Dharma Ocean's Pivotal Affinity with the Sixth Ancestor: Studying the Platform Sutra
"When absorption and wisdom are maintained equally/Within consciousness all is pure and clear."
We have launched our Platform Sutra fall practice period with Vine of Obstacles Zen students and others participating from this Ghost site. In this post, I'll offer those of you not in the practice period some ways to study along with us, and then share my translation and comments for Fahai's (Dharma Ocean) encounter with the Sixth Ancestor.
Tetsugan Sensei and I will be offering dharma talks on Sundays, November 10, 17, and 24, and as usual, will invite paid subscribers to these group practice sessions. If you are not a paid subscriber, but are interested in the teaching of the Sixth Ancestor and/or what we're doing with our Vine of Obstacles training group, this would be a good time to become a paid subscriber and attend some of these sessions. Click the link below for options.
In addition, every month I offer an original translation for paid subscribers. For the next few months, these will be from The Platform Sutra. The next offering will tell the story of a monk widely known as "One Night Awakening." The original translation below is open to all so that those of you who are not subscribers or paid subscribers can see if it's your cup of tea – or sip of the ocean, in this case.
Here's a recent comment about the offerings here on Vine of Obstacles Zen (slightly edited for clarity):
I appreciate the feedback, and will continue to do my best to live up to that!
You are welcome to study The Platform Sutra along with us with the PDF linked here (offered for free download by the publisher), pp. 53-67:
During this practice period, we're focusing on the “Encounters” section of the text. What McRae translates as "Encounters" is composed of two characters (機緣). The first, 機, is “opportunity” or "pivot." The second, 緣, is "indirect cause" or “affinity.” So this section could be translated as "Pivotal Affinity."
And in my view, "Pivotal Affinity" better highlights the themes of the practitioners who meet with the Sixth Ancestor. They aren't chance encounters, but pivots in their dharma practice based on some affinity – an underlying karmic connection that is manifested by the simple fact of meeting.
Several of the dialogues in this section are included as koans in the various collections and most are included in The Record of the Transmission of the Lamp. These include the Sixth Ancestor's meetings with Qingyuan and Nanyue whose successors eventually led respectively to the Soto and Rinzai lineages.
In addition, the Sixth Ancestor's pivotal affinity with a monk named Fada (Dharma Permeation), serves as the basis for one of Dogen Zenji's most wild, mind-blowing fascicles in all of the Shobogenzo: "The Lotus Turns the Lotus" (Hokke ten Hokke; the Tanahashi translation has: "Dharma Blossoms Turn Dharma Blossoms").
As I mentioned above, in this post, I'll offer my translation of the section's second such meeting. Below, Fahai (法海; "Dharma Ocean") meets the dharma revolutionary, the Sixth Ancestor (638-713; aka, Great Mirror Insight Genius; aka, Dajian Huineng; aka, Caoxi).
But, say, what was so revolutionary about the old fella?
Take a look:
The translation and comments
The monk Fahai was a person from Qujiang in Shaozhou. When he first came to practice with the Ancestral Master he asked, “This mind is Buddha. I ask for your pointed instructions.”
Dharma Ocean got right down to it! "This mind is Buddha." Yeah, he's saying. This mind, this person, perfect and complete. Try giving perfection some "pointed instruction."
The Master said, “The preceding unborn thought instant is mind. The subsequent unextinguished thought instant is Buddha. That which becomes all marks is mind. That which is free from all marks is Buddha. If I were to continue to use words it would take endless kalpas to exhaust it.
There is no before. There is no end. No birth and no death. No this and that. No mind is no Buddha. Yada yada. What is it?
The Sixth Ancestor continued:
Listen to my gatha that says: This mind is called wisdom/This Buddha then is absorption/When absorption and wisdom are maintained equally/Within consciousness all is pure and clear/Awaken this dharma gate/By your cultivation of true nature/Employ the source of no birth/Dual cultivation is correct.”
Wisdom (aka, prajna) and absorption (aka, samadhi) together. Seeing and stopping are seen through and terminated. Even the fog is luminous. The two hands of a single body wipe each other clean.
Those readers that have been following my essays on the teaching of Zhiyi and "stopping and seeing" might confuse these words of the quintessential old Zen Master, the Sixth Ancestor, for those of the quintessential old Tiantai Master, Zhiyi. That's because it's really One Vehicle.
When the Sixth Ancestor finished speaking, Fahai had great satori. Fahai then sang a verse in praise of awakening: This mind is originally Buddha/Without satori the self is distorted/I know that absorption and wisdom is the cause/Dual cultivation frees all things.
Then, of course, Fahai sang the song of awakening. Buddha, buddha, buddha, blissfully arising from wisdom-absorption. Not two. Not two. Not two.
Or as the Sixth Ancestor says in the following section:
Thank you!
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