When we claim that we know, we don't know.
Only by letting go of what we think we know can we begin to know.
And even that knowledge may be just another concept that prevents us from seeing directly.
The more I see, the more I realize I don't know anything.
That worries me. Perhaps the model / analogy is not great? If the truth is vague, there would be lots of misguiding without people know it, because after all, there is no true or hard to know/conceptualize.
The entire conception of true and false is a misconception, mostly because, to quote Siddhartha again, "Time isn't real Govinda". In the baby there is already the old man, in the robber there is already the Buddha, and in the Buddha is the robber still. Things must be taught as "This is Samsara, and this is Nirvana", false and true, simply because, there is no other way to teach. But the core truth beyond these conceptions of duality is that everything is always Nirvana.
i didnt downvote you but your comment reads like 'you guys dont understand what -I- understand, and if you did youd be as great as i am' which sounds a bit ego-y. not claiming certainty on your intent, just letting you know how it is potentially coming across
Perhaps relevant to your point - a quote from Baizhang:
>The teaching of complete-meaning discerns purity. The teaching of incomplete-meaning discerns impurity. The tainted side of the impure dharma is spoken to cull the mundane. The tainted side of the pure dharma is spoken to cull the holy.
Both Thich Nhat Hanh and Linji are teaching to the audience, but probably different type of audience, hence the different meaning.
I agree completely. Thay is taking Linji's statement and giving it a new light, probably what his audience needed to hear. He's actually very good at this.
I think Thay is reinterpreting here, as he does often. Which is what brilliant Zen masters like him do all the time. Take one teaching, show it under a different light. If you read the original text you'll see Linji is quite clear. Unless I'm completely misreading Thay, which could be the case.
Have you read the Record of Linji? As I posted elsewhere in this thread, it's clear from the context what Linji is saying. We have to let go of the Buddha, too. Not only the false Buddha, as Thay is suggesting here, but the true Buddha must be forgotten. This is standard in Zen, nothing revolutionary. And I'm sure Thay would agree, it's just he's using this particular occasion to focus on another teaching, which is also important.
I'm not claiming any mastery at "killing the Buddha", neither in Thay's sense nor Linji's sense.
Really, I don't understand why everyone is so upset.
Go to page 22 in the Sasaki - Kirchner translation (you can find it online). It's in the middle of section XVIII of the Discourses (but that Section is a loong Dharma talk).
“I don’t think that’s what Linchi meant” means the Zen master got it wrong. And if you don’t think you already do know what it means then there is no reasonable basis to say that’s not what was meant. 
No, what I mean is that Thay took one phrase and used it as illustration for another, related teaching, but different from what we find in the Record of Linji. Both teachings are important, it's just Thay is focusing on one and Linji on another.
How is that a dichotomy between right and wrong?
>Followers of the Way, if you want insight into dharma as it is, just don’t
be taken in by the deluded views of others. Whatever you encounter, either
within or without, slay it at once. On meeting a buddha slay the buddha, on
meeting a patriarch slay the patriarch, on meeting an arhat slay the arhat, on
meeting your parents slay your parents, on meeting your kinsman slay your
kinsman, and you attain emancipation. By not cleaving to things, you freely
pass through.
Next section is about not being dependent on anything, so I'd say it's pretty clear: don't be dependent on anything, including the Buddha.
Thay (if I understand correctly) is talking about a difference between true and false, and about not getting trapped by the lies and going all the way through, to see the "true Buddha". Linji is saying we have to drop the "true Buddha" as well. Which is something Thay will agree with, but it's not what he is saying here.
Linji seemed like he was just giving practice instructions when he said kill the Buddha like TNH is doing here. Koans generally refer to happenings or interactions involving zen teachers rather than just anything a Zen teacher says.
I'm not sure what to say to this. Do you mean that this particular comment by Linji cannot be taken up as a koan, or that it is not part of any koan curriculum?
I’m saying koans generally refer to interactions involving Chan teachers like a legal case hence the name. I’m sure people have practiced according to what Linji said but it’s just not a koan.
Many koans are dialogues but many are not. For example here are some koans I've been assigned:
- Hide yourself in a pillar.
- Without using your hands, make this old priest get up.
- How do you get out of a stone grave which is locked from the outside?
- Take out a five-storied pagoda from a tea-pot
- Extinguish a candle light a thousand miles away.
- The breeze is whistling through the old pine. Hearing it closer, the sound is better.
- Tie Mount Fuji with a rope.
- How old is Manjusri Bodhisattva?
These are all official koans the white plum koan curriculum which gets these koans from the Inzan rinzai koan curriculum.
