Hello everybody, and welcome to the beginning of a series of five classes on the Blue Cliff Record. I kind of forgot, I usually send out a sheet and have everybody sign their name and then take attendance after that, but I forgot to bring my sheet, I'm a little disorganized today, so excuse me. And there's one week, for those of you who are not in residence at Green Gulch now, there's one week that I'm not going to, we're not going to have class, just so you know. The week of the, I think, yeah, the week that, November 10th is a Monday, so November 11th,

[01:06]

yeah, November 11th, we won't have class that Tuesday because I'm going to make a short trip to Tassajara, but otherwise we'll have five classes. And I want to pass out these handouts here, and if you have a copy of the Blue Cliff Record, this is nothing other than that. So if you have a copy of the text, don't take one, in case there aren't enough. And if you are interested in Zen literature and koans and stuff, I would really recommend that you get a copy of the Blue Cliff Record. It's something, it's a book that you won't, kind of like, read through once and then that's it. You'll probably go back to it again and again, so it's worth having, and you can find it

[02:09]

in used bookstores. If there's anybody in the class tonight who's a visitor, it's better to give the material to somebody who's in the class ongoingly, rather than take it. You want me to transfer it on the side, actually? Sure, you got some? Yeah. Okay. Does everybody get a copy of that? Are we missing, or we don't have enough? This should be five cases here.

[03:10]

Cases 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. Oh, they gave you 15 too. Got an extra case free of charge. A bargain. And although we could certainly spend more than one week on each case, if we wanted to, we won't. We'll just kind of polish it off in one session, and then we'll go on to the next one. Understanding that probably we could study it more and learn more about it, but we'll just spend one week on one case. So, I would like to say just a little bit about Koans, and just a little bit about what

[04:20]

they are and where they come from. I mean, I'm sure most of you know all this already, but it's nice to say it again in a little organized way. So, since from the beginning the Zen school was interested in the actual experience that the Buddha had under the Bodhi tree, not in the elucidation of that experience through the scriptures. The expression of that experience in a lively way as teachers and students together worked with each other was what Zen was most interested in, and so early on they would discuss with each other things that happened in the monastery and things that were said and so forth.

[05:22]

These were later collected into books that were called The Transmission of the Lamp, various just recollections, sayings and doings of the various old teachers. And then later on, there were those who would take, lift an interesting story from here and there in those books and make their own private collection for their own students of their favorites, just like I have my favorites and you have your favorites. These are the ones that really mean something to you and so you want to share them with your students, and so they became collections of koans, culled from here and there. And so the master, I guess 12th century master Shuedo did that. He collected a hundred stories, and usually when they collected the stories they often edited them slightly, and he collected a hundred stories and then he wrote, as had

[06:29]

become the custom by the Sung dynasty, when already Chan Buddhism was fairly well developed and the methods of Chan were well developed, there was the tradition of writing a verse, a poem, on his end stories. So master Shuedo did that. He collected one hundred stories and he wrote a poem for each one, and he used that as kind of like a little private text of his. And then, about a hundred years or eighty years or so after that, Yuan Wu, another master, took Shuedo's stories and poems and added an introduction and made a collection of commentary to each story and each poem. And so what we have here is that text, which is work by master Shuedo and Yuan Wu, and it became a very famous text used widely,

[07:35]

not just by Shuedo's own students, but disseminated and used by a lot of people, and particularly identified with the Rinzai school of Zen, although Soto practitioners used it also, and they say that Dogen Zenji discovered this book the night before he was coming back home to Japan from China, and that he was so enthusiastic about it that he copied the whole thing in one night, which seems outlandish in a way, but actually not so outlandish if you consider that maybe the text that he had was only Shuedo's stories and poems. If it was just the stories and the poems, he could have done it, maybe. So let's say that he did it, just to be nice about it. So he did that, and he brought it home with him and it circulated in Japan. So, you know, it has some currency in the Soto school as well, although the Shoya Roku,

[08:41]

the Book of Serenity, which is constructed by two different people in exactly the same way, obviously modeled on this text, that's mostly associated with the Soto school. So as far as I know, and my studies are not really current, but as far as I know, nobody knows for sure exactly how these stories were used by different meditation masters in the days of Chan in China in the 12th, 13th, 14th century. And it seems like, just using common sense and what little scholarship we have, that they probably used them in a variety of ways, and different people used them in different ways. Zen teachers are very independent and individualistic, and they do things in their own way, and so they probably had a lot of different techniques. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know.

[09:49]

The whole thing sort of dissipated, and after a while, like all religious traditions, and not only religious traditions, but other sorts of things, they have their great moments of efflorescence and their moments of decay, so there was kind of a decline. And then a great Japanese Zen master, at least now speaking in terms of the Japanese tradition, a Japanese Zen master in the 18th century named Hakuin, who was a great, really great Zen master, also a wonderful calligrapher and painter, a really energetic and quite funny guy, revitalized the system and created a whole system of his own out of all these materials. And all of the, through the Japanese lineages anyway, all of the koan methods that we have now come from Hakuin Zenji's revitalization. For a long time, there was a sort of a doctrinal

[10:56]

sectarian fight between Soto Zen and Rinzai Zen, and Soto Zen saying, we don't use koans, and Rinzai Zen saying, you're dumb, you don't use koans, we do. And the Soto people saying, oh, you're just a bunch of samurai, you use koans, you don't really do real practice. There were some people who had this kind of debate and so on, that lasted for a while, and they're different, among different teachers. But there were always Soto masters who went to Rinzai schools to learn the koan system and brought it into the Soto schools. So there were various Soto schools that had the Rinzai system, and other Soto schools that didn't use the system at all. So, in the system, you, there are lots of ways of working with

[12:01]

the system, but in the system, you basically memorize the story, and you are gently steered in the direction of a particular pivotal point in the story, which you take into your meditation practice. You breathe with that story, that particular point of the story, until it sort of disappears as an idea, and reappears as a kind of a vivid sense of your own breath or your own life. And then you just stay with that story, constantly going to the master for presenting your understanding until you finally get it right, and then you go on to another one. And the idea is that each one of these little stories is a kind of a window on reality, which can't be seen whole, but you can see it through a window. You see this window and that window and all the different windows all around, and pretty soon you start getting a feeling for how things are. So it's really a nice system, and it does depend on

