Zhaozhou Meets Two Hermits

[00:00:00] Speaker A: For more information on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, please visit our website at www.ancientdragon.org. our teachings are offered to the community through the generosity of our supporters. To make a donation online, please visit our website for the Dharma Talk this morning I thought I'd talk about a koan. Yep, sure, do it. The unansweredness. [00:00:28] Speaker B: Profound wondrous stamina. [00:00:34] Speaker C: It is ready. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Okay, we'll start again. [00:00:57] Speaker B: It is recording. [00:00:58] Speaker A: It's recording. [00:00:59] Speaker B: It's recording. [00:00:59] Speaker A: Okay. So this morning I'm going to talk about a koan, which follows a pattern I've had for some time now, alternating what I would call zazen encouragement talks and koan talks. Today is a koan talk. I'm going to talk about a case from the Wu Mengkuan collection, KC Levin, Xiaozhou and the Two Hermits. And before I begin, let me introduce that with just a little quote from the great poem by the third ancestor, Sung Tsan faith in mind. The Great Way is not difficult for those who don't pick or choose. When like and dislike are absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. But make the smallest preference for one thing against another, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, hold no opinions for or against anything. And I read that because it's not explicit that this poem is about picking and choosing. And that's appropriate because a real protagonist of this koan, Xiao Zhou, had a real affinity for the poem. He has a number of koans in which he quotes the poem. And there are others as well in the three big collections of Wu Min Kwan and the Blue Cliff Record in the Book of Serenity. So it is. If you haven't read the Faith in Mind, I recommend it. It's about the least opaque Zen writing there is. It's really very helpful and very beautiful. So the koan goes like this. Xiaozhou went to a hermit's hut and asked, is there, is there? The hermit lifted his fist. Xiaozhou said, the water is too shallow for a ship to anchor. And he left. Sometime later, he went to another hermit's hut and asked, is there, is there? And the hermit too lifted up his fist. And Xiao Zhao said, freely you give, freely you take away, freely you kill, freely you give life. And he made a full bow. Master Wu, men who compiled the koans and the Wu Min Koans has a comment, and he says both held up their fist in the same way. Why did Yaozhu approve one and not the other? Tell me, what's the core of this complication? If you can give a turning word on this matter. You will realize that Xiaozhou's tongue has no bone in it. He is free now to raise up, now to thrust down. Be that as it may, can you realize also that Xiaozhou was seen through by the two hermits? Furthermore, if you say that one hermit was superior to the other, you do not yet have the Xin AI. And if you say there is no difference between them, you do not yet have the Zen eye either. And his poem is that eyes like a shooting star, activity like lightning, the sword that kills, the sword that gives life. So as I said, the faith in mind is very appropriate here because this is all about our dualistic clinging mind, our discriminating mind that divides everything reflexively into this and that, like and don't, like, good and bad, right and wrong, and so on. This is how Xiaozhou responds to two hermits who are given the opportunity to give a non discriminating answer and to give a. I'll give a little background first. The first thing to understand about this koan is that when Xiao Zhou goes to visit the hermits, he's talking to people who are very senior practitioners who are on solitary retreats. This isn't like some of the other koans where someone has no experience, has. Doesn't really have a clue of what's involved in Zen. This is. This is Xiao Zhou talking to very experienced people. And I want to give, just to indulge myself, give a little background on Xiao Zhou because he is the. The Zen master who appears in Coads more than any other Zen master except Yun Man. He's everywhere. And he was famous for mostly not doing crazy things, but for his eloquence and his. His penetrating speech. So that when he would talk, light would play on his lips. The thing that I most remember about him is that he practiced Zen for over a hundred years. He died when he was 120 years old. He was ordained by the great master Nanquan when he was 18. And he practiced with Nanquan for 39 years until Nanquan's death. And then he followed a convention that you would not seek out another teacher for three years. So after three years he started a 20 year pilgrimage of traveling to different monasteries to practice with other communities and other teachers to just develop his Xin AI war. And eventually he settled at the Guanyin monastery where he became a dharma teacher. It was not a wealthy or large monastery, but from there he became one of the most famous teachers in China. So that I think that's Enough background. So let's walk through this koan a little bit, see if we can explicate a little to at least identify what the big point is here. So the case begins that Xiao Zhou went to a hermit's hut and asked, is there? Is there? Which is a Chinese. The literal translation of a Chinese phrase, which maybe more idiomatically in English, would be anybody there? Or who's there? Or even better in the Zen context, what is it? What is there? Who is that? What is your fundamental nature? What is ultimate reality? And the monk, I mean, the hermit