This is day five of this. July. 2025, seven days a sheen. We're going to take up a koan today. This one's from the Mumonkan, the gateless barrier. That's how it's often translated. And this is number 15, Tozan and 60 blows.
It's a pretty long one, if I were to with the verse and commentary, so I'll just read the case now, Tozan came to see Ummon and was asked by him, where have you come from? From Sado? He replied, where were you doing? Where were you during the summer Ango summer training period I was at ho zu temple in koanan province. Replied, Tozan, when did you leave there? On the 25th of August, Ummon burst out, I spare you 60 blows the next day, Tozan came again before Ummon and said, Yesterday, you said I should receive 60 blows. I don't know where my fault was. Ummon said, You rice bag. Why do you wander about now west of the river, now south of the lake, and at this Tozan was enlightened.
I last commented on this koan 16 years ago. I remember when the day came a few years ago when I realized that when I chose a koan to do for teisho, that it would be either the last time I did it or one of the last times I did it. Those of you who are up in years, you've had that experience, okay, this is the last time I be getting a colonoscopy. Probably. This is the last time whatever, yeah, yeah, mortality becomes more within reach. And not just mortality, but the uncertainty, the certainty of death and the uncertainty of the time of death, as Zen Master Dogen put it. But I first read some biographical information about these two. First the Great Ummon. I think I'm going to switch. I'm going to try to use the Chinese. These are both Chinese men. Those of you, there may be a couple of you who don't know that the the Japanese, when Zen, when Chan, found its way to Japan and was called Zen, the Japanese redid the names of all these Chinese masters into usually something that's roughly sounds Like the Chinese so, so Dong Chan became Tozan and Yunmen became Ummon. So I'm going to try to remember to change the Japanese to the Japanese version to the Chinese Reading here from Zen Chinese heritage, by Andy Ferguson, how this hit some some points of Yun men's life. He was born in the he lived in the tangent dynasty, the Golden Age, so called Golden Age. There are scholars who who argue that the Song Dynasty which followed this the tangent could even be considered more illustrious in terms of Chan Buddhism,
this Yun men. As a young man, he first became a monk under a Vinaya master. I mentioned that earlier in seshin, the School of Zen that emphasized ethics, monastic. Rules and regulations. It says here that after serving as that teacher's attendant for many years, that is that Vinaya Master Yun men exhausted the teachings the Vinaya and set off to study elsewhere, and eventually he found his way to this mu Zhao chan master,
by the way, although this treasure of biographical material about the Masters was all Translated by Andy Ferguson, according to the title, according to the credit on the on the cover it this is all original material. This, what I just read, is part of what was dug up on scrolls or stelies that stone things. This is not, these are not Andy Ferguson's words. These go back centuries.
And then here is an account it gives of Yun men's enlightenment under this Zen master, mu Zhao. When mu Zhao heard Yun men coming, he closed the door to his room. Yun men knocked on the door. Mu Zhao said, Who is it? Yun men said, it's me. Mu Zhao said, What do you want? Yun men said, I'm not clear about my life. I'd like the master to give me some instruction. Mu Zhao then opened the door and taking a look at Yun min closed it again. Yun men knocked on the door the same way three days in a row. On the third day, when mu Zhao opened the door, Yun men stuck his foot in the doorway. Mu Zhao grabbed Yun men and yelled, Speak. Speak. When Yun men began to speak, mu Zhao gave him a shove and said, Too late. And then he slammed the door, catching Yun men's foot and breaking it. And at this moment, yen men came to awaken in
there's another story about Yun Men. Mu Zhao directed Yun men to go see another famous master by name of Shui Fung sepo In Japanese, when Yun men arrived at a village at the foot of the mountain, he encountered a monk. Yun men asked him, Are you going back up the mountain today? Remember now, this is Yun men, the enlightened one, not just the student. Are you going back up the mountain today? The monk said, Yes. Yen men said, please take a question to ask the Abbot, but don't tell him it's from someone else. Monk said, Okay. Yen men said, when you go to the temple, wait until the moment when all the monks have assembled and the abbot again, Shui Fung sepul has ascended the Dharma seat. Then step forward, grasp your hands and say, there's an iron Kang on this old fellow's head. Why not remove it? A Kang is like in the Middle Ages in Europe, they had these stocks where criminals or those, those who fell afoul of the law, whether or not they were guilty, criminals, would be have to stand and in with their hands in these, these holes in the wooden stocks in the Village Square. That's, that's the version I'm familiar with. But the Kang is in China. This is in China. It would be a mobile stocks. You could walk around with it.