[13:04]

a lot of interviews. So typically, when the system is used, you'll find that there are interviews, frequent saschins, and interviews maybe four times a day in each saschin. So you go to interview, you would go three, four times a day. And you really need to do that, because otherwise, because they give you little hints, you see. You go into the interview and you present an answer and you're wrung out. You can do that because you don't stay very long in the interview. You just stay a brief amount of time. And then you get little kind of hints, you know, oh, that wasn't it, and so on. And then eventually you can kind of get it. Without the hints, it would be pretty hard. So you need, that system depends, in my opinion anyway, on that kind of frequent interviews. In our tradition from Suzuki Roshi, we don't use that system. And as you know, we don't have that practice of frequent interviews

[14:09]

like that. And our way mostly focuses on Dogen's notion of genjo koan, which means the koan that is arising in the middle of our lives. And koan means, I mean, the word actually literally means like a public document, like a legal case or something like that, a precedent, you know, that sets the pattern. But the idea of a koan is that it brings us to a place where yes and no, right and wrong, black and white, don't apply. And so we have to go deeper in our lives. And that's true. Actually, every moment of our lives raises that question. It's like, you know, why are we born? How come we're dying? What is this life all about?

[15:09]

That question is actually there every moment of our lives. And so sometimes it gets raised vividly, and usually it doesn't. And these stories are supposed to bring us to that moment of our lives. But in our way of practice, we don't rely on the old stories so much. However, we do study them. And certainly, if you read the writings of Dogen Zenji, who's the founder of Soto Zen, he referred to these stories. And he himself had made his own private collection, which had 300 cases in it. So he clearly studied these stories and was interested in them. And always, in Shobo Genzo, his great work refers to them over and over again. So the idea is that in Soto Zen, and certainly in the way that we've developed over the years of working with them, we read them and study them and appreciate them and try to understand them for their deepest meaning. But our approach tends to be a little bit more literary, and kind of, let's talk about these stories and try to understand them, and maybe through

[16:13]

our meditation practice also really bring them to heart, to our heart. In other words, it's almost like we steep ourselves in these stories like a cup of tea. You just let the tea sit there for a while, long enough, and pretty soon the flavor is there. So it's more like that for us, rather than kind of a sudden penetration of the story. So in this class, we're going to take that approach, and it's debatable. For a long time I resisted doing a class like this, just because I wondered whether there was any virtue in speaking of these stories, and explaining this and explaining that, and bringing up the teachings that the stories indicate, and so on and so on and so on. I had serious doubts about whether there was any virtue in that, rather than actually taking up the cases in the doksan room in that system. But finally I decided, well, so what? Who knows? Does anyone

[17:17]

ever really know if they're doing any good or not? And I decided to do it just for myself, so that I could study the cases, which I know that I would be too lazy to do, or too busy. I would say that I was too busy to myself if I didn't have to talk to you about them. So having to talk to you about them means that I have to study them, and it's good for me, I think, because otherwise I probably would never think about them. And I usually, in a certain way, I mean now I've changed in these few short months of studying them, but before that I didn't particularly like them. So I thought, it's a bad thing for a Zen teacher who doesn't like Zen literature. It's no good. It's like a Catholic who dislikes the Bible and would rather read Khalil Gibran or something. It's no good. So I thought I'd better do something about this, otherwise I should change jobs. So I started to apply myself to this study,

[18:26]

and now you're, unfortunately or fortunately for you, you're just sitting in on my study of Rucliffe Record. And I hope to do all hundred cases before I'm done. So anyway, that's just to give you an idea. And I also may, from time to time, point out a place where here you can sit with this piece of the story, take that to your Zazen, and I would welcome any of you who would like to do that, to do that and come and see me and tell me the results of your investigations. And I do use, I've also used these stories and also original koans with students quite a bit. There's a style of doing koans developed in China and Korea, where you would have one koan for your whole life, understanding that any koan is

[19:26]

actually inexhaustible, even though you could penetrate the koan and have an answer to it and go on to other koans, that certainly doesn't mean that you've exhausted, how could you, it's like saying you've exhausted the meaning of your life, which one could never do. So Chinese would take a koan like, say for example, who am I? Or who is it? Or what is it? And they would have that koan for a lifetime, constantly sitting with that kind of question. So I've used that a lot with students, give them a question, what is suffering? Or something. Sit with that. And people have done that, and for many years sometimes, sit with a question like that and it can be very effective. Or taking a line from one of these stories and sitting with it like that for many years. Anyway, that's just a little background too, so that we're clear about what were the different aspects of koan study. So we're going to start with Case 10. Mu Zhou's Thieving Phony.

[20:35]

So here's the introduction. So, so, not so, not so. In battle, each occupies a pivotal position. That is why it is said, if you turn upwards, then even Shakyamuni, Maitreya, Manjushri, Samantabhadra and the myriad sages, together with all the masters in the world, all suck in their breath and swallow their voices. If you turn downwards, worms and maggots and everything that crawls, all sentient beings, each and everyone emits great shining light. Each and everyone towers like a wall miles high. So that's what they say. If on the other hand, you neither face upwards nor downwards, how would you deal? If there is a principle, go by the principle. If there is no principle, go by the example. To test,

[21:46]

I cite this. Look. So that's Master Yuan Wu's introduction to the case. And then the case. Mu Zhou asked a monk, where have you just come from? And the monk immediately gave a shout. One of those famous Zen shouts. You don't hear them too much around here, but there are places where they shout all the time. Mu Zhou said, I've been shouted at by you once. Which is, you know, one of the problems that we're going to have is we don't really know what this says. That's the problem. Because it's in Chinese, and maybe somebody here knows Chinese well enough to be able to read Tang Dynasty Chinese, but I don't. If you do, let me know and we'll talk in a class.

