SESSHIN TEISHO
                       John Tarrant Roshi
                    Camp Cazadero, California
                        February 10, 1993


                  BLUE CLIFF RECORD, CASE NO. 5


This is the fifth story in the Blue Cliff Record, "Hsueh-feng's
Grain of Rice."
     Introduction

     Whoever would uphold the teaching of our school must be
     brave spirited with the ability to kill someone without
     blinking an eye.  Only such a person can become a buddha
     right where they stand.  Therefore, such a one's
     illumination and function are simultaneous.  Locking up and
     opening out are equal.  Principle and phenomena are not two
     and he or she practices both the provisional and the real. 
     Letting go of the primary she sets up the gate of the
     secondary meaning.  If she were to cut off all complications
     straight away, it would be impossible for late coming
     students of elementary capabilities to find a resting place. 
     It was this way yesterday.  The matter couldn't be avoided. 
     It is this way today, too.  Faults and errors fill the
     skies.  Still, the point is as a clear-eyed person, she
     can't be fooled one bit.  Without clear eyes lying in the
     mouth of a tiger one cannot avoid losing body and life.  As
     a test I cite this.  Look!

     The Case

     Hsueh-feng, teaching his community, said:  Pick up the whole
     great earth in your fingers and its as big as a grain of
     rice.  I throw it down before you.  It's in a black lacquer
     bucket.  You can't find it anywhere.  Beat the drum.  Call
     everyone to look for it.

     The Poem

     The ox head disappears; a horse head emerges.
     In the mirror of Hsao-chi (???) there's absolutely no dust.
     He beats the drum for you to come and look, but you don't
          see.
     When spring arrives, for whom do the hundred flowers bloom?


Please sit comfortably.

The person who wrote the Introduction was Hsuan-wu (???), whom
everybody who does a koan lineage at all is descended from.  He
was one of the great late Chinese masters in our tradition, just
before our tradition came to Japan.  All of the entire Rinzai
line is descended through him, the entire Rinzai line through
Japan.  He said, "Only if you can kill someone without blinking
an eye, can you become a buddha right where you stand."   This
may be a little alarming for pacifist buddhists.  What do you
think he means?

There's a kind of inner resoluteness that is needed to really
achieve anything, whether it's in work, or in love, or in the
dharma.  We have to throw everything away and just concentrate on
this one thing and let everything else die, everything else goes
dark.  

He also points out that if Hsueh-feng were to cut off all
complications straight away, "It would be impossible for late
coming students of elementary capabilities (he means us) to find
a resting place."  In other words he's saying, Hsueh-feng is
bending down a little bit, but it's okay because he's gotten
people like us who wouldn't understand him if he didn't.  The
truth is that every time we open our mouths we're wrong.  We move
from it.  There's an old saying, that if you say the word
`buddha,' you should wash out your mouth with soap.  Hsuan-wu's
comment reflects this spirit.  But still sometimes you have to
say, `buddha, buddha.'  Another teacher was asked, "How do you
avoid saying the word buddha?"  He said, "Buddha, buddha,
buddha."

Hsueh-feng said, "You pick up the whole great earth in your
fingers and it's like a grain of rice in size."  Beautiful, isn't
it?  There are many, many examples of this kind of insight in our
tradition.  The first transmission story is of Shakyamuni holding
up a flower.  The story is that everybody gathered at vulture
peak in India for him to give a talk, a teisho.  When the time
came and the drum was beaten and everybody got ready, he didn't
say anything.  He just held up a flower and twirled it around. 
The zen story goes that Mahakasyapa was in the audience and he
cracked a smile.  Then Shakyamuni said, "Okay, I'll give you the
transmission.  You recognize me."  That was the first zen story
about transmission.  Although the events took place in Buddha's
time, the story came much later.  Blake's famous lines, almost a
cliche, really, come to mind:
     To see a world in a grain of sand,
     And heaven in a wild flower.
     To hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
     And eternity in an hour.

I think in sesshin we know that eternal hour.  You walk outside
meditating under the trees, the flowers and the rain and the
leaves and the birds.  All of them go on forever and the path
goes on forever from before birth and after death.  The whole
world is here walking under the trees, sitting in the dojo this
long afternoon.

Hsueh-feng's biography is worth recounting so I'll interrupt the
case to recount a little of it.  He wanted to go off and study
zen at the age of nine, but his parents had doubts about the
wisdom of this course at that age.  At the age of twelve he went
to a temple and met a teacher and refused to go home.  So he
stayed there.  He studied for many years.  He first studied the
precepts with the precept master.  Later on he studied zen.  He
was about twenty-four when buddhism was persecuted.  He dressed
in disguise.  In old China people's orientation, you might say,
was indicated by their dress.  There was Taoist dress and
buddhist dress and Confucian dress.  He wore Confucian dress and
went around visiting secret zen masters at that time.  Then later
on the persecution was lifted again.  Some suspect this time
always sounds like the twentieth century.  I think the koan
tradition sprang up in response to conditions rather like the
ones we have regrettably experienced in our time.  

