You Cannot See The Path - You Can Only See From It

Master Huairang asked his student Mazu why he spent so much time sitting in meditation.

Mazu answered, "I want to become a Buddha."

Saying nothing, Master Huairang quietly picked up a brick and started rubbing it on a stone.

Mazu watched his master for a few minutes then he asked, "Why are you rubbing that brick on a stone?"

Huairang answered, "I'm polishing it into a mirror.'

Mazu probably knew by this time that he had been set up, but he had to follow through, "But how can you make a mirror by polishing a brick on a stone?" he asked.

Master Huairang answered, "How can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation? To become a Buddha, act like a Buddha."

Chan Buddhism

Chan Buddhism teaches all beings have/are Buddha-Nature. Chan does not advocate Practice as a means to enlightenment, but rather as the meaning of demonstrating it. It is only in denial or ignorance of our own true nature that Enlightenment can be regarded as something to seek, a destination at which we might someday arrive.

Chan does not see dispelling ignorance of our own Buddha-Nature as involving cultivating or acquiring anything. We need only end the relational inertia that prevents us from conducting ourselves as enlightened beings. This does not require special conditions or implements, extensive study or training. It can be accomplished here and now in the midst of our day-to-day lives.

Hongren, the Fifth Ch'an Patriarch, Requested a Verse

The body is the Bodhi tree,
The mind is like a clear mirror.
At all times we must strive to polish it,
And must not let the dust collect.

                                           ---Shenxiu---


                                                                                    Bodhi originally has no tree
                                                                                    The mirror also has no stand.
                                                                                    Buddha nature is always clear and pure;
                                                                                    Where is there room for dust?

                                                                                                                ---Huineng,
                                                                                                                    the Sixth Ch'an Patriarch,
                                                                                                                    in Response
                                                                                                                    to Shenxiu's Verse---

Chan (Zen)

The non-conceptual nature of Chan (Zen) is apparent in the catch phrases that became popular in Sung China. Chan (Zen) trainees took their cues from such expressions as:

1. No dependence on words.
2. A personal transmission outside the standard teachings.
3. Direct pointing to the mind.
4. Seeing the mind is becoming the Buddha.

Two Gathas

Shen-hsiu wrote:

My body's like the Bodhi Tree*

My mind is like a mirror stand

From all dust to keep it free

I wipe it off with a cloth in hand

Hui-neng saw this was not complete understanding and wrote the following in response:

In the state of bodhi there is no tree**

Nor does a mirror need a stand

We have nothing at all originally

So where could dust possibly land?

Study these words. Sit with these words. Master Hui-neng says we don't originally have anything, so asks where could dust land. 

*The tree under which the Buddha realized Awakening.

**Bodhi means "Awakening"

---The poems are translated by Brad Warner---

Ch'an Buddhism

Cha'n is a Chinese school of Buddhism. When Ch'an traveled from China to Korea is became know as Seon. When Ch'an entered Vietnam it became know as Thien. When Ch'an went to Japan it became known as Zen.

Ch'an is a personal experience of reality without the addition and distraction of our own ideas and opinions. It's an unfiltered experience.

Attempting to use language to describe the experience, or to even think about it only obscures it.

The experience is happening 24 hours a day, every single day of a life. The experience is always happening.

Awareness, mindfulness, attention; these are the tools we use to experience the experience.

Master Hung-jen Requested a Gatha From Each of His Students to Demonstrate Their Understanding

Shen-hsiu wrote:

My body's like the Bodhi Tree*
My mind is like a mirror stand
From all dust to keep it free
I wipe it off with a cloth in hand


Hui-neng saw this was not complete understanding and wrote the following in response:

In the state of bodhi there is no tree**
Nor does a mirror need a stand
We have nothing at all originally
So where could dust possibly land?


Study these words. Sit with these words. Master Hui-neng says we don't originally have anything, so asks where could dust land. 


*The tree under which the Buddha realized Awakening.

**Bodhi means "Awakening"

The poems are translated by Brad Warner.