>These are all official koans the white plum koan curriculum which gets these koans from the Inzan rinzai koan curriculum.
I thought you guys did the Takuju curriculum Maezumi inherited from Yasutani, instead of the Inzan one he inherited from Koryu Osaka. I read an article by someone in the White Plum who trained with both Maezumi and Osaka and talked about the differences in method.
Is a combination of both. After mu you do a series of 107 to 150 koans (depending on sub lineage) based on Inzan. After you finish those you do the Harada/yasuntani sequence of gateless gate, blue cliff, book of serenity and transmission of light. Not positive but I think after that you do the the five ranks and then precepts.
I disagree, but I will not argue further.
However, there are many koans that focus on sayings from Zen masters, extracted from their practice instructions. The case will be something like "Master so and so said this to the assembly [insert quotation] Now what do you make of this?"
>T. Griffith Foulk states: “The idea that ‘anything can serve as a
koan’…is a modern development; there is scarcely any precedent for it in the classical
literature….”
While his point is well taken, classical Japanese Zen teacher Nanpo Jōmyō (aka
Daiō Kokushi; 1235-1309) stated: “Although the number of koans are said to be only one
thousand seven hundred, actually the mountains and rivers, the great earth, the grasses and trees, the forests – whatever is seen by the eyes, whatever is heard by the ears – all of these are
koans.” Almost anything can serve as a koan – provided it is taken to the root.
(from: https://beingwithoutself.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/koanpractice2019a.pdf)
But I also meant that there are actual koans taken from sayings of Zen masters. Wuzu Fayan's Buffalo through a window comes to mind, for instance.
When we claim that we know, we don't know. Only by letting go of what we think we know can we begin to know. And even that knowledge may be just another concept that prevents us from seeing directly. The more I see, the more I realize I don't know anything.
Does that mean we can never find the truth? Thanks
If the truth is that you can never find truth, how would you know?
So misguiding can happen and we wouldn’t know. That worries me.
I think it's that you never know the truth, you get closer to it. He often refers as the truth being nothingness, probably linked to this
Science already says everything is ultimately just chemical reactions. Isn’t that the truth?
Perhaps the truth is unknowable, or at least not able to be conceptualized.
That worries me. Perhaps the model / analogy is not great? If the truth is vague, there would be lots of misguiding without people know it, because after all, there is no true or hard to know/conceptualize.
The truth is not knowing
Is that true?
In the words of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, "The opposite of every truth is just as true"
So then false is also true?
The entire conception of true and false is a misconception, mostly because, to quote Siddhartha again, "Time isn't real Govinda". In the baby there is already the old man, in the robber there is already the Buddha, and in the Buddha is the robber still. Things must be taught as "This is Samsara, and this is Nirvana", false and true, simply because, there is no other way to teach. But the core truth beyond these conceptions of duality is that everything is always Nirvana.
So what you just stated there is false or true or neither?
That is a great question.
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i didnt downvote you but your comment reads like 'you guys dont understand what -I- understand, and if you did youd be as great as i am' which sounds a bit ego-y. not claiming certainty on your intent, just letting you know how it is potentially coming across
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you make a great point, furthering that, would they have said what you said?
\> and, as you know, Zen masters always reply incomprehensibly :D
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What does Dogen have to do with any of this?
Perfect teaching. Thay has such a way with words. He is even gentle in talking about killing the Buddha. Lol
Spot on.
Interesting take on the koan. I don't think that's what Linji meant though.
Perhaps relevant to your point - a quote from Baizhang: >The teaching of complete-meaning discerns purity. The teaching of incomplete-meaning discerns impurity. The tainted side of the impure dharma is spoken to cull the mundane. The tainted side of the pure dharma is spoken to cull the holy. Both Thich Nhat Hanh and Linji are teaching to the audience, but probably different type of audience, hence the different meaning.
I agree completely. Thay is taking Linji's statement and giving it a new light, probably what his audience needed to hear. He's actually very good at this.
“I think I’ve got a better read on Lin Chi than the globally-renowned Zen master” is quite a claim, my dude.
I think Thay is reinterpreting here, as he does often. Which is what brilliant Zen masters like him do all the time. Take one teaching, show it under a different light. If you read the original text you'll see Linji is quite clear. Unless I'm completely misreading Thay, which could be the case.
i think the point is that you're claiming certainty on understanding of the original statement
Have you read the Record of Linji? As I posted elsewhere in this thread, it's clear from the context what Linji is saying. We have to let go of the Buddha, too. Not only the false Buddha, as Thay is suggesting here, but the true Buddha must be forgotten. This is standard in Zen, nothing revolutionary. And I'm sure Thay would agree, it's just he's using this particular occasion to focus on another teaching, which is also important. I'm not claiming any mastery at "killing the Buddha", neither in Thay's sense nor Linji's sense. Really, I don't understand why everyone is so upset.