[22:48]

So all we have to do here is, you know, we have Thomas Cleary's idea about what it says, and I consult, when I study for these classes, I consult three or four different translations and I try to use my common sense and everything. And I have the feeling that in this particular case, Tom Cleary is a little bit off, because he doesn't agree with the other translators, and they agree with each other. And furthermore, the way they translate makes more sense. To me, anyway. So, you're laughing. So I think the idea here is, it's not just about the translation. It gives you the wrong impression. I've been shouted at by you once. I think the idea is, okay, you shouted me down. In other words, you win. Fine. I say, where have you come from? You shot. Fine. Good. You shouted me down. Congratulations. That's the idea. Okay? So, the monk shouts again.

[23:55]

So then Mujo says, okay, so after three, four, five shots, then what? And again, I think Cleary gives us an erroneous impression. He says, the monk had nothing to say. This is a delicate operation, this case. And I think that Cleary's translation here does not point us in the right direction. It's rather, I would say, the monk kept silent. It's different when the monk had nothing to say, right? The monk kept silent. Mujo then hit him. And he said, what a thieving phony you are. So that's the case. Okay? Then Master Yuanwu makes a verse. I mean, Suedo's verse goes, according to Cleary,

[25:04]

two shouts and then a third shout. Adepts recognize the opportune moment to change. You see these little words that are bracketed by asterisks underneath those lines that I'm reading? Those are a later, there's still a third Zen master whose name escapes me at the moment. This is the tradition, you know, beyond words and letters, right? But nevertheless, a third Zen master can't resist commenting on Suedo's verse which comments on the main case. And you can be sure that if somebody wanted to, they could make comments on the comments on the comments on the comments and that there are such things that exist. But what are the notes that are? The notes that are alphabetized are Cleary's notes. And those are just sort of, those notes are just sort of technical notes. But these comments here are Zen comments, you know. Are you going to be the fourth Zen teacher to comment?

[26:10]

Well, yes, I'm going to comment on all the comments, yes. Except it's not going to be written down in a book. So at least there's some virtue in that. So the verse is only the lines that come out to the margin. The other lines is not part of the verse. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yes. Two shouts and a third shout, adepts recognize the opportune moment to change. If you call that riding the tiger's head, the two of them would both turn out to be blind men. Who is a blind man? I bring it out for everyone to see. So that's Master Sedo's versification comment on the case. Okay, now, so these all seem like strange doings and sayings, I know. But one of the things that you're supposed to do when you discuss these cases, you're always supposed

[27:34]

to tell about the people, because these are people who were living and they were saying these things. And so you always have to tell about the people. So I'm going to tell you a little bit. And I go do research and look up all these books. So I have a great time with that. I like these characters. So I'll tell you about Mujo. And then after I tell you about Mujo, we'll go to the case. And looking at Mujo's life and his story and some of the things that happened, I think will help you to understand what this case is about and why it is the way it is. So Mujo lived in the 8th century, 8th, 9th century. So he was one of the earlier, at the kind of height of the development of Chan in China. His dates are 780 to 877. And he's sort of a little bit, not so much is known about his life, but one thing that all the

[28:39]

commentators mention about his life, which is very interesting, is that he, for a long time, earned his living. He lived with his old mother in a village. And for a long time he earned his living by making straw sandals, because this was a typical footwear for the straw sandals. And they would wear them out and they would need new ones, and so that's what he did. And he would kind of like, he would secretly give away the sandals. Like he would find some monk sleeping somewhere with worn out sandals, and he would like take his worn out sandals away and put a pair of new ones there, without anybody knowing. So he was, he became very well loved in his village for being so kind to do this. So somebody must have known. Oh yeah, people knew. But I mean, when the sandals would appear, you know what I mean,

[29:43]

and then they would say, oh, maybe, later on, as people caught on, they said, oh, it must have been old master Mujo who gave us these sandals. And there was one story that I found that said that one time bandits wanted to invade the town and take it over, and when Mujo heard about this, he made a gigantic sandal, a big, big one. And he hung it over the city gates. And when the bandits saw the sandal, they didn't come and invade the town. So now, in the story that I read, they said the reason that was, was not because they were afraid that there was a giant in the town, but because they knew that this saintly Mujo lived there, and so they wanted to protect the town out of respect for him. Anyway, it's

[30:46]

a story. But his style in Zen was in much contrast to this, because he was sort of obscure, and there are teachers who, one of the ways of being a Zen teacher is to be hard to find and hard to get at once you find them. And so he was like that. He kind of would beat people off with a stick. You really had to be, literally, you really had to be quite interested in studying with him in order to seek him out and stick with it, as you'll see in a moment when I tell some of the stories of how he did that. Anyway, I guess I won't go into all the lineage business, but one of the things that I'm always interested in

[31:46]

is showing how the relationship between the different, see there's a whole bunch of different styles in Zen and approaches, and it's interesting to see how they developed and who's what and where. Anyway, maybe it's enough to say for now that there was a, there was a, there was a famous master, Huangbo, who was a very important Zen master. And Huangbo had two disciples who were very important, and one of them was Mu Zhou, and the other one was Linji, or in Japanese Rinzai, who was the founder of the school that bears his name. And Rinzai's school is known for shouting. You see, that's why it's important to know that. Rinzai's school was, Rinzai was very famous for shouting. That was his thing. A lot of the Zen people were always trying to figure out, you know, how am I going to express this understanding

[32:52]

beyond words? And they would, various ones would come up with, you know, certain devices for trying to express themselves, and Linji had a device of shouting at people all the time. So if you read the record of Linji, it's full of, he shouted, they shouted, we shouted, we all shouted, everybody shouts. So, so in this story, that's one of the things that's going on, is that the student is sort of working, trying to figure out the shout, working with the shout as a way of expressing his understanding. So, now Muzo was an older Dharma brother of Linji, and when Linji came to study with Huangbo, Muzo was the shuso, or the tanto, or something. So I'm going to tell you the story of what happened to Linji when Muzo was the tanto,

[33:53]

because it's very interesting, I think. It tells you a lot about Linji, and about how they lived together and worked together in the monastery, and how they took care of each other. I think it's an interesting story. So here's how it goes. So Muzo is the head monk, and Linji shows up to study. And Linji is very pious and quiet, and sort of plotting, not too bright, but does everything right, and really tries hard. So he comes to the monastery, and Muzo notices him and is impressed with him, doesn't say anything. And one year goes by, two years goes by, three years go by, Linji never goes to doksan with the teacher, in three years. So Muzo is observing this, and he says, well, I don't know what to say, how come you don't go in to see the master? And Linji says, I think in a very humble and

