This is day one of this January 2025, rohatsu seshin, and I'm going to begin reading from the book Silent illumination, written by chan Master Guo Guo, Gu for those who don't know him, Guo. Gu is a disciple and a successor of chan master Sheng Yen, who had a center in New York and others all over the world and in Taiwan, and wrote a number of books and met with both Roshi Kapleau and Bodh and Roshi, both of them visited him in Taiwan. He so
I'm going to just plunge right in here, right from the beginning, pretty much. And Gu says Buddha nature, our natural, awakened nature, is really another word for silent illumination. It's the title of the book mo Zhao in Chinese, if I may butcher it, he says, Yet many misunderstand it as an exclusive meditation method of certain sects within the chan tradition, and say that it was advocated only by chan Master Hong Ji lived from 1091, to 1157,
but silent illumination cannot be claimed by any one tradition within Mahayana Buddhism, and it is Not a fixed meditation method. Hong Ji, a child prodigy who at age five, had already memorized the four classic books of Confucianism, was a gifted teacher. His masterful command of the Chinese language, its fondness for poetry in particular is evident in the poetic imagery he used to describe silent illumination, whose qualities are freedom, openness and clarity. In other words, for him, silent illumination was another word for awakening. He never presented it as a method or technique for meditation practice, staying true to Hong Ji's description of silent illumination, I present it in this book as natural awakening, accessible To everyone right here and now.
Of course, silent illumination is the Chinese term for what the Japanese call shikantaza, or just sitting but the point that Guo, Guo is making here is it's what silent illumination points to is not limited to one particular mode of practice. What he says here applies to breath practice, to koan practice, because really it is a description of our nature, who and what we are.
He says natural awakening is inherent within everyone. It's not something produced through practice so easily to get into a production mind state when we're doing zazen, to feel that our job is to produce good states of mind that somehow are going to lead us to the truth. But that's a misunderstanding, and it's a barrier. It's an obstacle. The minute we get involved in messing with the mind trying to make it this way or that way. We're no longer really on our practice. We're tied up worrying about results, making comparisons with others or with ourself. This time, I sat really well, amazing state. I wish I could describe it better, sort of thing.
Practice really gets going when we give that up, we give up our demands that our mind be a certain way. Of course, it's a good sign. Time when the mind settles, thoughts become less persistent, begin to feel lightness and clarity and silence.
This is the point that Anthony de Mello makes. I've read this a number of times, and I'll just summarize, compares the state of mind of somebody training the dog to a scientist studying the behavior of ants. Train a dog to get him to do certain tricks. But the scientist studying ants isn't trying to produce anything. He's just trying to see. He's just interested. He's interested in ants. De Mello says, If you attain a mindset like that, miracles will happen. You're no longer a little tyrant, oh, martinet, just opening up to what's there, interested in what's there. Things begin to move along.
Again. Natural awakening is inherent within everyone. It is not something produced through practice. Hong Ji eloquently described it as the vacant and open field, the lucid Lake, our original home. The point of chan practice, then is to regain our original freedom by clearing away our emotional afflictions and negative habitual patterns that is craving, aversion and ignorance and our tendency to perpetuate them,
grasping and avoiding,
picking and choosing,
this morning, we recited the great way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose when preferences are cast aside, the way stands clear and undisguised, the more we can get out of the way, more everything opens up to us on the mat and in our life,
no longer demanding that People be a certain way or that we ourselves be a certain way.
And he says, craving a version and ignorance in our tendency to perpetuate them, the accumulation of which have concealed who we are. And he states, this is long chi the correct way of practice is to simply sit in stillness and silently investigate deep down, one reaches a state where externally, one is no longer swayed by causes and conditions. The mind being empty, it is all embracing. Its luminosity being wondrous, it is precisely apt and impartial. It
when the mind is still, we find ourselves responding spontaneously without a sense of separation, without thinking of what to say, we're able to say The right thing, not trying to calculate, manipulate. Gu says chan practice is about investigating our intrinsic awakened nature. It requires us to remove the obscurations self attachment and all of its emotional afflictions and negative habitual patterns that conceal our inherent freedom. So. We can express it in the midst of daily life.
