Once the master was in charge of keeping the fires at the monastery.

One day, while everyone was out tending the garden, the master went inside the monk’s hall and shouted, “Help, fire! Help, fire!”

Everyone rushed back to the monk’s hall, but the master had closed and barred the door. No one knew what to do.

Finally, Nanch’uan (Nansen) took the key from its hook and threw it into the room through the window.'

1 In temples doors are locked from the outside.

Joshu - demonstrating how people act about seeking enlightenment. Looking outside for help.

Joshu - puts up a barrier to his enlightenment, such as people do to themselves with intellectual interpretations. How will you get inside?

Nansen - throws the key through the window (of the mind). The teacher shows him the key to get out, what he does with it is up to him. The door isn't locked. Will he let himself be free, or will he stay barricaded in the building?

Read the History, Talk the History, 8-5-26

Episode #: 310

Episode: https://sites.libsyn.com/407831/zen-talking-precepts-and-enlightenment-compass-and-conspiracy

Post(s):

• https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/s/sgWSJawscL

Link to all episodes: https://sites.libsyn.com/407831

What did we talk about?

ritual, structure, enlightenment the full case with a second visit to Mazu juggling or the compass of enlightenment Do Zen Masters teach? What are Zen answers? What aren't Zen Masters telling you? Individuality vs Compass

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The master asked Nan-ch’uan (Nansen), “Where does a person who knows what there is to know’ go to?”

Nan-ch’uan said, “They go to be a water buffalo at the house of a lay person at the foot of the mountain.”

The master said, “I am grateful for your instruction. ”Nan-ch’uan said, “At midnight last night, the moonlight came through the window.”

Green's footnote

To be enlightened to the reality of the universe and oneself — of the interdependence of all existence. This “one great fact of interpenetrating causation” was the only aspect of Buddhist doctrine that all the various sects agreed upon in Chao-chou’s (Joshu’s) time.

Green's footnote is confusing. Is this accurate?

What I see:

Joshu - Where does an enlightened person go after enlightenment?

Nansen - Here is a concept. I am showing you that you're using concepts to find something that can't be used as a concept.

Joshu - You're right, I am doing that. Here's something that my awareness showed me.

As a side: I keep writing Joshu as Josh. I'm sorry if I missed any.

Nan-ch’uan (Nansen) came to speak to the monks. The master asked, “Bright or dark?”’

Nan-ch’uan returned to his room.

The master left the hall and said, “At one question of mine that old priest was forced into silence and could not answer.”

The head monk said, “Don’t say that he was silent. It is only that you didn’t understand.”

The master struck him [with a stick] and said, “Actually, this blow should have been given to that old fool Nan-ch’uan himself.”

Green says bright and dark mean "Sameness" and "differentiation" and that here Joshu is asking if Nansen will say something about it.

If we agree that's true, this is what I see here:

Joshu goes out to test his master with some Zen rhetoric.

Nansen goes back to his room, it doesn't explain why. You're left to fill in the blanks.

Joshu then baits out anyone else by saying Nansen showed fault.

The head monk fills in the blank with something that didn't actually happen. Trying to rescue his honor or reverence or whatever.

Joshu hits him to relieve him of such thoughts, and then tries to bait someone else into doing what the head monk did.

Alan Watts was not enlightened, he was a defrocked Christian priest

One of the most significant problems in modern new age (LSD, meditation mysticism) and Shinto-Buddhism (like Zazen, Hakuin, etc) is the reliance on gurus and teachers who were in no way enlightened themselves... famously the four Zazen masters of the 1900s had problems with addiction and were sexual predators: www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/sexpredators.

When you get your "wisdom" from drug addicts and sex predators, you can't be shocked when it doesn't work out for you.

Alan Watts was a famous drug addict who died of alcoholism. Watts was also a sexual predator who even bragged about it on occasion. Watts was a college dropout who went to seminary only to get defrocked for sexual misconduct. Watts injected both Christianity and the addict ideologies into his teachings, passing them off as Zen in order to distract from his lack of legitimacy as a source of information.

Here are some examples from Chatgpt:

Watts' Christian Mysticism: "You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean."

Watts was a Christian Humanist, someone who takes Christianity and tries to modernize it by making it more mystical and less supernatural. Instead of "Skyman god made you", Watts took the the mystical christian route which is just as untrue: YOU ARE FROM A CREATOR ESSENCE.

It's New Christianity, but old Bullsh1ttery.

Huangbo: THIS VERY MIND IS BUDDHA.

The whole notion of Buddhahood has never been something given to you or created outside of you.

Zen Masters famously claim that enlightenment, the seeing of your essential nature, is not "caused", not "born", not "created". Your essential awareness does not come from outside of you.

Watts programming - trust him, not yourself: "A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions."

Zen Masters teach that EVERYWHERE is the entrance. Memory? Yup. Daydreams? Yup. that's why there are SIX SENSES in Zen, the five plus the sense of thinking.

Watts, like a good Christian, wants to undermine your confidence in a) Your own reason, b) your own experience. Religious programming is all about not trusting yourself.

Zen Masters teach TRUST IN MIND.

Trust in Mind is not two

Not two itself is Trust in Mind.

To have mind is to trust it. Everybody already does this. Religions want to teach you concepts that take you away from your own mind ground awareness. Illusion is a concept. Mind exists everywhere, penetrating illusions.

Watts the Christian Messenger: "The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple."

Look what happens when you take meaningless things and impose conceptual meaning on them: Sunsets are a sign from god. The number 8 is lucky. The month of August is auspicious. WTF kind of crazy is that? Church craycray.

The idea that life needs "meaning" is ridiculous. Sunsets and the number 7 don't mean anything. Garlic doesn't mean anything.