[34:57]

heartfelt way, remember now, this is Mr. Schaus, he says, you know, my practice is so poor that I wouldn't even know what to ask, I wouldn't even have anything to say. So Muzo says, and this same sort of thing happens around here all the time, Muzo says, look, go, I think you should go, don't worry about it, it'll be good, it's really important to go to doksan, so you go. So Linji goes, and before he can open up his mouth, Huang Bo hits him. So imagine that, three years, you don't go to doksan, you go in to doksan, the teacher hits you and he's going to kick you out. That's what happened. So Linji felt terrible, you can imagine how you would feel, he felt terrible about this. So Muzo said, well, listen, the teacher's a really good guy, and in all sincerity, I don't think he's fooling around, Muzo, he's

[36:01]

really concerned about Linji's welfare, so he says, go again. Well, he goes again, same thing happens. He goes a third time with Muzo's urging, same thing happens. So then Linji says, and this again, this shows the kind of spirit, he says, well, of course, there's nothing else to do but leave. I go, I don't even have a question, I'm urged by the head monk to go in, I go in, I get struck with the stick three times, I tried my best, and he says, it must be that I have a strong karmic obstruction and I just don't seem to be able to understand the teaching, so I'm just going to have to go, I guess I'll go away. So he's ready to go and Muzo says, oh man, don't do that. Anyway, if you have to go, before you go, go see the teacher one more time and say goodbye. Not to ask a question, but it is protocol, and it is, you know, you don't leave the monastery without, you shouldn't anyway, without going to see the teacher and saying thank you very much, and making your vows and leaving. It's

[37:04]

just a custom. So Linji goes in to say goodbye to Huangpo. In the meantime, Muzo, for the first time, goes to Huangpo. He hadn't spoken to him before, but now he says, look, this guy Linji is a wonderful student, and I don't know what you've been doing with him, but please have some compassion on him, because I really think that he's a great student. And I think that Linji, I mean Huangpo, this is my interpretation, Huangpo did not understand Linji's spirit. Muzo needed to tell him what was going on, because he didn't understand. So after Muzo talked to Huangpo, he says to, so then Linji comes, you know, and he says, well, doesn't hit him this time. He says, well, since you're going, why don't you go see Master Dayu? That's where you should go. So Linji says, okay. So he goes to see

[38:08]

Master Dayu, and he tells Dayu the whole story. You know, maybe upset, you know. Tells Dayu the whole story. And Dayu says, don't you see that Master Huangpo was treating you with grandmotherly compassion, trying to release you from your suffering? And yet, you think that there's karmic obstructions and that you're at fault. You just don't see what's going on. And at this, Linji subtly understands the kindness of Huangpo and bursts out laughing, and says one of the great famous lines in Zen, now I see there's nothing at all to Huangpo's Zen. You know, what a bum. Huangpo has nothing to it at all. And Dayu says, hey, you just came to me a minute ago telling me about how you feel, bad you feel, this and that. Now you're telling me there's nothing wrong, nothing good about, nothing special

[39:08]

about Huangpo's Zen? And then Linji punches him. And then Dayu says, you better go back to Huangpo, he's your teacher. So the thing is that this is kind of astonishing in a way, just the whole way that they relate to each other and the way that this all happens. And you know, can't you relate to this thing of Linji feeling like there's some karmic obstruction I just can't understand, and it's my fault, and so on. I mean, this is how we feel. But when he understands from Dayu, somehow Dayu helps him to understand that it's not about that at all, that Huangpo's treatment of him really is kind, when he realizes that. And when he realizes that, in fact, he understands already. Then all of a sudden he turns from being this sort of very straightforward, mild-mannered guy to Mr. Shout, almost just

[40:09]

like that. So it's an interesting story. So now Muzo, later on, goes out to teach on his own. And he definitely learns something from Huangpo's methods. And he himself, now seeing that, used similar methods to the way that Huangpo taught. And this is a hard way to teach. I mean, in other words, and it doesn't work unless, no it works, it works really good, but it only works, this is my opinion, I'm just telling you how I feel, it only works when there is a tremendous, first of all, when the student already is well-rooted and grounded in Buddhism, has tremendous faith, number one, and number two, has more or less given up everything else in their lives but the way. Then it works. Because then the person, when you hit them, they don't just run screaming

[41:11]

out of there. They deal with it. They come back. However, it's not skillful, I think, in other situations. Because you've got to know who you're hitting. So I think that if we try to use such methods around here, we would be insane. Because I don't think it would work. It would only create tremendous trouble and harm. So maybe in 100 years we can get into the shouting part and the hitting part. Not yet. Anyway, we already, in studying, you know, if you study case number six, you will be introduced to Master Yunmun, and Master Yunmun, and I'm telling you about Master Yunmun, this is like, studying koans is like a hypertext card. There's a story, one story leads to another, and it goes on infinitely. I won't keep going like that. I'll just stop it at some point arbitrarily. One story just leads to another. So Yunmun, it's important

[42:16]

to know about him because he was a very famous Zen master as well, and he started by going to Muzho. So this gives me a chance to tell you a little bit about Muzho's teaching style, you see, by telling you about Yunmun's study with Muzho. So Muzho, as I said, was obscure and hard to find, and if you could find him, if you could get in the gate, he would grab you by the collar and say, speak, speak, you know, while you're being, you know, and if you didn't say anything, he would throw you out and close the gate. That was his, that's how he taught. So Yunmun came, and you know, he said, speak, speak, and Yunmun didn't say anything. He threw him out, closed the gate, and Yunmun's leg was in the gate when he slammed it, and he busted Yunmun's leg, and Yunmun became enlightened. So Yunmun always loved Muzho for this, and Yunmun himself developed a similar style. He took it,

