Huangbo Xiyun

But that isn't the stuff that was, that, that I was asked to believe.

There was all this sort of philosophical stuff about the oneness of body and mind, or the oneness of the whole universe, or the idea, uh, Huang Po says that, that the entire universe is a manifestation of mind.

Uh, things like that were hard to accept, and I always took them with a grain of salt, as we say in English.

I always had a certain amount of doubt in them.

All these various lineages of the Dharma assert that the myriad of things and phenomena are even and balanced, undivided mind, undivided mind, other than which there is nothing.

That being so, how could we divide this one reality into body and mind or into life and death and nirvana?" And here's, um, a teaching from maybe my favorite Zen master, Huangbo.

He was, uh, one of the kind of the core superstars, um, of Tang-era China.

You know, the...

Some people says the Golden Age of China.

And a lot of the teachings from people of that time are, are, were invented later in the S- in the Song, or Sung, I forgot how to pronounce it, era of China.

But, but we're lucky that, um, a lot of Huangbo's teachings were actually recorded in his lifetime by one of his disciples, so, so we're able to see what Buddhism was actually like, Zen Buddhism was actually like that time.

Anyway, so here's his teaching.

That evening, the master took the high seat and explained the day's events.

Thereupon Huangbo asked, "Because the old man gave a mistaken answer, he was reborn as a fox for five hundred lifetimes.

What would have happened to him if his answer hadn't been wrong each time?" The master said, "Come close and I'll tell you." Huangbo went up and gave the master a slap.

The master clapped his hands and said, "I thought I was a red-bearded foreigner, but here's someone who's even more of a red-bearded foreigner." There are seven things I can remind you about this koan.

The first one is that Kashyapa Buddha was one of the Buddhas before Shakyamuni Buddha.

Baizhang Huiyun is part of the ninth generation of Zen in Tang dynasty China, living from seven twenty to eight fourteen, and a disciple of the great master Mazu Daoyi.

Huangbo Shixun was of the tenth generation of Zen, dying in eight fifty, the disciple of Baizhang and the teacher of Linji Xixuan, who died in eight sixty-six.

Linji would of course be the founder of the branch of Zen that focused on koan study.

And then Providence Zen Center and the Korean Zen lineage was nearby.

And some practitioners there would come to the university once a week and offer a meditation group, read a little bit from Hwang Bo, one of the ancestors, as I recall, a real fan of still.

And we'd sit some.

And I remember... other people kind of checking out that group coming and going for a few weeks and then would drop out but i think it was maybe a year or so i just kept going week after week i really took to it especially in the middle of a busy academic life it was very grounding to practice and also the understanding of reality as presented through zen in a very direct way really rang true for me

This primal fact of life is reflected in the powerful mythos of Christianity in which God showing up in human form is betrayed, abandoned, and crucified, tortured to death, and then rises from the dead as Christ, the light that can't be destroyed, the primordial awareness beholding, being, and holding it all.

The one mind of Buddhism as expressed here by Zen Master Huang Po over a thousand years ago in China.

Quote, "All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the one mind beside which nothing exists.

This mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible.

By their very seeking, they lose it, for that is using Buddha to seek for Buddha and using mind to grasp mind.

Even though they do their utmost for a full eon, they will not be able to attain it." End quote.

Huang Po, translated by John Blofeld.

We can't attain or lose what we always already are, the radiant light of boundless awareness shining as this present experiencing that which we see before us.