simply raises his fist. So that's a pretty good answer, you know, a fist. It's just that there's no discriminative thing, thinking going on. There are no likes or dislikes. There's no. There are no labels. There are no descriptions. There are no explanations. There are no preferences. There are no comparisons. That. And Winchy raises his fist. You know, it's just like this. He could have said something like, oh, who's there? What is it? And the hermit could have said, oh, Buddha nature. Or this is Buddha nature, or anything along those lines. All of which would have been wrong. That would have been discriminatory thinking. His thinking and description of his answer would have gotten in the way of that experience. The expression of just that, just the presentation, just the presence of this fist is an aspect of all this, without my thoughts getting it into the way. But Jiaozhou says, the water's too shallow for a ship to anchor, and he walks off. And a lot of commentators, almost every commentator on this koan that I've been able to find says, oh, yeah, that's Xiaozhou Sang man, this understanding is too shallow. It's a waste of time to stay here. And he walked and that. He walks off and goes to the next one. And so the hermit, the next time he visits a hermitage, the hermit, he has the same question. You know, is there? Is there? Who is it? Who's there? And the hermit raises his fist. It's a good answer. But this time, Xiao Zhou says, well, freely you can give, you can freely receive, freely, kill, freely give life. And we go, what? What are you talking about? And I think what he's doing is he's talking about how this hermit is not caught up in the constraints of dualistic thinking of I me mind that out there, this and that, good, bad, right, wrong, attachment, aversion, all the things that really strongly conditioned, direct our ordinary choices in life, sort of ruts on the road of life, where everything becomes pleasure, pain, Loss, gain, praise, blame, fame, shame, all of those things, those kinds of dichotomies that shape our perception of our experience of this life shape everything. But this monk can step out of that. He can penetrate delusion, open, open up to awakening and big mind. He can act freely and flexibly. He isn't constrained by this fixed way of thinking that we normally have. So Master Wu Men points out that do two hermits give the same answer? Xiaozhou gives two different responses, right? He says both held up their fists in the same way. Why did Jiaozhou approve one and not the other? Tell me, what's the core of the complication? But at the same time, he says, well, if you say one hermit was superior to the other, you don't have the I of Zen. But if you say they're the same, if they're equal, well, you don't have the I either. What's going on? And I think we have to go back to the first hermit and Xiaozhu's response to the fist. Say, whoa, what is Xiao Zhen saying? Is Xiaozhou picking and choosing between these two hermits? Is he saying, oh, yeah, Your answer is pretty shallow. Not much understanding here. I'm not going to waste my time in leaving. I don't think so. I think that he is. He is encouraging the first hermit's practice in the same way he encouraged the second hermit. The second hermit, he said, he's going, that's an answer. To answer this, you must, you are free. You can act freely. With the first hermit, he's not saying, oh, the water's too shallow. He's just implicitly saying, you did fine, but you can't anchor here, you can't stay here. The upraised fist is not the answer. Sitting in emptiness or your perception, your experience of suchness, that's not the experience. You can't stay there. You have to move forward. You have to be able to, you can and you must freely give and receive, kill and give life. So I think. I think Wu Men's sort of setting a trap for us. Who says, well, didn't like one answer, he liked the other answer. He's trying to get us to get caught into that binary, thinking that good and bad, right or wrong, having preferences, liking and disliking the answers that we could do well, what you know, so anyway, so what you know, clearly the monks have given. Do we say the monks have given the same answer? The hermits have given the same answer? No one hermit went the second hermit with one not making a comparison. Of the two, they just are what they are. There's no relationship. Xiao Zhou doesn't make a relationship. He doesn't compare them. He responds to each hermit who's in front of him at the time without picking and choosing, without preference. And he's free to respond in different ways. There isn't one fixed response to the fist. You know, he can. He can encourage the hermits in different ways. Once you get beyond that mind of preference and picking and choosing, liking and disliking, you can step out of the ruts and the life and the world is wide open and free for you to respond. And that's what he does. That's why Wu Men says that Xiaozhou's tongue has no bone in it. Xiaozhou can speak flexibly in response to the specific situation without being constrained by preconceptions about what would be a good answer, what would be a bad answer. He just responds in. And that's the point of Women's second comment or final comment that look, if you say these hermits, one hermit is superior to the other, you don't have the zenai. If you say they're the same, you still don't have the same eye. Because those are conceptions. Those are not meeting the hermits. Outside of that dualistic mind of picking and choosing without discrimination, you are discriminating in the same. If you say, well, they're. They're the same, well, they're