Fundamentally, Not One Thing Exists

Ch'an (and by extension, Zen) was established with this single phrase. With it, all grasping, all attachment, and all delusion are mute.

Within The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch we read:


Shen-hsiu wrote -

         The body is like a bodhi tree:
         The mind is like a standing mirror.
         Always try to wipe it clean;
         Do not let it gather dust.


Hui-neng wrote in response -

         Bodhi originally is no tree;
         The bright mirror has no stand.
         Fundamentally, not one thing exists;
         So where will the dust gather?

You Have To Be Realistic

When it had stopped snowing, Wen-i announced he was going to take his leave. Ch'an master Ti-tsang accompanied him to the temple gate, and said, "Your Honor always explains the Three Worlds of past, present, and future are only mind, and the Ten Thousand Things are only perception."

Then he pointed to a rock, and continued, "What do you say? Is this rock inside the mind or outside the mind?"

Wen-i answered, "Inside the mind."

Ti-tsang then asked, "Why would a mendicant need to travel around with a rock inside his head?"

Wen-i was speechless, and had no way to give an answer.

Ti-tang said, "If you want to discuss the Buddhadharma, you have to be realistic."

Hearing this, Wen-i had a great awakening.

A Layman Speaks

Layman Pang attended a reading of the Diamond Sutra.

When the speaker reached the phrase, "No self. No other," Layman Pang called out, "Speaker! If there is no self and no other, then who is lecturing and who's listening to it?"

The speaker was dumbstruck.

Layman Pang said, "I'm just a common person, but I'll offer you my crude understanding."

The speaker said, "What is the layman's idea?"

Layman Pang answered with this verse:

No self, no other,
Then how could there be intimate and estranged?
I advise you to cease all your lectures.
They can't compare with directly seeking truth.
The Diamond Wisdom nature
Erases even a speck of dust.
"Thus I have heard," and "Thus I believe,"
Are but so many words.

A Legendary Meeting

When Chan placed importance on the legendary meeting and failure of agreement between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu, the tradition distanced itself from political and doctrinal issues that detracted from its central insight and practice, a practice that emphasized observing the nature of the mind.

The Chan Movement in Tang China

The Chan movement began in China around the sixth century. Chan is Chinese for the Sanskrit word dhyana, meaning "meditation," and is better known by the Japanese pronunciation zen. Chan acted as a kind of postgraduate movement in Chinese Buddhism, functioning to help all the accomplished scholarly monks from the various doctrinal schools free themselves from attachments to specific descriptions of the truth. Chan above all emphasized actual personal experience of the dharma, and of bodhisattva awareness and activity, in one's own life. In this tradition, such experience is usually entered into through sitting meditation practice, mindful attention to practice of everyday activities, and checking one's practice and understand with awakened teachers and their traditions.

While being greatly influenced by each one of the teachings and sutras of Mahayana Buddhism already mentioned, Chan developed its own voluminous body of literature, largely built on the dialogues and encounters of the great masters of the "golden age" of Chan in the Tang dynasty of China of the eighth and ninth centuries, with subsequent commentaries.

These Chan masters developed their styles of teaching based on everyday life and activities, and down-to-earth, often rough expression, more than on the lofty philosophy of Indian cosmology. Much of their humorous and paradoxical manner derives from native Chinese Taoism, although their teachings clearly are expressions of the traditional Mahayana texts, with which the masters were fully conversant. The extensive literature of teaching stories with commentaries, called koans ("public cases"; in Chinese, gongan), has been used in training in all branches of Zen; sometimes the koans have been used in more schematized meditation programs, and sometimes informally as study tools. The koans are filled with references to the sutras, and many of the stories also directly concern the bodhisattva figures, or refer to them, and constitute a significant piece of the archetypal lore.

