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Illuminating Silence #6 | Otter.ai

Illuminating Silence #6

John Pulleyn42min

John Pulleyn

00:00

Today is the sixth day of this November, 2025, seven day sesshin, and we'll continue with the book illuminating silence, words of master Sheng yen and edited by Dr John crook. You and

John Pulleyn

00:38

we're going to pick up with

John Pulleyn

00:47

a selection from the poem calming the mind by the Chinese Master Wang Ming. And he says this, using speech or written words to gain the praise of others is something most repulsive. Tell us what you really think. Chan tells us that we should not rely on words. This is Sheng yen. Of course, often it is better to say nothing in chan practice, the spoken and the written, written word are superfluous. Only a communication through a genuine mind is reliable. When old friends or family members have been separated for many years and meet again, what are the first words they say often, there is so much that could be said that they cannot say anything. They just embrace or shake hands and that is enough. The contact says everything.

John Pulleyn

02:01

Then Sheng yen says, last year, I went to mainland China for the first time in many years. I had not seen my brothers for 38 years. So much had happened to them in that time, doing a little calculating. I see that he last saw his brothers in 1951 which means that they lived through the Great Famine. Ran from think 1959 to 1961 where millions of Chinese starved to death. Estimates of from 15 to 50 million people died in that famine as part of the Great Leap Forward of Mao Zedong.

John Pulleyn

03:01

So much had happened to them in that time, so much had happened to me. Also when we met, we couldn't say anything. There were simply tears rolling down our faces. I myself was too embarrassed to cry, but tears were falling inside me and racking my stomach. Everything was communicated just like that.

John Pulleyn

03:30

Legend tells us that Shakyamuni passed on the whole Buddha Dharma to the first Patriarch Mahakashyapa, without saying anything in an assembly of monks, the Buddha had refused to answer metaphysical questions to which no sure answer could be given. He was just holding a flower in his hand. No one spoke, but Mahakashyapa smiled, and the Buddha said, Mahakashyapa understands.

Speaker 1

04:02

Hmm. Wang

John Pulleyn

04:09

Ming is saying that if you do not truly practice but merely use the spoken or written word to tell others about your attainment, then that is shameful. In fact, talking is useful useless. If people do not act upon these talks, that is, the talks that Sheng Yen is giving, then these two are useless. People do not act. Then this whole retreat, the lectures, all the words, would be comparable to my bringing a lump of clay from an Eastern Mountain and dumping it on a Western one. The propaganda of mere information is not of use to you within your practice, some may say, although chan speaks of no self, the bodhisattvas still teach compassion. Passionately to others. These are good teachings. Just to hear them is good and they should be handed on. So it is yet I say to you, without practice, the teachings are not manifest in the world.

John Pulleyn

05:22

Sometimes, we finally understand some aspect of practice, and then we cling to that and feel we've got a way in now and then, what you find is, as long as you're still there in the words, it doesn't keep working. Can't bottle it. We can understand what it means to drop thoughts. But if all we're doing is thinking, got to drop thoughts, that's not it. It's just, it's just so direct, so simple, so straightforward, so unencumbered beyond words and letters pointing directly to the mind everything in practice is becoming intimate with this Mind, which we all have, we all share.

John Pulleyn

06:41

Without practice, the teachings are not manifest in the world.

John Pulleyn

06:53

I'm going to move to a talk later. He says there are two important phrases for you to bear in mind. These are ordinary mind wanting nothing, ordinary mind wanting nothing. And he says, the unbiased content of the ordinary state of mind is both natural and everlasting. To be natural, the mind needs to be free, free from anything artificially created by thought or reasoning from anything shaped by an experience or judgment. When these things are absent, we say the mind is in its natural state. When the mind is natural, it is in conformity with the Tao, with the truth, with the way and when we're emptied out our baggage, everything we carry around with us, some of it, some of it conscious and a lot of it unconscious. So many attitudes and habitual reactions, of which we are as yet unaware, it's always more to chip away.

John Pulleyn

08:19

And then Sheng yen says, Let me put it this way, here in the mountains, in this old farmhouse of stone and wood, we're living close to nature. Yet the tools we use and the clock that tells the time remain man made. They are not completely natural. But for us, the use of such simple tools is natural enough. It is of our nature to use such things to wear clothes is natural and we feel comfortable to take them off and be uncomfortable would not be natural for us, even if at first sight, nakedness might be nearer our original condition. Natural is what is appropriate. Natural is this. When there is one, there is one, when there are two, there are two things are as they are. We don't need to add criteria of evaluation to fit our moods, our thoughts or judgments.

