Original Nature: Zen Comments on the Sixth Patriarch's Platform Sutra

Copyright © 2010, 2012 by Sokei-an Sasaki.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-5317-9 (sc)

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iUniverse rev. date: 05/21/2012

Contents

By way of an Introductionby Robert Lopez

A Note on the Translation by Peter Haskel

A Preliminary Note by Mary Farkas

THE GREAT SIXTH PATRIARCH’S SUTRA OF THE

TREASURE OF BUDDHISM FROM THE EARTHEN ALTAR

I

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

II

PRAJNAPARAMITA

III

QUESTIONING

IV

SAMADHI AND PRAJNA

V

SITTING IN MEDITATION

VI

CONFESSION

VII

AFFINITY

VIII

SUDDEN AND GRADUAL

IX

THE ROYAL REQUEST

X

FINAL INSTRUCTIONS

GLOSSARY*

FOOTNOTES

In the Memory of

Edna Kenton & Mary Farkas

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In addition to the notetakers mentioned in the introduction who were present at Sokei-an’s talks, many others subsequently assisted in the completion of this manuscript. Mary Farkas inherited these cherished collections over the years and oversaw the transcription and collation of the various versions. The results were then published in the Institute’s periodical, Zen Notes. Mary was helped at times by various dedicated individuals, among them Vanessa Coward, Francis Bahi, and Sandy Hackney. Preparation of the final manuscript for publication was done under the auspices of the Institute’s publication committee, consisting of Bob Lopez, Peter Haskel, Michael Hotz, Ian Chandler, and Peeter Lamp, current editor of Zen Notes. Bob Lopez completed the bulk of the editorial work in preparing the manuscript for publication. Peter Haskel and John Storm edited the final draft. Peeter Lamp lent his considerable talent to the cover art, layout and computer-related aspects of the project. Michael Hotz, president of the Institute, coordinated the overall process.

Over the past seventy-five years, generations of American Zen students gave their time rescuing this manuscript. In return they gained some insight into the early Chinese Zen that Sokei-an felt would create a suitable foundation to accompany the transmission of Zen to America. Sokei-an spoke these commentaries and labored over his translations not just for the benefit of those who were present in the 1930’s, but, as he put it, to those future beings. We are grateful for these efforts and pass the discovery of ‘original nature’ on to you.

I only transmit to you the law of seeing original nature,

Revealing myself in the world to destroy false ideas.

The Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng

I am of the Zen sect. My special mission is to train students of Buddhism by the Zen method. Nowadays, there are many types of Zen teachers. One type, for example, teaches Zen through philosophical discourse; another through so-called meditation; and still another directly from soul to soul. My way of teaching is the direct transmission of Zen from soul to soul.

Sokei-an

By way of an Introduction 

 by Robert Lopez

Had she lived, Mary Farkas would have taken on the task of writing this introduction to Sokei-an’s talks on the Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra. Mary, who passed away in June 1992, left it to us at the First Zen Institute to complete the work she began in 1938 when she became, as Sokei-an put it, a pillar of his temple. That temple was the Buddhist Society of America, now the First Zen Institute of America, founded in 1930 in New York City by Sokei-an.

Sokei-an translated and commented on the Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra for his American Zen students in 190 lectures, delivered between July 1935 and June 1939. The sutra, which purports to record the sermons of the Zen teacher Hui-neng (673-18), is an important scripture of early Zen Buddhism in China. Such subjects as seeing into one’s own original nature, no thought, and formlessness still lie at the heart of this unique religion we call Zen.

In the weeks before Mary’s death. many of us at the Institute spent long hours in the abbot’s quarters sitting beside her on the wooden palanquin she called her bed. During one evening’s conversation about the publication of Sokei-an’s commentary, Mary turned to me excitedly, and said; You know, don’t you, we are presenting not only the sutra of the Sixth Patriarch but the sutra of Sokei-an to present the teaching of Sokei-an to the world.

One need only turn the pages of Sokei-an’s magnificent translation and commentary to appreciate Mary’s splendid notion. It’s all here, she would say, and her face would beam with an extraordinary happiness as she perused her teacher’s commentary. Nevertheless, Mary did not complete an introduction for this volume, so we must do without it, and to my sorrow, without her.

As Mary grew increasingly aware of her age, she became preoccupied with insuring that her work at the Institute would be carried on by its members; and, as I had assisted her for several years preparing the Institute’s periodical, Zen Notes, editing the Sixth Patriarch manuscript, and compiling the first book of Sokei-an’s talks, The Zen Eye (New York: Weatherhill, 1993), she asked me to continue with the effort she had begun so many decades before, that of getting Sokei-an into print. So, in accordance with her wishes, I have taken it upon myself to write this introduction.

Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki was born in the old Japanese province of Sanuki, on March 10, 1882, the son of a samurai named Tsunamichi Sasaki. Once a retainer of the Takamatsu clan, Tsunamichi became a successful Shinto scholar, teacher, and missionary during the Meiji period (1868-1912). Tsunamichi and his wife, Kitako Kubota, named their son Yeita. Yeita, however, was not the biological son of Kitako. His actual mother was said to be a concubine named Chiyoko. Why Tsunamichi and Kitako secured Chiyoko to bear them a son sired by Tsunamichi is not clear, but Sokei-an would remain their only child.

Sokei-an attended the usual primary and middle schools. After his father’s death in 1897, Sokei-an went to Yokohama and apprenticed himself to a craftsman who specialized in exterior temple carvings. In 1898, Sokei-an walked through what he called the Japanese Alps, supporting himself by putting into service the tools he had used as an apprentice. Traveling from one temple to another asking for restoration work, he earned about thirty-five cents a day. Later that year, Sokei-an returned to Tokyo and his widowed mother.