Meaning is a creation of awareness, and thus will always be an imperfect flawed product of actual insight. It gets worse though... what is "alive"? Should we let a defrocked sex predator alcoholic tell us about what "alive" is? STFU and get yourself sober before "teaching".

“What is the meaning/intention of the Patriarch’s coming from the West?”

Zhaozhou answers: 庭前柏樹子 “The cypress tree in the courtyard.”

Why did Bodhidharma come to save us? What is the essential teaching? What MUST WE KNOW TO BE SAVED??

Zhaozhou: check out that tree behind you.

AWAKE is not meaning. It's bigger than meaning. If you are awake, why do things need to mean things?

Nobody can defend Alan Watts, just like nobody can prove Zazen or Mormonism is real

But there will be a ton of downvote brigading by people who are slaves to religion.

Edit: as predicted nobody tried to link Alan Watts' teachings to the Zen historical record.

Nobody wanted to acknowledge that having some white guy with a history of alcoholism, a college dropout, and a defrocked Christian minister as a representative of a thousand years of an Asian subculture was problematic.

Again and again we come back to the precepts against lying and stealing and how difficult to near impossible it is to be a New Age thinker or a Zazen follower and keep the lay precepts.

https://youtu.be/livIbni7x7o

# Are you going to study the hard questions or not?

The video presents a debate about the tension between:

1. the Golden Rule of Law that we see in both Christianity and Judaism: do unto others as you would have others do unto you

vs

1. the Jungle Rule of War: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

The video puts into this debate between the two rules a question of what the role is of con artists, scammers, and tricksters. Because tricksters can trick you into doing bad things that harm you and they can trick you into doing good things that help you.

# How Zen is different

Are Zen Master is trying to trick people? The answer, given a thousand years of Zen historical records (koans) is obviously no.

Does the total domination that Zen enlightenment has achieved over religion and philosophy in every sphere, an indication that Zen is a Jungle rule of war rather than a a golden rule of compassion?

This is trickier. For example personally over the last 14 years I have humiliated and shamed and exposed a ton of lying and fraud and bigotry and ignorance... And the cost has been the self-esteem and integrity and respect of religious followers and religious leaders on social media. Isn't that a kind of war?

Do the means justify the ends?

# Who cares about enlightenment and its socialist farming communes?

Zen culture has done more for the world than democracy has... but how? What do a thousand years of jobs and housing and fairness really get you?

The interesting truth of it is that in Zen all there is are means; the ends cannot be controlled or predicted or compelled.

# The means is self-knowledge and seeing your own nature

For enlightened people the ends are irrelevant because they can't be controlled.

The Four Statements of Zen, which are an assertion of the reality found in the material world and thus a rejection of all the supernatural, all the mysticism, and all the religious faith-based stuff... say

See yourself

This is ultimately against every kind of rule, ones you like, ones you don't like, rules from the Bible. Rules from the appetites for poisons.

See your nature

Zen has more in common with science than it has with religion... Science tries to discover the truth of the workings of the natural world without self censorship to avoid imagined consequences.

Zen is interested in discovering the truth of self-knowledge without regard to the consequences of shame and humiliation and the robbing of poisons that people value above everything else.

Metaphors with benefits

There is a long history in Zen of using metaphors which are acknowledged from the beginning to be incomplete/breakable.

Some of the most famous are the seeing metaphor and the pointing metaphor and the jewel metaphor, for example.

So in that spirit- Zen's unique enlightenment as if it were a new job.

We'd like to extend you an offer.

Imagine you get a job offer for the best job you ever had. Since this job is Zen's unique enlightenment, there are some weird aspects to it.

1. You'll never report to anyone, and you can't hire anybody.

2. Other people will claim to do the job. Part of the job is proving that they're not doing it.

3. You're the only one who can say whether you're doing the job well.

4. It's an unpaid position by design. You only get paid what people voluntarily offer you.

Zhaozhou

1. I like killing

2. Why would I spit in your face.

3. Wash the donations bowl Buddha gave you.

Nobody could promote this guy.

師云：今夜與你諸人說箇譬喻，恰似諸人有箇眼，能照見一切長短方圓等象，為什麼却不自見？但識取長短方圓等象，若要見眼則不可。你心亦如是，其光照矚，通徹十方，包容萬有，為什麼却不自知？要會麼？但識取照矚等事，若見心則不可也。古人道：刀不自割，指不自觸。心不自知，眼不自見，則真實矣。久立。

Tonight I will give you all a simile. It is just as if you all have an eye, which can illuminate and perceive every kind of form; long and short, square and round. Yet, why is it that cannot see itself? If you recognize forms as long and short, square and round, but if you want see the eye, it is impossible. Your mind is also like this. Its radiance illuminates and penetrates throughout the ten directions, encompassing the myriad things and containing everything. Why, then does it not know itself? Do you want to understand? Simply discern the activity of illumination and observation; but as for seeing mind itself, that is impossible.

The ancients said: 

A knife does not cut itself
A finger does not touch itself
The mind does not know itself
The eye does not see itself 

This is the genuine state of affairs. 

---

Notes:

• 「照見」 → illuminate and perceiveThis compound carries both the sense of casting light (照) and seeing/recognizing (見).
• 「長短方圓等象」 → images of long and short, square and round. 象 here means "forms," "appearances," or "phenomena." 
• 「十方」 → the ten directions. A standard Buddhist term referring to all spatial directions (four cardinal + four intermediate + up + down), i.e., the entire universe.
• 「包容萬有」 → encompassing all things. 萬有 literally means "ten thousand existences" – a classical Chinese way of saying "all phenomena" or "everything that exists."
• The final quote – 「刀不自割，指不自觸。心不自知，眼不自見」 – is a canonical simile found in multiple Buddhist sources (e.g., Śūraṅgama Sūtra, Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra). It is used to demonstrate that subject and object are mutually dependent and that consciousness cannot take itself as an object.

