Nomon Tim continues an exploration of Sōtō Zen ancestors with part 2 of Keizan Jokin, born a few decades after Dōgen, and who was considered to be the 2nd founder of our practice.

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Tim's Talk Notes:

Last week we met Keizan Jokin - the 2nd founder of Sōtō Zen who lived in the 14th century - born a few decades after Dōgen, but like most of these mostly guys started as a young man and studied two of Dōgen's important students Ejo who recorded many of Dōgen's talks and sayings, and also the Chinese monk Jakuen who founded a temple a few valleys over from Eiheji. Ultimately Ejo's student Gikai ended up being Keizan's main teacher.

Keizan's claim to fame is broadening Dōgen's vision to be more inclusive in many ways. He and his successors opened many temples and Sōtō Zen began it's trajectory of expanding all over the country and becoming known as the Zen of the countryside - "Farmer's Zen" - as opposed to Rinazi Zen which remained the "Samuari Zen" of the elites in the capital and other centers of power.

I shared a little about Keizan's respect for women so here's a little more about that:

Keizan's religious development seems to have been guided as much women as men. Women played powerful roles in many early Zen communities, but mostly as patrons. Whereas Keizan learned from women, especially from his mother and grandmother. He never mentions his father.

He was initially raised by his grandmother, Myōchi, who was one of Dōgen's first patrons on his return from China - she's probably studied with Dōgen's first Japanese teachers, Myōzen.

These guys started young but Keizan started really young. At 7 years old he ordained as a novice at Eiheiji. I had no idea they took boys that young.

Keizan later had a woman senior student, Sonin, who he praised as the reincarnation of his grandmother.

And Keizan's mother Ekan also appears often in his writings - unlike Dōgen, Keizan wrote a lot about his own life. But his mom, Ekan, was the abess of a Sōtō convent - and even as abbot she was, it seems, quite involved in her son's career as a Zen teacher.

Keizan wrote that her stern admonitions checked his growing arrogance when he first rose to prominance as a young monk under Dōgen's Chinese disciple Jakuen at Hōkoyoji.

And he told a long story about a statue of Kannon - Avalokitesvara - was his mom's and that it had produced many miracles for her and later for him. He wrote that all of the major events in his life, from his own birth, through becoming a monk an dhis dharma succession, to becoming abbot of his first major temple Yōkōji were all due to this mother's faith in and constant prayers to Kannon.

The scholar I cribbed all of this from said, "Accounts of Kannon calling forth the birth of illustrious monks is a standard hagiographical element." [hagiography being enthusiastic religious biographies - not super historically true] and, "Yet for Keizan his assertion [about everything good that happened to him was thanks to Kannon] was no mere pious legend but an autobiographical fact."

So we also see here Keizan's faith in miracles and what we might call the supernatural. Dōgen probably wouldn't have argued with him but it wasn't what Dōgen emphasized. He was more far out. And another reminder to us that the idea that Zen is a rational science of the mind and maybe not even a religion is a modern idea - modern science-raised people seeing what they want to see - we're part of a far out religion with miracles here for sure.

And at the same time we are all 100% welcome to dip into this in the way we like. I've prayed to bodhisattvas from time to time but I have to admit I don't have anything like the faith in that part of our Way that Keizan did.

So here's the 2nd story of Keizan's magnum opus, the Denkōroku - The Record of the Transmission of Illumination. I won't give talks on all 53 stories of the Zen ancestral line he tells, just a good sized selection I find interesting, and know that I met with our Practice Leaders group and they'll be sprinkling in the stories of our women Zen ancestors as we try to balance that scale a little.

Still as I said last week these are the core myths and stories of our tradition. It's helpful to know them both to understand our tradition and as they are actually useful practice pointers too - it just can be challenging sometimes to see how!

Anyway last week we looked at the story of the Buddha's enlightment which was a kind of prologue to the book and the outlier as it doesn't show the Buddha receiving the Dharma from a teacher who was before him - although there are also many stories of our Buddha-to-be practicing with earlier Buddhas in previous lives.