In 1899 Sokei-an entered the Imperial Academy of Art in Tokyo where he studied sculpture under the famous artist Takamura Koun (1852-1934). In the evenings and on holidays, Sokei-an worked in a post office. In 1903, Sokei-an had begun to study with the Zen master Sokatsu Shaku (1870-1954) at Ryomo Kyokai, or Society for the Abandonment of Subjectivity and Objectivity, whose headquarters was in Nippori on the outskirts of Tokyo. The Ryomo Kyokai was founded in 1875 by the celebrated Rinzai Zen master Imakita Kosen (1816-1892) for the establishment and practice of lay Zen. Sokatsu had been appointed head of Ryomo Kyokai by Kosen’s famous senior heir and student Soyen Shaku (1859-1919) following Sokatsu’s return from a pilgrimage in South Asia. Sokei-an describes what it was like for students at Ryomo-an.

. . . At the time, the disciples of Sokatsu Shaku were, for the most part, university students and young doctors, with a sprinkling of members of the nobility. The farmhouses of Nippori village were favorite lodging places for the university students who came from all parts of Japan. The village itself was quiet but not too far from the city universities, and the households of the farmers afforded both pleasant and inexpensive living.

In rain and snow, or in fine weather, at six o’clock in the morning we students were assembled waiting for the gate of Ryomo-an to open. Quietly, we would enter the temple and, sitting together in the big room which served as our zendo, we would practice meditation after the fashion of the sodo or monastery monks. At seven o’clock sanzen, catechism, began. One by one we would enter our teacher’s room to answer the koan, or zen question, which he had previously given to each of us. After sanzen, we would quietly leave the temple, returning home for breakfast and then on to to our nine o’clock classes at school. Sunday passed as other days, except that our Roshi, our Zen teacher, gave a lecture, or teisho, which we were all expected to attend.¹ . . .

Soyen Shaku, abbot of Engakuji in Kamakura, was well known for having visited the United States in 1893 as part of a delegation of Buddhists to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. When a friend of Sokei-an’s, a sculptor named Unkyo Goto, introduced him to Soyen, Sokei-an was taken aback:

. . . The first moment of this interview, the Abbot’s two shining eyes pierced my mind through and through. I stood in silence, aghast! The Abbot questioned me about what I wished to become. I replied, I am studying art. What art are you studying? I am learning how to carve Buddhist statues."" Who is your teacher? ‘‘Koun Takamura. He looked into my eyes again and said, Carve a Buddha statue for me when you become a famous artist." And he gave us tea and cakes.² . . .

Later, Sokatsu asked Sokei-an to carve a him a buddha. But when Sokei-an brought it to him, Sokatsu threw it out his window into a pond. Sokei-an later said, It seemed unkind, but it was not. He meant me to carve the Buddha in myself.

In April 1905, he graduated from the Academy of Art and was immediately drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army. Serving as a corporal in the transportation corps during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), he drove a dynamite truck on the Manchurian front, an experience he would frequently refer to in his commentaries. Before his discharge, Sokei-an started a theater for the soldiers. He not only painted scenery and wrote plays; he acted in the productions as well. In 1906 he was demobilized, and a few months later found himself following his Zen teacher to America.

Having recently married one of the Zen students at Ryomo Kyokai at his teacher’s urging, Sokei-an arrived in the United States on September 8, 1906 with his wife, Tome, Sokatsu, and a group of students Sokatsu hoped would form the nucleus of a Zen community on a small parcel of land he had purchased in Hayward, California. Sokatsu expected his community of students to cultivate the land and become self-sufficient. But when their first crop failed, Sokei-an said the neighboring farmers made fun of their produce. Sokei-an confronted Sokatsu on the practicality of using monks, artists, and philosophers in such an undertaking. An argument ensued and Sokei-an left. After it became clear the Hayward settlement would not succeed, Sokatsu opened a Zen center on Sutter Street in San Francisco. Sokei-an was already in the city studying at the California Institute of Art with Richard Partington, a well known portrait painter. But Sokatsu’s venture in San Francisco faltered as well, and in 1910 he returned to Japan with his disciples. Sokei-an remained. He later recalled his feelings about Sokatsu’s departure:

. . . When I lost my teacher (he went back to Japan), I was left alone in this country. I had no one to follow, and I began to meditate upon the five skandhas. Samsara—I could not understand it! Then one day I took my dog to the beach: he barked at the waves as they rolled in on the beautiful ocean strand. I realized that all this was reflected in the mind of my dog; I felt it in the dog’s samsara and expressed it. I meditated upon samsara for many months. I watched the autumn foliage leave the trees. One leaf on a treetop waved to me like a hand—I am going away, I am going away. Goodbye, winter has come! Samsara.³ . . .

That year a son, Shintaro, was born to Tome and Sokei-an. A daughter, Seiko, followed two years later. Sokei-an supported his family by repairing art with the woodcarving tools he had cherished since age fifteen. In 1916 Tome, pregnant with a second daughter, who would be named Shihiko, returned to Japan with Shintaro and Seiko. Neither Tome nor Shihiko would ever return to the United States. Sokei-an missed his family and would see the face of his little boy behind the top of every bush. Following his family’s departure, Sokei-an decided to leave San Francisco with the aim of seeing the United States.

. . . Alone in America, I conceived the idea of going about the United States on foot. In February 1911, 1 crossed the Shasta Mountains through the snow into Oregon. On the hillside of the Rogue River Valley was the farm of an old friend. He asked me to stay with him for a while. Summer came with the month of May. I began again my practice of meditation. Every evening I used to walk along the riverbed to a rock chiseled by the current during thousands of years. Upon its flat surface I would practice meditation through the night, my dog at my side protecting me from the snakes. The rock is still there.

For several years I led a wandering life, finally reaching the city of New York. My carving tools, cherished from the age of fifteen, provided me with a hand-to-mouth livelihood. One day all of a sudden, I realized that I must see my teacher. I packed up my things and in October, 1919, left New York.⁴ . . .