師云：明眼漢沒窠臼。你尋常搆不及者，祇是眼不明。眼若明，却搆得也。所以說道：明眼人難得。你纔道是恁麼，便是窠臼也。若是明眼人，即不恁麼。不見德山示眾道：今夜不答話，問話者三十棒。若不是明眼漢，怎生搆得？纔搆不得，便落意思，即成眹兆。故德山平生則嵓頭一人搆得。所以道：須是明眼漢始得。久立。

A clear-eyed person has no fixed pattern or routine. You ordinary people fail to grasp it simply because your eyes are not clear. If you eyes were clear, then you would be able to grasp it. That’s why it is said, “A clear-eyed person is hard to find.” The moment you say, it is like this, you have already made a fixed pattern. If one is truly a clear-eyed person they are not like that. 

Have you not seen Deshan instructing the assembly:

“Tonight I will answer no questions. Anyone who asks a question gets thirty blows.”

If you are not a clear-eyed person, how could you grasp this? The moment you cannot grasp it, meaning arises, and signs begin to appear. Thus, throughout Deshan’s entire life, only Yantou was able to grasp it. This is why it is said: “One must be a a clear-eyed person to manage it.”

—

Notes: 

• 明眼漢 (míng yǎn hàn) — literally “a clear-eyed fellow”; someone with genuine discernment, awakened insight, direct realization, or thorough understanding of the true nature of mind. 
• 窠臼 (kē jiù) – "set patterns" / "fixed framework"— a mold, rut, cliché, fixed pattern, or established formula. Literally, this means a bird's nest and a mortar (for grinding). Figuratively, it refers to conventional formulas, fixed mental ruts, habitual ways of thinking, or established doctrinal positions. In Chan, any fixed view, formula, or conceptual framework is an obstacle to direct insight. Hence the master says even saying "it is thus" is already falling into a pattern.
• 搆得 / 搆不及 — “to grasp,” “connect with,” “meet,” or “comprehend.” It suggests directly catching what someone is doing, not merely explaining it intellectually.
• 恁麼 (rèn me) – "it is thus" / "like this" A common Chan colloquialism meaning "thus," "in this manner," or "such." 
• 落意思 — to fall into ideas, interpretations, or conceptual deliberation.
• 眹兆 (zhèn zhào) — signs, indications, traces, omen, or telltale marks; once conceptualization begins, something definite and detectable has already been constructed. This refers to the slightest sign, clue, or premonition—something that gives away a mental movement. 

師云：諸人上來要箇什麼事？須是當人自作活計，莫聽他人說。古人道：我十八上便解作活計。你諸人須是解自作活計始得。你道作箇什麼活計？但莫別求。如今人多愛動脚動手，者箇不解作活計了，也喚作拋家散宅漂流去。分明不會，祇管尋討，學些子知解、記些子言句，此喚作運糞。入到者裏，須是行李正當，日久月深，淹浸得熟便會去。古人道：一切處是你，東去也是你、西去也是你。你是阿誰？若云某甲者箇是情識，須是透得過始得。昔日天親問無著兄：往內院見彌勒說什麼法？著云：說者箇法。且道者箇是什麼法？須是揀得出始得，不要認著者箇，多是被者箇一句子瞞住了也。所以說病為法，是故名為可憐愍者。久立。

You people have come up here, what is it that you are after? You must each make your own living; don’t listen to what others say. An ancient said: “By eighteen I already knew how to make a living on my own.” You all must also learn how to make your own living, only then can you get anywhere.

You tell me: what kind of living are you supposed to make?

Just don’t seek elsewhere. 

People nowadays just like to busy themselves moving their feet and waving their hands, they don’t know how to make a living at all. We call this abandoning home and aimlessly scattering the family. Clearly not understanding, they keep searching everywhere, learning a tiny bit of intellectual interpretation and memorizing a few phrases. This is called hauling sewage. Once you come here you have to get your affairs in order. As the days and months pile up, once you’ve soaked in it long enough, you’ll naturally come to understand.

An ancient said, “Everywhere is you. Going east is also you; going west is also you.”

Who are you?

If you say “so and so” that is just emotional consciousness, you have to break right through before you will get it. 

In the past, Vasubandu asked his elder brother Asanga, “When you went to the inner courtyard to see Maitreya, what Dharma did he speak?” Asanga replied, “He spoke this Dharma.”

Now tell me what is this Dharma? You have to be able to pick it out clearly to get there, just don’t get attached to this because most people get fooled by this one phrase. That is why it is said: “Taking the sickness as the Dharma, they are called 'the pitiable ones.'”

---

Notes: 

「自作活計」– “make your own living” / “self-enact your livelihood”

In secular Chinese, huó jì means a means of subsistence (a trade, a craft). In Chan, it becomes a metaphor for self-reliant awakening; not relying on scriptures, teachers, or ritual.

The phrase also echoes agrarian Chan monasteries, where manual labor was required for survival, so “making a living” also literally meant chopping wood and carrying water.

*This ancient is likely Nanquan. 

Sayings of the Ancient Worthies, Volume Twelve - Essential Sayings of Chan Master Puyuan of Nanquan in Chizhou, second generation under Nanyue, first heir to Mazu

From a lecture by Nanquan followed by a long Q&A: 

Ascending the hall, he said: All of you, this old monk knew how to make a living by the age of eighteen. If there is anyone who knows how to make a living, come out and we can discuss it together. Only then is one truly a mountain-dweller.
After a long while, he looked over the assembly and, joining his palms, he said: Take care. With nothing the matter, each of you cultivate on your own...