John Pulleyn

09:28

Right now, it's like this.

John Pulleyn

09:34

That phrase is

John Pulleyn

09:43

it's become something of a Buddhist catch word. It's really got a lot to it, and a lot of it goes back to Ajahn sumato, who is a. A successor of Ajahn Chah, the Thai Forest master Ajahn sumedho was a Westerner and teaches in Great Britain. And he said, This awareness is your refuge, awareness of the changingness of feelings, of attitudes, of moods, of material change and emotional change. Stay with that, because it's a refuge that is indestructible. It's not something that changes. It's a refuge you can trust in. This refuge is not something that you create. It's not a creation, it's not an ideal. It's very practical and very simple, but easily overlooked and not noticed. When you are mindful, you're beginning to notice. It's like this. It's the basis of our practice things as they are, not things as we want them to be, things as we hope they will become.

John Pulleyn

11:16

It's really the foundation you

John Pulleyn

11:23

it's liberation. It's right here. It's right now. It's outside of any goals, outside of regrets, hopes, it's good. Completely natural.

John Pulleyn

11:52

It's really a way of saying, I take refuge in Dharma. You.

John Pulleyn

12:03

The Sheng yen says, whatever is truly natural is everlasting. I mean to say the natural form is part of a timeless process that obeys unchanging principles. The sunlight from the window moves as a patch across the floor. It comes and goes as the clouds move across the sky, the sun itself follows its own varying path relative to the Earth. The Earth revolves on its axis, so that we have the experience of the sunrise in the morning and sunset in the evening. Patch of light on the floor appears according to the rules of place, time and weather. All this is natural and everlasting. Water becomes rain and rain becomes water. This too is everlasting. It is of the eternal. Hmm? In the practice of chan it is important to discover and to maintain the natural basis of the mind. If a practitioner remains with his illusory thoughts, his mind is split, does not come to rest in its natural state without discovering the natural basis, the practitioner, sooner or later, abandons his quest. He has not hit upon the eternal. Once the eternal is perceived, the practitioner is unlikely to give up for he has discovered his own basis,

John Pulleyn

13:40

even short of awakening so we begin to sense the natural basis of our life. We're solid. We can practice for the sake of practice. We can set aside our constant preoccupation with goals and results. Can just do the work.

John Pulleyn

14:21

Sheng yen says, when we are born, the body mind is in its natural state. Gradually we adopt unnatural contortions defending ourselves, where, if we were wise, we would find that no defense is needed. Such a wonderful thing to begin to feel no need to defend myself,

John Pulleyn

14:51

no need to defend the me.

John Pulleyn

14:58

We can move freely when we're not. Ending ourselves. We don't become rigid, and we can see what's needed. We can see others, not blinded, not puffed up and artificial or shrinking and ashamed. You

John Pulleyn

15:27

Sheng yen says the practice of chan enables us to go back to being natural, to rediscover the eternal quality of being every day we get up, wash, eat, go to the toilet, all this is natural. Similar, similarly, we need to build into our everyday lives the practice of meditation. Let it be a natural part of daily life, not something special with a time set aside for it, but a quality of ongoing awareness in the beginning of practice Zen can seem really special, and a lot of people remain attached to that special aura of Zen, especially to their own particular flavor, whether it's Japanese or Chinese or So tou or Rinzai, their own rituals and routines. Seems like that's Zen. That's the surface. It may be helpful in some cases for a while, but really we need to find our natural basis. Zen is not the intellectual property of the Zen school. It's the truth it appears, all in all religions, in all countries and all peoples.

John Pulleyn

17:04

Yen. Sheng yen says, when we look at the stream outside, we see the water flowing. What is its purpose? There is no purpose. It is simply flowing. So let it be with practice. Practice itself has no particular purpose. If you give practice a purpose, then it's not natural practice. It is not rooted in the eternal when your practice has no purpose, when practice itself is the purpose, then it is natural practice, and only this natural practice has the quality we call everlasting. When your practice has no purpose, you are not seeking anything. You want nothing. When you want nothing and there is nothing to want, what is there? Then please, just use an ordinary state of mind to practice, no need for assumptions, moods, emotions or judgments. Simply follow your method. Work hard for no reason, sit without purpose in your sitting, let the natural state arise everlastingly. When practice has no purpose, it's a joy. It's open, it flows. Purpose only gums it up.