Now we have Chapter 1 - The Buddha transmitting the Dharma to his student Mahākāśyapa:

ROOT CASE

The First Ancestor, Venerable Mahākāśyapa. When the World-Honored One held up a flower and blinked his eyes, Kāśyapa cracked a slight smile. The World-Honored One said, “I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the sublime mind of nirvāna, which I entrust to Mahākāśyapa.”

PIVOTAL CIRCUMSTANCES - the backstory in other wolds

Kashyapa was one of the 3 most important disciples of the Buddha - Keizan talks first about his family background and then his story of his miraculous ordination:

In front of the Stūpa of Many Sons, he encountered the World-Honored One for the first time. When the World-Honored One said, “Welcome, bhiksu,” his beard and hair instantly fell out, and a kāsāya draped itself on his body. Thereupon, [Buddha] entrusted him with the treasury of the true dharma eye, and he practiced the twelve austerities, never wasting any time throughout the twelve periods of the day.

And yes he was the hard core one. They all practiced devotedly and very full time but Kashyapa was the tough guy about it. But the other monks and nuns found him a little weird, too. Keizan goes on:

Seeing only the shabby appearance of his worn-out robes, all in the sangha were suspicious of him. In response to that, whenever Śākyamuni the Honored One preached the dharma at assemblies here and there, he shared his seat and had Kāśyapa sit next to him. Thereafter, Kāśyapa was the senior seat at assemblies. And, he was not only the senior seat in Śākyamuni Buddha’s following, but the senior seat who never retired in the followings of the buddhas of the past, as well. We know from this that he was an old buddha. Do not rank him among those who were merely śrāvaka disciples of Buddha.

So Buddha had to intervene and show everyone he was a wise practitioner.

That was the situation when, at an assembly on Vulture Peak, before a gathering of eighty thousand, the World-Honored One held up a flower and blinked his eyes. No one knew his intention, and they were silent. At the time, Mahākāśyapa alone cracked a slight smile. The World-Honored One said, “I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the sublime mind of nirvāna, which is the fully clear and signless dharma gate. I entrust it entirely to Great Kāśyapa.”So what's going on here? Kashyapa recognized something that no else did. He was more awake.

Keizan in a hard to follow way talks about practing with this moment of recognition. Initially he talks about the flower but then he says the flower is important but incomplete. Go deeper into the story. Focus too on how the Buddha blinked his eyes. That that's not just a little minor detail. That we can always look more closely in other words. Always. The are always more levels of awareness available to us.

Setting aside, for the moment, “held up a flower,” each person should come to clarify the place where he blinked his eye. When all of you routinely raise your eyebrows and blink your eyes, there is not a hair’s-breadth of separation between that and Gautama’s “held up a flower and blinked his eyes.” When all of you smile slightly when talking, there is not even a single hair’s-breadth of difference between that and Mahākāśyapa’s “cracked a slight smile.” Nevertheless, if you are not clear about who it is that raises the eyebrows and blinks the eyes, then Śākyamuni and Kāśyapa will be in Western Lands, and “skin, flesh, bones, and marrow” will be in your own minds. With so many eye flowers and so much floating dust, you have yet to be liberated for innumerable kalpas past, and you will surely be drowning for kalpas yet to come.

Keizan also warns us against trying to figure this story out in that usual congitive way:

Fully clear complete knowing does not involve thought: having utterly cut off the faculty of mind, as was fitting, [Mahākāśyapa] awakened.

And he also reminds us not to diminish these stories of awakening but thinking of them as something that happened long ago:

If you just pursue the way urgently today, then Kāśyapa will not be awakened in the past, but truly will appear in the world right here and now in this Country of Fusō. Thus it is that Śākya’s blood relations will be warm even now, and Kāśyapa’s slight smile will also be fresh.