equal, then once again, you're thinking, you're. You're dealing with your thought and your evaluation of the answers, not with the response themselves. So that theme of freedom and flexibility I think applies all the way through the co ops. The first hermit, he's saying, look, you can't. Good answer, proper response. But you can't bind yourself to that. You can't get stuck with that. With the second hermit, he's encouraging in the same way, look, yes, good answer. You're free. You've opened. You've demonstrated reality. Now keep going. Now you can give and receive, kill or give life. Xiaozhou has his tongue that has no bone. And Wu Men says that he has eyes like shooting stars. So he flashes light to illuminate what's been going on here. And he says, right, the sword that kills, the sword that gives life. Xiao Zhou has the same way to cut through the picking and choosing the preferences, the right or wrong, good and bad, and so on, to deal with the hermits in a flexible, liberated way without being caught in delusion. And we ask, well, okay, so what's that got to do with the fact that almost everybody in this room is sitting in Sashin. And the answer is that that's exactly what Zazen is. Zazen is stepping free of the conceptual mind. The picking and choosing, the dualism, the liking and not liking. Just letting everything come up and not choose. Let it come, let it go away. No grasping to hold onto it, no reaching to experience something better, to get some better understanding, to calm down, to become clear, and no pushing away. This thought cannot be what it's all about. But thoughts are not the problem. Picking and choosing is the problem. Grasping the thoughts that come up are the problem. So we just sit with the thoughts, with the feelings, with the desires, with the body, the posture, physical sensations, our perception of the world around us. And that's it. We fall away, we come back. We fall away, we come back. We cut through with the sword that kills. We wake up with the sword that gives life, that turn, that, as Dogen said, with this stepping, taking the backward step is the step that lets go. Would say fukanza zendi. It's putting down like and dislike, good and bad, right and wrong. And when you do that, the original face appears, just reality without your overlay of preferences and picking and choosing on it so that you can respond to it in a liberated way in accordance with the fundamental nature of our life. So I think that's enough. I'd be happy to hear if anyone has some thoughts about the story or what I had to say or has a question about anything else. [00:18:51] Speaker B: Thank you very much, David Weiner's handy, though. [00:18:54] Speaker A: Oh, good. David, where are you? Where's your face? There you are. Okay, now that I have unmuted myself, [00:19:03] Speaker B: I can't hear you. I saw you on. [00:19:07] Speaker A: Can you hear me? Yes. No, we're try. We're making adjustments, David, to see if we can hear what you're saying. [00:19:15] Speaker B: Which one do you mean, Wayne? [00:19:17] Speaker A: Try again. [00:19:20] Speaker B: I have never touched this. Perhaps you'd like to do it. Thank you. [00:19:25] Speaker A: David's making sure that he's not going to blow up the whole thing. [00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's my service to the science. [00:19:33] Speaker A: I'm raising my fist. [00:19:36] Speaker B: We. [00:19:36] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, Now. [00:19:39] Speaker B: Exciting. [00:19:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it is up. Power on. Okay, can you hear me now? We can kind of turn the volume up higher. My volume's up all the way. That's perfect. Thank you very much. Okay. I think you mentioned the book. You said it's probably the clearest description of Zen in the very beginning of your talk. Yeah, it's a poem called Faith in Mind. Faith In Heart, Mind, Trust In Heart, Mind, Space Heart, Mind, Heart, Mind Faith in Trust In Heart, Mind by Sun Sound, the third patriarch, Sung Sam. And there are translations all over the place. There's a good book by Moo Seung, S O E N G who has. It's a very nice collection. And he also sets out different. All the different major translations of the poem so you can get a flavor for. For what the original Chinese said. Okay. Some of the connotations of some of the language, but there's. Who is it? It's Richard Clark, I think is. Yeah, Richard Clark. That's a translation that I think people like pretty well. Okay, thank you very much. Sure. Someone else, please throw me a bomb. David Ray. [00:21:15] Speaker B: Thank you, Douglas, for that talk. This is more comment than a question. It seems to me that Xiao Zhou is being respectful. The situation in the moment and the hermit. Because I think anybody who teaches or. And maybe everything involves teaching knows that if two people do the same thing, it's not the same experience, it's not the same moment. And the response that it calls forth is not the same response. Because it's my holding up my fist isn't the same as you holding up your fist. This can't be the same. [00:21:56] Speaker A: It's not. I'm not sure what the difference is. [00:21:59] Speaker B: Nor is it different. Nor is it different, you know. Okay, what are those two people doing? Oh, they're holding up their fist. [00:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're right. Maybe, maybe, maybe that's right. Maybe one thing you could, we could say is you just. You respond freshly without preconception of good or bad or right or wrong. Maybe that's one way to think about it. Yeah, I think he is being respectful