"No Seeking" teaching of Linchi (Rinzai)

[catmoon]

Is it correct to say that Buddhist understands whatever that occurs to be anatta while worldly person does not?

Buddhists go through stages. First there is ignorance. Then there is awareness that there is an anatta doctrine. Then comes vague comprehension, sharper comprehension, and experiential realization which itself gets refined and clarified and generalized.

[Shigetsu]

Hello all,

Linchi has said

The way I see it, there's no call for anything special. Just act ordinary, put on your clothes, eat your rice, pass the time doing nothing. You who come from here and there, you all have a mind to do something. You search for Buddha, search for the Dharma, search for emancipation, search for a way to get out of the threefold world. Idiots, trying to get out of the threefold world! Where will you go? (Lin-chi, ZTML, 53-4.)

1) I wonder the context of the above. Is this relevant only to those who were practicing hard (zazen 20hours a day for months or years at a time) ?

Or does this apply to those who don't practice zazen as much (or at all)?

2) What is the difference between an ordinary worldly person and Buddhist who follows the above?

Thanks,


With best wishes,

Alex

Hi Alex,
Rinzai is telling us to stop thinking and to give ourselves to our ordinary daily activities. Give yourself to whatever you are doing wholeheartedly.
As for Zazen, don't see that as something special - again, please listen to Master Rinzai's kind advice. It's not the lack of Zazen that is your problem, it's the thinking! I'm sure an hour or so a day would be quite enough lol.
Hope that helps,
S

[songhill]

Hi Alex,
Rinzai is telling us to stop thinking and to give ourselves to our ordinary daily activities. Give yourself to whatever you are doing wholeheartedly.
As for Zazen, don't see that as something special - again, please listen to Master Rinzai's kind advice. It's not the lack of Zazen that is your problem, it's the thinking! I'm sure an hour or so a day would be quite enough lol.
Hope that helps,
S

How does this tally with the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment which speaks of four maladies people suffer from who want to engage with Buddhism? Two of the maladies are stopping thought and naturalism, i.e., letting things follow their natural course.

[Shigetsu]

Hi Alex,
Rinzai is telling us to stop thinking and to give ourselves to our ordinary daily activities. Give yourself to whatever you are doing wholeheartedly.
As for Zazen, don't see that as something special - again, please listen to Master Rinzai's kind advice. It's not the lack of Zazen that is your problem, it's the thinking! I'm sure an hour or so a day would be quite enough lol.
Hope that helps,
S

How does this tally with the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment which speaks of four maladies people suffer from who want to engage with Buddhism? Two of the maladies are stopping thought and naturalism, i.e., letting things follow their natural course.

To give a more complete answer - and this is purely based on my experience - the intellect chops reality into this and that and from what I could work out the purpose of all the things we do in practice is to de-clutch from the thinking mind, release ourselves from its iron grip, and see things straight for the first time . While anyone is chasing ideas around they cannot de-clutch, and are lost in the wisteria tangle of thought and are literally chasing ghosts or reflections that appear on the surface of the mind. However, once released, you can see the thinking for what it is, and that the "I" is the ghost in the machine, just another idea swirling round the mental apparatus.

Once de-clutched from the mind you enter a place known as the 'Original Face'. It all sounds a bit strange, but that's what happens! In the Rinzai system this comes just before the passing of the first Koan - which happens as soon as you can figure out how to become the Original Face in front of the teacher. Then all the other satellite Koans and ongoing practice deepen that insight and get you operating out of the Original Face, (or 'Mu" or the "one hand" - whatever you like to call it) rather than out of the intellect. You can still think, obviously, but it just doesn't have the hold on you it once did. At some point there is a merger or something, and then you are heading towards the more mysterious end of the Ox Herding pictures.

I'm not a zen master or anything, (and my teacher would laugh his ass off if he thought that I was trying to give out advice because I'm still a beginner) but I have done a years monastic training in the traditional line and so that is what I experienced, and this stepping back has helped me many times in ordinary life. However, have I fallen back, yes, because it's very difficult to not slip back into taking the mind 100% seriously!

S.

[Quiet Heart]

This is a dangerous teaching. There is so much to do - the mind is a mess, and it needs cleaning up. Doing nothing changes nothing.

----------------
It is not a dangerous traching, it is the teaching of first reaching a certain level however.
Therefore, it shouldn't be given to those who are not yet ready to understand it, but for those that have atained the understanding to hear it clearly it is the speech of liberation.
Don;t forget Linchi himself had to go through many years of training to reach the level to understand this himself.
When Linchi taught this he was speaking to those who already had reached the stage to hear it clearly ... they were not Beginners.
That was and still is the crucial difference.
Not doing anything is NOT the same as to doing nothing .... and by the time you hear this teachung of liberation you should already understand that difference.

[oushi]

Don;t forget Linchi himself had to go through many years of training to reach the level to understand this himself

Three years.

[Megha]

Don;t forget Linchi himself had to go through many years of training to reach the level to understand this himself

Three years.

The first 'opening' of a Zen trainee is relatively easy to achieve. See "The Treatise on the Inexhaustible Lamp of the Zen School" by Master Torei.

That insight doesn't make someone a zen master, however - not unless you live in the USA and want to publish a book on the 17 Pillars Of Zen and become the next Roshi or Grand Poobah on the lecture circuit

I seem to recall reading somewhere that Linchi probably didn't take his leave to start teaching for many years after his first awakening - possibly his late 40's.