His first teacher died and he travelled around quite a long time. 
He had a close friend called Yen-t'uo (Ganto) and they used to
travel together a lot.  They were both rather restless,
particularly Hsueh-feng, and he would go around everywhere.  He
had a rice tub and a spoon and he would be the rice steward in
every temple.  He would travel around from temple to temple and
he'd stay a few years and then go back to another master.  Then
he'd decide maybe the first master was better and he'd go back to
him.  He went like this.  He actually visited Tou-zu (sp???)
three times and he visited the great Te-shan, perhaps the great
teacher of his time, nine times.  He eventually wound up with Te-
shan, who was the great figure of the last case who studied the
Diamond Sutra and came down to teach the barbarians that zen was
wrong and stayed to perpetuate one of the great zen lines.  He
was over forty by the time he finally met Te-shan and is
generally considered to be a successor of Te-shan.  Te-shan was
over eighty, quite old, quite long in the tooth.  He stayed there
for several years with his friend Yen-t'ou.  Although they were
friends, Yen-t'ou was younger.  Yen-t'ou was already very deeply
enlightened.  Hsueh-feng would struggle along.  He had had little
experiences that would keep him going, but he couldn't really set
his heart to rest.  This was a matter of great concern to him. 
He was known as the sweating horse of zen.  A man of effort.  He
started when he was twelve and here he has just met his true
teacher when he was forty, twenty-eight years later.  Think of
this next time you complain about the time it is taking you to do
koans.  He's just meeting his teacher now.  He stayed with that
community for some time and there are a number of koan stories
about him there.  He doesn't really seem to have connected with
his teacher immediately.
The story goes that he was traveling on pilgrimage between
training periods with his friend Yen-t'ou.  As they were crossing
a mountain pass, they were snowed in a little place called
Tortoise Mountain in a village that was in Hunan (???) in a
little hut.  There's nothing much you can do when you're snowed
in except meditate and sleep.  So Yen-t'ou slept and Hsueh-feng
meditated.  Every now and again Yen-t'ou would roll over and open
his eyes and look at Hsueh-feng sitting there meditating and then
he'd roll over and go back to sleep.  Day and night Hsueh-feng
meditated.  This went on for several days.  Yen-t'ou sat up and
said, "What are you doing sitting there like a wooden buddha by
the roadside?"  Hsueh-feng said,  "My heart is not yet at rest." 
Which is a very beautiful reply, I think.  He had an awareness of
who he was and where he stood.  I think this sort of admission to
ourselves is very important.  To see who we really are is always
the beginning of something good.  Just like discovering our
secret greed, or secret tendency to tell lies, or something in
yourself.  When you notice it, you begin to feel shame.  The
beginning of generosity and change in you is happening.

Then what happened was that Yen-t'ou said, "Bring out what you
know and I'll test you."  Hsueh-feng told his story.  When he
arrived at Te-shan, he said, "Does this student have any share in
the matter handed down from antiquity as the fundamental
vehicle?"  It's a rather fancy way of putting it, but I think you
can get what he's saying.  Do I have the capacity to be
enlightened in this life?  Do I have any connection with all
those old stories?  If you tell stories about something that
happened a thousand years ago, people say, `well, that happened
so long ago and doesn't apply to me.'  If you tell stories about
things that happened a generation ago, people say, `that happened
in the last generation and doesn't apply to me.'  If you tell
stories about things that happened last week, people say, `it is
not now.'  Our potential is really always the same, but Hsueh-
feng doubted.  He knew that he did not know that in his bones. 
So he asked his teacher that.  Te-shan, even though he was eighty
years old, managed to stagger up and strike him a blow and said,
"What are you saying?"  He had an insight at that time.  He
described this sort of thing to his friend Yen-t'ou.  He said,
"When Te-shan hit me, it was like a bottom falling out of a
bucket."  Yen-t'ou gave a great shout, "KAH!" (he was known for
his shout) and said, "Haven't you heard it said that what comes
in through the gate is not the family treasure.  You must let it
flow out from your own breath to cover heaven and earth, then you
will have some small portion of realization."  With this shout
and these words Hsueh-feng was suddenly greatly enlightened.  He
bowed and said to Yen-t'ou, "Older brother, today, Tortoise
Mountain has finally attained the path."  That's often translated
today `In tortoise mountain I have attained the path,' but
actually he says, `Today, the whole village, the whole mountain,
the whole world has attained the path.'  It is a very beautiful
way of putting it.  So you can see that Tortoise Mountain is the
whole world just like this grain of rice that we hold up.