John Pulleyn

18:34

Then turning to another talk, he says, the attitude we need to adopt in the practice of Chan is different from the attitude we take when doing work of other kinds, such as academic study. Not only is it different, it should be quite the opposite. Usually, when we're involved in a task that needs discipline or study, we like to get on with the job. To get things done fast. If we hurry and get a move on, then we can get as much done as possible. If we hurry and work hard, then the result is usually proportional. On the other hand, if you take a hurrying attitude in the practice of chan you may achieve merely an undesirable result. The more you try to hurry and calming your mind, the more obstacles you will generate, the more you hurry to get enlightenment, the more vexations you will create, and you will be further away from your goal. The practice of chan involves training and patience and in determination requires the development of the will. The purpose of practice. Guess there is a purpose. The purpose of practice is to free ourselves from the self, to go beyond attachments to the self. If we are seeking rapid results, seeking to gratify ourselves, and reaching some goal or some attainment, then this is the opposite of the purpose of chan. I say the purpose is no purpose if we get anxious, because there appears to be no result from practice, we're making a mistake in chan trying to make progress ensures no progress. So common to feel anxious when you think you're in a flat state, they genuinely be in a flat state and you're not getting anywhere spent so many sesshins just spinning my wheels. Day four, day five, day six, day seven. So frustrating, something I wasn't dropping. Sometimes that's all you can do. Just keep coming back. It's nothing really wrong. It's all probably part of the process. I went to Roshi in one of those states, spinning my wheels. Told me, John, just trust the pro the just Trust the process. I I went, Oh, that's it. So

John Pulleyn

21:42

simply follow your method. Work hard for no reason, sit without any purpose in your sitting, let the natural state Arise everlastingly. You.

John Pulleyn

22:21

I let Anthony de Mello weigh in on this topic. Says people think that if they had no cravings, they'd be like Deadwood, but in fact, they'd lose their tension. Get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding. You'll be yourself relaxed. You wouldn't be driving with your brakes on. That's what would happen. There's a lovely, lovely saying of chan to a great Chinese sage that I took the trouble to learn by heart. And it goes, when the archer shoots for no particular prize, he has all his skills when he shoots to win a brass buckle, he's already nervous when he shoots for the gold prize, he goes blind, sees two targets, and is out of his mind. His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He cares. He thinks more of winning than of shooting, and the need to win drains him of power.

John Pulleyn

23:30

Tense up, we choke. My father used to always like to point out this phenomenon. One day I was sitting on the floor. I had a little toy ski ball thing, where you roll, you roll a ball up a incline and try to get it to fall into the right hole, depending on how fast you roll it and how straight and true. And I was doing pretty good. And my dad said, Okay, I'll tell you what. I'll give you a quarter if you can do it on the next one. What a jerk. But I learned a valuable lesson. I didn't need some Chinese sage, and he didn't give me a quarter either.

John Pulleyn

24:31

De Mello says, Now there is human living for you. That's what life is all about. That can only come from awareness. And in awareness, you will understand that honor doesn't mean a thing. It's a social convention. That's all. That's why the mystics and the prophets didn't bother one bit about it. Honor or disgrace meant nothing to them. They were living in another world, in the world of the awakened. Success or failure meant nothing to them. They had the attitude. Said, I'm an ass. You're an ass. So what's the problem? There is a

John Pulleyn

25:13

parable, I think, from the Buddha or sort of organizational system called the eight worldly wins.

John Pulleyn

25:29

The eight worldly conditions, gain and loss, fame and fame and ill repute, praise and blame, pressure, pleasure and pain. It's basically good and bad. And there's a story about that story about a famous Buddhist poet named Su Dong pu in the Song Dynasty, and he was assigned to an official post right across the Yangtze River from the golden mountain temple where chan master fou yen presided, and one day Su Dong Po, feeling quite advanced in his practice, wrote a poem and asked his attendant to send it to chan master fo Yin for verification. The poem one is following, bowing with my highest respect to the Daeva of devas, the God of gods whose fine light illuminates the whole universe. The eight winds cannot move me, for I am sitting upright on the golden purple lotus blossom. After receiving the poem from the attendant and reading it, chan master full yen, picked up the brush and wrote down one word as his comment when the attendant came back with the poem. Su Dong Po expecting words of praise. Hua,

