Refuge in the Three Jewels According to Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen

Below is an excerpt from the so-called Platform Sutra of Hui Neng, the Sixth Patrirach of the Chinese/Japanese Zen lineage.  Although in my own practice and consequently in the way I am sharing the dharma with others, I am mostly following instructions and precepts as transmitted via Indotibetan Vajrayana traditions, I cannot be blind to the beauty of the teachings in whatever transmission they appear - especially when the cut to the heart of the matter like in this case, in the way Hui Neng explains Buddhist refuge.  

The simplicity and relevance of the direct transmission from the patriarch's heart of enlightenment,  inspired me to share his teaching in this posting.  Furthermore, Hui Neng's presentation is particularly pertinent to the NadiPrana Buddhist yoga, which serves as my main teaching tool in the groups that come and work with me.  We will have ample chance to elaborate on the connection in a later article, when we will explore a little further the particular features that make a yoga 'Buddhist', so to speak.  Which will be important for us to understand so that we know what we are actually practicing, and why.  If we want to practice the genuine yoga of the Buddha we need to not only understand, but be able to feel the direct connection between what we label 'body' and what we conceive of as 'enlightenment', or 'liberation'.

But then, Hui Neng's point of view is also very similar to

what my own Tibetan root teacher stresses time and again: the fact that as ordinary human beings we should not get blinded by the delusion of our inborn enlightened or buddha nature and mistake it as an accomplished fact.  Many modern teachers and popular authors mislead people in their books and talks in this way - that gets them nowhere but into further confusion.  Rather it would be more practical and helpful to acknowledge the facts as they stand, namely that, as my own teacher would phrase it "although, as human beings, we undoubtedly are born with buddha nature, we are much more governed by our shortcomings.  After all, we mostly express our being human through emotionality and mentation, in word and action.   These shortcomings none withstanding,  because we are endowed with buddha nature, we have one great advantage that most of us even fail to notice: we can strive and realize the buddha nature we were born with in this very body, and become Buddha (in other words absolutely free of suffering due to conditioning) in this very lifetime.  But we have to work for it, both effortlessly and with a lot of effort"  …Speaking about a worthy goal.

But now, let's get the form of refuge that Hui Neng at one point granted to a large assembly of ordained and lay practitioners.  His words are permeated by the beauty and simplicity of self-evident truth:

"Good friends, while I confer on you the Formless Precepts, you must all experience this for yourself.  Recite this together with me, and it will enable you to see the three-bodied buddha within you:"

"I take refuge in the pure dharma-body buddha in my own material body."
"I take refuge in the myriad-fold transformation-body in my own material body."
"I take refuge in the future and perfect realization-body of my own material body."

"Now, repeat this three times with me."

"This material body is an inn and not a fit refuge. But the three bodies I just mentioned are your ever present dharma nature.  Everyone has them.  But because people are deluded, they don't see them.  They look for the three-bodied tathagata outside themselves and don't see the three-bodied buddha in their own material body."

"Good friends, listen to this good friend of yours, and I will tell you good friends how to see within your material body the three-bodied buddha present in your dharma nature, the three-bodied buddha that arises from this nature of yours."…

In short, the path of Buddhist yoga is to first take refuge in the three-bodied dharma body which is given to us by virtue of our human birth.  It is accessible through this human body.  But even though the gate is there, we have to still walk through it ourselves, and make it so.

The text presented here was taken from Red Pine's beautiful and naturally flowing translation and commentary: The Platform Sutra - The Zen Teachings of Hui Neng, published by Counterpoint, Berkeley

Shot Dead & Born in the Year of the Tiger…

I wrote this poem many years ago, probably around 1990 or so, inspired by reading one of Chogyie, the Vajracharya's pieces from his 108-poems collection First Thought Best Thought, published, I believe, in 1987. 