His friend Yen-t'ou, who was known for his shout, died and sort
of disappears from history.  He returns later because Hakuin was
fascinated with him and how such a wise teacher could die so
young.  He died in his sixties, his late sixties.  He was run
through by bandits, guerillas.  Just the usual casual mayhem at
the time of civil war.  He had sent his students away and he sat
meditating in his temple.  They rode into the temple and speared
him.  And he had said, "When I go, I will go with a great shout." 
For miles around villagers heard this great, `Aaahhh' lion's roar
and they knew that Yen-t'ou had gone.  Years later Hakuin
meditated on this and met Yen-t'ou, actually.

But Hsueh-feng became a very humorous and great teacher with
maybe 1500 hundred students himself.  A sample of his humor is,
"Everyone.  The whole great earth is the eye of a monk."  You see
it's that same enlightenment experience, isn't it?  Tortoise
Mountain is the universe.  Tortoise Mountain gets enlightened.  A
grain of earth is the whole world.  A very great enlightenment
experience at work here.  He says, "Everyone, the whole great
earth is the eye of the monk.  Where will you go to take a shit?" 
So here he is.  His humor is at work again.  He says, "The whole
great earth, though it is just a grain of rice in size, I throw
it down.  It's in a black lacquer bucket.  You can't find it
anywhere."  Then he says, "Daniel, beat the drum.  Call everyone. 
We'll look for it."  Imagine everyone going out to look for that
grain of rice.  Where do you think that grain of rice is?  Is it
still here?  Someone asked another teacher, Yung-feng (???),
about this, and he held up his staff and he said, "Do you see
Hsueh-feng?"  Hsueh-feng's humor seems to have passed down
through the generations.

The verse goes, `An ox head disappears; a horse head emerges.' 
Very interesting.  Something disappears; something appears.  When
we really realize and we really see that grain of rice, you will
understand what he means.  Something disappears and a horse head
emerges.

`In the mirror of Hsao-chi there is absolutely no dust.'  The
mirror of Hsao-chi refers to the Great Sixth Ancestor who is
considered to have written a sutra.  The only sutra written in
relatively recent times.  The long story is that he was a semi-
literate rice pounder; a workman working around the meditation
hall.  It was the time when the Fifth Great Family (???) Teacher
asked everybody to compose a verse expressing his understanding. 
A great tradition, actually.  There was a person of great
learning and accomplishment in meditation, who was the most
senior student who was Hsuen-sueh (???), who wrote:
     The body is the enlightenment tree.
     The mind is like a bright mirror stand.
     Polish it again and again diligently,
     and there will be no dust at all.
     Do not let there be any dust.

People were reading this aloud and admiring it as an expression
of the depth of meditation and Hui-neng asked somebody to write
down on the wall for him his own verse:
     Enlightenment is basically not a tree.
     The mind mirror is not a stand.
     Originally there is not a single thing.
     Where is there any dust?

The story is that Hui-neng actually was the first person to
succeed the Fifth Great Ancestor, but that's another story.

Okay, so, `In the mirror of Hsao-chi there is absolutely no
dust.'  You know what that is like when you are deep in
meditation.  Everything is crystalline and clear.  Hsuan-wu's
(???) comments on this are, "Smash the mirror and I'll meet you. 
First you must smash it."

The poem goes on, `He beats the drum for you to look, but you
don't see./When spring arrives, for whom do the hundred flowers
bloom?'  Kind of a good question to ask yourself.  For whom do
the flowers bloom?  For whom do the mushrooms push up out of the
earth covered with pine needles?  For whom do the birds sing if
not for you?  Who is that one?

So now, here we are in the depths of sesshin, in the depths of
samadhi.  It is important at this time to raise up your effort. 
It is easy now to just enjoy sailing down the river as if you
were on Cleopatra's barge, but when you come to shore everything
will be taken away from you again.  If you want something that
can't be taken away from you, you must really penetrate right
now.  Please look into your heart and ask yourself the question,
what is it?  You will find that the question itself is a
marvelous palace that you can walk into.  Even that is not
enough.  You must keep asking yourself, what is it? what is it?
going deeper and deeper.  You can never really cross that barrier
between the question and complete unity, but suddenly it will be
crossed.  It is beyond your will and your intention, but the
universe will do it for you if you are sincere.  All we have to
do is over and over again approach the gate until suddenly we are
flung through it without the use of our own hands.  

Please, it's very important to persevere at this time.  Let's do
it!

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