudden you go, “I got it?” No.

As Buddhism went through China, I think it was called “The East Mountain Teachings.” The East Mountain Teaching came to the idea in that point where from the Fifth Patriarch, Hongren, started developing these ideas of this gradual enlightenment. Also came in Huineng and Huineng had a different approach to it. What was his approach? It’s sudden enlightenment. I’ll give you a new term today: Subitism - it just means the study of sudden enlightenment or the concept of sudden enlightenment, that one is capable of getting hit on the top of the head and becoming enlightened. Not necessarily from that because then I’d bring a bat next time, (laughs…) but the idea that somebody can become suddenly enlightened.

For political reasons, the Northern school of Shenxiu and this gradual enlightenment, and the Southern school of Huineng of sudden enlightenment, were artificially split. Shenxiu and Huineng were at a time where Shen Hui(?), Huineng’s disciple, started politicking the Imperial Palace saying he was really the sixth patriarch although previously, Shenxiu had been presented to the court with credentials that he was in fact the Sixth Patriarch and that he received transmissions from Hongren. Do you guys know that part?

But the way it's written, it sounds like Huineng, from right out of the box, came out and he was the Sixth Patriarch. That's not historically correct. Shen Hui said, “No.” He presented a counter credentials to show that Huineng had received the transmission. This was all because there was a battle between the two schools. Shen Hui, being Huineng’s next disciple, wanted to preserve the integrity of the Southern school.

It took a while but eventually, they unseeded the Northern school and to the victors, they write history. Not to take anything away from Huineng but simply restore Shenxiu to his place as well. It is because just like what they're saying there, the practice is there but the principle has to be there. Sudden enlightenment is not something like you can knock somebody on the head. You've got to put the time in and then it hits.

But if you're sitting there waiting, “I want it to hit; I want it to hit,” it’s not going to hit. It will never hit it! I won’t work that way so we don't approach it in that way. What we do is we set the stage for it. How do we do that? By coming to class, by doing our own self-study, by learning very, very clear what we’re talking about, and then it can hit you. As you begin to listen intently, any moment it can hit you - a little tiny realization. And all of a sudden you go, “Yeah, I’m going to come back again. Now, I understand that something that hit me.” All of a sudden what appeared to be work is no longer work. What appeared to be uncertainty is no longer uncertainty, and  your practice is filled with these moments of little tiny realizations.

We shouldn’t be worried about, “Did I see my self-nature, or did I become enlightened, or did I do that or did I do that?” Don’t worry about that! That’s really not important. What's important is to keep moving forward with your practice. As long as you’re practicing, as long as you're studying, then it will help you.

In my studies right now, I really feel deficient. Honestly to tell you the truth, I’m studying literally hours a week, depending on whether I’m going somewhere or not, probably 10 to 20 hours a week at least. Not on meditation but in studying and reading. I read morning, I read at lunch, I read after work, I read when I go home, and I still can't even touch the surface of all the wealth of the Buddhadharma that’s out there.

It's incredible; very, very credible. I was writing one of my friends from back east like you know, I can’t drop this - what the heck is mind? I keep asking myself, what is this mind? As I kept asking myself that, what happens is the parameter of mind keeps spreading out. It's not that they're spreading, it's just the awareness that’s included is eroding and mind appears to be getting more expansive. It is not that it’s more expansive, it's just that one is able to discern it better.

But when I look at it, I’m going like, “Wow I must be like on the negative fifteenth bhumi.” Compared to these people who were writing, I’m simply awed by the depth of their work and the complexity and what I would call the beauty of the Buddhadharma. It’s very incredible, very, very incredible work. Especially Mahayana's because one can really feel their heart - that they sincerely want to write in a way to communicate directly to you. If you can do that, you can absorb it and penetrate the sutras.

So that gives you a little bit of Buddhist history in a nutshell. It’s kind of along the lines of like “in the beginning, there was this big hot ball and it exploded and the dinosaurs came,” you know. A very quick type of how we got here. In any case, it does give you an idea of how things began to change in these ideas of Chan. Next time, if I continue on with this one, we’ll explore some of the concepts that began to turn this Buddhist training into Chan. We already got to the point of Shenxiu and Huineng and will start working a little bit towards what they were doing and how Chan began to really develop.