[43:31]

he took it, he took it to a different, a different, in a different way. So I see by that you're laughing, I'm not quite getting the point across. Let's talk about the shout. Maybe that will help. Now, so on Sunday, we had a funeral, right? And some of you were there. I was there. And in a funeral, the sojin, our senior dharma teacher, officiated at the funeral, and he spoke of birth and death, and in the middle of his remarks, he gave a great shout, just like Linji would shout. Just like that. And that's very traditional to do that. In fact, that's how you're supposed, if you,

[44:33]

if you actually, the traditional way to do a funeral ceremony is to, you write a verse, and the last line of the verse is a shout. Now, the shout is a serious thing because, and when we were sitting there in the funeral, and we heard that shout, it wasn't a joke. You know, it was a serious thing. I mean, this is, this is life, right? Beyond words, it's beyond explanations, beyond our expressions of sadness for the person who's gone. How can we understand birth and death? How can we understand the fact that we're alive? I mean, like, this was a woman who died, who was a dear friend of many of us, and she had children who were fairly young. How could they, they stood up and they said something, but how could they really understand? How could they express the strangeness and the incomprehensibility of losing their mother, you know? How can you understand that? And, and you

[45:39]

can't express it. So a shout does pretty well, actually. Now, the shout, it seems to me, is the equivalent in Zen of the famous thundering silence of Vimalakirti. In the Vimalakirti Sutra, there's this whole little storyline, but basically what it comes down to is many, many, many wonderful Buddhist students are asked to express their understanding of reality, and they all express something, and all the things that they express are wonderful. But when Vimalakirti is asked to express his understanding, he's silent. And it's not the silence of, I don't know something, or the silence of, I won't say, or the silence of, let's just be quiet now and not think about it. It's a very active silence that expresses the ineffable. So they call it the thundering silence of Vimalakirti.

[46:40]

So the reason why in Zen that silence appears as a shout, I would say, is because Zen emphasizes activity and energy and personality. A shout is an expression, a spontaneous, strong, no-holds-barred, no-nonsense expression of, you know, reality is ungraspable. I appreciate that, you know. I live, I live my life based on that. I know that birth and death are here every moment, and I take a step forward into that. That's what the shout is. So it's a serious shout. However, not always, because people imitate a shout, or they make a shout into a style. So it becomes a laughable thing in a way, when it's not really. So in other words, is the shout real or not? Is the shout

[47:47]

authentic or not? Is it a jokey shout? Is it a Zen shout? Or is it really and truly expressing this reality? And the same thing is true with all these other expressions, the beating and the hitting and so on, which sometimes has different meanings depending on the situation, as does the shout. And, you know, when you give a Zen talk, it's actually, the name of the Zen talk, which is given by a qualified teacher, who is, you know, fully qualified to teach Zen, is actually called Teisho. It's a different term for the talk that's given by the qualified teacher. And the Teisho, I think, I believe, translates as presenting the shout. So that when you give a Dharma talk, when a Zen teacher gives a Dharma talk, you really aren't necessarily expected to explain or

[48:52]

elucidate the Dharma. Basically, your talk should be the equivalent of a shout. In other words, a personal, strong expression of ultimate reality to the best of your ability to do so, rather than an explanation of Buddha Dharma. So, you know, in reality, often we don't give Teisho. You know, often, like when I give talks, quite often, I mean, of course, you could say that one is always expressing that, and I try to do that, but usually in our talks we are elucidating the Dharma. But actually a real Zen talk is not to elucidate the Dharma, but it's just to present the shout, to demonstrate, really, to demonstrate the Dharma rather than explain it. So, anyway, that's something about the shout. Rinzai himself, who developed the shout, he wasn't the first one to do it. Two generations before him, Matsu was the first Zen master to give a shout, and he gave a tremendous

[49:56]

shout, apparently, that Baizhang, his disciple, on hearing it was deaf for three days. The story goes, so tremendous was Matsu's shout, but he didn't sort of raise the shout to the level of technique as Rinzai did. So Rinzai has lots to say about the shout. Anyway, so that's a little background. So now we can appreciate better, you know, this story and where it's coming from. But first let's go back to this. So let's now talk about, I'll just go through, oh boy, I'll go through this and point out some things that interested me or that I think are valuable, and then after that we'll see how much time we have and what we're talking about. So, see, the basic problem that we have is, because we have minds, you know, we have opinions, and we stick to those opinions,

[51:06]

the opinions blind us. So we drop one opinion and we pick up the opposite opinion, and then that blinds us. And we seem to be constantly stuck on the horns of the dilemma, as long as we have a mind. And our practice is trying to get us to let go of all of that and just stand in the middle of the shout, stand in the middle of this feeling for reality. So that's what this introduction is telling us about. So, so, not so, not so. In other words, these are, you know, one opinion is it's so, the other opinion is it's not so. Either way, these are just positions, opinions to have. In battle, each occupies a pivotal position. So when we debate, we debate yes or no. That is why it is said, if you turn upwards, then even Shakyamuni, etc., together with all the masters in the world, all suck in their breath and swallow their voices. If you turn downward, worms and maggots, etc. So

[52:11]

turning upward means taking the absolute position beyond, you know, everything, the silence. If you take the absolute position, then nobody, no person, even Shakyamuni Buddha and Maitreya Buddha and all the Buddhas, all have to humble themselves before the absolute, which is bigger than anybody could understand. If you turn downwards, if you turn toward the relative, then each and everything, it not only completely understands it, but each and everything manifests it like a shining light. And yet, these are just two different opinions, two different positions. What about when you face neither upwards nor downwards? What about when you just stand in the middle of reality without an opinion of the absolute or opinion of the relative or attachment to either one? How do you present

[53:13]

reality without falling to either extreme? So the case is going to give us a feeling for that. So Mujo asked a monk, where have you just come from? And you see this question over, this was a standard question that the Zen teachers would ask. Where do you come from? I often ask that question myself, and I remember when I first went to study with one of my teachers, he asked me that question, where do you come from? And I remember I said, surprised him, I said, well, I really don't know. But I was born in such and such, and you know, he was surprised that I said I really don't know. So I often ask that to people and they say, San Francisco or Marin or something. But of course the question is, it means San Francisco or Marin, but also it means, where do you really come from? How does your life appear? How could it be? Who are you really? Something like that. The monk,