A more vivid account of the circumstances of Sokei-an’s departure for Japan was offered by his second wife, Ruth Fuller Sasaki.⁵

Sokei-an went to New York and lived in Greenwich Village and got to know some of the poets of those days. He knew Maxwell Bodenheim, with whom he translated poems for the Little Review. Another person he knew was [Aleister] Crowley. And while his interest in Zen kept on, during this period he was finding out a lot about life, And then in 1919, on an awfully, awfully hot day in July he was walking down the street and suddenly in the street he saw the carcass of a dead horse, and something happened to him psychologically and he went straight home to his rooms and packed up his things and got a ticket for Japan and went back to Sokatsu.⁶

On March 28, 1922, after an intense period of Zen study, Sokatsu granted Sokei-an inka. a Zen master’s seal of approval authenticating a student’s experience of realization. Returning to the United States in September 1922, Sokei-an once again settled in New York City, resuming his art restoration work and his literary efforts. Sokei-an wrote and published four volumes of essays on his experiences with the character of Americans. These volumes had tittles like, America a Land Troubled by Money and Women. During this second stay in New York, he began to give lectures on Buddhism at the invitation of the Orientalia bookstore, on East 58th Street opposite the Plaza Hotel. Four years later, summoned by Sokatsu, Sokei-an returned to Japan and resumed his Zen study. Meanwhile, a committee of American and Japanese Buddhists had sent a letter to Sokatsu formally requesting that Sokei-an be appointed teacher for their group in New York.

We know the reputation of Shigetsu Sasaki Koji who once taught here and inspired enthusiasm among Japanese as well as American Buddhists, who were deeply impressed with his splendid teachings. His vast knowledge of English, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese, coupled with his remarkable understanding of social conditions in this county, fit him for a return here in this capacity. May we then urge his visit to this country even if only for a brief period, say, six or eight months, so that we could continue our study of Dharma with his invaluable aid?⁷

In his reply to the New York group in May 1928, Sokatsu wrote: Shigetsu Koji will come to you not only as one of the officials of our associated temples, but also in the capacity of Reverend, and assume the responsibilities of opening the American Branch of the Ryomo Society. In July 1928 Sokei-an received formal certification as a teacher and missionary to the United States for the Ryomo Society. In August, when Sokei-an arrived in New York, the committee sent an ecstatic letter to Sokatsu thanking him and informing him of Sokei-an’s arrival. But the New York group did not live up to its promise. Their interest had so seriously waned that after a short time Sokei-an just disappeared. Now and then, he said, he busied himself preaching the Dharma in various quarters.

When [Sokei-an] went back again to New York in 1928. [Ruth Sasaki noted,] he felt he was completely alone with nothing but his Zen. His teacher had told him that now his life was to be devoted to teaching Zen and no more to earning his living by some other manner and toying with Zen on the side, and so at first he didn’t know quite what to do. He didn’t have any group to go to. He was more or less alone. He had a commission from some magazine or newspaper . . . to write a series of articles on the various foreign people who lived in New York City and made up its population. So instead of going back to Greenwich Village and picking up that type of friend and acquaintance again he lived for two or three months apiece with an Italian family, a Portuguese family, and eventually a Negro family. I don’t know how many others, but the Negro family was the last, and then he was forced to do something to eat and he went to Mr. Mataichi Miya, of the Yamanaka Company, for antique furniture. Whether he had known him previously, or how he got to know him I don’t exactly know, but at any rate, Mr. Miya was very interested in Zen and had studied Zen previously, and so he gave Sokei-an $500 and went around and hunted for a place for him to live and to begin to give his lectures." ⁸

At some time, after he received his appointment from the Ryomo Society, Sokei-an decided that if he was to make any headway with Americans, it was essential he become a priest. He, therefore, arranged to become a disciple of Master Aono Futetsu, abbot of Manmanji, a branch of the famous headquarters temple Daitokuji. On March 15, 1933, Sokei-an formally received the precepts and the religious name Soshin and moved up through the ranks at Daltokuji. All of this, through a complex but accepted procedure, was carried out while Sokei-an remained in New York.

Sokei-an’s ordination as a priest very much displeased Sokatsu. Sokatsu would have preferred that Sokei-an remain a lay teacher. Indeed, Kosen and Sokatsu’s original intention in creating and maintaining the Ryomo Society had been to establish a lineage based squarely on lay practice and represented by lay teachers. On February 15, 1930, with the support of his many Japanese and American friends, Sokei-an finally opened the Buddhist Society of America at 63 West 70th Street, situated a block from one of his favorite New York City locales, Central Park. From 1929 until September 1941, 63 West 70th Street not only served as the headquarters of the Buddhist Society of America but as Sokei-an’s place of residence.⁹ On December 7th, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Buddhist Society moved into its new quarters at Ruth Fuller’s home at 124 East 65th Street. As Ruth recalled, disaster loomed on the horizon for the Institute, and for Sokei-an:

. . . From that time on, of course for months we didn’t know it, but there were two FBI people under the present apartment verandah twenty-four hours a day. Mr. Sasaki was interviewed many times by the FBI, and so was I; but the meetings were permitted to be continued until June. On the 15th of June, 1942, he gave his last talk; and the next day he was taken and was interned.¹⁰ . . .

After 36 years in the United States, Sokei-an was arrested as an enemy alien and sent to Ellis Island, New York. In October 1942, he was transferred to Fort Meade, an internment camp near Baltimore, Maryland. Sokei-an was shocked by the actions of his adopted country. Many of the letters he sent from Ellis Island are heartbreaking; others are funny. In a 1942 letter to Ruth Everett, Sokei-an observed, The Island is shrouded in drizzling rain. Avalokitesvara weeps over me today… . I am waiting for Alice in the wonderland to come.

After spending close to a year in the Maryland internment camp, Sokei-an was finally released by the government in August 1943 following a vigorous campaign mounted on his behalf by several of his American students. Sokei-an returned to Manhattan, and the following year he traveled with Ruth Everett to Little Rock, Arkansas, to obtain a divorce from his first wife, Tome, and to marry Ruth. Sokei-an’s arrest effectively ended his formal teaching career, but he would continue to give sanzen until his death twenty-one months later. On May 17, 1945, he died from a variety of complications due to high blood pressure, passing away in his apartment on 65th Street surrounded by his wife and friends. Shortly before his death, Sokei-an made a request of Mary Farkas, who wrote:

When Sokei-an overstayed his leave in this world according to his own calculations, that is, outlived the day he predicted for his own death, he asked me, somewhat jokingly, to give him a new name, as he said this was the custom. I racked my mind for a name for this great and wonderful person who was my teacher, warm and close as a member of mv family from one point of view, remote as the final nirvana he was about to enter from another. Only one name came to my mind: Tigerheart. He accepted this as quite appropriate, and a few weeks later he was gone.¹

When Sokei-an sat before his Zen students in his Manhattan studio in the summer of 1935, he was giving the first English commentary on one of Buddhism’s most popular and enduring works of religious literature. In the remarks with which he introduced the celebrated fourth chapter of the Sixth Patriarch’s Sutra, Samadhi and Prajna, Sokei-an expressed his astonishment and delight that the words of the Sixth Patriarch were being presented in America.

