Nomon Tim returns once more to Keizan's collection of stories on the traditional Zen patriarchs.

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Tim's Talk Notes:

Good evening,

We return once more to Keizan's collection of stories on the traditional Zen patriarchs.

And good news in terms of learning the fuller picture of our tradition. Our other teachers and practice leaders are going to start giving talks on Zen women interwoven with these talks in February, March, and April.

First here's a little more about how important the support of women was to Keizan and to the early Sōtō Zen movement in general:

Keizan's most important patron was a woman, Lady Taira Sonin. In 1212, she and her husband donated land for what eventually became Keizan's main temple, Tokokusan Yokoji. Sonin eventually became a nun with her own chapel. Keizan compared the closeness of their relationship to a magnet and steel.

Keizan's dependence on a female patron was not at all unusual. When Dogen founded his first temple, Koshoji, at Fukakusa near Kyoto, an aristocratic woman named Shogaku donated the Lecture Hall. Dogen taught a number of laywomen and nuns, including Keizan's grandmother, Myochi. Other Sōtō monks who studied with Keizan, as well as his disciples, founded temples that were sponsored by women patrons.

Women outnumber men by a significant margin in the records of early donations preserved at Tokokusan Yokoji. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century records of Sōtō funeral sermons similarly reveal that the vast majority of lay funerals conducted by rural Zen teachers were for women. Clearly, without the support and religious devotion of countless women, Japanese Zen institutions (and perhaps most other Buddhist institutions as well) could never have succeeded on such a wide scale.

Yet today we know the names of only a few of these vital female patrons. None of their biographies have survived. Keizan's descriptions of Sonin, his grandmother, and his mother, therefore, provide rare glimpses into the essential role played by women in the propagation of Buddhism in Japan.

And we know Keizan's support from women wasn't just financial. His writings suggest that he really listened to the women in his life. His mother, his grandmother and that he and his patron and student Sonin had a pretty collaborative relationship.

Chapter Two, the 3rd story in the book, is very near and dear to my heart.

Here's the opening case:

The Second Ancestor, Venerable Ānanda, asked Venerable Kāśyapa, “Brother, apart from the World-Honored One’s transmission of the kāsāya of gold brocade, what is it that was transmitted separately?” Kāśyapa called, “Ānanda!” Ānanda answered, “Yes?” Kāśyapa said, “Topple the flagpole in front of the gate!” Ānanda greatly awakened.

You might recall that Kāśyapa, also called Mahakāśyapa, in the Zen lineage stories received the Dharma from Shaykamuni Buddha which was confirmed when Buddha held up a flower and winked during a big assembly of the monastics.

This story is Ananda, the Buddha's loyal attendant and also biological cousin, receiving the Dharma from Kāśyapa.

I love Ananda because his role in the family drama of Buddhism is the really smart older brother who just doesn't quite get it. Not that he doesn't know and understand the teachings in great depth - he does. But at this deep visceral felt and embodied level of true understanding he's been a bit vague and needy all of this life. I'm sure he hid it well and appeared to all as a deeply grounded monk - which he also was. But his practice was characterized by a deep unfulfilled yearning. What does it really mean? What does it all really mean?

He's eager, he's devoted, he's smart, he's dedicated, he never gives up. And yet...

He was famous for his incredible memory. He sat beside the Buddha for the vast majority of his Dharma talks and memorized every word - word for word. Nothing was written down back then. 

Well not nothing: there was a writing system but it was used primarily by merchants to track goods and services and finances. It turns out the religious practitioners of the day thought it would jsut be too weird to write down teachings. Plus it was only a small sliver of the population who were literate - again the merchant class - apparently the societal elites were also illiterate as that was kind of like beneath them - kind of gauche.

So it was all about the oral tradition for remembering the Buddha's teachings for about 500 years until they were written down with the most famous collection of those teachings being a set that were written down in the Pali language in South India and the island nation now called Sri Lanka.