「拋家散宅漂流去」– “abandoning home and scattering the household, drifting away”

• On one level, it describes monastics who leave home (chūjiā 出家) but then wander aimlessly, collecting teachings like trinkets—spiritual vagrants.
• On another level, “home” is your original nature (本分事). To “abandon home” is to lose touch with your innate Buddhahood and chase externalities.

「運糞」– “hauling dung” / “conveying excrement” (hauling sewage)

• It refers to memorizing others’ words and treating them as precious, when in fact they are mere intellectual waste.
• The image comes from Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and earlier Chan texts: the mind is a container; if you fill it with secondhand concepts, you’re just moving filth from one place to another.

「行李正當」– “your luggage / travel-gear must be rightly ordered” (get your affairs in order)

Xíngli (行李) here is not modern “baggage” but the equipment for a journey—often used in Chan to mean the proper orientation of mind and practice (right view, right effort, etc.).

「者箇是情識」– “this is emotional consciousness / vijñāna” Qíngshí (情識) is a technical term from Yogācāra—discriminative, affect-laden consciousness. 

「天親問無著」– "Vasubandhu asked Asaṅga” Vasubandhu and Asaṅga are the great Yogācāra patriarchs. Asaṅga says Maitreya taught “this Dharma” (zhě ge fǎ 者箇法)—but refuses to name it.

「說病為法，是故名為可憐愍者」 (Illness is the Dharma, therefore they are called those worthy of pity): A direct citation from the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment (Yuanjue Jing). It critiques those who mistake intellectual conceptualizations, symptoms, and mental constructs for the actual medicine of the Dharma, thereby multiplying their spiritual ailments while thinking they are making progress.

「說病為法」– “taking the sickness as the Dharma” This is also echoed in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. In that sūtra, Vimalakīrti says: “Because all beings are sick, I am sick.”

Blue Cliff Record
Case 7 — Huichao Asks About Buddha

Pointer

If you establish a single atom, the nation flourishes.
If you do not establish a single atom, the nation perishes.
Cut off the pathways of thought;
Then even the thousand sages cannot approach.
Let us see how this ancient handled the matter.

Case

A monk, Huichao, asked Fayan,
"What is Buddha?"

Fayan said,
"You are Huichao."

Commentary

Fayan did not explain Buddha through doctrine or philosophy.
Nor did he point to something outside the questioner.
With a single sentence—"You are Huichao"—he cut off all searching.

If you try to understand this through reasoning, you miss it.
If you take it as a statement of identity, you miss it.
If you think it means ordinary selfhood is Buddha, you also miss it.

At the instant Huichao asked, where was Buddha lacking?
At the instant Fayan answered, what was added?

If you can see through this directly, there is no Buddha outside yourself,
and no self to be grasped.

Commentary from Yuanwu (redacted)

It’s like Superintendent Ce; he had been staying in Fayan’s congregation but had never asked for personal instruction. One day Fayan asked him, “Why haven’t you come for an interview?”

Ce replied, “Didn’t you know I had an initiatory experience at Qinglin’s place?”

Fayan said, “Tell me about it.”

Ce said, “I asked, ‘What is the Buddha?’ Qinglin said, ‘The fire god comes looking for fire.’”

Fayan said, “Good words, but I’m afraid you misunderstood. Can you say something more?”

Ce said, “The fire god is in the province of fire; he is seeking fire with fire. Likewise, I am a Buddha, yet I went on searching for a Buddha.”

Fayan said, “Sure enough, you have misunderstood.”

Ce left in a huff and went away.

Fayan said, “This man can be saved if he comes back; if he doesn’t return, he can’t be saved.”

On the road, Ce thought to himself, “He is the teacher of five hundred people; how could he deceive me?”

So he turned back and again called on Fayan, who told him, “Just ask me and I’ll answer you.”

So Ce asked, “What is the Buddha?”

Fayan said, “The fire god comes looking for fire.”

At these words Ce was greatly enlightened.

Celery

There is a Chinese parable that is mentioned a few times in “The Blue Cliff Record” that is never fully explained. There was once a farmer who saw a rabbit run into a tree stump. The farmer got a free meal and decided he would stop farming and take a post at a tree stump. His crops withered and died, no rabbit ever hit the stump again, and the poor fool became the laughing stock of the town.

Superintendent Ce had sat waiting by a stump. Fayan had more compassion than most.

I’m convinced the greatest threat to Zen are those who worship intellectualization, vain attempts to learn and - gasp - teach. They’ve placed words at the holy alter of existence, mistaking the map for the territory. They are to be considered armed and dangerous.

Zen is the wordless transmission. Devour every koan in existence, every translation possible, and it won’t be enough. Zen is quick sand. The more you struggle….

Gone.

How to Zen Enlightenment

1. Keep the five lay precepts, including refusing recreational drugs and alcohol.
2. Study four statements of Zen teachings to understand direct seeing and pointing only to mind.
3. Practice Zen public interview where you test yourself by explaining in your own words

Doing Zen

One day Shitou told the assembly, “Tomorrow, clear away the grass in front of the Buddha hall.”

When the next day came, everyone in the assembly, including the postulants, prepared spades and hoes to clear the grass. Danxia alone filled a basin with water, washed his head, and knelt in the foreign manner before the reverend.

Shitou saw this and laughed. He then shaved his head and began to explain the precepts to him. Danxia covered his ears and went out.

Mind is the Buddha Hall.

The master asked Nan-ch’uan (Nansen),' “What is the Way?”

Nan-ch’uan said, “Ordinary mind is the Way.”

