Reddit reviews Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu

Oh, no need to apologize anyway. There's just a lot of... backstory.

You'll need to couple source material like the below with the above historical scholarship if you want to come to a full understanding.

As for some primary sources:

Tang dynasty teachers who were students of Mazu (one of the most influential Zen teachers ever)

Dazhu (although, relevant)

Huangbo

Baizhang (this text is prohibitively expensive on Amazon, so look in local libraries.)

Song dynasty teachers

Yuanwu (1, 2)

Hongzhi (1, 2) (note, take Taigen dan Leighton's introduction to Cultivating the Empty Field with a grain of salt, as he's a shitty scholar. He basically just misrepresents Hongzhi and Dahui's relationship. See Schlutter's How Zen Became Zen for more details.)

Song dynasty kanhua Chan teachers (kanhua is the main approach to Zen in both Rinzai and Seon)

Dahui (Yuanwu's student)

Wumen

A Japanese Zen teacher

Bankei (1, 2)

A Korean Zen teacher

Daehaeng (1, 2, 3)

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Note that this leaves out huge swathes of the literature, including all of the literature associated with the East Mountain teaching, the Northern school, the Oxhead school, Soto, most of Rinzai, Obaku, most of Seon, etc. Of course, some people with more fixed and essentialist ideas of what "Zen" is object to the idea that some of these other schools/lineages are actually "Zen". Use your own head. (I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong; I'm just saying that once you feel comfortable with the basics, start to think critically about Zen and your own study of it, including e.g. how you would decide which teachings to follow, and why.)

There's no roster of "Zen masters^TM " anywhere, so the above is a bit of a random mix of my own choosing.

While reading, note what people say and ask yourself questions -- where do they agree? Where do they disagree? If they disagree, should that be reconciled or not, and why?

Some more pointed questions to ask for each book: What can one do to reach awakening? What ways to reach awakening are preferred over others? What practices and doctrines are criticized? Is there any cultivation necessary at any point along the path? If yes, what is to be cultivated? If the teacher is talking about the teachings of earlier masters, are those teachers being represented accurately, or are extrinsic frameworks being laid onto them to fit the later teacher's presentation of Zen? If you had to sum up the teacher's teaching in a slogan, what would it be?

Really, the main thing is that you can think critically about what you're reading, but the above reading list and approach would give you a really solid foundation for the things people tend to talk about on this forum.

>A monk asked Yun Men, "What is the Body of Reality?"

>Men said, "Six do not take it in."

>Commentary: Yun Men said, "Six do not take it in." This is indeed hard to understand: even if you reach it before the first indications are distinct, this is already the secondary. If you understand after the first indications arise, then you've fallen into the tertiary. You go to the words and phrases to discern (his meaning), you will search without ever being able to find it.

A tertiary understanding would be that the six are the six senses (taste touch smell sight sound and thoughts). A secondary understanding is approaching Yun Men's as he says what he says. Primary is seeing as Yun Men sees.

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The Yuanwu OP is from here.

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>And last but not least, why do we fool ourselves?

Conditioned ignorance.

Zen Letters. No kindle version; I type them out.

Those aren't books of instruction, ewk. They are popular collections of certain people's enlightenment encounters.

Is Red Pine's translation of Bodhidharma not a direct teaching? Are letters of practice instructions from Foyan, Yuanwu, and Hongzhi not direct teachings? I suppose that Takuan Soho's instructions to Munenori on maintaining no-mind in daily life doesn't count either?

Why is it better for novices to dive deep into stories about Gutei's finger or think about whether the flag moves or not than it is to read directly from Huangpo? Isn't that like asking a baby to chew a piece of meat?

From the book Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu

I wouldn't say those in recent times who study the Way do not try hard, but often they just memorize Zen stories and try to pass judgment on the ancient and modern Zen masters, picking and choosing among words and phrases, creating complicated rationalizations and learning stale slogans. When will they every be done with this? If you study Zen like this, all you will get is a collection of worn-out antiques and curios.