So it's basically the stocks. There's an Iron King on this old fellow's head. Why not remove it? So the monk followed. Through he did this, he challenged Shui Fung. And when shui feng heard this, he got down from the sea, grabbed the monk, and said, Speak, speak. The monk couldn't answer. Of course. Shui Fung pushed him away and said, this wasn't your own speech. Monk said it was mine. Shui Fung called to his attendant, bring a rope and a stick. And the monk said, I wasn't. It wasn't my question. It was from, it was from this monk in the village. Shui Fung said, Everyone go to the village and welcome the worthy who will have 500 disciples. The next day, Yun men came up to the monastery. When Shuai Fang saw him, he said, How is it that you have arrived in this condition? Yun men then bowed his head, and At that they became teacher and student in
Yun men was famous for his very, very brief replies or answers to questions. They came to be known as his one word replies, really, one character, one Chinese character reply, which, if translated, would might be two or three or four, but here's, here's where he's a lot more wordy when he first entered the hall. That is the monks Hall, as the Abbot, the governor attended and said, Your disciple asks for your valued teaching. Yen. Men said, There is nothing special to say. It's better if I don't speak and deceive you all. I'm sorry that I've already played the part of a wily old fox for all of you. If someone of clear vision were to suddenly see me now, I'd be the laughing stock. But if I can't avoid it, then I'll just ask you all from the beginning, what's the big deal? What are you lacking? I don't have anything to say. There's nothing to be seen. You have to break through to this on your own. Don't ask silly questions. In my mind, there's just a dark fog. Ta tomorrow morning and the day after. There are a lot of affairs going on here. If your disposition is to linger here and not return to your usual lives, to look here and there at the gates and the gardens built by the Ancient Ones. What point is there and all this. So he's really handing the governor's ass when he's saying this, do you want to understand that's just due to your own quagmire of delusion accumulated for endless eons? You hear someone expound on something, and it puts a doubt in your mind. So you ask about Buddha and you ask about the ancestors, looking high and low, searching for a solution, getting caught up in things. This scheming mind is wider the mark. It's always caught up in words and phrases. Isn't what you require. The non intentional mind that is a is mind without an agenda. That's how I would take that. Don't be mistaken about this. There's nothing more to say. Take care.
And now there's more, but we'll turn now to Dongshan, to use the Chinese Tozan.
His dates are 910, to 990, so he died at 80. He. And this the today's koan was the record of their first meeting about, well, I'll just say that. Okay.
After Dong Shan became a teacher, he addressed the monks saying, language doesn't help matters. Speech does not bring forth the truth. Those burdened by language are lost. Those held up by words. Are deluded. Do you understand? You monks should be clear about it. If you come here, you must start using the Dharma eye. It's just like I say. But I've heard about one thing, what error is there in the words I've spoken? I Oh, well, we could just say the words you've spoken, the danger of listeners being caught up in the words missing, looking looking at the finger pointing to the moon rather than to the moon itself.
Yun men. Just back to Yun men for a minute. He was supposed to have been absolutely brilliant with words, eloquent, known for his eloquence, and he could see how he could manipulate people and things with his words. And so he he was always suspicious of words later in his life than and felt that they do. They're they're more trouble than than they're worth. So that's why he became famous for his so called one word replies. I
just a couple very short exchanges here involving Dongshan or Tozan. A monk asked, What did all the ancient holy ones do? Dongshan said, enter the mud, enter the water.
Another one is is itself a koan in the Mumonkan, a monk asked, what is Buddha? Dongshan said, three pounds of flax.
Another time, a monk asked him, What is Buddha? And he said, the crystal clear truth, that's a that's a pretty good definition of the word Buddha in these exchanges. Never Buddha never means, or almost never means Shakyamuni, the historical person. So when monks in the koans ask, what is Buddha? They are asking, what is the crystal clear truth?
About words, Hakuin once said, The measure of words is like the sea and the mountains nothing but an overflow of delusions. I
How did a Roshi? That's Roshi kapleau's first teacher in Japan, where he spent about three years at hoshinji once said philosophy is the study of human delusion
that comes from this is from people who have realized, realized that words aren't it? I.
More like foyan from yesterday. I quoted him. It does not come from thoughts. Same thing, all right, now to today's koan Dong Chan in 60 blows, Dom chan came to Yunmen and was asked by him, where have you come from? From Sato? He replied, Where were you during the summer on Gu Well, I was at houzu temple in koanan province. And when did you leave there? On the 25th of August, Ummon bursts out. I spare you 60 blows. Now some, some cultural explanation I came to understand. I have come to understand from a lot of reading about Zen, Chinese and Japanese, Zen and in some time there in both China and Japan, that the Chinese and the Japanese and the Koreans, at least of those days, in Those days, they often saw being struck as a tribute. It's a sign that the teacher cares about you.