It went through a lot of incarnations, countless re-writings actually,  before it popped up again, to my own surprise, in this version today, with a new beginning and new ending of which I cannot make heads or tails either, rationally.  But there is its own logic to it that requests to be honored.  Actually, I had already discarded the poem, and removed it from the folder with the pieces that I see fit for sharing with the public one day when I'll be a little older and maturer… Ha!

I know, I know: Why sharing poems when the site is supposedly dedicated to informing about or spreading of Buddhist yoga?!  Yes, I can hear you.  But, not really.  Compartmentalization doesn't work.  Yoga here, poetry there.  Too much separation.  And too many baskets for the dirty laundry of the intellect. Poetry, when done in the spirit needed, IS yoga.  And yoga when properly applied, IS poetry.  No doubt.

Especially, Buddhist yoga is not one separate thing, something you can use like a toothpick to remove the remains of the steak (sorry, my vegan friend, or the broccoli) you had for lunch from the gaps between your teeth.  No, you and I cannot remove karma just like that.  You and I need the whole deal.  The vision.  The feeling tone.  The arts, the philosophy… the many superfluous aspects of mind - to finally get to the heart of the question that is, in a way, the only question worth contemplating and solving: the question of life and death.

The dharma is about understanding and expressing and living, in your/my own way: the crucial question of life and death.  As Red Pine says in the introduction to his translation Hui Neng's Platform Sutra: "Life is important.  And death is important.  This is something we all deal with sooner or later, but it isn't something we all deal with equally well."

So, today, let's deal with it in a poem, if you're interested that is.

*****

Before any birth can occur

A death must have happened.

Before a tiger can be born

A tiger has to have died, or a mouse.

Hazy image fading from the fringes:

A man supine on the ground

His shirt stained red in the chest

Where the heart was still beating seconds ago…

Now eyes are turned up.

Glazing over as breath has already left.

Yet the rocks of the cliff

Keep humming their prayer-like chant.

At least some things

Never change.

This prayer will continue,

Until the eon ends.

In fact, the ashen face displays

Just mild surprise:

Ah, such is the reality of this life

Which is death!

*****

What an animal!

Tiger is:

Stalking through thickets of bamboo,

Paying his evening visit to the water hole,

Sniffing nonchalantly

Around hoof prints

Left by a family of gazelles

When they ran away in flight.

What a simpleton!

Tiger is:

Roaring to challenge

All folks in the jungle

Except for elephant and snake

And then grooming his whiskers

Lost in the pleasure,

Very meticulously.

What an image!

Tiger is:

Striped energy pure,

Color of tropical dawn

Parted by streaks of

The black of tree trunks

And the shades of leaves.

What a destiny!

To be born tiger:

To instill fear

Not really trying to

But only pointing out

The joy of living and the chase

On the wild side

Even for those who are prey.

What a pleasure!

Tiger takes in the small things:

Driveling in reminiscence of

This hearty chunk of meat

That used to jump

Over bushes and grassy knolls

Carefree paying the price.

What nonsense they come up with!

To regulate tiger out of the jungle:

Of course, he is anything

But your reasonable kind of guy.

Yet he has honor.

Reason being beyond his grasp,

He’s often in trouble, alas.

He’s got paws. He’s got claws.

No planes cleverly laid out, except very short term.

He’s got eyes. He pricks up his ears,

And acts on impulse.

That’s my tiger!

In fact, he is the humblest of creatures!

Tiger is:

Content with himself,

Loving whatever he encounters,

With a roar or a burp,

Or by not paying attention at all.

*****

Naturally, this one too,

Will have to go on a fine day

When it is good to die

Vanish like the previous mirage

From whose roars and runs of love

He emanated as slightly befuddled compassion

A slayer of mostly females but always

Elegantly and according to etiquette.

Born indeed in the year of the tiger

In lands so flat and grey and alien,

Absurdly unreal, and mental in their disorder

That no one there appears to have any idea

About a true tiger’s grotesquely playful tigerness

That knows not of any ultimate prison.