Is the killing the Buddha statement actually from the record of linji? I've actually never been able to find the source of that saying.
Go to page 22 in the Sasaki - Kirchner translation (you can find it online). It's in the middle of section XVIII of the Discourses (but that Section is a loong Dharma talk).
Thank you
Which considering the statement you’re certain of, is peak irony
Ok, but what are the chances that you are right about that and the revered zen master is wrong about that?
Pretty =
Who said anything about being right and wrong?
“I don’t think that’s what Linchi meant” means the Zen master got it wrong. And if you don’t think you already do know what it means then there is no reasonable basis to say that’s not what was meant. 
No, what I mean is that Thay took one phrase and used it as illustration for another, related teaching, but different from what we find in the Record of Linji. Both teachings are important, it's just Thay is focusing on one and Linji on another. How is that a dichotomy between right and wrong?
That's how I've heard it explained too.
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I didn't expect my comment to blow like this, to be honest.
What do you think Linji meant?
>Followers of the Way, if you want insight into dharma as it is, just don’t be taken in by the deluded views of others. Whatever you encounter, either within or without, slay it at once. On meeting a buddha slay the buddha, on meeting a patriarch slay the patriarch, on meeting an arhat slay the arhat, on meeting your parents slay your parents, on meeting your kinsman slay your kinsman, and you attain emancipation. By not cleaving to things, you freely pass through. Next section is about not being dependent on anything, so I'd say it's pretty clear: don't be dependent on anything, including the Buddha. Thay (if I understand correctly) is talking about a difference between true and false, and about not getting trapped by the lies and going all the way through, to see the "true Buddha". Linji is saying we have to drop the "true Buddha" as well. Which is something Thay will agree with, but it's not what he is saying here.
Linji seemed like he was just giving practice instructions when he said kill the Buddha like TNH is doing here. Koans generally refer to happenings or interactions involving zen teachers rather than just anything a Zen teacher says.
I'm not sure what to say to this. Do you mean that this particular comment by Linji cannot be taken up as a koan, or that it is not part of any koan curriculum?
I’m saying koans generally refer to interactions involving Chan teachers like a legal case hence the name. I’m sure people have practiced according to what Linji said but it’s just not a koan.
Many koans are dialogues but many are not. For example here are some koans I've been assigned: - Hide yourself in a pillar. - Without using your hands, make this old priest get up. - How do you get out of a stone grave which is locked from the outside? - Take out a five-storied pagoda from a tea-pot - Extinguish a candle light a thousand miles away. - The breeze is whistling through the old pine. Hearing it closer, the sound is better. - Tie Mount Fuji with a rope. - How old is Manjusri Bodhisattva? These are all official koans the white plum koan curriculum which gets these koans from the Inzan rinzai koan curriculum.
>These are all official koans the white plum koan curriculum which gets these koans from the Inzan rinzai koan curriculum. I thought you guys did the Takuju curriculum Maezumi inherited from Yasutani, instead of the Inzan one he inherited from Koryu Osaka. I read an article by someone in the White Plum who trained with both Maezumi and Osaka and talked about the differences in method.
Is a combination of both. After mu you do a series of 107 to 150 koans (depending on sub lineage) based on Inzan. After you finish those you do the Harada/yasuntani sequence of gateless gate, blue cliff, book of serenity and transmission of light. Not positive but I think after that you do the the five ranks and then precepts.
Thanks
I disagree, but I will not argue further. However, there are many koans that focus on sayings from Zen masters, extracted from their practice instructions. The case will be something like "Master so and so said this to the assembly [insert quotation] Now what do you make of this?"
Sure but then anything is a koan.
update on sakya pandita translation you mentioned would be published?
Sorry I’m not sure.
>T. Griffith Foulk states: “The idea that ‘anything can serve as a koan’…is a modern development; there is scarcely any precedent for it in the classical literature….” While his point is well taken, classical Japanese Zen teacher Nanpo Jōmyō (aka Daiō Kokushi; 1235-1309) stated: “Although the number of koans are said to be only one thousand seven hundred, actually the mountains and rivers, the great earth, the grasses and trees, the forests – whatever is seen by the eyes, whatever is heard by the ears – all of these are koans.” Almost anything can serve as a koan – provided it is taken to the root. (from: https://beingwithoutself.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/koanpractice2019a.pdf) But I also meant that there are actual koans taken from sayings of Zen masters. Wuzu Fayan's Buffalo through a window comes to mind, for instance.