[54:20]

this is a savvy monk, the monk shouts, gives a shout. And I think, so the question, we're left with in this koan, is what is that shout? Is that a phony Zen shout? Is the monk showing off? Is the monk arrogant? Is the monk really presenting Rinzai's non-dual shout? You know, there's no, one thing about the shout, the true shout, is that there's absolutely nothing holding on. In other words, there's no shadow of, look at me, I just gave a shout, or what a great shout, or something, you know. It's just, this is it, I could die right now and it's fine. No question of good or bad, or right or wrong. So what kind of shout was that? So Mujo said, fine, good shout, you win. So maybe Mujo is a little bit testing to find out what kind of shout that was. And the monk shouted

[55:28]

again. And again, you know, it's not exactly, and this is the crux of the koan, is that we have to know, we have to decide, we have to find the shout in ourselves, so that we can be in the position of that monk and really know what the shout is. So then Mujo again says, after three or four shouts, then what? And the monk is silent. What does that mean? Does that mean that the monk is embarrassed by Mujo's calling him on his phoniness? Or does it mean that the monk is now presenting silence as the shout? So that's for you to think about. Then Mujo hit him and said, what a thieving phony you are. Now you've got to understand that in Zen, the fact that somebody hits somebody doesn't

[56:28]

mean that they're wrong or made a mistake. Hitting can be a great compliment. When Huangbo hit Linji, what did that mean? In the story I told you before, was Huangbo actually seeing Linji's accomplishment and hitting him out of congratulations? And Linji was misunderstanding and not letting go? Maybe if Linji would have let go after the first hit, he would have realized, Huangbo is hitting me because he loves me, because he really acknowledges me. Instead, Linji was stuck on his feeling of inferiority, so he saw the hitting as something like, you don't know what you're talking about. But sometimes hitting is, you dummy. See, it's not obvious. You see, because this is the whole problem and the beauty of our life,

[57:39]

is that it's not like enlightenment and delusion are divided up neatly into different columns. You see, it's not like that. If we divide them up neatly into different columns, then we're not really appreciating what enlightenment is, and we're not really appreciating, we're not really understanding what delusion is. It's through a full-bodied and personal, I don't know if this is quite the word I want, but ownership of the person that we are, as we are, that we express our enlightenment. It's not throwing away the person that we are and becoming some sort of perfect Buddha. It's being the person that we are with full-bodied acceptance. So in that sense, being a Buddha and being a, what does he call him, a thieving phony, are mixed up together.

[58:41]

See, that's why we have to, ourselves, come to an appreciation of this in ourselves before we have the eye to see whether he means you're really a dummy and that's why I hit you, or I really think you're wonderful and I approve of your understanding and that's why I hit you. So they're having a very important conversation in which they both are aware of what's at stake. They're having a very important conversation about the nature of birth and death. And the commentary, I think, gives us some hints and some good suggestions as to the nature of their dialogue. So I'm going to say a few things about the commentary. First of all, the commentary says, if you want to establish

[59:45]

the teaching of our school, you must have the eye of a true master and the functional ability of a true master. So these two things, the eye and the functional ability, are the sort of, this is the meat and potatoes of sin. The eye, I don't know if some of you were hearing my talk on Sunday, in the pointer on Case 9 that I talked about on Sunday, this same thing is referred to in the introduction, where it says, the mirror, remember, the mirror and the sword. The mirror and the sword is like the eye and the function. So the mirror or the eye is that you see clearly. In other words, basically, almost nobody sees clearly. It's very rare to see clearly, right? Because we're so blinded by our self-interest,

[60:45]

basically, or our experience, that we always project the past and our self-interest onto whatever we're seeing. Just like maybe Linji was projecting his sense of inferiority onto Huang Bo's striking him. He saw it as one thing and it was maybe another thing. So to actually, through the process of our practice, purify our eye so that we can see things clearly, as they are. As it says in Case 9, whatever is in the mirror is reflected just as it is, without any distortion. So that's 50%. And the other 50% is, based on that clear sight, it's not enough, you see, to just have clear vision. We have to act. Zen is all about the dynamic action, which is always unique and always fresh and personal. But not willfully personal. In other words, this is reality as it really is. I'm a human being. I'm in this

[61:51]

position right now. I have to come forth in response to reality. Zen is very active in that way. It has to be. That's really the essence of it. Those two sides. Because if you come forth without the eye, you just make a mess. And if you sit there with the eye and you don't get up, you're too passive. Either way, your Zen practice is incomplete. So you have to have a balance of these two factors. So, let's see. So, down in the next paragraph, the monk was well-polished and prepared, but nevertheless he had a dragon's head but a snake's tail. So this tells us pretty clearly what's going on, because dragon means clear-eyed Zen student. Snake means confused. So this monk, he partly was really pretty good, and partly was confused. So in the

[63:03]

course of the story, this monk actually wins a great victory, because he's able to see clearly in the course of the story, as we'll find out. So then the next thing is the whole thing is discussed pretty clearly. So this monk had a dragon's head. In other words, he was a pretty good student, so anybody but Master Mujo would have been thrown into confusion by this monk. And when Mujo asked him, where have you just come from? And the monk shouted, what was his meaning? The old fellow wasn't at all flustered. He replied, I've been shouted at by you once. He seems to take that shout and put it to one side, and he also seems to test him. Again, the monk shouted. He seems to be right, but he isn't yet really right. His nostrils were pierced by the old fellow, meaning the old fellow hung him up to dry, who immediately asked, after three or four shots, then what? The monk was speechless. So where does it say it in part, where it changes? Oh, it's in the poem.

[64:17]

Here, if you can discern survival and destruction, and distinguish right and wrong, if your feet tread the ground of reality, then who is concerned with after three or four shots, then what? See, if you are intimidated by that question, then you're still holding on, right? I'm going to go into the teacher, I'm going to shout, I'm going to get it right. Because there is a right. There is a wrong. But actually, there isn't a right and a wrong, there's just now. So, when the monk holds silence, like I say, clearly he seems to feel that, here, the way he translates, that when the monk holds silence, the monk is defeated. But I would say, and I think that in the commentary on the poem, and in the poem itself, it seems to me that the monk realizes, after his second shout, that there was a shadow of holding on in his shout.