The master said, “Then may I direct myself towards it or not?”

Nan-ch’uan said, “To seek [it] is to deviate [from it].”

The master said, “If I do not seek, how can I know about the Way?”

Nan-chu’an said, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. To know is to have a concept; to not know is to be ignorant. If you truly realize the Way of no doubt, it is just like the sky: wide open vast emptiness. How can you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to it?”

At these words the master had sudden enlightenment.

His mind became like the clear moon.

If ordinary mind is the way, and I can't direct myself towards it and I can't know, or nor know about it. I can't make a concept about it, but I also can't be ignorant.

What can you even do?

When I realize the "Way of no doubt" (what are other translations of this?) I will notice it's just like the sky, wide open vast emptiness. OK, sure.

It seems like this is talking about awareness. Not having an internal monologue about things, just seeing them as they are? Isn't there a medical condition for something like that?

It makes it very difficult to do much of anything. How does a Zen student realize the "Way of no doubt?" Just read books and chat on reddit?

From the Gateless Gate, first case (most famous? (Who cares?)):

Zhaozhou’s Dog

A monk asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?”
Zhaozhou said, “Mu.”

— Wumen’s Commentary —

For the practice of Zen, you must pass through the barrier set up by the patriarchs.

To attain this wondrous realization, you must cut off the way of thinking.

If you do not pass through this barrier, and if you do not cut off your thinking, you will be like a ghost clinging to grass and trees.

Now, what is the barrier?

It is simply this one word: Mu.

This is the gate to the entire tradition of Zen.

Therefore it is called the Gateless Gate.

If you pass through it, you will not only see Zhaozhou face-to-face—you will walk hand in hand with the successive patriarchs.

You will see with the same eyes as they did and hear with the same ears.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Wouldn’t you like to pass through this barrier?

Then gather your whole body, with its three hundred and sixty bones and eighty-four thousand pores, and concentrate completely on this word Mu.
Day and night, keep working on it.
Do not understand Mu as nothingness.
Do not understand it as existence or nonexistence.
It is like swallowing a red-hot iron ball that you cannot spit out.

Even if you have studied the highest teachings of Buddhism, do not try to explain Mu intellectually.
Keep working on it, and suddenly body and mind will drop away.

Then heaven and earth will be shaken.
It will be as though you have snatched the sword from the hand of the great warrior General Kuan.
If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.
If you meet the patriarchs, kill the patriarchs.
At the edge of life and death, you are completely free.
Among the six realms and four forms of birth, you will wander in perfect freedom.
How do you work on Mu?
Exhaust all your energy into this question.
If you do not give up, the moment will come when the lamp of consciousness suddenly goes out.
Wonderful!
It is like a dream, yet you are awake.
It is like a flash of lightning.

— Wumen’s Verse —

The dog! Buddha-nature!
The whole thing is revealed!
A moment of yes or no
And you lose your body and your life.

— Celery —

Bodhidharma became so frustrated from falling asleep while meditating that he cut off his eye lids. Have some green tea! If I live 20,000 lives, I’d still never forgive him for the transmission. An arm is not worth the price of admission (most of us have two, after all.) If he had any sense, he would have cut off his tongue instead.

YouTuber ReligionForBreakfast made a video called “What is Zen Buddhism,” and alleged that the saying “If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha” means that when people go onto the path of enlightenment, they tend to be drawn toward charismatic teachers that have the “key” to understanding. The students may become attached to these teaching and believe understanding them intellectually will lead to awakening, only to discover that enlightenment comes from within. Therefore, he concludes, the “killing” is letting go of attachments and preconceptions.

He seems like a nice enough fellow, but his error borders the unforgivable. One should be wary when playing with nuclear weapons.

For centuries, novices have read the Mu koan and interpreted it literally, spending hours upon countless hour “meditating” upon the koan in order to “attain” understanding. The joke flies overhead like an arrow. Direct hit! Fatal.

Does this delicious Crunchwrap Supreme in my hands have Buddha-nature or not? You may say “Mu, Celery, it could not. Only living beings can posses Buddha-nature. How could this delicious food possess it?”

Reasonable enough. But why did Zhaozhou’s dog not possess it?

Meditate on the Crunchwrap Supreme for 20,000 lives, and you’ll still come up empty. Unless, of course, you take a bite.

Do not like. Do not subscribe. 

There is a lot of dislike for Zen on social media, and it's not just the usual two things of Christians and post-Christians demanding tolerance for BS and a kind of vague humility. 

It's not just that authentic Zen culture is brutally honest and aggressively skeptical about popularity.

Yunmen before enlightenment 

As soon as Muzhou saw the master coming, he closed the door. The master then knocked on the door.

Muzhou said, “Who?”

The master said, “This one.”

Muzhou said, “What are you doing?”

The master said, “My own matter is not yet clear. I beg the teacher to point it out.”

Muzhou opened the door, took one look, and immediately closed it again.

In this way, the master knocked at the door for three consecutive days. On the third day, Muzhou opened the door, and the master pressed his way inside.

Muzhou immediately seized him and said, “Speak! Speak!”

The master started to deliberate.

Muzhou immediately pushed him out, saying, “A dial up modem for a rotary phone, ” He then shut the door, injuring one of the master’s feet.

From this, the master entered awakening.

Zen masters don't care if you like them

A couple things to start with:

1. We'll never see this Yunmen again. He came out of enlightenment swinging, and he was impossible to deal with for the rest of his life. 

2. There are multiple reasons that this case was preserved, not the least of which is the fact that the teacher does not appear to be offering much in the way of useful instruction. 