I think the Sixth Patriarch never dreamed his record, and especially this chapter, would be explained to Westerners in New York. Reading this chapter, I feel that I am in a valley between huge mountains, and that the ancient simpleminded woodcutters, fishermen, monks, and nuns who are living in these mountains have come to the place where they always make their gatherings, and that I am one of them now.

In fact, it is a wonder that we have this record today. It is surely a testimony to the affection Sokei-an’s students had for him that they preserved so accurately and conscientiously this work, which took four years for Sokei-an to complete, and which has taken nearly fifty years to find its way into our own hands. In a 1941 letter to a friend, Sokei-an described the difficulty of transmitting Buddhism to Americans:

In New York, mv work is somewhat taking root in the mind of several Americans. I am encouraged. As we say, it is like transplanting the lotus to the stones. This means that Buddhism is a slow-growing religion and hard to take root in peoples’ minds. Of course, Buddhism is not a weed. It is a huge tree. It is very slow to take root and very slow to grow. The Buddhism which is carried into this country, especially among Japanese, I do not consider to be a religion for Americans. But the Buddhism which touches the American mind is that which teaches simplicity, without any Amida Buddha or any personage to be worshipped.¹²

Few of Sokei-an’s talks were ever written out by him. For Mary Farkas, his impromptu, extemporaneous talks transcended the spoken word. She recalled her first meeting with him at the Buddhist Society:

. . . One evening it happened to be June 22, 1938, I entered a room at the main floor front of 63 West 70th Street, New York City . . . . Promptly at 8:30 a lady with large brimming eyes reminiscent of a character in Swann’s Way . . . took a position at the reading desk and announced that Samanna Sokei-an Sasaki . . . would read a translation he had made from the Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch of Zen in China and comment upon it. Thereupon a rather large Japanese, robed as a priest, entered through a pair of sutra-papered doors at the north end of the room and performed a brief ceremony that included the burning of incense and chanting. At its conclusion, he seated himself at a reading desk on which were, in addition to his manuscript written in red Chinese characters, a ceremonial fly whisk, a crystal glass, and a curious scepterlike object with an involute top. We then observed a period of silence, during which he sat before us like an image on a mountaintop. To tell the truth, it was more like a mountain, if a man may be said to be like a mountain, in huge immobility.¹³

Sokei-an never intended to work over his hundreds of talks, lectures, and commentaries. In his commentary on the closing chapter of the Sixth Patriarch’s Sutra Sokei-an says, I hope after my death someone will publish this translation in a book for future Zen students. He wanted his American students to create his record, much as the Zen records of past masters were created by their disciples. Although early models of the tape recorder were available in the thirties and forties, Sokei-an’s students did not use them. Every lecture he gave of which a record remains was recorded by one or more of his students who were present. The notes were typed, and then typed once again, one under the other, very much like the text of a chorale or cantata, so that they would all coalesce into a seamless record of the evening’s presentation, recreating Sokei-an’s voice through a sort of common consent.

In the early forties, however, at the behest of Ruth Fuller Everett, Sokei-an did begin to write out a commentary on the Record of Lin-chi and in 1940-41 he composed articles for his newsletter, Cat’s Yawn, dealing with the history of his lineage and the particulars of Zen training. Besides the lectures he gave at the Buddhist Society, Sokei-an also spoke at other religious organizations in the Boston and New York City area, including some black churches in Harlem.

In the early thirties, two of Sokei-an’s longtime Zen students, Audrey Kepner and Edna Kenton, were the principal note takers. Edna, whom Sokei-an said he used like an old shoe, was a playwright and author, as well as the Buddhist Society’s archivist, historian, and treasurer. Audrey Kepner, the recording secretary of the society, was a retired high school history teacher who helped Sokei-an with his English and assisted him with his first major translation.¹⁴ Audrey began studying with Sokei-an in 1930, Edna in 1933. Mary Farkas, sometime after her own arrival in 1938, joined the groups that met to compile and edit Sokei-an’s lectures. Other note takers included George Fowler, Jan Welsh, Frieda Stern, Winifred Bartlett, and beginning in 1939, Ruth Fuller and Mary Farkas. These notes are available in the Institute’s archives. It was from these edited versions that Mary prepared the final form of Sokei-an’s lectures for Zen Notes. Mary wrote about this process in response to a query about how she assembled a Sokei-an article.

. . . The notes were taken by a writer, Edna Kenton, and a school teacher, Audrey Kepner, whose major interest was comparative philosophy and religion. Their accuracy is judged three ways: by each other; by the facts ascertainable elsewhere; by agreement with statements made by Sokei-an on other occasions.

Our first step is to try to find out what Sokei-an said. After a collation sheet is made, in this case from two persons, sometimes from more, a rough draft is made . . . . It should be Sokei-an’s actual words, as nearly as possible. His English was, of course, not English, but reading his actual words, as he habitually used them, in many different cases, gives a clearer sense of what he had in mind than a completely polished version of what anyone else believes he meant. It is therefore his sense I try to find, not just a sense. This can only be determined by acquaintance with his thinking.¹⁵

When Edna Kenton died in 1954 at the age of 78, Mary Farkas inherited the mantle of Sokei-an’s editor. Edna had doggedly safeguarded his lectures from the beginning of his career at 70th Street, and was a principal note taker for the Sixth Patriarch’s Sutra. But it was Mary who seized the opportunity of rescuing Sokei-an from his students’ notebooks and began publishing the edited articles in Zen Notes. That is why Mary shares the dedication with Edna, Sokei-an’s Iron Mortar, his name for his cherished student and friend.

