Chan Buddhism

She said it was the student's own inner light and goodness, not something manufactured or released or borrowed from the teacher.

Daniella quoted the Platform Sutra, which is one of the foundational texts of Chan Buddhism, or Zen Buddhism as we know it in the West.

This was attributed to Hui Nung.

He was an illiterate woodcutter who became the sixth patriarch.

Describe what Ji Gong looks and acts like in this moment.

Ji Gong, historically based on a real Southern Song Dynasty Buddhist monk named Daoji, is the ultimate embodiment of the crazy wisdom tradition in Chan or Zen Buddhism.

Crazy wisdom?

Yes.

To understand the how of Ji Gong's method, you have to look at the concept of a pattern interrupt in psychology.

Like breaking a habit.

Yes, fused with the Chan Buddhist concept of prajna, or direct unfiltered insight.

Fu Yud is locked in a cognitive death spiral.

We're really jumping around.

This is Chan, Chan Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism.

We know it as Zen in the West, but originally it was Chan Buddhism.

And I'm going to read you about Yun Men, Yun Men, one of the great Zen masters.

Just a bit of context.

You talk about Jing Shengtan in this chapter 4, and you made him appear almost like a spiritual guide in disguise.

And he's well versed in all kinds of Buddhist or religious performances and religious verses.

He's regularly performing Buddhist sermons, holding Chan Buddhist dialogues.

And you discuss this as necessary context for understanding his Six Books of Genius, which is his commentary on the Xi Xiang Ji, the Western Wing.

So are you suggesting that Jing Sheng Tan's drama commentary was similarly a performance of spiritual, specifically Buddhist, communion?

Yeah, this is a chapter I really like too, because I've always been a fan of Jing Sheng Tan.

A lot of people are fans of Jing Sheng Tan.

Rather, his interest spans across various genres and fields.

But Zen does not originate in Japan.

The word Zen as we use it in English comes from a Japanese transliteration of Chan, which is itself a Chinese transliteration of the word dhyana.

Obviously, Chan doesn't originate in China any more than Zen originates in Japan, because dhyana is a Sanskrit word, uh, in Pali, it's jhāna, and it's difficult to translate.

It refers originally to something like a meditative state.

Some describe it as a kind of meditative ecstasy, even Nishitani does this.

Dogen and Hakuin are traditionally the two most important figures for bringing Zen from China to Japan, Dogen in the Middle Ages, Hakuin in the early modern period.

Dogen founded the Soto school, and Hakuin revived the Rinzai school.

They claimed lineage from the Chan Buddhist tradition, which by the time Dogen brought Zen to Japan, had existed for almost seven hundred years in China.

Exactly.

For a monk to openly reject the calendar of his own institution is a radical statement of Chan Buddhist non-attachment.

He is arguing that performative rituals do not generate spiritual liberation.

They are just another ledger of debts and credits you owe to the gods.

Welcome to Cosmopolitan Zen, a podcast that offers an inclusive vision of 21st century Zen as it evolves through Western culture.

While honoring the traditional Chan and Zen approaches, Cosmopolitan Zen brings together diverse perspectives of Buddhist practice and contemporary approaches to awakening through developmental psychology and integral theory.

Hosted by Ekai Joel Kreisberg, Cosmopolitan Zen is a program of Shining Bright Lotus Meditation Society, an online sangha.

You can find out more at www.shiningbrightlotus.org.

Okay, so I won't ask for questions.

I hope you're keeping up with me on this one.

When we start to move into awareness, pure awareness, clear deep heart mind, fundamental wellbeing, Chan, Zen, Dhyana, all these words we have for this experience that moves beyond the thinking mind, right? The narrative self, right? What happens when we start to reflect about that experience? That's metacognitive awareness.

So you start to notice what it's like to have the experience of awakened awareness, of pure awareness.

He is destroying the illusion of order.

That captures the essence of crazy wisdom, which is a concept prevalent in Chan Buddhism and Taoism.

Crazy wisdom?

Yes.