That was, It just occurs to me that was the occasion of Lin cheese awakening when he was given some blows by whoever it was, Wong Bo maybe, or hyakujo, one of those guys. And and he kept asking the question and kept getting struck with a stick, and later he was told, that's like the that's like grandmotherly kindness. It's hard for us as Westerners to understand this. Okay, there it is, though seen as as a sign that the teacher feels that you're you're worthy, you're worthy. And here just imagine this what he's really saying. When he says, I spare you 60 blows. He's saying, I ought to give you 60 blows, but you're not even worth that.
What's going on? He just poor. Dong Chan was just answering the questions, where'd you come from? Well, from Rochester, you know, how Where were you during the this summer training period. Well, Cleveland. And when did you leave there? Mid 14th of June. I spare you 60 blows. You're not worth anything. Will we'll look into this more when we get to the commentary, but we can only imagine what Tozan or Dongshan, what, what, Howie, what his night was like for him before he came back. And he did come back to his credit, he didn't slink off and just gripe about the master being mean to him and unfair.
I once raised my voice in dokusan with a student, which I really seldom do, in a kind of scolding way. And later she reported that to the Zen Center ethics committee. And there you are, Western Zen.
So he comes back. He says, yesterday, you said I should receive 60 blows. See how he he converts that I should receive, you know, you ought to give me 60 blows, but then I'm not even. Worthy of that. I don't know where my fault was. And then Yun men again, you rice bag. Why do you wander about now west of the river, now south of the lake? Why do you spend all your time wandering around? And at this Dongshan was enlightened. I
this koan is really, you could say it's really about pain and how to use it. In this case, it wasn't even physical pain, but you can be sure that Dong Shan was really wounded by Yun men's outburst
in my
guess is that Dong Chan didn't get much sleep. He was just in an agony of questioning about what he could have said that provoked the master like that. And that's that's in the commentary. I'll just jump ahead for a minute all night, Dongshan struggled in a sea of yes and no. You could say right and wrong, this and that, you
how had dung chan changed when he came back the Next day? How does how does questioning change us? I
We can't be self justifying when we're questioning. We can't be sitting and nursing our psychological wounds and replaying it and finding that we were right and he was wrong. It's questioning.
This, this famous incident, also brings to mind the three essentials of koan, practice, faith, doubt and determination.
Would Tong would Dong Shan if he had just, if he had not had faith in Yun men, in Yun men's judgment and his wisdom, if he had just been able to slink often and say that Yun men was just having a bad day, or was just being cruel, or unfair? Would there have been the questioning we see the connection between faith and doubt. Doubt in Zen means questioning, wondering. It was dong Shan's tremendous faith in Yun men as the embodiment of the Dharma, his faith in the Dharma, really, that drove him to wonder all night, how this could have what, what? What went wrong?
There's this saying in Zen,
great doubt, great enlightenment, small doubt, small enlightenment. No doubt, no enlightenment.
This is the genius of a koan, is we can't be questioning truly. Questioning and holding to our ideas about ourselves and others at the same time, or at least to the degree that we're questioning, we're free of our ideas that bind us. It's
so it starts with a faith and and faith is also just absolutely necessary with breath practice, but not doubt. There's really no no no questioning in just pure breath practice, the koan is is meant to bring forth whatever. It's meant to focus whatever questioning the student has that brought her here. This is how I understand it to be human means to have questions such as, What? What is this all about? What am I doing here? I'm born. I live for 80 or 100 years at most, maybe a lot less, and then I die. What? What? What is this, I think, for reflective people, this, this questioning, such as it may be is doesn't have much power to change them. They just kind of visit it and revisit it every once in a while. I think it's very common as adolescents, we have these questions coming forth, and then our lives fill up with relationships and work and deadlines and financial concerns and everything and and the questions, these very human questions, sort of go under underground until, until sometimes there's an experience of loss, a death, someone close to us, maybe a serious injury or illness, something that lays us low, knocks us down, and at that such times, then we're more likely to say, Okay, now let's, let's look at this, but, but generally, human questioning. I think of it as like the sun, the warmth of the sun, it's nice, it's okay, it's now and then, but it doesn't, doesn't really bite it. But when the koan is like a magnifying glass, holding that in the sun, you can start a fire. It's gathering together, gathering together all this, what would otherwise be diffuse questioning, kind of weak questioning, or just occasional questioning, and putting a putting a focus on it.