[65:34]

And then when he's speechless, it's not because he's embarrassed, or like Rinzai, slinking away, oh, I don't have, it was more like he understood. So his silence was upright silence, an active silence. And that when Mujo then says, you're a phony thief, and he hits him, it's an approval. And the poem, I think, would indicate that. But you could see it either way. That's the interesting thing about these stories, is sometimes you can see it the other way as well. And in these dialogues, the dialogues are not really, they're often called dharma combat, but you don't think they're dharma combat. The sense of it is more like bringing out the dharma together. And when we bring out the dharma together, we take various positions. Somebody says yes, somebody else has to say no. But you could do it the other way around. You could say yes, and I could say no. Together, all together, in the whole gestalt of it, we bring out the truth.

[66:51]

So I think the monk's silence, he understood what Mujo was telling him, and he just came forward with his acceptance and acquiescence and understanding. And Mujo was satisfied. He had a bee there, probably, to tell. So you can see the poem in front of you. And I'll give you some variant translations. Two shouts, three shouts, the knowing one knows well. If going hell-bent, both are blind. Who is blind, fetch him and expose him to the world. And another translation. Two shouts, three shouts, the enlightened person is smart. But if you say that's sitting astride a tiger, then both of you are blind. Who are the blind ones, go fetch them and show everyone.

[67:54]

Sitting on a tiger's head, or sitting astride a tiger, is translated by one translator as going hell-bent, because the idea is that that's how tigers are. Tigers just jump. They don't think. So if you're sitting on a tiger's head, you're someone who gives a shout without worrying about it. So this line, two shouts, three shouts, the third shout is Mujo saying, not shouting at all, but saying words. Lungji distinguished between four kinds of shouts. He said there's four kinds of shouts. One shout is like a prajna sword, showing emptiness. The next kind of shout is like a crouching lion, flushing out the opponent. The third kind of shout is like a fishing pond, looking for the slightest movement of the line. And the last kind of shout is the shout that doesn't look like a shout or work like a shout.

[69:25]

So that's the kind of shout that Mujo gives in this case. That's the kind of shout that, on Sunday I talked about Master Jaojao, who never shouted. That was his kind of shout. See, Master Jaojao shouted by very simple words. So that's the fourth kind of shout. So I think the poem, two shouts, three shouts, is saying that all these shouts are valid shouts. Both Mujo and the monk have a good eye, and especially the monk, because the monk changes and learns, doesn't stick to a shout. He could have shouted a hundred times, but he didn't stick to it. He was able to change and he was able to give his shout as silence. Both are blind. Well, again, there's five kinds of blindness. There's the blindness of ordinary people, who really are blind to their lives.

[70:39]

There's the blindness of heretics, which means people who have powerful religious powers and ideas, except they're wrong and they're poisonous. There's the blindness of enlightened people, who are blind to the ordinary world, although they see reality, deeper reality. There's the blindness of people who stick to their enlightenment. That's another kind of blindness. And then there's the blindness of Buddha, which is the best blindness of all. So in other words, what this is telling us is that the term blindness, like the Zen striking you, or like the Zen insulting you, is double-edged. Sometimes blindness is the blindness of ordinary people who don't know what they're doing, and sometimes it's the blindness of people stuck to enlightenment, and sometimes it's the blindness of Buddha. So there's those distinctions and those differences, but actually they're not so different. So Buddha doesn't look at ordinary people and think, what blind dummies, if only they could be like me, enlightened. So I'm different from them.

[71:52]

You can't imagine the Buddha saying such things or thinking such things, right? When the Buddha sees beings, he sees beings just like him. And they say that when the Buddha was enlightened, he said, what a marvelous thing, that all beings are enlightened. So Buddha's vision of enlightenment was not that he was enlightened, he could see and others were blind. His vision of enlightenment was that everybody is in the same boat that I'm in, and I'm in the same boat that they're in. So on the one hand, that's why blindness can be viewed from either side. Do you see what I'm saying? It can be viewed from either side. The shout can be viewed from either side. Yeah, it's warm, isn't it? Man, I'm getting tired. So, I think the poem is saying that they're both blind, and then it's for us to discern. I mean, I'm saying that I think that my favorite interpretation of the story is that the monk sees, and especially is to be credited for changing.

[73:14]

But, you have to think about it. So, then here he quotes Lungji's kinds of shouts in the commentary. Let's see. So at the end, the last paragraph of the commentary, Suedo says, Who is a blind man? Tell me. Is it the guest who's blind, or is it the host who's blind? Aren't guest and host both blind at the same time? This is what I've been saying. Guest is the unenlightened person. The host is the enlightened person. So, Suedo is bringing up this issue of blindness and saying, Who's blind? And aren't they both blind at the same time, each in their own way? So, a good way to meditate on this story is to ask yourself the question, Who is blind?

[74:23]

Who is blind? What is blindness in the context of this story? Or you could ask yourself, Where do you come from? Where do I come from? The question that opens the story. Or, you could sit with your breath as the monks shout. Each breath is a shout. You could sit with that. What is that shout? These are some ways that you could work with this story in your satsang practice. Because in the end, we've talked about the story and we've hopefully at least made it a little bit less absurd than it appears at first. And hopefully we've succeeded in giving you the idea that there's something really going on here, more than just a bunch of guys slapping each other around and giggling. Although they're probably doing that too.

[75:24]

What the issues are. Hopefully you have a better sense of what the issues are. However, the story doesn't really mean all that much until you really sit with it. Then, who is blind? Who is blind? Who is enlightened? You could ask, Who is enlightened? What is enlightenment? What is the shout? What is the breath? In that way, with this story in your mind, sitting with it in that way, you can maybe appreciate it more deeply. What's involved here. It's a radical thing. We say it over and over again, but it's actually a very radical thing that there isn't any doctrine. There isn't any right answer. There isn't any description of reality that we can all say, Oh yes, good, now I have that. There's only, in effect, standing naked in the face of birth and death, and living completely.

