[Buddha-l] the body in Buddhist Practice

[Elihu Smith]

There are some errors in the following (Full message
at end):

"Ta-hui of Tsao-tsung school (the counterpart of
Japanese Soto)  often
attacked seated meditation, and he represent the more
popular view of
buddhist practice before Sung. In fact, Ta-hui call
the silent
illumination (mo-chao/zazen) an heretic view regarding
the authentic
Chan...in these times,  silent illumination was
defended by only a few
people, in example Hung-chih."

Ta-Hui was in the Lin-chi school, a Dharma heir of
Yuan-Wu, not in  the Tsao-Tung school. Interestingly,
Ta-Hui was close to Hung-chih, despite their lineage
and teaching differences. If you look at the
literature, you will see that the "silent
illumination" that Ta-Hui criticizes is a rhetorical
straw man, which he sets up to argue against and to
push his own vision of kung-an practice. Look at
Hung-Chih's work in "Cultivating the Empty Field,"
trans. D. Leighton for more; Peter Gregory's
collections also has more on this. Furthermore,
mo-chao does not equal zazen but is a particular style
of zazen; as noted, mo-chao is not limited to the
narrow definition which Ta-Hui uses in his polemics -
Hung-Cih clarifies this. Zazen is the Japanese for
tso-chan; your mixing this up leads to
misunderstanding in your later comments. If you look
at early Ch'an texts, you will see emphasis on zazen /
tso-chan (from Bodhidharma sitting for "9 years"
onward), and also emphasis on clarifying this so as
not to misunderstand it - Ma-Tzu's dialogue with his
teacher Huai-jang regarding seated meditation is one
example of this (see Case 30 of Zen Comments on the
Mumonkan by Shibayama for one source). 

(Interestingly, Dogen has some strong criticism of
Ta-Hui in chapters of his Shobogenzo written at the
end of his life; in fact Ta-Hui also has a text titled
Shobogenzo).

A point about Dogen; he had completed the
Lin-chi/Rinzai training in Japan, and in fact
inherited the Dharma lineage of Lin-chi from Myozen,
Eisai's heir, with whom he travelled to China. In
China, he practiced under Lin-chi masters before
studying with Ru-jing (Tendo Nyojo) with whom he
completed his study and who is the source of his
Tsao-tung/Soto lineage.

To return to the Buddha's words,"In this very body,
six feet in length, with its sense-impressions, its
thoughts and ideas... are the world, the origin of the
world, the cessation of the world, and the Way that
leads to the cessation of the world."

Elihu



Full message below:

Message: 9
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:48:34 +0200
From: Vicente Gonzalez <vicen.bcn at gmail.com>
Subject: Re[2]: [Buddha-l] The Body in Buddhist
Practice
To: Buddhist discussion forum
<buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
Message-ID: <286076984.20060922174834 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

S. Lacks wrote:

SL> A few years ago I  spent a fair amount of time
meditating with an
SL> experienced Indian meditator from the Advaita
Vedanta tradition who 
could go
SL> into "samadhi" and maintain it effortlessly for
hours all the while 
his posture
SL> was as bad as it gets. His posture was always bad
but it did not 
seem to
SL> keep him from going into these "states" and
maintaing them for 
hours. I know
SL> his effortless states were not considered Chan
states, but I do not 
think
SL> that is relevant to the discussion. I also knew
another fellow, 
rather tall
SL> and heavy, in the Zen tradition whose posture was
quite bad but he 
too could
SL> sit  concentrated for long times. When he got up,
his body did not 
seem to
SL> bother him.

meaning of meditation (bhavana) it's closer to
"cultivation of mind".
In the Pali Cannon, Buddha teaches meditation many
times without  any
direct reference to be seated.

Ta-hui of Tsao-tsung school (the counterpart of
Japanese Soto)  often
attacked seated meditation, and he represent the more
popular view of
buddhist practice before Sung. In fact, Ta-hui call
the silent
illumination (mo-chao/zazen) an heretic view regarding
the authentic
Chan. In these times,  silent illumination was
defended by only a few
people, in example Hung-chih. 