When you "seek the source and investigate the fundamental" in this fashion, after all you are just climbing up the pole of your own intellect and imagination. If you don't encounter an adept, if you don't have indomitable will yourself, if you have never stepped back into yourself and worked on your spirit, if you have not cast off all your former and subsequent knowledge and views of surpassing wonder, if you have not directly gotten free of all this and comprehended the causal conditions of the fundamental great matter-then that is why you are still only halfway there and are falling behind and cannot distinguish or understand clearly. If you just go on like this, then even if you struggle diligently all your life, you still won't see the fundamental source even in a dream.

This is why the man of old said: "Enlightenment is apart from verbal explanations-there has never been any attainer."

Deshan said: "Our school has no verbal expressions and not a single thing or teaching to give people."

Zhaozhou said: "I don't like to hear the word buddha."

Look at how, in verbally disavowing verbal explanations, they had already scattered dirt and messed people up. If you go on looking for mysteries and marvels in the Zen masters' blows and shouts and facial gestures and glaring looks and physical movements, you will fall even further into the wild foxes' den.

All that is important in this school is that enlightenment be clear and thorough, like the silver mountain and the iron wall, towering up solitary and steep, many miles high. Since this realization is as sudden as sparks and lightening, whether or not you try to figure it out, you immediately fall nto a pit. That is why since time immemorial the adepts have guarded this one revelation, and all arrived together at the same realization.

Here there is nowhere for you to take hold. Once you can clear up your mind and you are able to abandon all entanglements, and you are cultivating practice relying on an enlightened spiritual friend, it would be really too bad if you weren't patient enough to get to the level where the countless difficulties cannot get near you, and to lay down your body and your mind there and investigate till you penetrate through all the way.

Over thousands of lifetimes and hundreds of aeons up until now, has there ever been any discontinuity in the fundamental reality or not? Since there has been no discontinuity, what birth and death and going and coming is there for you to be in doubt about? Obviously there things belong to the province of causal conditions and have absolutely no connection to the fundamental matter.

My teacher Wuzu often said, "I have been here for five decades, and I have seen thousands and thousands of Zen followers come up to the corner of my meditation seat. They were all just seeking to become buddhas and to expound Buddhism. I have never seen a single genuine wearer of the patched robe."

How true this is! As we observe the present time, even those who expound Buddhism are hard to find, much less any genuine people. The age is in decline and the sages are further and further distant. In the whole great land of China, the lineage of Buddha is dying out right before our very eyes, We may find one person of half a person who is putting the Dharma into practice, but we would not dare to expect them to be like the great exemplars of enlightenment, the "dragons and elephants" of yore.

Nevertheless, if you simply know the procedures and aims of practical application of the Dharma and carry on correctly from beginning to end, you are already producing a lotus from within the fire.

You must put aside all the conditioning that entangles you. Then you will be able to perceive the inner content of the great enlightenment that has comedown since ancient times. Be at rest wherever you are, and carry on the secret, closely continuous, intimate-level practice. The devas will have no road to strew flowers on, and demons and outsiders will not be able to find your tracks. This is what it means to truly leave home and thoroughly understand oneself.

If, after you have reached this level, circumstances arise as the result of merit that lead you to come forth and extend a hand to communicate enlightenment to others, this would not be inappropriate. As Buddha said, "Just acquiesce in the truth, you surely won't be deceived." But even for me to speak this way is another case of a man from bandit-land seeing off a thief.

Source

Links:

Zen Letters 1

Zen Letters 2

Zen Letters 3

Zen Letters 4

Zen Letters 5

Zen Letters 6

Zen Letters 7

Zen Letters 8

Zen Letters 9

Zen Letters 10

Zen Letters 11

Zen Letters 12

Zen Letters 14

Zen Letters 15

Zen Letters 24

Zen Letters 46

Have you ever read Zen Letters? Yuanwu has a couple chapters talking about the Tao not the wacky worship cult.