Now I've learned that for a lot of people working on a koan, the questioning doesn't really bite into them. For most, most of us, who, for whom, the questioning does eventually bite, it takes a while and and I've come to to understand that that's not a deal breaker at all if, if, for example, you're working on mu and and it's really not a genuine question that's gripping you, it's okay then just, just to concentrate on the word mu with your whole being. And then, if you persist long enough, then eventually you get more intimate with it, and then it becomes perplexing if you stick with it, and it can happen just like that. Can be nothing much at all in the way of questioning, and suddenly it's got you by the throat. You
Let's just go to the commentary. If Yun men at that time had given him the fodder of the truth and awakened him to the vivid, dynamic Zen life, Yun men school would not have declined. This is Mumon the compiler of the of the Mumonkan, just being sort of playful. The point is that the Yun men school, there was the Soto, the Rinzai, the obaku, there's another one. There are five schools in that time and and one of the schools was the Yun men school. And it just didn't last that long. Who knows why? It certainly was not due to any any deficit in terms of yen men's awakening, these things are hard to to understand. So he's just saying, well, I'll just go on all night. Gong chan struggled in a sea of yes and no. Don't be caught in the whole idea of yes and no, right and wrong could also have been the way he framed it as he was thrashing around, spinning like a rotisserie in his bed all night long,
for sure, there was a strong I, what did I do wrong? Where? What's wrong with me until that had been scoured away. When dawn broke. Long awaited. Dawn broke. He went back to Yun men who helped him open his eyes and then Mumon adds, but though dung Chan was suddenly enlightened, he not he could not yet be called brilliant, I would just take that to mean that he had a lot of more work post enlightenment, as countless masters have emphasized awakening, even what may have been pretty deep awakening Dongshan had still leaves a lot of unfinished work of cleaning up the traces the habit forces They don't don't just vanish with an awakening experience, especially now, with a Very slight opening.
I found these words of t, s, Eliot made me think of Dong Chan that night from wrong to wrong, the exasperated spirit proceeds unless restored by that refining fire wherein you must move in measure, like a dancer.
He came back to you, and when he came back to you and meant he was traveling light, he had unloaded a lot of self concern. He's probably light on his feet when he came in. Imagine him same state as St John of the Cross said, walking, I know not where by a road I know not of open receptive.
Just to get back to the third of the requirements for koan were faith, doubt and determination. If the faith is strong, the doubt will be strong, the questioning will be strong, and then the determination to resolve that state of doubt is. Was he courageous coming back to this master who had verbally abused him so much? I don't think it was courage. He couldn't not come back. He had to know. He had to know, I
the verse, The lioness trains her cubs this way. If they walk ahead, she kicks them and quickly dodges heedlessly. He came back to Yun men, but was checkmated. The first arrow was only a scratch, but the second went deep in
it's all too easy to see the way Yun men treated Dongshan as again, as mean, just too harsh. There's so much that Yun min would have taken in when Dong Shan approached him the first time and answered those questions in such a kind of clueless way, Yun min would have taken the measure of of Dongshan and seeing this was no ordinary monk. This is someone he could work with but first he had to subject him. He had to provoke in him, this questioning. I
elsewhere in the Mumonkan. Mumon says, if you wish to know pure gold, see it in the midst of fire. Yen men felt, yes, it's worth it's a gamble, but it's worth subjecting him to this fire, fire of verbal abuse. It would, it would, at best, it would force him to transcend the pain. That's the key thing about pain. Pain is can transform us if we're we know how to use it. Not everyone does, but even if, in the beginning of practice, we're not so good at using pain, we develop the ability to capitalize on it, to really use it to deepen our practice.
Yen men must have we can just imagine that Deng Xian was in quite a state, that for even the first time he came yen men could see he was desperate, and the fact that he his answers to Yun min questions were so flat, didn't couldn't obscure the fact that Dong Shan was ready to make The leap, but he needed a push.
What To an outsider, someone have no experience in Zen? What might such a person seem like? Cruelty on yen men's part, really, we can be sure it was for one purpose he won to help Dongshan. He had faith that Dong Shan could use this treatment of him and well, you can't argue with success. Look what happened. I
the fact that in in in the west of meting out of. Physical pain is somehow not suitable here. Doesn't mean that that we can't find that kind of pain in our practice and use it. How many of us know the pain of not doing what we came here to do over and over and over again, seshin after seshin after seshin. All right, when it gets bad enough, when you get fed up, you'll find a way to do what you came here to do. There. Don't expect pity from the teacher, not that anyone would hear, but that's the last thing a teacher would feel, because the teacher knows that is within reach of everyone, because everyone has equally endowed with this original nature, this bodhi mind,
when you can no longer tolerate not knowing that's when things really Change. We'll stop now and recite the four vows I