We have retained the original format in which the translation was read and then lines of the text were repeated as Sokei-an gave his commentary. Sokei-an’s individual lectures have been marked off by a lotus icon, a design derived from the master’s personal copy of the Taisho Tripitaka. This format keeps the work in its original context. It was never a book, but a rolling introduction to Zen for new people who came, as well as the ongoing story of the Sixth Patriarch.

Sokei-an was intensely attracted to the Sixth Patriarch’s Sutra and as a Zen student would carry it with him everywhere he went. Indeed, his special affection for the text played an important role in the acquisition of his name. In 1932, in a reply to a letter from the American Buddhist Dwight Goddard, Sokei-an explains the origin of his religious names, Shigetsu and Sokei-an.

To come to your question about "Anja Shigetsu." Anja means the laborer in the temple, one who polishes the rice, or picks up the kindling wood from the mountain, or brings water from the pool, or does all the hard labor for the monks. He is not of the same rank as a monk but lives in the temple community, observing the same commandments as does the novice.

The Sixth Patriarch of China was an anja. We call him Lu Anja because his lay name was Lu. He Succeeded to the torch of Zen from the Fifth Patriarch and went to the southern part of China. While he was concealing his effulgence, he still called himself Lu Anja. I was also in the temple of my teacher. I was born a samurai. My father became a Shinto priest after the old form of feudal government in Japan passed away. At the time of his death. I was fifteen years of age. At the age of twenty years, I became a disciple of my teacher, leaving to my mother my father’s scanty property, but I did not shave my head, being accepted in the temple as an anja. Until I was ordained as a Zen master, I was an anja, so I called myself Anja Shigetsu. Shigetsu is the name my teacher gave me as a Zen novice. "Shi is to point out with [the] finger; "getsu" means moon. To point out the moon means a sutra, because a sutra points out the moon of the soul, but no one sees a moon but sees a finger, just as when pointing out food to a dog, he sees not the food but your finger. I was taking the philosophy of Buddhism very seriously but did not know the moon of the soul to which the philosophy was pointing, so my teacher called me "moon pointer who does not know to what he is pointing." When I was ordained, he said, After all, that blind finger was a moon.

Sokei-an is the name of my hermitage that I am supposed to have—given by my teacher to me as an ordained one. "An means hermitage. Sokei" is the Japanese pronunciation of "Ts’ao-ch’i," the Chinese name of a place in which the Sixth Patriarch of China was living. There are not many anjas who have become ordained Zen masters, [though] there were several in the lineage of the Zen torch bearers. But an anja like myself, holding the reflection of the moon, ordained as Zen master and striving not to lose it, is an omen of the decline of Zen in the Orient, alas!

Sokei-an’s intention to personally introduce his students to the tenets of the Buddhist canon, as he called it, through his weekly meetings made it imperative that he translate the selected materials himself. This he did from his complete edition of the Taisho Tripitaka, the multi-volume collection of Buddhist texts in Chinese that had been recently published in Japan and was donated to the Buddhist Society in 1930 by Sokei-an’s admirer and friend Kazuo Kawazuchi.

Sokei-an’s translations and commentaries provided his American students with an authentic context for their faith as Buddhists; and his sanzen, the face-to-face, or mind-to-mind encounter between master and student, provided them with the core of Zen itself, the perspective of what he called their original aspect.

Sokei-an spoke in a natural manner, free of pretension, ostentation, or artifice. He learned his English in the farmlands and cities of the West and the apartments of Harlem and Greenwich Village in the East. He told his students that he was from Missouri and had to be shown the answers to the koans he assigned them. Sokei-an’s talks are filled with the intimate details of his life in America and Japan. He comments upon the triumphs and frailties of human nature in a profusion of anecdotes and tall tales of every variety. His examples, drawn from his own experiences with his family, friends, students, and teachers, as well as the turbaned gurus of his day, are told in a voice that is remarkably perceptive and delightfully frank.

Sokei-an’s talks can be understood by anyone. They require no special training or education. You needn’t know much about Buddhism or Zen to ride the wave of his commentary. Speaking from the platform of the Sixth Patriarch, Sokei-an expresses his inmost nature without restraint or reservation. For Zen students, he said, the conclusion of Zen is daily life, and it is not so easy to come to this. Then there is one more stage, art; the art of life.

¹   For a full-length biography of Sokei-an, readers should consult Holding the Lotus to the Rock, The Autobiography of America’s First Zen Master (New York:Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002).

²   Cat’s Yawn, (New York: The First Zen Institute of America, 1947). 1, p.19; Ibid., p.3.

³   Unpublished commentary on the Sutra of Perfect Awakening, November 1. 1939.

⁴   Cat’s Yawn, p.23.

⁵   Sokei-an and Ruth Fuller Everett were married in 1944. In 1958 Ruth Sasaki was appointed Priest of the Rinzai Zen Temple Ryosen-an at Daitokuji in Kyoto. At Ryosen-an she was given permission to open the First Zen Institute of America in Japan for westerners who wished to study Zen.

⁶   Wind Bell (Zen Center of San Francisco), Excerpts from ‘Our Lineage,’ by Shigetsu Sasaki Roshi, with comments by Ruth Fuller Sasaki and Gary Snyder. Volume VIII, Number 102 (Fall 1969), p.13. The excerpts" of the title were taken from Cat’s Yawn.

⁷   Zen Notes, Volume XXVII, Number 7 (July 1981).

⁸   Wind Bell, p.14.

⁹   See Mary Farkas’s introduction and appendix in The Zen Eye for more details on Sokei-an and the Buddhist Society during the thirties and forties.

¹⁰   Wind Bell, p.15.

¹¹   Unpublished notes on Sokei-an by Mary Farkas.

¹²   Letter to a Mrs. Wills dated February 10, 1941.

¹³   Unpublished notes on Sokei-an by Mary Farkas.

¹⁴   Ananda and MahaKasyapa. From the Chinese Version of the Sutras of Buddhism. Sokei-an Sasaki. trans. (New York: C.M. Neumann, 1931).

¹⁵   Letter dated February 15, 1961.