But starting Sung dynasty, a less favorable
environment for Buddhism
causes an introspective style, and from here the
arising of popular
manuals about seated meditation. Some of these manuals
influenced
Dogen. Zazen is today the more popular method in
Chan/Zen, although
historically it was not in this way. It doesn't mean
zazen was not
an ancient practice; just that it was not the only way
to focus the
teaching. 

Ta-hui attacks against followers of silent
contemplation were in the
fear that they were apart of the world. Note those
ancient Chan
masters understood the Mind like an all-embracing
totality, therefore
both the individual mind and the immediate perceived
reality they are
the Mind. And this Mind should be the object of
meditation not just
the inner ambit of the being. So Ta-hui was not in
agreement with
ignoring this. The Chan school acquires his name
because the
prevalence of dhyana, although it doesn't mean zazen
but dhyana as
was understood in Vajrasamashi Sutra and other works.

An historical explanation of these things can be found
in chapter 4 of
"Buddhism in the Sung", P. Gregory. There is also a
little book of
modern Master Hsing Yun called "Only a Great Rain"
explaining the
different approaches in Chinese Buddhist meditation.


SL> Having been around both Chinese and Japanese
Chan/Zen centers, I 
would add
SL> that one sees much more "less than perfect
posture" with the 
Chinese.
SL> Posture and form for that matter is stressed much
more in Japanese 
oriented
SL> Zen centers.  I wonder if the connection between
the importance of
SL> good/perfect   posture and meditation  is not
another culturally
SL> mediated idea? 

I don't think so, because the stress in a right
posture in seated
meditation exists from always when any master talked
about seated
meditation. Not only in Zen but in any other Buddhist
tradition.
When we call the support of the common pattern of
Japanese culture,
truly there is a perfectionist effort to improve the
Chinese mo-chao
in the Japanese zazen.  Zazen then becomes a wonderful
and subtile
method, and Dogen an enormous figure. I think the true
problem remains
in the popular understanding that Chan/Zen belongs
exclusively to
Zazen practice, which is an statement of Japanese Soto
school.
Zazen is today the best known method but at least in
my little
understanding, when somebody is not able to grasp the
subtile meanings
of shikantanza and mushotuko it can be an analgesic
instead a cure.
Zazen apparently it's a simple teaching but it is not
in this way.
Zazen is a deep notion about the nature of self
including body and
mind, and it demands perseverance and patience.

This subject was of special interest to me for long
time, and from all
what I have read around this, I have found in master
Chi-i of Tien-Tai
school the best key to understand the root of this
problem. Lacking of
a good written synthesis in Early Chan, in the Chi-i's
"The Great
Calming and Contemplation" there are basic points to
understand what
happened later in the Chan/Zen practice with the
different
approaches.

In the practical side, my humble experience is that
mixing both views
becomes the perfect approach. Because one can
cultivate the mind
all the day (or at least lot of times across the day)
in both
ambits. Today maybe still there is an excessive
attention to that
individual inner ambit of Mind, and forgetting the
reasonable warns of
Ta-hui. And I wonder if probably it is what many
people enjoy when
they know Advaita.
However, similar things are part of Chan/Zen teaching
from the
beginning. In example, we find that in the I-hsing san
mei of Early
Chan. ("Traditions of meditation in Chinese Buddhism",
P. Gregory.).
Also, when we read some modern masters like Hsing Yun,
we can check
this point of view still it's alive, although it is
not very known in
the West.

In Japan, there was an specialization of Rinzai and
Soto. A possible
interpretation of the absence of some Early Chan views
maybe is that
those jumped directly from Tendai school to Pure Land.
In example we can read similar approaches in Amidist
master Genshin,
who had a Tien Tai background.
Dogen arrived to China when silent illumination was
well established
in China, then  mo-chao (Zazen) become his method.
That absence in
the Soto school is fully logical.


best regards,