The Chinese characters Hong Ji used for investigation have the meaning of partaking, integrating and thoroughly penetrating. Sometimes he combined the word investigation with the term TI, which means embodiment or experiencing. For Hong Ji, investigation was not an intellectual process, but embodied, actualized and lived experiencing. Thus, while silent illumination as our original awaken nature is quote, something intrinsically full and complete, we must personally recognize and live it.
Anyone working on a koan faces this fork in the road, whether to go into questioning in an intellectual way, thinking way, conceptual way, or in a silent, formless way.
Sooner or later, we have to exhaust the thinking mind, which can't take us where we want to
go. Guo Gu says silence is the metaphor for the wisdom of emptiness. So our quiescence, formlessness, spaciousness, stillness. These are all Hong Ji's poetic terms for the Mahayana teaching of selflessness. We could say the teaching of no self.
The Buddha said there are three characteristics of existence, suffering. Impermanence and no self.
Illumination refers to the wondrous activity of this selfless wisdom that in Buddhism is none other than compassion. It's compassion because there's no separation. It's not me and you.
He says, just as wisdom and compassion are inseparable. So are silence and illumination. There are simply two aspects of our natural, awakened Buddha nature within
chan teaches that we are already free. We are Buddhas at the same time we're bogged down by delusion, emotional afflictions and negative habitual patterns so we don't realize our freedom. An analogy for this is the room that you occupy right now. The room its spaciousness, cannot be defined by the furniture contained in it, or the presence or absence of people, nor is the nature of the room affected by its level of cleanliness. Similarly, our Buddha nature is not defined by the presence or absence of our emotional afflictions. Like the spacious room, Buddha Nature has always been empty, free of disturbance at the same time, Buddha nature is is not a thing apart from emotional afflictions. It's through the vexations of our lives that we realize freedom. By working with our thoughts, feelings and mental states, we come to realize that we are the dynamic expression of Buddha nature, working with our vexations, best done is done without aversion or grasping to be able to See our own shortcomings without immediately trying to suppress them, hide them, deny them to be okay with who we are, because who we are is where we start from, our personality, our tendencies, these. Our problems, this is the starting line.
So often we'll have some negative feeling overtake us, some tang of guilt nervousness, depression.
There's a woman, the teacher, I guess, in Byron Katie, who calls that a compassionate alarm clock telling you you're lost in the dream. Caught up, good and bad, what you want and what you don't want. It's all grist for the mill. Roshi Kapleau used to say, it's not a problem. Sometimes in session, the going gets tough. Remember so many sessions where, well, into the session, I felt like I was just spinning my wheels. Couldn't get any kind of traction, any momentum. Of course, the what was holding me back was my constant attention on how much traction I had. Sooner or later, you have to surrender you have to give that up. I have to have faith. Say an AA, it works. If you work it, you
he goes on, like the spacious room, Buddha Nature has always been empty, free of disturbance. At the same time, Buddha nature is not a thing apart from emotional afflictions. Say that once more, it isn't a thing. Everything we do with our thinking mind is things, ideas, labels, truth is not a thing. We are not a thing. Others are not things.
In Gu terms, terms, we could say we are the dynamic expression of Buddha nature, a it and then drop that our true mind has no delineating borders, and it has infinite potential. We have the ability to respond to the needs of all beings creatively immeasurably, just as space is not the result of our moving the furniture around the room. Awakening is not something that we gain from our efforts in practice. If awakening were gained from practice, then it would just be an additional piece of furniture. Whatever can be gained is also subject to loss. Our Buddha Nature has nothing to do with having or lacking, gaining or losing.
Yet by working with the furniture, fixing the dilapidated pieces, recycling the old ones, clearing up the clutter, it's more likely that we'll recognize the spaciousness of the room. You the pieces of furniture in our heart mind are all the ever changing constructs, narratives, knowledge and personal experiences. For the purpose of this book, I use mind, or heart mind, to refer to the workings of our whole being. While our modern sensibilities tell us that body and mind are separate, that there are distinct functions of heart, brain and mind in chan usage, all of these functions are interconnected, synonymous. As for the furniture, there is a vitality to their transparency, where nothing is fixed and everything is possible.
Again, the furniture is all the constructs, narratives, knowledge and experiences, they're all. Impermanent. They all pass. They're all uncertain.
