For this month’s open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — Denny and I sum up the themes of our last two conversations on Mahayana and Theravada while adding in the 3rd Buddhist Council. We then wrap-up the developmental history of Buddhism in China, South East Asia and Tibet. Finally we move into the history of Zen Buddhism. From Denny’s notes (most of which is covered in this talk and/or previous talks):
- Zen is Chán which is 禪, short for 禪那, or jhāna.
- Zen was first brought to Japan in the Kamakura era (12th century) through Korea (which originally came through China in the 9th century).
- Zen was welcomed by the samurai class, combining Zen, Confucianism and Shintoism and developing into Bushido, a code of honor and ideals, which eventually enabled the transfer of power away from the imperial aristocracy.
- In 1187, Zen master Eisai returned to Japan from China and brought with him the Rinzai tradition.
- In 1223, another Zen master Dōgen went to China, upon return he brought back the Soto tradition.
- «Rinzai for the Shōgun, Sōtō for the peasants»
- Rinzai is famous for the kōan (a riddle to keep the mind in suspense)
- Sōtō is famous for “Shikantaza” (Only Sitting).
- Rinzai and Sōtō are two of the five schools formed by students of the sixth patriarch (Huineng, 638 ~ 713).
- Shikantaza is much misunderstood. In reality, Shikantaza is a shorthand for 默照 (Silent Illumination) which is the integration between shamatha (calming of the mind) and vipashyana (contemplation).
Miscellaneous mentions:
- The Sutra of Forty-two Chapters
- Discourse on the Eight Realizations of the Great Beings
- Guanyin
- Daoism
- Green Tara and White Tara
- Yi Jin Jing
- Seon or Sŏn meditation
- Book: The Search for the Buddha: The Men Who Discovered India’s Lost Religion
Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)
Join Denny live Saturdays online for Yi Jin Jing and mindful joint, stretching, breathing, and qi exercises via:
Full list of links at DennyKMiu.com
The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:
drum roll hi everyone thank you for joining our
show uh last tuesday of every month at 10 a.m pacific time
uh josh and i uh the dumb and dumber of uh buddha dharma and
i hope you guys uh don’t mind and just humor us because we’re doing it we’re doing it
because it’s just so much fun for us hi josh how are you hey denny um yeah
it’s uh it’s we were talking beforehand about denny just shaved and i’m actually growing out a beard for the winter that
i’ve done the past few few years anyway but starting early this year but anyway
um did i not shave today it would take me another five years to get to where you are now
so you know i wouldn’t want to i wouldn’t want to overstay it by saying that i shaved i i
didn’t i don’t know what i did but you know i probably just took the eraser and just
rip it off but anyway the photoshop eraser yeah and then also to tie in what we were picking up last
time we talked a lot about food in the different theravada
things for monks about food and here jenny gets a refrigerator today and i’m outside picking up um trash by the fast
food restaurants in my neighborhood so how about that we were we were not necessarily talking about
food but we were talking about diet oh well
yeah getting on so so the idea that and storing food too or not what we were really talking about last time was
really the comparison between the the tarabata buddhism and the mahayana buddhism
and with pointing out the irony of how those two really doesn’t describe who they are
because the mahayana to be accurate is really the chinese buddhism whereas the talabada is to be accurate
is really um more of this the southern uh branch of buddhism and and and if i
remember correctly we were talking about how sometimes one side takes something very
very seriously and then it turns around and takes something else kind of kind of kind of uh not so seriously and we were
talking about diet vegetarian diet and how the terabata buddhism they don’t they they can eat
meat as long as they don’t they don’t they’re not the one that caused the
the killing and the suffering because they they they do the arm they they go out and bag
for food right whereas the the mahayana buddhism once once they get to china
um the chinese culture just just doesn’t support bagging it’s it’s it doesn’t
work for them and so what they have end up doing is that they grew their own food you know they have to grow their
own food and so then they become very strict in in in the diet but anyway um
and we talked about the the council and the different rules of dispute right the things of dispute yeah yeah so what we
we kind of when when out went a big full circle and what we really want to talk about in
initially was was really about american buddhism what what is the future for
buddhism in america and i made the point that that we’re not there yet we’re not even at the beginning yet and because um what
i wanted to talk about is how there is no one buddhism there there’s every every time the
the the teaching uh show up in a particular corner of the
universe they almost always fail the first time and then they then have to come back and
and get localized you know into the culture and so in that sense all the buddhism that we see in