And if you read these old teachings in translation you'll notice they almost always start with the phrase, "Thus have I heard..." The "I" there is Ananda. At least it's supposed to be, there are teachings were scholars are pretty sure Ananda wasn't present but he gets credit for remembering everything.

And here we have the story of Ananda finally feeling it all click into place. Boy that must've been a very very good day for him:

The Second Ancestor, Venerable Ānanda, asked Venerable Kāśyapa, “Brother, apart from the World-Honored One’s transmission of the kāsāya of gold brocade, what is it that was transmitted separately?” Kāśyapa called, “Ānanda!” Ānanda answered, “Yes?” Kāśyapa said, “Topple the flagpole in front of the gate!” Ānanda greatly awakened.

His question is I think very vulnerable and courageous.

“Brother, apart from the World-Honored One’s transmission of the kāsāya of gold brocade, what is it that was transmitted separately?”

These two have been practicing together for decades and know each other through and through. To make this really shine as a fable let's imagine that Ananda had never really admitted to anyone he wasn't awakened - hadn't integrated the teachings fully and now for the first time he admits that by asking this question.

Besides everything I already know about - all of the teachings, the transmission of the lamp as symbolized by the Buddha giving Kashyapa this beautiful okesa - besides all of that, what else is there? What have I missed all of these years? What was transmitted separately? Or you could say: secretly?

Kāśyapa didn't answer him in a way that would feed this conceptual yearning for "the answer" - do you know that yearning? Just tell me what it is, what is means, just tell me what I should do! What's the answer?!

No instead he calls to him - suddenly, maybe sharply, with lots of love behind the intensity of his call - he calls Ananda forth, calls on him to leap free from his stuckness in words and concepts and the belief that he's not quite there. He just calls his name: ANANDA!

And it helps! Kashyapa's cry cuts through his defensive habit energies completely - he feels it in his bones and all thought stops for an instant. These are powerful instants.

And he answers from that place: YES!

The new translation has a question mark after the Yes which I don't think is right. It's not "yessss??" - there's no hesitation there, no question at all. He gets it. Completely. And the Dharma is passed on - or probably it's more accurate to say the Dharma that was always there expresses clearly at last.

And Kashyapa confirms his clarity with a metaphor: “Topple the flagpole in front of the gate!”

This refers to a tradition back then I understand. They had public debates between religious thinkers, maybe political people too, and each of the two debators had a special debate flag they'd put up. A kind of banner that signifies their name and station I guess. Both flags start out up and when a winner is decided the losers flag comes down. They won - proclaimed for the community to see and celebrate. Like a scoreboard at a sporting event these days.

And the cool think about Kashyapa's words is he didn't say "Run your name up the flagpole" or "Take the illusion of self's flag down from the flagpole." That would be only halfway right - do you see why? - he said forget about it all - no debate, no winners, no losers - knock down the whole idea of comparison and attainment.

In other words: good, you've stopped striving. There's nothing more to do. There no one to compete with - and there never really was any need to that either. Knock down the flagpole.

What's always moved me about this story is the call from Kashyapa and how that supported Ananda's YES - how it helped him complete the decades long journey to letting go.

I studied this story myself as a koan - and actually in the Japanese koan system every case of Denkoroku is taken up as a koan in that challenge-from-the-teacher-to-embody-the-wisdom-of-the-story way. I've always been fascinated by Ananda as I feel such resonance with his story and this story as his awakening just touched my heart.

Back then I took up just the word "yes" - what was the meaning of Ananda's yes, what was the feeling of it, how deep did it go. For a year or so in zazen I'd often breathe "yes... yes...." and I'd regularly think about the whole story and step inside it, putting myself in Ananda's shoes. I don't think i ever thought to put myself in Kashyapa's but I was far from identifying as any kind of teacher back then.

And here's a little koan story of a shift in my practice.

