September 9

If you had studied Zen, then you would have heard about Master Hui Neng.  He was the most famous Zen Master in Zen history.  People in Taiwan made a film about him.  Since all of you knew his story, I will start it in the middle:

When Hui Neng became a monk, he neither sheared his hair nor wore a monk's robe.  There were so many monks lived in the same temple with him.  Everybody thought that he would have the chance to become the next Zen Patriarch after the old master passing away, but the master gave the position to Hui Neng.  Because Hui Neng was a new member who had just come to the temple several months ago, everybody asked: "Why did our master give the position to a stranger who isn't even his disciple?"  They were so confused and some of them even got angry about it.  One of the monks was very angry.  He said: "Hui Neng must have snatched this position from our master.  I am going to hunt him down."

In the tradition of the Zen sect, if you became the next Zen Master, the former Zen Master would give you a cassock or a special stamp to certify that you are the new master of the lineage.

Therefore, that monk rode a horse chasing after Hui Neng until came to a big mountain.  Hui Neng thought that his life is in danger.  So he said to that monk: "If you want to become the next Zen Patriarch but you need the cassock to prove that, than you just take it away.  If the cassock really belonged to you, then you deserve to take the cassock away from me."  Hui Neng put the cassock on a rock then said: "Come and get it."  The monk approached to the rock to get the cassock.  Although it was just a piece of cloth but the monk couldn't take the cassock away from that rock because it was too heavy.  The monk realized that there must be a reason for it.  Thus, he said: "Hui Neng you are the Zen Patriarch of the Zen sect."

There were some other monks chasing after Hui Neng besides that monk.  Therefore, Hui Neng hid in a hunting group and lived in the mountain with the hunters.  Nobody would think that a monk would stay with the hunters because they hunt all the time and they kill animals.  After hiding there for several years, Hui Neng thought that it was the time for him to come out.  He left those hunters and went to a famous temple in a big city.

One day, the master of that famous temple bestowed a Dharma Talk.  Many people came to the temple.  It was very windy that day.  The banners hung around the Buddha Hall were waving rightwards and leftwards.  Two men in front of Hui Neng saw a waving banner.  One of the men said: "The banner is waving."  The other one said: "No.  You are wrong.  The banner isn't waving.  It is the wind causing that banner to wave."  Hui Neng said to those two men: "Gentlemen!  The problem isn't coming from the banner or the wind.  It is coming from your mind.  It is your mind that is waving."  The master on the stage heard their conversations.  He realized that it was Hui Neng.  So the master said: "You must be Hui Neng.  I have waiting for you for a long time.  Please come up to the stage and give us a Dharma Talk."

In the Buddha's teaching, there are so many ways to help us to practice.  We say "There are as many as eighty-four thousand ways in Buddhism to help us to learn and to practice Dharma."  It is just like there are eighty-four thousand dishes that we can choose from and we can choose any dish on any day.  Because we are alive that makes our mind very unstable.  There are so many things going on in our lives and we always ask ourselves "what's going on?" when something happened.  For example, what is going on with this President who wants to go to war?  What is going on with this football game?  This or that team should win.  But we never asked that what is going on in our mind?  Because we are the human beings and we are the center of the universe.  We know what is right and what is wrong and that makes the human beings so special.  The animals are so cute but they don't know what is wrong and what is right.  That's why they don't know how to practice.

When you ask a Zen Master this question: "What is Zen?"  He will say: "Zen is eating and sleeping."  Everybody knows how to do that because we eat and sleep everyday.  But we don't know how to eat and how to sleep sometimes.  When it is the time to sleep, we cannot sleep well.  We have nightmare and we dream a lot.  When it is the time to eat, we can only concentrate if that is the food we like.

One time, I went to a friend's house.  She was preparing the dinner for her two children.  When dinner was ready, my friend called her two children to come to the kitchen to eat.  The first thing her daughter did was to turn on the TV in the kitchen.  She might never realize what kind of food her mother had prepared for her.  Sometimes, we are just like this little girl engaging in different things when we are eating.  Our minds are so distracted.  We are thinking about turning on the TV to watch football game after dinner while we are eating our dinner.  There are so many things in our mind.  Although our mouth is eating the food but our mind is somewhere else.

That is why the Zen Master said: "It is very simple to practice Zen.  Just keep your mind simple."  Zen teaches you how to sleep and how to eat.  This is the Zen.  Zen is neither in the Zen text and Tripitakas nor in the Sutras.  Zen is here.  Zen is in our daily life.  That is why when we sit down and look into our minds, we will discover how many thoughts are there in our consciousness in just one second.  There are countless thoughts.  Some of the thoughts are just like the clouds that we cannot figure out what kind of thoughts we have because those thoughts are from our past.  They will cause the problems in the future.  We have to become the wind that blows the clouds away, so we will see the sunshine.  The sun is always there.  Because we have so many clouds, we cannot see the sun.  Sun is wisdom.  Sun is Zen.  Zen is compassion and wisdom.

I always say that: "Don't force ourselves to find a shortcut to reach our goal of practice.  It will make us extremely worried."  I have spent twenty years in practice.  But in my mind, I still always regard myself as kindergarten in the stage of practice.  There are so many Great Masters including the Buddha who had practiced life after life before me.  Maybe I was shopping and playing around too much in my previous life and I never focused on my practice.  Maybe I have only practiced for these twenty years for all of my life.  Comparing the time that I have spent on the practice with the time that the Buddha had spent on the practice, it is only twenty seconds just like a baby on his/her baby stage.  There is still a long way to go.  To tell you the truth, I didn't find any shortcut to practice within these twenty years.  If we want to find out the true answer, we should encourage ourselves to continue with our practice.  This is the correct approach and there is still a long way to go, but I am confident that I'll reach my final goal eventually.  There isn't any special skill to help us to practice.  Just be practical and just do whatever we need to do.