Excerpts from the teaching of Ying-An
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The beginning of cultivating yourself is right in yourself; on a thousand mile journey, the first step is the most important. If you can do both of these well, the infinite sublime meanings of hundreds of thousands of teachings will be fulfilled.(1)
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Generally speaking, Zen requires a decisive, powerful will, because you are going to be cleaning your six senses all the time, so that even if you are in the midst of all the stresses and pleasures of the world, it is like being in a pure, uncontrived realm of great liberation.(2)
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First of all, don't establish a preconceived understanding of Zen, yet don't rationalize Zen as 'not understanding' either. It's just like learning archery: eventually you reach a point where ideas are ended and feelings forgotten, and then you suddenly hit the target. You should know, furthermore, that there is a subtlety breaking through the target, which is attained spontaneously.(3)
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The mind of Zen adepts is straight as a bowstring, like a long sword against the sky cutting through confusion wherever they may be. Worldly wealth and status, hauteur and extravagance, mundane desires, and all the ups and downs of life cannot affect them. Fame and profit, judgments of right and wrong, and all the possible states of being cannot trap them.
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Zen has nothing to grab onto. When people who study Zen don't see it, that is because they approach too eagerly. If you want to understand Zen easily, just be mindless, wherever you are, twenty-four hours a day, until you spontaneously merge with the Way. (4)
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If you want to see the subtle mind of Zen, that is very easy. Just step back and pick it up with intense strength during all of your activities, whatever you are doing, even as you eat, drink, and talk, even as you experience the stress of attending to the world. (5)
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Zen living is a most direct shortcut, not requiring the exertion of the slightest bit of strength to attain enlightenment and master Zen right where you are. But because Zen seekers are searching too eagerly, they think there must be a special principle, so they try to describe it to themselves mentally, in a subjective way. (6)
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In Zen, your eyes are looking southeast while your attention is in the northeast. It cannot be sought by mindlessness, it cannot be understood by mindfulness. It cannot be reached by talking, it cannot be understood by silence. (7)
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When the essence of seeing is everywhere, so is the essence of hearing. When you clearly penetrate the ten directions, there is no inside or outside. This is why it is said, "Effortless in all circumstances, always real in action and stillness." Action like this is the function of complete real wisdom.
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The classical masters of Zen were people who had above all let go. (8)
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If people want to learn Zen, let them learn the Zen of a lone lamp shining in a death ward. Do not set up any limit, with the idea that you want to realize Zen for sure by such and such a time. (9)
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(1) Allusion to a common Daoist proverb that a thousand-mile journey begins with the first step. Ying-an is emphasizing that the first step taken must be in the right direction or every step that follows will be wrong. We might also notice that Ying-an makes reference to hundreds of thousands of teachings being 'fulfilled' - we may also recall the Mahayana proverb that there are 84,000 dharma-gates. The implications of the path of Zen as a thousand-mile journey would be that cultivation involves time, patience, effort, gradualism. The idea of all teachings being fulfilled at once seems to hint as some kind of substance or pay-off to the enlightenment experience.
(2) Mind, or consciousness is the sixth sense in Buddhist phenomenology. It corresponds to the sixth consciousness in the eight consciousness model of the Lankavatara. To understand how the six senses would have been conceived of, here's the wikipedia on Ayatanas.
(3) Here, Ying-an sets up a dialectic where we have the gradualism of learning a new skill, such as archery (I guess Herrigal wasn't far off the mark!) , but the 'subtlety' of mastering the skill (breaking through the target, something which happens in an instant) is achieved 'spontaneously'. We might recall the Daoist saying, "Strive for the effortless" - one practices, just as they would practice a sport, an instrument, or carving an ox, but the 'subtle' mastery of the craft is something that we cannot understand or define, and cannot be said to be the direct result of practice. To quote Alan Watts, "What is fascinating always about [a] genius is that the fellow does something that we cannot understand." The paradoxical relationship between sudden and gradual, spontaneity and practice, essence and function, etc. has been explored throughout the history of Chan. It came out in Dahui's disagreement with Hongzhi. Ying-An was another student of Yuanwu's who would have been well aware of this apparent tension and the differing interpretations of the role of practice vs. spontaneity in Chan. This may be why he is cautioning not to bring any preconceived understanding, even the preconceived understanding as "not understanding".
(4) Ying-an cautions once against eagerness; he also brings up being 'mindless' wherever you are. This is a reference to one-practice samadhi, but the term 'mindlessness' almost recalls Hongzhi's silent illumination. Is he synthesizing Dahui and Hongzhi here; or at least trying to get over their dispute some other way? Emphasizing how inner stillness must be cultivated, but in the midst of outward activity?
(5) Practice all the time. Dahui advocated for this with hua-tou study; Ying-an does not discuss the method of meditation but it seems like he is advocating for something more like 'mindlessness' or silent illumination, even in the stress of attending to the world.
(6) Don't approach too eagerly. Don't make subjective judgments about Zen. Do you get it yet?
(7) It's not mindlessness, it's not understood by silence. So, maybe we can chuck silent illumination out the window. But what then are we practicing 24/7 without interruption? It's not mindfulness either. It's not 'a bit of conversation'. Earlier, he seemed to be saying "Not one or the other, both" - now we're shifting gears into "neither".
(8) We have seen consistently that Ying-an emphasizes not clinging. Not clinging to any outward circumstances of wealth or pleasure, not being affected or turned awry by negative circumstances either. And this extends to the teachings - not clinging to one interpretation of Zen or the other, not being averse to one interpretation of Zen or the other. Elsewhere, Ying-an is very clear about denouncing 'sectarian Zen'. Liberation through non-clinging is one of the teachings central to almost all forms of Buddhism, and it is a theme that appears throughout the Pali canon.
(9) One of my favorite quotes from Ying-an, comparing Zen to the only source of light to a bunch of dying people. Elsewhere he says that the ancient masters kept birth and death foremost in their minds, but did not imagine that anyone dies or does not die. There's a sense of urgency here that some choose to ignore; and yet, Ying-an is talking about a Zen that is beyond limits. Throw out sudden and gradual, secular and sacred, hua-tou and silent illumination, meditation and anti-meditation, Buddhist and anti-Buddhist, Zen and not Zen, me and you.
-es
[translated by Thomas Cleary]
Submitted December 05, 2017 at 10:00PM by essentialsalts http://ift.tt/2jTa1Pv
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