and he's, it's encouragement really. And I don't think that although I talked about his approving their responses, I don't know that he's really approving in the sense of I like that, I don't like that response, or that's a good one, that's a bad one so much as just reflecting back. This is. Okay, that's a, that's a pretty. Yeah, that's a presentation of the real thing, the fundamental reality. And I encourage you to go further. So he, I don't think JoJo is picking and choosing. I think he's just acting out of. He's. He himself is acting out of an open, non discriminating mind. Which is what. Which flows from our practice. The, you know, the equanimity, the friendliness, the generosity, the compassion of his dealing with These hermits is what flows from his practice and that those things are not grasping, discriminating, they are not selfish, self centered, self absorbed kinds of responses to other people in reality. That's just so much the case with much of our life in our own experience. I like it. I don't know. I like it. I think that, I think it's interesting that I think people want to make the point you have made that you come freshly to each situation so you don't give the same response each time necessarily. But almost every single comment on this koan says, well, you know what really, you know, what happened here was Xiaozhou, when he saw, he saw the first hermit, he saw the hermit's face and he just wasn't real confident. But the second one, yeah, he knew what was going on. Well, that's fine. But that's not the koan. That's the koan. You have to deal with the koan that's in front of you. And Wooman says that's it. That they gave the same, they both raised their fist. So how do you deal with that? He doesn't say raised his fist, made a face. Well, I don't know. Maybe this is it. That's not it. And it loses the coin, loses its force by trying to have an explanation like that. Yes, [00:24:42] Speaker C: yes. [00:24:43] Speaker A: If you saw the fist the first time and kind of that sat with him as koan, and then the second time he actually had a response for it because he'd actually sat with it for a little while. So in other words, he wasn't the same person the second time compared to the first time. You know, that could be. I sort of, I sort of like, I sort of like a reading that is that Joshua knows what he's doing when he responds to the, to the first hermit and is able to respond to where the hermit is. Right then she's saying, but, but don't, don't, don't get stuck there. The next time somebody asks you, you know, what is the, what is the point of Zen or what is what is Buddha? Don't raise your fist again. As soon as you raise your fist again, you've decided this is the right answer. This is, this is Buddha nature. I'm going to show them Buddha nature. So I think it adds a little depth with that reading. But it's certainly a valid reading to say he leaves and goes to the next, you know, he could have and you know, you could read it as well. He didn't really, maybe he didn't understand and that's why he said that the first hermit, you know, but that was shallow water. He didn't mean to spend any more time there because it was shallow water, and went on to the second hermit. Thank you. And that's the reading for almost all of ones who don't say, oh, he saw this tentative expression or kind of tentative presentation of the fist, and so he knew that that hermit didn't have it. Ones who don't say that say, well, you know, what he was really doing is he was seeing how they both reacted to praise and blame. So he. He rejects the first answer, and then on his way out of the hermit's hut, he looks back to see how the hermit's reacting. And the second time he praises the second hermit on his way out of the hut, he looks back to see how the hermit's responding to the praise. And again, I said, well, that would be a nice koan, but that's not the one that's in the book. And. And it. It doesn't have the same message for us that we can. That fundamentally our mind is not enmeshed in picking and choosing and having preferences that we can be open and respond freely and flexibly to reality. Yeah. So it's just. It's astonishing to me. And that happens. I just. I will just say that happens over and over and over again. If you. You know, the miracles of the Internet, all these Zen teachers out there on lots of koans, they do the same thing over and over again. Really? That's the best you can do? Yes. Howard, [00:27:47] Speaker C: thank you for the talk. Douglas, at the risk of talking about the wrong koan, first of all, appreciated. You remind me of the. The trust in mind, faith in mind. It's one of my favorites, the Xinxin Ming. You know, hearing the. This koan, but also hearing ones like this, because there are many like this, right. Of, like, people doing the same thing and then, like, getting different responses. Like my favorite version of his gutte's one fingers, right. He's the one who's going around doing this the entire time. And then he cuts off a boy's finger, right. [00:28:19] Speaker A: And then does it again. [00:28:21] Speaker C: This usually I like when I've heard these for many years, I've been like, I've been the monk or I've been the hermit, or I've been these. These people. Like, why was that wrong? Why was that one right? Sort of obsessed with picking and choosing and being right or being wrong. And now I'm listening to this more from JoJo's perspective, and maybe this is Just circling the same water, shallow waters that, that we've been going around and that David brought up. But I, I, my sort of connection with the teaching thing is like, I mean this