Along with encouraging personal realization of awakening, the Chan movement in Tang China emphasized everyday activity and work practice, ideally aimed at developing self-sufficiency for the communities that gathered around various masters, often in the remote mountains. The more established doctrinal schools, based on individual sutras and dependent on impressive, large edifices, were all substantially weakened by a massive though short-lived persecution of all Buddhism by the Chinese emperor in 845. In the aftermath of the destruction of the many temples, images, and sutras, and enforced laicization of many monks and nuns, the Chan and Pure Land movements emerged as the dominant remnant of Mahayana Buddhism, and Chan/Zen eventually became prominent and culturally influential in Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. Teachers from the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Zen traditions are all currently active in the West.

Chan and the Sutras

Chan is not something utterly distinct from the sutras, mush less antagonistic to them, for it embodies the very insights that the sutras seek to express, allowing for a profound complementarity between the two: what is stated in words in the Buddhist scriptures will be confirmed in fact in the course of Chan practice, while what is experienced in Chan practice will resonate immediately with what is written in the sutras.

---Master Sheng Yen---

The Word "Chan"

The word chan (Wade-Giles romanization: ch'an). from which Chan Buddhism, or Zen Buddhism, takes its name, is a Chinese transliteration of the Indian Buddhist tern dhyana, meaning "meditative concentration" or "meditative practice." Applied specifically to the Chan or Zen school, it carries the particular sense of the cultivation and experience of enlightenment itself, and not just any sort of meditative experience. Thus Chan Buddhism is often characterized as the school of meditative experience and enlightened insight par excellence, for it claims to embody and transmit the living wisdom that Siddhartha Gautama achieved when he became the Buddha, or "enlightened one."

---Master Sheng Yen---

The Chan Tradition

Another misconception commonly encountered in Western circles is the notion that there is an absolute form or essence to Chan tradition, and that a particular master or line—Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese—might speak authoritatively for the whole.

---Dan Stevenson---

Wordless Teaching

. . . for all its emphasis on being a "wordless" teaching Chan boasts by far the largest literary corpus of any of the Buddhists schools.

---Dan Stevenson---

The Oxherder

The Yijiao ching ("Sutra of the Bequeathing of the Teaching") likens the Buddhist practitioner to an oxherder who—ever watchful, ever patient—herds his ox with stick in hand, never letting it stray. In Chan tradition he becomes a model for the meditator, who must constantly guard his or her mind to prevent it from straying into defilement.

---Master Sheng Yen---

 

Chan

Chan is a Buddhist tradition that is found throughout East Asia (it is known as "Zen" in Japan, "Thien" in Vietnam, and Son in Korea), the distinctive form of which first took shape in China some fifteen hundred years ago. Like most schools of Mahayana Buddhism in East Asia, it affirms that every being is intrinsically endowed with the perfect illumination that Sakyamuni himself actualized when he became the Buddha or "enlightened one." Known as the "Buddha-nature," this power of illumination does not have to be acquired, reinstalled, or even rekindled. It is naturally so, and it has always been naturally so. Again, like most any Buddhist tradition, Chan purports to provide a "raft" to reach this "other shore" of enlightenment, a "finger" to point the direction of this "moon" of illumination.

---Dan Stevenson, in his Preface to Master Shen Yen's Hoofprint of the Ox---

Not Depending On Words

The aim of Chan training, like any form of Buddhism, is to investigate and transform the very ground of one's being. Since this entails the reversal of some of our most deep-seated assumptions about existence, to begin by trying to mold Chan to old habits of egoistic thinking is like "heading south when you want to go north." In order to underscore the incompatibility of this discriminating mind with the no-mind of Chan practice, Chan masters down through the ages have made a tradition of "not depending on words and letters" and refusing to speak too openly about enlightenment.

---Master Sheng Yen---

You Arrive Without Departing

Ch'an, the Chinese tradition of Buddhism that inspired Japanese Zen, is often misunderstood as a system of mind games; the Ch'an path leads to Awakening (Enlightenment) through apparent contradiction. While demanding the mental and physical discipline of traditional Buddhist Teaching, Ch'an asserts Wisdom (Buddha Nature) is innate and immediate in all Living Beings, and, as such, not to be achieved through devotion to the confines of religious practice.