John Pulleyn

27:03

I quickly opened it to read the comment. However, on that page, nothing was written except the word fart pee in Chinese, which means utter nonsense. Upon seeing such an insult, Su Dong Po was ablaze with the fire of anger. Immediately, he boarded a boat and crossed the Yangtze River to argue with chan master fo Yin. Before the boat even pulled up onto the shore, chan master pho Yen was standing there waiting for Su Dong Po. He knew how to call him over upon seeing fou yen. Su Dong Po said, chan Master, we are such intimate Dharma friends, it's fine that you do not compliment my practice or my poem, but how can you insult me like this, innocently, as if nothing had happened. The chan master asked, How have I insulted you without saying another word. Su Dong Po simply showed the word fart to chan master, full yen and laughing wholeheartedly, the chan master said, Oh, didn't you say that the eight winds cannot move you? How come you were sent across the river with just a fart? You? And hearing what fo Yuan said Su Dong Po was extremely embarrassed.

John Pulleyn

28:42

All right back to work.

John Pulleyn

29:01

Sheng yen says, Let us return once more to the analogy of the feather and the fan. Before you can get any result from your practice, you have to hold the fan in a very stable and peaceful manner. And if the feather does end up on your fan, it is important not to get excited. If you get too happy, there will be a slight stir of your hand and the feather will be gone. The question is, When will the feather drop on your fan and never fly away again? As long as there is an idea of attainment in which you imagine something and want it, the feather will keep floating away. In fact, the problem will last just as long as the feather and the fan exist for you only when there is no person seeking an attainment, and no attainment to be realized will the ultimate solution arise. Another way of putting it, is only when the practice is all consuming. One only when you care more about mu. Than you do about getting through mu. Care more about the breath than how well you're breathing. It's extremely powerful when you drop your preoccupation with goals. It's a completely different attitude. And we all find our way into this attitude. From time to time, you wonder why practice suddenly went so well, well, something you weren't doing, not something you did something you didn't do. You

John Pulleyn

30:58

you now from an evening talk, he's turned back to Wang Ming and he reads this. This verse, What common people regard as auspicious, the sage takes as evil. The enjoyment gained is fleeting, but the sorrow is everlasting. Says today is the next to last day of retreat. By now, some people have had some experience of the meaning of practice, and others may feel envious of their good fortune. From an ordinary point of view, such experiences are indeed valuable, but from the ultimate point of view, are not to be regarded as good. They're nothing special. We've been talking about people climbing mountains on their way, some encounter flat areas, while others come across extreme, exceedingly steep slopes. We're pleased with the easy slopes, and feel the mountain climbing is going well, but on the flat area, the climber is not getting any higher. Someone struggling with cliffs and boulders on the steep slope may be on the quicker path. The climber wandering around on the flat area, may be going around the mountain rather than up it. This is especially likely, likely if he is climbing in a cloud. Yesterday morning, I said it was bad luck if somebody always seemed to be on a steep slope. Actually, this might not be the case at all. Such a climber might be the most fortunate. Years ago, during a retreat in America, I described the practice of chan as like climbing a glass mountain, and moreover, its surface is covered with oil, making extremely slippery if you try to climb it. There is no way you will not slide down. Nonetheless, this is the task before you the mountain is very tall, but still you must climb, and still down you slide. This is how chan practice is. In the end, you discover that the glass Mountain is an illusion. It has no real existence. One day, when you climb up some distance and then fall right back to the bottom, you suddenly come to see that the top and the bottom are the same. To understand this, you have to be a climber. You have to make the effort to climb the slippery mountain. Unless you climb, you can never know that top and bottom are the same. Sometimes we just have to spin our wheels.