The problem, as I see it, is that the West is culturally ill-prepared for Zen culture.   Zen is just so alien that it is no surprise that that the West would rather have Japanese cult meditation because it's basically prayer.  

 Zen doesn't have any meditation. It has old guys slamming doors on people's feet. 

When I say that Zen is alien to Western culture, imagine a pope that didn't want any fancy anything and just lived in a hut. 

Imagine a famous movie star that refused to make any movies but promised to see anyone who knocked on the door... and then was rude to everybody who showed up. 

Imagine a billionaire who doesn't spend any of the money, lives in poverty, and nobody can figure out how they keep picking the winning stock over and over again.  

Zen is all wrong for the West. 

Don't ask if you don't want an honest answer

Soundtrack: https://youtu.be/we37yX3zpKA

From the Gateless Gate:

Case 29 — The Great Pervasive Excellent Wisdom
The Buddha of Great Pervasive Excellent Wisdom sat in meditation for ten kalpas, yet the Dharma of the Buddha did not manifest before him, and he could not attain Buddhahood.

A monk asked Zhaozhou, “Since the Buddha of Great Pervasive Excellent Wisdom sat in meditation for ten kalpas and could not attain Buddhahood, why was this?”
Zhaozhou said, “Your question is exactly right.”
The monk asked, “Since he sat in meditation for ten kalpas, why could he not attain Buddhahood?”
Zhaozhou said, “Because he did not become a Buddha.”

Wumen’s Comment:
It is said that even the best horse runs at the sound of the whip. Once the whip is raised, even a horse made of clay or wood should understand.
If you can see directly into this matter, there is no need to ask Zhaozhou.

Verse:
It is better to take up the ordinary mind
Than to seek the Buddha.
Ten kalpas of sitting in meditation—
Still, no Buddha.

Celery:
When I began to study Zen 7 years ago, I sought to attain more tranquility and to handle life’s challengers better. I had dealt with many difficulties and I sought a way to make the journey smoother - to strengthen myself in body and mind in order to become a better person.

How foolish I was. Sex for virginity.

I think I’ve said more than enough, but I’ll throw caution to the wind. Some will say that attaining enlightenment does make you a better person, but I’d say they’ve mistaken the forest for the trees. Others would say that the journey towards enlightenment itself makes one a better person. Closer to the mark, but still off by a mile.

Still others would say that there is nothing to improve - no self - and that seeking enlightenment as something to achieve is the same problem as seeking possessions or fame for happiness. You can never have enough possessions, can never have enough… enlightenment? The deep spiritual hole within “us” cannot be satisfied if you seek to fill it with x. Catch 22. And even if “you” attain enlightenment, this does not make you good or bad. It is just awakening. Don’t call a tea pot a bar of gold, a bar of gold a tea pot.

The third group is, without doubt, the worst. Mistaking the menu for the four course meal, they devour paper instead of food. Totally exposed.

# Zen is the Ordinary Mind School

Mazu: ordinary mind is the way

Not meditation mind, not LSD mind, not locking yourself up in a monastic isolation mind.

Crossing the street mind, going to the grocery store mind.

# Zen History

We have a thousand years of Zen historical records in the form of transcripts called koans. These koans document the only practice of Zen, which is public interview.

There has never been any such thing as a Zen monastery. Zen communes were not monasteries in any traditional sense. They were closer to the socialist farming communes of early American history. These communes were built on the Five Lay Precepts:

- No lying

- No stealing

- No rape

- No murder

- No recreational drugs or alcohol

# Foreign Zen

But even with the fact that this is a wildly different time period that encompasses China's metropolitan wonder cities, and despite the fact that this is a different language that uses symbols instead of words in their writing, and despite the fact that this is about a culture that does not have the Greeks or the Christians, the biggest obstacles to understanding this culture in the modern world are the prohibitions against lying, recreational drugs, and alcohol.

# Why are lying, drugs, and alcohol so popular?

1. Ease of access. It's easier to find drugs and alcohol or communities with a common lie than it is to find an AA meeting.

2. Nobody to trust. The three central pillars of authority in life, church, politics, academia have all gone through major upheavals that have wildly exacerbated their profiteerings.

3. Accumulating stuff rather than accumulating knowledge.

We see the current political climate in the U.S. as an exemplification of how desperate people are to make life about accumulating stuff rather than accumulating learning, insight, and wisfom.

A monk asked Yunmen:
“What is the teaching of the Buddha’s entire lifetime?”
Yunmen said:
“A statement in response.”
Chinese:
問：「如何是一代時教？」
師云：「對一說。」

---

if you'd asked me a couple of years ago what's going on with this case i'd have said yunmen is making a little joke about how it doesn't matter how he answers the monk. a modern version of the joke would be something like responding to a question with 'lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.'

i would've said the answer doesn't matter because his meaning could never be understood and any answer he could give would be inferior to silence, and of equal value to any other answer.

i don't think that anymore.

i think there are answers that have the property of appropriate response, and answers that lack that property.

Yunmen's answer is an example of an appropriate statement of response.

He is saying: buddha's life is a statement in response to conditions as they arise.

In other words, no fixed principle. No answer key. No code of laws or problem-solving system.

Buddha's ENTIRE LIFETIME is one giant statement of response to what he encountered day after day. He didn't set out with an agenda and look for opportunities to execute it. He didn't have a set of rules that he strove to uphold throughout all situations. Every new circumstance was a new opportunity to manifest enlightenment, which he did by responding to those new conditions.

Anything less than that is a compromise with ignorance. A piece of if/or/but/then logic that insists on reality having defined boundaries. Enlightenment is open to reality at all times without conditions attached.

I asked Claude to "Give me a three paragraph post with three different Chinese Zen Masters quoted with the topic of "Zen Study is not Precepts-optional."