A Note on the Translation 

 by Peter Haskel

The Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra is probably the most celebrated of Zen (C. Ch’an) classics. It is the only record of a Zen master that bears the title of sutra, a designation usually reserved for works purporting to record the words of the Buddha himself, and the only sutra with a distinctly Chinese (rather than Indian) setting. In addition, the heroic image of the Sixth Patriarch presented in the Platform Sutra has in many ways been central to the development of the Zen school over the centuries, and is likely to remain so as long as the Zen tradition itself continues. Yet, in reality, we know little or nothing of the actual Sixth Patriarch or of the origin of the work that bears his name.

The Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra claims to record the biography and teachings of the Zen master Hui-neng (683-713), an illiterate peddler of brushwood who joins the assembly of the Fifth Zen Patriarch, Hung-jen (601-674), ultimately succeeds to his teachings, and becomes the founder of the Southern School of Zen. The historical record, however, remains scant and inconclusive, providing little support for the events and views found in the text. Indeed, despite considerable scholarly research and debate, virtually nothing can be said with certainty about either the historical Hui-neng or the character of his teaching.

Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars generally agree that the original form of the text was set down during the late Tang dynasty, probably in the late eighth or early ninth centuries. But the identity of the sutra’s original author(s) or compiler(s), their backgrounds and motivations, are unclear. In searching for clues, certain scholars have focused on the school of Hui-neng’s Dharma heir Ho-tse Shen hui (670-762), whose recorded sermons bear a marked resemblance to the teachings attributed to the Sixth Patriarch in the Platform Sutra, suggesting that the Sixth Patriarch’s record as we have it may be largely the creation of Shen-hui and his followers, an attempt to enhance their standing among the Zen schools of the day by acclaiming Hui-neng the sole legitimate successor to the patriarchate. Others have recently sought to establish the sutra’s origins in the Niu-t’ou, or Ox-Head school, a school of Zen active in southern China during the late Tang, arguing that the teachings that form the core of the Platform Sutra are the product of this school and originally bore no relationship whatever to Hui-neng, having been simply appropriated to him by Shen-hui’s followers, who then revised and expanded the text, adding their own material.

While Sokei-an, working in the mid 1930’s, was cognizant of certain aspects of the debate surrounding the origins of the Platform Sutra, his relation to the sutra and to the Sixth Patriarch was clearly that of a Zen teacher, not a historian, and the truths that concerned him in approaching the text were religious rather than factual in nature. Sokei-an’s was not the first English translation of the sutra. It was preceded by the 1930 translation of the Chinese scholar Wong Mou-lam,1 and has been joined since by a number of other translations. However, Sokei-an’s was the first and to my knowledge remains the only complete translation of, and commentary on, the sutra to be directly presented in a Western language by an authenticated Asian Zen master (a master being the only person authorized within the Zen school to comment on a Zen text). This project, in turn, formed part of Sokei-an’s broader program in introducing Zen to America. As the first Rinzai master to settle permanently in the United States, Sokei-an wished to give his American students access to the original Tang Zen texts, which, he believed, embodied the roots of the Zen experience itself. By contrast, in his talks Sokei-an never expressed the slightest interest in the works of Japanese Zen teachers, medieval or modern, but focused on the records of Zen’s Chinese founders, such as his namesake, the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng, the central figure of the Platform Sutra.

Sokei-an based his translation on the Liu-tsu ta-shih fa-pao t’ an-ching (The Sixth Patriarch’s Treasure of Dharma Platform Sutra) sometimes referred to as the Yuan or Ming text. The 1291 work was compiled on the basis of several earlier manuscripts by the Yuan-dynasty monk Tsung-pao (n.d.) and later included in the Ming Tripitaka, a compendium of Buddhist scriptures in Chinese published in the early fifteenth century. Sokei-an translated only the ten sections that form the body of the work, eliminating the various introductory materials and epilogues.²

An earlier, shorter text of the Platform Sutra, apparently dating from the late Tang dynasty, was discovered in 1900 in a cave at Tun-huang, in China’s Kansu province. The Tun-huang version of the sutra is about half the length of the Yuan text, and there are certain differences in the materials included in each version and in the overall ordering of the contents. Nevertheless, both texts are very close, and there are few if any marked differences between the teachings conveyed in each.³

The Tun-huang manuscript was included in the Taisho Tripitaka, the noted compendium of Buddhist scriptures in Chinese published in Japan between 1924 and 1934, and was thus available to Sokei-an. But although he was aware of the Tun-huang text, which had generated considerable excitement among scholars of Chinese Buddhism, in his lectures Sokei-an chose to rely on the Yuan version, which was probably more familiar to him. This was the text commonly consulted in Japanese Zen temples since at least the Tokugawa period (1600-1867), and is likely to have been the version of the sutra that Sokei-an studied during his own Zen training. Sokei-an’s choice of the later edition may also have been influenced by the fact that it contains certain celebrated passages not included in the Tun-huang text. The two most obvious examples are the phrase From the beginning not a thing exists, which Hui-neng recites in response to the poem of the senior monk Shen-hsiu; and the question, Thinking of neither good nor evil, at that moment, what is your original appearance? which Hui-neng puts to the monk Hui-ming, who pursues him from the Fifth Patriarch’s temple. The first of these is among the standard capping phrases (agyo, or jakugo) employed in koan study in Japanese Zen temples; the second is itself a koan, one particularly favored by Sokei-an.

Unlike his commentary on the Platform Sutra, which was delivered impromptu in English and recorded by members of his audience, Sokei-an’s translation of the text was composed by him beforehand and written out, with assistance on wording from his American students. In preparing his lectures, Sokei-an’s method was to go through the original text on which he was speaking, writing out the Chinese characters for each line and placing his proposed English translation directly beneath. Although Sokei-an was trained in classical Chinese since childhood and had labored over the complexities of translation in preparing his weekly talks on the Platform Sutra, his perspective was always that of a Zen master rather than a linguist. His aim was to present the Sixth Patriarch’s essential teaching, as he saw it, rather than a scholarly translation that hewed to the text in every detail.

By December 1941 the text of Sokei-an’s translation of the Platform Sutra had been separately typed and bound. A memo prefacing the surviving typescript states that it represents an uncorrected version, and warns against letting anyone have access to it without Sokei-an’s permission—indicating that though the process of editing may already have begun in Sokei-an’s lifetime, he regarded the task as incomplete.