He says again, there is a vitality to their Tracy, where nothing is fixed and everything is possible. Furniture can be rearranged and recycled endlessly. We may take a particular piece of furniture as who we are, but there really is no permanent me, apart from our mental construct of it. There is no self that experiences. There's just moment to moment experiencing. Problem is really not with the furniture, but with our rigid fixation on it. You're attached to all the things we experience and have allowed them to define shape and manipulate us. When we fully appreciate the natural expression of mind as experiencing all things become alive, fluid, intimately connected with one another. This is the realization of no self or selflessness. The true nature of our mind is free. This freedom is also our true nature. Thoughts and passing emotions liberate themselves, moment after moment after moment. We don't have to do anything to make them disappear. They liberate themselves if we let go of what we're grasping.
Bodhidroshi once mentioned that he felt he could be replaced in the dokan room with a sign that says this will pass. Our problems do liberate themselves. Mark Twain is supposed to have said, I'm an old man. I have known many problems, most of which never happened.
Back to Gu. When we are aligned with our Buddha nature, we are like a mirror, selflessly reflect, reflecting images before it. We respond to complex situations and interact with others effortlessly and the reason we can function perfectly well without a fixed, rigid sense of self or experiencer is because in reality, there is no such thing and there never was. Self as a permanent entity doesn't exist in our confusion, we think that the objects of our minds, thoughts and feelings arise from the eye that is the subject standing in opposition to the rest of the world. Of course, this is the basic human delusion all fall into.
It's built into the brain, sense of self. It's there because it's conducive to survival and
now nature wants us to protect ourselves and pass our genes on to the next generation.
The I've read that the sense we have of deciding something is simply a snapshot thrown up in the brain from a process that's been going on way before we made our decision and continues through the carrying out of whatever it is, so much that's hidden beneath the surface, yet we have this little construct of itself, like a crayon drawing on a refrigerator. Doesn't begin to encompass who we are, what we are. You.
Our attachment to a fixed sense of I is unnecessary. We can actually function better without it adapting to changes when things. Faced with obstacles, but when we fixate on this sense of me, I and mine, and inject it into our daily interactions with others, we hinder the natural expression of our Buddha nature as experiencing and cause suffering for ourselves and others. Why? Because it's contrary to how we actually are free and open, wondrously changing and with great potential to understand silent illumination is to appreciate our nature as already free, the natural awakening of who we are. You.
We operate so well. Sound comes, we hear it, see, sights, senses are wide open to the world.
We're actually amazing, even though we don't appreciate it. Gu says, the reason we don't feel liberated is because we attached these notions of me, I and mine. We have taken our thinking and feeling, the objects of experiencing as who we are. Truth is, if we fill a glass with murky water and then we set the glass down and allow the silt to settle, the water naturally becomes clear. The nature of water is originally clear. It only appears to be temporarily muddied, muddied by the silt that it contains. This is who we are. Clarity has always been present. This is called intrinsic awakening, or what I call natural awakening, usually, realization of this truth happens suddenly. This is experiential awakening, we could say, realizing that we are awake. Water holds silt particles without resisting their presence or changing its true nature. And the same is true of the heart mind, if it did not have freedom as its intrinsic nature, how could it liberate itself?
In Buddhism, when intrinsic awakening is experientially realized. It is called selfless wisdom or prajna, because this wisdom operates freely without self referential obstructions. It responds skillfully to the needs of sentient beings. This is called Great Compassion, thus wisdom and compassion are the same thing, just expressed differently. They are inseparable, as our silence and illumination
among the various chan lineages, silent illumination is a shared language for awakening that rests on a playful interdependence of opposites, wisdom and compassion, stillness and activity, quiescence and wakefulness, essence and function before the arrival in Bucha of Buddhism In China, Chinese philosophy, philosophical traditions often use metaphors to express similar interplays and harmonies between dualities as a Chinese form of Buddhism, chan practice is thus naturally expressed through the same poetic language. Many chan masters from different lineages use this sort of language. Consider the words of the famous Lin chi chan master that is Rinzai Master Yuan Wuan Wu is famously the author of the hekigan roku, one of the books of koans. Consider his words directly your mind should resemble a withered log and a rotten tree stump, like a person who has gone through a great death, who no longer breaths moment to moment without knowing, instant to instant without abiding even 1000 sages cannot call you out, call you out of this state, then it may be possible to be like the blossoming of flowers on a withered tree. You should be. You would be able to bring forth boundless responses and exhibit the great, lively function of kindness and compassion. Guo Gu says. Is the main point of this past passage is that only through stilling the mind can we embody the realization of compassion and help sentient beings the withered log and rotten tree stump point to stillness and silence. Chan Master Yuanwu is encouraging practitioners to cultivate the ability to not be swayed by diluted thinking the furniture of the room, only then will the mind become truly responsive, like the quote blossoming of flowers on a withered tree, or have the ability to connect with others with genuine kindness and compassion. Compassion is the function of wisdom, just as illumination is the function of silence.