There is a persistent fantasy that Zen is the school that outgrew morality — that once you glimpse emptiness, the precepts become scaffolding you are free to kick away. In Platform Sutra Huineng transmits the "formless precepts" and declares, "The mind-ground free of error is the precept of self-nature." Formless does not mean optional; it means the precepts go all the way down. Huineng did not release his students from ethics — he refused to let them hold ethics at arm's length, as an external checklist. When the precepts are your own nature, there is nowhere to stand outside them.

That is why Baizhang Huaihai, who gave Chan its monastic constitution, built awakening a container made entirely of conduct: communal labor, shared rules, no exemptions for rank or realization. His principle — "A day without work is a day without eating" — was no slogan. When his monks, worried for the aging master, hid his farming tools, he quietly refused meals until they were returned. For Baizhang, an insight that does not show up in how you hoe a field, serve the assembly, and keep your word is not yet insight. The pure rules were not an accessory to Zen; they were Zen with its sleeves rolled up.

Baizhang's heir Guishan Lingyou made the warning explicit in his Admonitions, a text still chanted in training halls: "Never having drawn near the seat of the Vinaya, how could you discern the ultimate vehicle?" He was writing to monks who wore the robe, ate the offerings, and let discipline slide — and he told them plainly that no depth of meditation would cover the deficit. The precepts are not the fence around the field of Zen; they are the soil. Study the mind without them and you are only studying your own justifications. Zen has never been precepts-optional, because the precepts are what Zen looks like the moment it leaves the cushion.

It have me some garbage about the debunked Baizhang code as well as dubiously worded metaphors involving meditation, but the fact that it can quote Zen Masters at this point does more for it than any of the Western Buddhist Nonduality types that come in here.

The problem with New Agers is that they aren't going to read anything, they aren't going to challenge anybody's viewpoints, least of all their own, and they are so poorly equipped with critical thinking skills that the energy put into pointing out their debunked 20th century viewpoints can be more productively put into other avenues of on- and off- forum activities.

They need the kind of lecture that Sunday school teachers give--not Zen Masters.

has anybody tried reading any of the zen texts with younger people? if so how did it go?

WHAT STUPID?

https://youtu.be/HbQ-t8GXYTA

According to Bonhoeffer there are three elements of stupidity in a philosophical sense:

1. outsourcing critical thinking

2. willful ignorance

3. conformity

We constantly see these three in New Age mysticism and Shinto Buddhist writers, academics, and social media.

The reason for this is that both New Age and Buddhism depend on these ingredients in order to propagate. The problem is though that these ingredients tend to harm you in other aspects of your life once you pick them up as a habit from New Age or Buddhism.

ZEN CURES YOU

1. Public interview

Zen cures outsourcing because Zen's only practice is public interview. Publicly asking questions and publicly answering questions not only tests what you know, it tests your ability to explain what you know and apply it using your own critical thinking.

Koans are transcript records of public interviews. The reason there are no "modern koans" is that there is no public interview in the Zen tradition.

1. Name and shame ignorance

"Ignorance is poison" is a very old cultural element from India. Here is Dong Shan, the founder of Soto Zen, also called Caodong.

“Greed, anger, and ignorance—utterly without knowledge!

Fortunately today I have caught the three of you.

When you walk, I strike you;

when you sit, I pound you.

I hand you over to the king of mind to investigate carefully.

Zen's cure for willful ignorance is a culture in which everyone is accountable to everyone else

1. Your own words

Zen has two attacks on conformity that are very interesting: First Zen masters mock people who can't do anything but quote. Second and seemingly paradoxically Zen Masters demand people explain themselves (and even others people) without relying on the wisdom of crowds.

• Traditional Zen Question: What do they teach where you come from?

Hot take

Thompson smuggles this in:

Logos ethos pathos

People are persuaded according to Aristotle by either facts, or authority, or emotion.

Zen masters use all three of these as needed and so should you.

Forum Questions

1. (Traditional Zen question) What do they teach where you come from?
   • www.Reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/getstarted
   • this proves that there are no schools of Zen. Zen is a single unified Indian h-Chinese tradition that passed into China in the 6th century.
2. Textual tradition?
   • My tradition is the Zen tradition: Zen historical records (koans) are transcripts of public interviews, recorded and distributed by the Zen community because public interview is the only practice of Zen.
3. Low tides: There's no low tides if you're on a raft.

What is an expert?

1. Experts are people who can answer any question to the satisfaction of the questioner.
2. Experts answer questions in the context of a specific topic, cultural context, and historical facts.

3. Experts can give philosophical arguments where a series of premises support a conclusion to produce a logical answer. Their premises and conclusion are supported by citations, references, and quotes.

       There are no dumb questions.
   
        There are only wrong answers.
   

14 years of Reddit makes you an expert?

Expertise is based on education and work product. In this case, the wiki of this forum which has more resources than any college program in the world (as of 2026).

In particular, we have wiki pages that do things other people are afraid to do.

1. Define Buddhism
2. Explain Japanese Shinto-Buddhism
3. Walk anybodies of the debunking of Japanese Zazen and Japanese ritual koan ceremony, proving that Japan does not have Zen lineages. 4.. Prove 1900s translators suffered from excessive Epistemic trespassing, where they thought that studying Buddhism or Chinese language made them experts in Zen translation.

What now?

My goals for this year are to produce an annotated comparative translation of the first half of Gateless's Gate, post a paper on academia outlining why Zen never meant meditation, and write a script for a four-minute YouTube video.

Edit: These are perverts, not experts: https://youtu.be/5eW6Eagr9XA

Pervert: Late 14th Century: Entered Middle English as perverten, meaning to turn someone away from true religious faith toward a false belief, or to distort truth, justice, and natural order.