After Sokei-an’s death, the work of editing the sutra notes was taken up by his student Mary Farkas, director of the First Zen Institute of America, the organization Sokei-an had founded in New York City. From 1975 till her death in 1992, Mary presented Sokei-an’s Sixth Patriarch lectures in Zen Notes, and gradually began to prepare the full manuscript for publication with the assistance of Bob Lopez. Bob labored assiduously to annotate the translation. But due to to the extreme length of Sokei-an’s commentary, which is, after all, the heart of the book (and which, along with the glossary, explains many of the references), the Institute’s publications committee decided to drop most of the footnotes, though they remain available in the FZI archives.

At Mary’s request, she and I went through the translation portion together, line by line, as Sokei-an had done, comparing it with the Chinese of Tsung-pao’s original text, a task in which we were assisted by a grant from the Numata Foundation. In editing the translation, we sought in part to use the Chinese original to clarify certain of Sokei-an’s less precise renderings, many of which had apparently been suggested by his American students. But by and large our effort was simply aimed at enhancing the peculiar force implicit in Sokei-an’s understanding of this remarkable Zen text. It is my hope that we may have succeeded, to at least some extent, and that Sokei-an would have appreciated our attempts to polish the mirror he left behind.

New York City

Summer 2011

A Preliminary Note 

 by Mary Farkas

I hope you will read the Sixth Patriarchs message we have presented to you all ears and all eyes. I have personally gone to a great deal of effort to pass such messages on to you accurately. I hope you will keep your copies so you can refer to them later, as many are of a nature that call for reading many more than one time. Please do not think that Sokei-an’s talks on the Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra are for scholars, philologists, historians, or religious people of a superstitious bent; they are for practicing students. Also, please do not think that by sticking to the (probably almost entirely fictitious) events described, or by memorizing definitions of terms or doctrines, or even answering the koans, that you will have obtained the great teaching. How, then, can we use printed matter like this to get to know Sokei-an and the Sixth Patriarch, and see with the same eyes and join hands with not only them but all the masters of the past and future?

For more than a quarter of a century, I have been collecting the scattered beads dropped by Sokei-an and stringing them together into a rosary as a testimony of faith that can be passed on to the sentient beings of the future world. I do not know as yet how many beads it has, or when all are matched, cleaned, polished, and strung, what form it will take. Though the individual beads have been presented singly, in each the whole string may be glimpsed. Carrying my metaphor a bit further, it is my idea that by getting to know any Zen master, even through one of his words, you are on a direct line with the whole lineage. Just as really getting any koan you are strung on the string yourself, as on Mumon’s skewer that caught Tenryu, Gutei, and the fingerless boy.⁴

The masters, not unmindful of the needs of students, devised various methods of contacting them, of getting them on the line, of catching them on the straight hook. The most intimate, direct and electrical contact we can have is sanzen, the meeting in Zen with a living master. A master even present in the too, too solid flesh, is somewhat mythical, as well. So to know him isn’t any easier than for a wise father to know his own son, or a man his wife, or a person oneself. How do we get to know the masters of the three worlds of past, present and future? How do we relate to them present, or absent? The Sixth Patriarch, in order to initiate relations with them, gave his audience a Zen talk from the altar platform.

A student is supposed to realize the first word. What was the Sixth Patriarch’s first word? Before the Sixth Patriarch’s first talk about himself, before he said anything aloud, he manifested silence. You may also have noticed that in the description of the Buddha’s transmission of Zen, he, too, first manifested silence. When Sokei-an was alive, sanzen always began with silence, as did his talks. When you offer incense to Buddha, it is an opportunity for you to manifest this silence—your mini-samadhi in that single-minded act. How can it be said more clearly? In the West there is a saying, A word to the wise is sufficient. I’d like to emphasize that word to the wise. It is the wisdom of the bodhisattva, always there to be contacted. So the kind of words we must strive to present are those that can act toward that wisdom-being, like the shadow of the whip is to the good horse (student) who is plodding along at the moment.

Only human beings can get this sort of message. Our particular medium is language, isn’t it? Of course, gestures may also convey the message. Tenryu’s finger, which was enough for Gutei’s whole life, is famous in the Zen world. Spoken or unspoken, a message is conveyed, communication takes place. One way is by hearing. For twenty years now, I have been bringing you the words I heard from my masters. These words are for you. Take the advice of the Sixth Patriarch when you have the opportunity to hear the words of a master: Whoever may be listening to this teaching. I pray you to purify your mind first, and after you have listened, clear your doubts.

______________________________________________________________

THE GREAT SIXTH PATRIARCH’S SUTRA OF THE 

 TREASURE OF BUDDHISM FROM THE EARTHEN ALTAR

Edited by Tsung-pao

Heir of the Patriarch and Abbot of Ch’an Temple Kuang-hsiao built as a Testimony of Gratitude for the Wind and the Banner

______________________________________________________________

Chapter I

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

When the Great Master reached Pao-lin Temple, Wei Ch’u, prefect of Shao-chou, together with other local officials, went to the mountain to implore the Master to give the teaching at the hall of Ta-fan Temple within the walls of the town. The Master ascended the high seat. The Prefect and some thirty local officials, more than thirty Confucian scholars, and over a thousand monks, nuns, and lay people all bowed and entreated him to impart his teaching of the Dharma. The Great Master addressed the assembly:

"Good friends, the intrinsic nature of wisdom is originally pure in itself. We have only to use it to become Buddha directly. Give heed for a time while I tell you how I, Hui-neng, finally attained the Dharma:

"My father was a native of Fan-yang. Later he was relegated to an inferior post and banished to Ling-nan, becoming a commoner in Hsin-chou. I was unfortunate. My father died early, and my mother was left alone with me. We moved to Nan-hai, where we were distressed by poverty so great that it drove me to peddle brushwood for fuel in the marketplace. One day a customer asked me to deliver some brushwood to his dwelling. I went there and received payment. When I came out of the gate, I noticed a man reciting a Buddhist sutra. As I heard the words of the sutra, my mind suddenly opened. I questioned him: ‘What is the name of that sutra you were reciting?’ He said: ‘It is the Diamond Sutra.’ I questioned him again: ‘Where did you come from, and where did you find that sutra?’ He said: ‘I have come from Eastern Ch’an Temple in the district of Huang-mei in Ch’i-chou. In this temple, the Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen, is in charge of the instruction of the monks, who number more than one thousand. I went there, paid my homage to him and heard this sutra. The Patriarch always advises monks and lay people to just observe this Diamond Sutra, since one who follows this will discover his essential nature and become a buddha directly.’