The Country of Fusō is a way of talking about Japan - right here where we are in othe words. To retranslate a little:

If you practice deeply now, then Kāśyapa's awakening wasn't something that happened before, but is happening right now, right here. That the Buddha and his students are alive and Kāśyapa’s smile will also be fresh.

Presumably the flower won't have wilted either. Right here, right now.

Can you feel it?

Keizan's little closing half verse in this chapter is:

Know that in the dark, deep place of the cloudy valleys,

there still exists a divine pine, living through the year’s frigidity.

Interestingly this story about the Buddha and Kashyapa isn't what the early Buddhist texts said happened. They not only don't talk about Kashyapa as the Buddha's sole disciple, they say that the Buddha, though he had close students, didn't name any successors at all.

After he died a council of elders was gathered with Ananda and Moggallana and Shariputra and others. Kashyapa was like the chair of that long committee meeting - it was called the First Great Council - where they retold all of the Buddha's teachings as a way of clarifying the 45 years of the Buddha's ministry (I've been hanging out with Christians!) and carrying his legacy forward.

So in that version of Buddhist history it was more like Thich Nhat Hanh said some time before he himself passed: the next Buddha will be the sangha. So that's Thich Nhat Hanh, about 90 generations into the Zen story of succession himself, saying maybe we shouldn't be so tight about this idea of linear succession. And it turns out that was the original idea too.

And yet something does happen between student and teacher. I don't really know what it is. But there's definitely something. And when it's all happening in a wholesome way it's a something that's really important, really healing, really opening us up to the truth of our existence in this ephemeral world as Buddhas and as flawed sentient beings all at the same time. Isn't it wonderful?

So that's Keizan's chapter 1, the second story but the first story of ancestral succession from teacher to student: Buddha to Mahakashyapa.

I'd like to do the formal 3-person dharma dialog form tonight for our discussion. I'll give you a prompt and we'll explore it in small groups.

Let me just remind you of the format. There's a quiet and settled form we can hold that really can support some depth in engagement and also if you are not a fan of social engagement in a practice time this can feel less like a social interaction and more like Buddha meeting Buddha. It's still vulnerable but there's a support to holding this form.

1. Find a group of 3. Might be people right next to you, but if you are feeling adventurous walk across the room. See if you can do that really quietly - silently even - we talk a lot more than we have to

2. If you can't find a group of 3 be in a pair. Let's not have groups of 4 - the timing gets off.

3. Sit down and bow a silent hello to each other - later we'll share names ok?

4. One person agreed to go first - how will you signal that? Raising 1 finger is a reference to several koans.

5. That person has 4 minutes to speak, to explore, to feel into the prompt and see what comes, you can also talk about anything else that feels alive to you here and now - don't tell old stories though, we get to do that other times - what's here NOW?

6. The other 2 deeply listen, a little nodding and smiling is ok - that's deep in us - but don't interupt, don't ask questions, monitor your mind to see if you're still listening. So easily we drift off. Come back, be here, support your group member with the incredible gift of full attention.

7. A little pause in between people settles the space and makes room for the 2nd person to speak. 

8. The second person doesn't need to feel like they should refer AT ALL to what the first person said - it's your time.

9. Repeat for the 3rd person.

10. At the end we usually have a few minutes for more informal dialog. This made me think of... One more thing I wanted to say was.... I do appreciated how you shared about.... 

We get through this with time to spare I'll be curious if anyone wants to say a word about how happened in your triad but when I'm the speaker it's rare we have that much time.

OKAY - find your people.

ZOOM - same idea but you're in the breakout rooms.

Here's the prompt: when do you see and feel more deeply? when are you most aware?

What supports being deeply present, feeling yourself and open to what's around you both?

What gets in the way.

Short version is the first bit: when do you see and feel most deeply?

Channel your inner Mahakashyapa - he was so very THERE when the Buddha held up the flower and blinked. What helps you to be fully HERE.