is from the perspective of Xiao Joe, right? Like he is a teacher, he's met many, many, many years of practice. So he knows in a way. I don't know what he knows, but he knows in a way. And I'm kind of thinking like, yeah, like a, you teach a five year old how to play a C major scale. Yeah, they're playing a C major scale. But that, that is different with someone who is trained, knows how to play a C major scale, is the same damn notes, doesn't change. It is different while being exactly the same. So I think what's coming up for me now is like, okay, what did Joe, Joe see? Not to do with like, did he see something right? Did he see something wrong? [00:29:35] Speaker B: What did he see? [00:29:37] Speaker C: Which gets me into more like, okay, so what is like skillful discernment if we're not picking and choosing right? And I, that has been like the bewildering question for me ever since I started practicing. If it's not picking and choosing, then what is like discernment? Because you do notice things are different even if they're like the same thing or the same head or something like that. [00:29:59] Speaker A: Different in what way? [00:30:01] Speaker C: Hell if I know. [00:30:03] Speaker A: So, so I think that Howard mentioned Gutier's finger, which is a Japanese reading. It's Master Judy's finger, I think in Chinese it's like the second or third case in Wu Men Quan. And that's a story of anytime anyone would come to Master Judy with a question about Zen, he just hold his finger up, whatever the question was. And so he had. His attendant was a young boy and Judy was busy and a visitor came to see him and said, well, you know, what is your master Zen anyway? And the servant held his finger up. That was the right answer, right? This is, yeah, this is, this is all, this is it. And the visitor went away very pleased and master and the servant attendant met with Judy and said I did it, I can do it too. And Judy said, yeah, fine. And he a knife and cut off the kid's finger. And the kid started screaming and he said, well, you know, what is it about anyway? And the kid started to raise his finger and said, oh, okay, it's going to have to be some different answer. I'm going to have to come up with my own answer. All these, the Zen horror stories. And there's another, there's another similar koan, too. In the Wu Ming Kuan about. I don't remember which teacher Baijang or someone like that is teaching in the Dharma hall. And light is coming in too much light. And he's coming into the Dharma hall, it's hot. And he points up to the blinds to close the blinds. And two monks jump up, and they go to lower the blinds. And on their way back to their seats, he says, well, one got it and one didn't. And you kind of go, what's that about? And, you know, I invite you to spend some time about that and understand what's going on in that. You know, koans are entertaining as well as being illuminating. [00:32:08] Speaker D: Let's see, Mike, when you were illustrating the. The koan that Howard mentioned, and then, you know, your finger has just been cut off. And then the person who has just cut off your finger says, oh, asks you, what is Zen? And, you know, you're writhing in pain. My first thought was to hold up the next finger next to it. But I was also thinking about. I think Howard asked a good question of, like, what does skillful discernment approach? Not picking and choosing and thinking about teaching. I don't know. I was thinking about meeting the present moment. Like, if you are meeting someone with no. As much as possible, no preconceptions, then I think discernment is a part of existing. And if there's no preconceptions, then maybe that's much closer to being skillful than not. I don't know the kingdom I am. [00:33:16] Speaker A: I think that's fair. I think, you know, these are artificial literary documents, right? So we don't have a lot of details about the different hermits. We've just given the fact that there was nothing really for Xiaozhou to discern about why he would give one answer to this hermit and a different answer to the other hermit. They're both encouragement. I think maybe they're the. Maybe. Maybe one answer is. Is taking away, and the other answer is giving. The first answer is killing. Killing. This desire to grasp an answer that seems to have been right. And on the other hand, something different. Just keep going, keep going, keep going through the second one. But it's also. Both are really. Keep going, keep going. So they're really just obverse sides to the same response, I think, acknowledging their answers. [00:34:15] Speaker E: Sandra, I really love the. The mentioning of discernment. So to me, I. I think that Joju. Is that how you say it? [00:34:31] Speaker A: Joshua, [00:34:34] Speaker E: the great example of his discernment. I don't know how to say this quite right, but if Josu has no judgment, and so he really has the Zen eye, that's where we touch mystery. Because he doesn't really know what's going to come out of his mouth. You know, life is going to move through him. Something's going to be said. He won't have an opinion about it. It's just. It's the difference between judgment and discernment. You know, that in that moment that is mysterious. You discern what needs to come out, and you don't even have to have an opinion about it after it's come out. [00:35:29] Speaker A: Okay, I think we're probably about out of time. Any more. We could do one more and then close with the four vows. I'm off the hook. All right. Kokyo San. [00:35:58] Speaker B: Delusions are inexhaustible. We vow to cut through them. Our gates are boundless. We allow sway to them.