[76:34]

Which is not an easy thing to do, and you have to constantly let go. So here, this is a case of a very intense conversation in which the necessity to respond with being viewed clearly by the other is there every minute. How do you respond without holding on to anything? That's what these two are doing with each other in this story. Out of love for each other. In all these stories, I see them as very affectionate dialogues. Not pampering each other. In a way, you could say that the deepest love is when we don't pamper each other, but when we're really straight with each other. But with kindness, and with a real sense of mutual concern, which I don't see that in a story like this.

[77:40]

Anyway, anything to bring up? Yes. In some of these old stories, there's so much hitting and striking. We were just talking about dealing in a direct way with kindness, and you seem to be intimating that when you struck him, that one way of looking at it is that it was a kind strike. I'm just having a very hard time understanding that. Well, you know, Maureen Stewart, bless her soul, is no longer with us, but when she was around, she was a Rinzai teacher, and she would tell these stories all the time, and she would always say, and then Master Rinzai hit him. She had a way of saying, hit him, I'll never forget. And he hit him! And she would explain that hit him, I forget exactly how she said it, but she had a beautiful way of explaining that it was like direct personal contact. Maybe it wasn't that he hit him with a stick, maybe it was that he hugged him.

[78:44]

Maybe it was that he grabbed him, or maybe it was that he looked at him. In other words, there was real contact, actual contact in some way, in some direct way. So she actually didn't interpret it as meaning, literally, that he hit him. So you could give it another, you know, and he, I don't know what, he made contact with him, or they met, they met. He reached out and something, I don't know. But she would, she also, one of the things that I sometimes do, that I learn from her, is she would go around the Zendo, and you know how we used to have the stick and hit people? Well, she would massage people. And sometimes I do that, and when I do that I do it out of love for her because I remember her doing it. That was how she hit people. See? So the idea of, you know, a direct, unadorned, no politeness, just really meeting each other, you know?

[79:51]

In other words, we're so intimate that we don't have to, there's no social conventions here. There's just meeting one another, meeting one another, you know, like that. Nakedly, just meeting, you know? So that's, it's more like that, rather than, I mean, it's hard for us to, hitting always has the connotation of some sort of violent, negative thing, but I don't think it's meant that way. And clearly, like I've been in Zen mondo, where I've been hit or I've hit somebody, and very often it's, you know, it's like, I don't have my stick with me, but it's like this. You know? Like that. In other words, it's affectionate. You ever have your old grandmother or something hit you? My grandmother used to hit me like this. Oh, you're such a good boy. You're so good. You're so good. You know, like that. So I think that I look at it that way. And then, you know, these stories got extremely stylized over the centuries. And so you know that these are not exactly what happened.

[80:54]

And they did, and you know, they definitely, somewhere along the line there, it did kind of turn and it became a tough guy thing. I mean, it did. There was a kind of a, I mean, look, I mean, don't forget there was how many hundreds of years of Japanese militarism that Zen was cooperating with. Those people translated and worked on these stories too. So it turned into that. I mean, there was certainly an element of that in it as the centuries wore on. And the monasteries did take on a militaristic and tough guy flavor. But you see the story, like I told you, about Mujo and Rinzai. And how Mujo had lovely kindness, you know, please go into the teacher. It wasn't a setup. I think he was really concerned about Rinzai. But then the strikes that Rinzai takes, he takes them as in, you know, there's something wrong with him and he wants to flee. Which doesn't intimate that it was like your grandmother's cattle. No, in that case, well, there's a million kinds of hitting and a million kinds of shouting, right?

[81:58]

No, in that case, I think what happened there, my interpretation would be that didn't you ever have the experience of someone, surely you must have, many people in this room have had the experience of someone meeting you in a strong way, assuming your strength and your competence. And you take it as, oh my God, they're really putting me down. Didn't that ever happen to you? So there was some kind of encounter like that. See, where Huangbo is just coming on, you know, like this guy is a, you know, and I think that, I know from being a teacher, that often happens where you see somebody for the first time and you, this, I have a number of people that I work with where I can see that person has a lot of chops as a human being. Wow, what a great person. And so I relate to them that way. But they think, oh my God, you know, I can't do anything. So it takes a long time before they see in themselves what I see in them.

[83:01]

And I think that's what happened. And Linji did not appreciate what Huangbo was, how Huangbo was reacting to him. He was stuck on his own stuff. And so, but the psychological thing about how after that, Rinzai becomes this teacher who was, he was constantly, I mean, Rinzai's shout in a sense is like saying, I'm going to give you nothing. That's how much I respect you. I'm not going to pamper you one bit. Everybody here is a Buddha and I don't have to do anything. I don't have to compliment you or sort of bring you along nicely or anything like that. You're a Buddha and to hell with it, you know. If you don't like it, tough. You are a Buddha. Stand up to that. That was Rinzai's teaching style after his experience. Can you see how that would, yeah, see? That's what's interesting about these stories. That's how these people come to these things.

[84:03]

So because of that, because that was his experience, he sort of in a way went the other direction. So, but you know, like I say, these little stories are, they're stylized. They're just the tiniest little shorthand for what it must have really been. You've got to flesh these things out and imagine. I think you start with the assumption that these people were people like us. Granted, you know, the culture was different and so on, and so there are important differences, but basically when it comes down to it, they were in the same business we're in. They were trying to figure out their lives and, you know, figure out who they were and why they were on this planet and what they're supposed to be doing and, you know, and they had suffering. If they didn't have suffering, they would not have been practicing Buddhadharma. Many of them were orphans or had had tremendous suffering in their lives and in the course of their practice underwent tremendous suffering,

[85:07]

deprivated, had bad food in the monasteries and cold weather and no heat, and I mean, they really suffered a lot, you know, to try to penetrate these ultimate questions. So, I mean, they were like us in a lot of ways, even though the object of conditions were different. So when you think of it that way, then you can, I think, appreciate that it must have been this way, you know, like that. Well, yes? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay, well, since it's practice period, it's our custom to go over and bow out at the end of class.

[86:10]

So, all those people in the practice period, please come over to the Zen Dojo and join me to bow and chant the refuges. And anybody else who would like to join us is welcome to do that and we'll see each other in the Zen Dojo in about five minutes. Venerable Rinpoche.

[86:29]

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