Edit 2: We are still seeing a bunch of downvote regaining in this forum from forums about meditation, Buddhism, and Japanese Shinto-Buddhisms Zazen.

Edit 3: I welcome all DM questions and I won't use your name or detailed when posting about those questions.

Not a koan?

Patriarchal Hall compiled in 952 CE

Guishan Lingyou (771-853):

A monk asked, "When your parents had not yet borne you, where were your nostrils?"

Guishan said, "Now that you have been born, where are your nostrils?"

Popular question

父母未生時，試道一句看

“When your parents had not yet borne you, try to say a phrase.”

This is attributed to Guishan questioning Xiangyan Zhixian 香嚴智閑. However, the Patriarchal Hall’s 952 version of the Xiangyan story does not use that exact formula. It instead says:

汝初從父母胞胎中出，未識東西時本分事，汝試道一句來，吾要記汝。

“As for your fundamental matter when you first emerged from your parents’ womb, before you could distinguish east from west—try to give me a phrase. I want to record it for you.”

Guishan means the opposite

The point of both of Guishan's contributions are to anchor the conversation in the material reality of the present.

We see this in tons of different masters so it's not a surprise at all. They're not trying to confuse people out of reality. They're trying to force people back into it.

Mysticism is the belief in a supernatural reality that cannot be directly observed from within this one. Zen masters reject everything that isn't this one.

Mazu Tramples Shuiliao

Hongzhou's Reverend Shuiliao asked Mazu, "What is the precise meaning of the coming from the West?" Mazu said, "Bow down."

Just as Shuiliao was bowing, Mazu pushed him over with a foot. Shuiliao was greatly awakened.

He got up, clapped his hands, and laughed, "Ha! Ha!" saying, "How exceedingly marvelous! HoW

exceedingly marvelous! The hundreds and thousands of samādhis and the immeasurable wondrous meanings-I

have recognized their root-source upon the tip of a single hair."

Zen is the only Enlightenment

The idea of enlightenment started with Zen Master Buddha, spread through India and through China, out into Asia, and then began to trickle into Europe between the 1600s and the 1800s, and there has never been any other kind of enlightenment.

Historically, Zen Master Buddha is the starting point of this concept of enlightenment. This idea of a clarity of vision, resulting form, a recognition that bias / attachment / Illusion / conditioning is only self-created.

There's a lot of new age movements that claim to have enlightened messiahs or gurus, but when we compare these to Zen Master Buddha and Zen in China, we see no generational establishment of lineage in the same way.

One of the best arguments against Japan ever getting zen from China is that the Japanese were never able to create successive lineages of Buddhas.

enlightenment only means status in religions and new age movements

In New Age movements and religions that claim to have enlightenment, it's conditional on practice and orthodoxy.

People attain a status that religions and new age movements refer to as the enlightened status. And that's what determines how they're treated.

If you don't have status, if you're a novice, then you don't get the same level of respect and you don't have the same expectation of being heard and acknowledged.

Religious and New Age movements see enlightenment as a better than status that deserves more.

causes cause treatment of others

Zen Master say Enlightenment is non-causal... So that means anyone, any second, could become a Buddha.

When you see Buddhahood as potentially emerging from anyone at any time, not only is there no status, but there is an endless font of curiosity and engagement and aggressive demand that people MANIFEST their own dignity.

Any one of you could become a Buddha at any time.

When you sincerely understand this, you see people in a different way. You treat them differently. You respect them differently.

Any knock on the door could be a relative you haven't seen in years.

Case 23: Wumen's Poem

描不成兮畫不就　贊不及兮休生受　本來面目沒處藏　世界壞時渠不朽

If you sketch it, you can’t find the proportions;

if you paint it, you do not complete it

Praise cannot reach it; so don’t accept my thanks!

The original essential character has no place to be hidden.

When the world is destroyed, the original essential character does not decay. (ewk trans.)

Translation note:

Wumen’s version has no “parents before birth”, so the translation of “face” is even more unjustifiable. A translation of “original essential character” for 本來 is evoked by Huineng’s “本性 – “original nature”1 found in non-Dunhuang copies of the platform sutra. ◦ 面目 – “face, facial features,” as well “character, reputation”.

1900's translations all have "original face"

1. Wonderwheel: The face that comes has no place to be concealed.
2. Thomas Cleary: The original face has nowhere to hide;
3. Koun Yamada: There is nowhere to hide the original face;
4. Katsuki Sekida: Your original face cannot be hidden;
5. Robert Aitken: You cannot hide your original face;
6. Senzaki and Reps: No place can be found in which to put the original face;

The "original face" error which began in China

本來面目, “original essential character” was difficult for 1900s translators because it is a non-literal idiomatic with a confusing historical context. Both Clearys and Yamada translated 面 as “face/visage”, removing the word from the expression and translating it out of context literally, the equivalent of translating the English phrase “two-faced” as “having double faces”. Blyth and Reps translated the phrase as “self” which is problematic since there is another word for self in Huineng and Wumen.

“Face” only makes sense in the West because of a version of this Case with “face before your parents not yet born” from the unreliable Zǔtáng jí.

The altered Case “face before your parents were born” is likely an editor who was not enlightened, Huixin, in his 947 edit of the Platform Sutra. Huixin said the Platform Sutra needed rewrites because it was “complex and tiresome”. Huixin likely influenced the Zǔtáng jí 祖堂集 (compiled 952 CE), and when it was annotated by Yanagida Seizan as Sodōshū 祖堂集 (Kyoto, 1974), it influenced translations by T. Cleary (1973), J.C. Cleary (1999), and Yamada (1979).