Chan master ta Hua was Yuanwu disciple Japanese scholars of Zen typically refer to him as Angie's arrival on the basis of their respective differences in their approach to practice, koan versus shikantaza, yet the two masters actually speak of practice in similar ways. Da Hua writes those who study must quiet, must be quiet and still their thoughts, still, their thoughts, feelings and perceptions during the hours of the day. If there is no particular task that needs to be done, then sit in quiet meditation so that your mind does not become lax and your body remains motionless. After a while, you will become natural and have a tranquil body in mind, which will put you in proximate accord with the way
we are normally so conditioned and our vision is so clouded by our thoughts, feelings and perceptions that the first step to any real cultivation is to learn how to manage these mental processes. To do so, we need to practice meditation and settle the body and mind. Thus, while awakening is our true nature, practice is absolutely necessary. In Hong Xi's words, this vacant and open field is intrinsically present. From the very beginning, you must purify and wipe away the various diluted conditioning and illusory habits. Naturally, you will arrive at a place that is clear and pure, perfect and bright, totally empty without any image, resplendent and outstanding. It does not rely on anything. Only this vastness can illuminate this fundamental reality as external objects are relinquished.
Guo Gu says, Indeed this vacant field, our intrinsic Buddha nature is empty of hindrances, free of defilements, and originally awakened. This may be a difficult concept for us to understand or accept. If we take a moment to reflect on what is going on with us right at this moment, chances are that what we are most aware of is a constant stream of internal mental chatter, or discursive thinking is hard to conceptualize, much less experience and openness of mind in the midst of This constant chatter. For this reason, chan practice involves purifying and wiping away the various deluded conditioning and illusory habits. Thoughts and emotions are only temporary functions of the mind. We can't get caught up with them. We need to expose, embrace, work with and let go of them. You in
this process, we regain the most natural state of being empty yet wakeful, still and aware. Master Yong Jiah, back way before, way in the very beginnings of Zen describes it like this, wakeful yet quiescent is correct. Oblivious and quiescent is wrong. Quiescent yet wakeful is correct. Mental scattering and wakefulness is wrong. Need both silence and illumination.
Here. Yang Jie Luci. States the nature of mind is quiescent and wakeful. Even though the mind is quiescent, that is, it's quiet, it is not dull or oblivious. While the mind is wakeful, it is freed from scattered thinking. The principle of silent illumination is applicable to practice. Usually when we are relaxed and still, we fall asleep when we are awake, our minds are spinning with thoughts. This is all due to habitual tendencies of attaching to different states of mind. So the point is to regain the natural clarity of our mind without being conditioned by thoughts. Being free from conditioning thoughts, our mind becomes wakeful, not being attached. We do not fall into a state of stupor. You
uh, finally, he says, As a poetic metaphor, silent illumination harmonizes the positive and negative ways of expressing our true nature. And this balance provides a principle upon which we can base our practice. If we engage in practice one sidedly, focusing on either stillness or clarity to the exclusion of the other, we will stray from the path. Mind must be still yet clear self must be empty yet engaging with the world, Hong Ji's poetic images are not concepts that we imagine while sitting in meditation. They're pointers that need to be correctly realized in daily life. As Hong Ji says, We must wipe away the various deluded conditioning and illusory habits so that we can discover the profound depth of awakening. How do we experience this? How do we concrete, concretize this in our practice? This book shows you how, and we'll take up the book again tomorrow. Time is up today. Stop now and recite the format you.
