The Daily Zen Teisho Daily Zen

With any spiritual discussion, there is always a point where you just can't understand because the very faculty trying to grasp it all is standing in the way. So what do you do at that point? Relax, sit back, and know that it is there for you somehow.

Most of us are well aware that the truth cannot be experienced by just reading sacred writings, however, lest we swing into extremes, as we are sometimes known to do, they still have their purpose. From the very first line though, the encouragement to “stainless learning” means … what exactly?

While the sutras are numerous and many have never been translated, what we do have access to can be challenging to understand. The lore surrounding the Lankavatara Sutra is that when Bodhidharma chose his successor Hui-k’o, he gave him a copy of the Lanka sutra and told him all he needed to know was in it.

Some of the Zen masters may sound harsh at times; their actions can seem confounding, but for some it takes a big message to break through the attachment to self.  This truly is one of the biggest hurdles we encounter in practice, so subtle as to actually fool us into thinking “ah, now I really understand at last!”

What little we know of him sitting in front of the wall and not responding to Huike until he took extreme measures to show his sincerity indicates someone of profound depth and experience. When compared with other translations one wonders if the entirety of this is from him or later accruals.

As seemingly difficult as some passages above are to comprehend, the method elucidated is clear and the “goal” of training is set forth at the very beginning. Hung-jen was the fifth patriarch of Zen and the teacher Hui-neng studied with.