After some time practicing "yes" in zazen and living within this story of his question of Kashyapa and Kashypa's powerful response I was at Samish sesshin. Sesshin is a really good time to take a deep dive into these kinds of practices.

So I was feeling pretty deep into zazen, in the my body, in the "yes", and that story felt very front and center. Then one evening I was walking near the dining hall and I heard this ringing sound. Cling cling cling. I looked up and saw that the flagpole they have there, which usually doesn't have a flag on it, had some metal hardware on it's rope that was cling cling clinging against the metal flagpole.

Woah. We all have these moments and they can't really be described but a ringing bell that was a flagpole while I felt so embedded a story about a flagpole. Woah.

Next day I saw Norman in dokusan. I was very excited. I felt so close to this koan, so in it. So intimate with it. I was starting to tell him about it. Not gushing I don't think. I was grounded but I had some things to say! he often starts out in dokusan with his eyes closed. I've never asked him why - just to be deeper in his own practice as the student begins I guess. But a couple of sentences in, mid sentence, Norman's eyes fly open and he calls to me, with strong energy: "Tim!" and instantly without thinking about it I called back "YES" -and it was someone a new yes. The real yes. Ananda's yes.

Norman then looked at me for a moment. Deep pause, very quiet. And then says, "Good, let's not talk about that anymore."

A bit about Ananda's mastery and his limitations from Keizan's commentary on this case.

After a wild little story about how Ananda couldn't enter a magical cave that Kashyapa and the other senior students went inside of to review all of Buddha's teachings after he did, Ananda was able to get in to join them until he transforms himself into a tiny body so he could squeeze in through a crack the size of a keyhole. And then presumably he regained his normal shape and they asked him to recite the teachings. Here's Keizan:

All the disciples said: “Ānanda, as Buddha’s servant, has heard much and has broad learning. With him, it is like one vessel full of water being poured into another vessel, without spilling even a little. We would like to ask Ānanda to repeat those sermons.” Kāśyapa said to Ānanda, “The entire congregation is looking to you. They request you to ascend the seat again and proclaim the teachings.” At that time Ānanda guarded that which had secretly been entrusted him by the Tathāgata and accepted Kāśyapa’s request. He immediately stood, bowed at the feet of the congregation, ascended the seat and, proclaiming, “Thus have I heard: at one time Buddha dwelt at…,” he recited all the sagely teachings of Buddha’s entire lifetime. Kāśyapa addressed the disciples, saying, “Are there, or are there not, any deviations from what the Tathāgata preached?” The disciples said, “There is not a single word that deviates from what the Tathāgata preached.”

So that's good but then Keizan explains there's a downside to being attached to even the teachings:

But Ānanda enjoyed hearing much, so he had yet to attain perfect awakening. Śākyamuni Buddha cultivated vigor and, on account of that, attained complete and perfect awakening. From this we know for sure that hearing much is an obstruction to the way: this is proof of that.

It is for this reason that the Flower Garland Sūtra says: “Take, for example, a destitute person who counts another’s treasure, while himself having not half a cent; hearing much is also like that.” If you wish to adhere closely to this way, do not delight in hearing much; you should straight away practice courageous vigor.

Okay so this is ironic for me to bring up because I love study. But don't get too into study, don't get lost in words. Cultivate vigor means prioritize the practice itself. Being in it. Being it.

Like in my little story about this case of Ananda receiving the Dharma for sure I've read about Ananda and appreciated his appearance in various layers of Buddhist teachings but I wasn't trying to figure out Ananda which I dove into the story at that sesshin. I was in vigor. I was supported by the framework of this story for sure but in some ways I went beyond the story too. 

I always think it's a both and really. Enjoy hearing. Enjoy these wonderful, if sometimes a bit mystifying, teachings but not as an end in itself. Study can be fun but is doesn't change your life. It can support practice though which sure does.

Questions:

The world is always calling to you, when do you listen?