John Pulleyn

33:36

Wang Ming is saying that for one who has never practiced certain states and certain experiences are good and valuable. The sage, however, recognizes that attachments to experience or high states are a hindrance, for they do not lead to liberation. The Exalted states, the peaks, must also be put down. You have to go beyond this type of evaluation in

John Pulleyn

34:04

you may enjoy certain states or conditions and come to value them highly. It's like climbing up to a flat area with beautiful trees and running Brooks. You arrive there and find it's quite gorgeous. So you sit down saying how beautiful this is. You forget about the climb. The next time you make the ascent again, you sit down in the comfortable spot, perhaps you enjoy a snooze in your dreams, you are Lotus eating. Have some of you found such a place on the mountain? The ancient patriarchs cautioned their disciples about this, especially those who had had a first taste of enlightenment, they told them that the road ahead was still very long. If you have only just begun to walk, then there's a long way to go. If you've had a glimpse of seeing the nature, then you have to practice even harder. Of course, when you fully understand there is nowhere to go. So. We get so nutsed up about our progress or lack of progress, but other people's position relative to us. Remember reading a book by John Blofeld, translator and author, was in China, and he was commenting on the superiority of the chan attitude to develop self power, johriki, as opposed to what's done in the Pure Land School, where you rely on other power, the mercy of the Bodhisattva Kannon koan yen, and the person he was talking to said, your your view may be more sophisticated than that of simple peasants or devotees of Kuan yen. On this journey, you may be a step ahead, but this is a journey of 10,000 miles. What difference is one step?

John Pulleyn

36:19

Sheng yen says danger is that people who have had a taste of enlightenment confuse pleasing sensations with the real thing. They believe that's it. These sensations are perceptual experiences. Mental responses are states which are refreshing and give one a feeling of calm, peace and even a unity of body and mind. All these pleasing experiences have nothing to do with enlightenment. They're simply a rise on the path. The wise practitioner should be very careful. Maybe you have come to experience the unity of the previous thought with the subsequent one. The experience is valuable. It's a sign of strong meditative practice.

John Pulleyn

37:10

Yet this is not enlightenment becoming one. Is becoming one that is all yet, because it feels good, because you do not know what enlightenment is. You may mistake it for the real thing. It's happened so often, so many people wandering around feeling that they've come to awakening. Says, Be cautious. Just continue without attachment to states that arise as Wang Ming says, such enjoyments are fleeting, but the illusion might last forever.

John Pulleyn

37:53

Again, perhaps you've seen the nature, which is a chan way of saying, perhaps you've had Kensho you've seen the nature actually like that phrasing better. You have perceived the emptiness of self in all things. Experienced an awareness of the absence of self. You've seen the empty state where there is no self because the self has vanished. You've had an initial taste of enlightenment. You need no longer doubt it. Yet, as soon as you realize it and think about it, you are no longer there anymore. When you speak of it, you're speaking of something past a one time experience. Such an individual is in danger if he thinks he is enlightened. What was it now? It's only a dead experience. If you take this attitude, there's no way you can make progress. Wang Ming tells us that if we have a good experience and hold on to it, evaluating it and wanting to repeat it, then we will have a very long night ahead of us. Remember, after Bodhin Roshi passed me on mu him some days later, pointing out to me that when sesshin ended and people came out, very often, the most radiant people were those still working on their first koan, people who weren't bogged down by some feeling of attainment being special in some way.

John Pulleyn

39:38

People can actually get lost if they're too enamored of what they've achieved or what recognition they've been given, I.

John Pulleyn

40:13

I'm going to finish with the last stanza, stanza of the poem. And Sheng yen comment, commentary. So Wang Ming said, What is of value, what is cheap, where is there shame or glory? What is excellent or inferior? How can there be heavy and light? And Sheng yen says, When the meditator comes to understand that there need not be discrimination. Then the whole process of discriminating, that the whole process is a matter of illusion, that although things exist conventionally as they are, yet they need not be taken as fixed entities. Then a fresh sort of vision becomes available when we describe things, we usually do so in dualities based on our attachments. Things are good or bad, tall or short, big or small, these are the words we use to manage our practical concerns in the world. But when we deeply investigate these conventions, we see that we have allowed them to blind ourselves, bind ourselves in a prison of words. There are infinite opposites and comparisons for one with Dharma insights, such discrimination is seen as arbitrary. If there is no longer anything to gain or lose, then everything is experienced as equal within the endless arising of causes and conditions. This is simply the nature of being. Wang Ming says, the clear sky puts purity to shame. No brightness compares with the brilliant sun, stable as Mount Tai steady as a golden wall. And Sheng yen says, what else can be added? There is no need to say more.

John Pulleyn

42:17

But I will say more. Keep working. Keep giving yourself to your practice right to the end of sesshin. Don't fall back into ideas about time or what you've done or haven't done or may be going to do. Let go of that kind of purpose. Do the practice for its own sake. Stop here and recite the four vows and.

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