"I, Hui-neng, had the good fortune to be informed of this. It may be that I had some tie of causality with this sutra from a past incarnation. Then, too, a stranger gave me ten taels in silver, which allowed me to provide for the needs of my old mother, and suggested that I go to Huang-mei to pay homage to the Fifth Patriarch. I, therefore, furnished my mother with all she might need in my absence and left. I journeyed about thirty days and finally reached Huang-mei, where I paid homage to the Fifth Patriarch.

"The Patriarch questioned me: ‘Where have you come from and what do you want?’

"I replied: ‘I am a commoner from Hsin-chou in Ling-nan. I have come this long way to pay homage to the Master. I want nothing but to become a buddha.’

"The Patriarch said: ‘You are from Ling-nan. That means you are a savage! How can you become a buddha?’

"I said: ‘To be a native of the South or of the North is natural to a man, but there is neither North nor South in the nature of Buddha. The flesh of a savage is not the flesh of an abbot, but how can my buddha-nature be discriminated from yours?’

"The Fifth Patriarch wished to talk further with me, but seeing that the other monks were there, he then ordered me to do some work along with the rest of the assembly.

"I said: ‘I would like to say to the Abbot that wisdom is always growing from my own mind. When one does not stray from one’s own nature, one finds the ‘field of merit.’ I wonder what labor you ask of me.’

"The Patriarch said: ‘This savage is too smart! Not another word! Get to work!’ I retired and went to the rear of the temple. A lay brother was there who told me to split firewood and pound rice with the rice pestle. This I did for more than eight months.

"One day, unexpectedly, the Patriarch came to see me and said: ‘I thought that your view was acceptable, but I feared that some ill-natured persons might do you harm. That was the reason I did not talk further with you then. Did you perceive that?’

"I replied: ‘I understood my master’s mind. That is why I have never gone to the front of the temple—to keep people from realizing the situation.’

"One day the Patriarch summoned all the disciples and said: ‘I have brought you all here to tell you that the question of life and death is the greatest problem of human life. All day long you are seeking the ‘field of merit’ instead of deliverance from the bitter sea of life and death. If you are deluded about your self-nature, merit is useless to save you. Go and look into your own wisdom. With your original wisdom [prajna], each one of you make a gatha and present it to me. If you have realized the great principle of Buddhism, I shall transmit the robe and the Dharma to you and ordain you as the Sixth Patriarch. This is urgent. Go at once! Do not delay! If you deliberate, it will be useless. One who realizes his own nature sees it instantly. If you are able to do this, you will realize it even in battle under slashing swords.’

"Following the Master’s instructions, all the monks retired. Discussing the matter among themselves, they said: ‘It is unnecessary for all of us to clear our minds and try to make gathas. What merit can we expect merely from making them and presenting them to the Master? The head monk Shen-hsiu is virtually our instructor. He is certain to succeed. Why should we make gathas, exhausting our minds to no purpose?’

"Hearing this, the rest of the monks also gave up the endeavor. They said: ‘We shall rely on our teacher Shen-hsiu and not trouble ourselves to make gathas.’

"Shen-hsiu thought: ‘The reason the monks are not presenting their gathas is that I am their instructor. I must therefore make a gatha and offer it to the Abbot. If I do not offer a gatha, how can he see whether my understanding is shallow or deep? If in offering a gatha I desire only the Dharma, my purpose is good; but if I seek the honor of becoming Patriarch, my purpose is bad. It is just as though one with a common mind tried to usurp the position of a sage. Yet, if I do not present my gatha, I cannot obtain the Dharma. How very difficult this is!’

"Leading to the hall of the Fifth Patriarch were three corridors. It was intended that the court artist Lu-chen would be invited to paint on the walls a mandala suggested by the Lankavatara Sutra as well as the genealogical tables of the Five Patriarchs, so that tradition would be venerated and transmitted.

"Shen-hsiu, having composed a gatha, came several times to the front of the hall to offer it to the Patriarch. But each time his mind became so confused that his whole body was drenched with sweat and he could not present his gatha. After four days had passed and he had made the attempt more than thirteen times, he had still failed in his purpose. He then asked himself what he should do.

"‘It is better,’ he thought, ‘that I write [my gatha] on the wall of the corridor. If the Abbot sees and approves it, I shall come forward, and bowing down, tell him that I am its author. If it does not meet with his approval, then my years in this temple, accepting everyone’s reverence, are of no significance for my practice of Buddhism.’

"That midnight, without letting anyone know, he took a light and wrote his gatha upon the wall of the southern corridor. The gatha said:

‘This body is a tree of wisdom

This mind, a clear mirror

Wipe it diligently always

Let it gather no dust’

"After he had completed writing his gatha, Shen-hsiu went back to his cell without having been discovered by anyone. He debated in his mind: ‘Tomorrow the Fifth Patriarch will see my gatha, and if he is pleased, it will signify that I have an affinity with Buddhism. If, however, it does not meet with his approval, I must realize that my delusions from the past are very deep and that, obstructed by them, I am unable to obtain the Dharma. It is impossible for me to fathom my teacher’s mind.’

"Occupied with such thoughts, he tossed anxiously in his cell until dawn.

"The Fifth Patriarch knew that Shen-hsiu had not entered the gate or found his true nature. In the early morning, he summoned the court painter Lu to do the proposed painting on the corridor wall. Suddenly discovering the gatha, the Patriarch told him: ‘It is unnecessary to paint anything on this wall. I am grateful to you for having come such a distance. In the Diamond Sutra it is said that all that has form is false. I shall keep this gatha here for people to recite.