Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership

Translation by Thomas Cleary

From the Introduction…

“An enormous proportion of the Zen canon uses techniques honed to perfection during the baroque period, and therefore consists in one sense largely of technical descriptions of misconceptions of Zen and human values, analyses of the major problems of human thought and behavior in individual and social life. These descriptions are like designs of the locks that bind the conditioned human mentality, and are used to unlock those locks. The results of this unlocking are popularly called enlightenment, regarded in Zen as the initiation into higher learning experiences available to humankind.

One of the major problems encountered in the dissemination of the liberative Zen arts was the usurpation of the teaching function by imitators without the genuine inner knowledge of human psychology and Zen enlightenment. The fetishism that came to surround tokens of initiation and adepthood in Zen orders was to the true Zen leaders simply a sign of trivialization, but it was enough to deceive many naive Confucian grandees who, in the words of a late Song Zen teacher, “only admired the flowers and did not take the fruit."

…

Much of the most famous Zen literature of the Song dynasty, which in fact became the classical literature of Zen, derives from the public lectures of the masters, and therefore is highly veiled due to the inherently secret nature of Zen experience. These Zen Lessons in contrast, are largely derived from private teachings, and therefore are mostly explicit.”

1. A Swift Bird

Yunji Shun said to Fushan Yuan:

If you want to find out all you can about supreme enlightenment, you must be all the more firm when you become exhausted, you should be all the more vigorous as you grow old. Do not follow the vulgar to swipe fame and profit to the detriment of higher virtue.

In jade, a pure luster is esteemed, so neither red nor purple can change its character. Pine stands out in the coldest part of winter, so neither frost nor snow can wither it. Thus we know that as propriety and righteousness are what is great in the world, it is only important to be steadfast.

Should you not strengthen yourself? An ancient said, “A swift bird flies alone, a solitary mien has no companions.” So it should be.

—Extensive Record

1. Work and the Way

…

And if one is not personally upright and true, how could one be able to study the Way of enlightenment?

—Talks of an Attendant

1. The Blue Cliff Record

Xinwen said:

The Way that is specially transmitted outside of doctrine is utterly simple and quintessential. From the beginning there is no other discussion; our predecessors carried it out without doubt and kept it without deviation.

During the Tianxi era of the Song dynasty (1012-1022) the Chan master Xuedou, using his talents of eloquence and erudition, with beautiful ideas in kaleidoscopic display, seek- ing freshness and polishing skill, followed the example of Fenyang in making verses on ancient stories, to catch and control the students of the time. The manner of Chan went through a change from this point on.

Then during the Xuanho era (1119-1125) Yuanwu also set forth his own ideas on the stories and verses from Xuedou, and from then on the collection was known as The Blue Cliff Record. At that time, the perfectly complete masters of the age, like Wayfarer Ning Huanglong Sixin Lingyuan and Fojian could not contradict what he said, so new students of later generations prized his words and would recite them by day and memorize them by night, calling this the highest study.

In the beginning of the Shaoxing era (1131-1163), Yuanwu’s enlightened successor Miaoxi went into eastern China and saw that the Chan students there were recalcitrant, pursuing the study of this book to such an extent that their involvement became an evil. So he broke up the woodblocks of The Blue Cliff Record and analyzed its explanations thus to get rid of illusions and rescue those who were floundering, stripping away excess and setting aside exaggeration, demolshing the false and revealing the true, dealing with the text in a special way. Students gradually began to realize their error, and did not idolize it anymore.

So if not for Miaoxi’s high illumination and far sight riding on the power of the vow of compassion to save an age of dereliction from its ills, the Chan communities would be in peril.

—letter to Zhang Zishao

https://terebess.hu/zen/Thomas-Cleary-Zen-Lessons.pdf

Submitted March 14, 2022 at 06:14AM by zennyrick https://ift.tt/9cW5aVK