america they have not been localized yet so i i make the distinction between american buddhism which doesn’t exist
but it will because we just have to go through that and versus what i would call the uh
immigrant buddhism you know the buddhism that exists today are essentially uh practices that were brought here by
immigrants who who happen to come from a different part of the world and so
it’s it’s kind of important for us to really understand um where they come from and their historical development
and so um should we continue sure yes and then that’s um you know if
it is there if there is an american buddhism i would say it’s it’s in its very exploratory stages or pioneering
stages uh our development stages yes and then well the last two shows we kind of
talked about what denny just mentioned and also um you know the theravada and the um
and the uh and um in the derogatory term uh hinayana and also we talked a little
about uh chinese buddhism too so we’re gonna try to wrap that up and then possibly well denny where where are you
gonna where are we gonna lead to today after that wrap up well we’d like to like to wrap up um the historical
development of buddhism and and so that gives a context to all the different sects of buddhism that show up in
america right so probably america is unique in that we have so many different sects whereas if you go anywhere else
it’s you know you go to chinese buddhism you might see tibetan you might see japanese zen but it’s it’s very rare you
know it’s dominated by it by its own culture so i do want to the word i was looking for last time was was tempest in
the teapot oh yeah so so i i do want people understand that the reason that we want
to bring up this this thing called the hinayana which means small vehicle is that it is a it is a tempest in the
teapot in that um it’s a it’s it’s a terminology that is used
by the chinese buddhists to kind of um
pigeonhole or classify um the the tarabata buddhism and and
unfortunately even though we’re not supposed to use that word because it’s it’s
it’s meant as an insult uh not so much by the person who is supposed to receive the insult because
he doesn’t see it the terrifying monk don’t know what you’re talking about when you say hinayana
it’s just it reflects to me um i really want people to stop using it and
unfortunately the the word hinayana might not be used but the chinese version of that is used
every day it’s used every day and that should be stopped that should be stopped because
it’s first of all it’s it’s it’s an insult and it’s not even accurate both in context in in in
in history so let me just uh pop up this uh this chart here um
cool and you know this the um that it’s all about intent too so if it’s intended
as an insult then obviously it’s not wholesome you know or skillful uh and then some people might even use it and
not even realize that if the initial you know creation of the word was a was a derogatory intent and they just used
it unknowingly it’s still you know it still has that intent built into it as um you know the superlative so that’s a
good one i think there’s a lot of terms that we use in our everyday life that we just
stop using because it’s it’s it hurts people you know it’s meant to hurt people that
that should be stopped okay right if it has the intent to harm then yeah then there’s then that’s causing
all ought to be stopped yeah yeah yeah so anyway anyway i think i think this this chart here um shows um kind of the
the the title is called the proliferation uh buddhism and of course it all start here
and here is the northern part of um of uh of india uh in fact um
buddha historical buddha was actually born inside of nepal
and then of course moses worked now most of his work was done in india but at
at the time you know like 2600 years ago there were no borders so
present-day nepal president de la paul yeah now of course um you just look at the timing so so ce is
is what we call uh common error sometimes we use a d after death so so
we don’t do that because that’s that’s christian so we just use common error but that’s basically a century after the
birth of christ and then when we say bce that’s before common era or we used to call bc before
christ right so you can tell that just just kind of pick up um so when we say uh terra vada buddhism
that’s the yellow part and and i’ll have the next chart to talk about how at first
there was a time when uh buddhism kind of just spread out and it came to
sri lanka and then from sri lanka it went to burma or myrma or some people actually
even argued that it went directly to miramar okay now this is thailand now interestingly when i have a chance i’ll
talk about buddhism in thailand buddhism in china is actually relatively new it’s less than a thousand years
it’s actually interesting how new it is um and it has something to do with mongolians but that’s a different story
i’ll talk about that and then eventually um the theravada buddhism uh came went
to laos and cambodia and and which we don’t hear a lot about
yeah it’s a small country yeah it’s a small close to a very small country both in size and and in number of people and
and they’re just now starting to open up for for tours so a lot of people from
the west and knows very little we know a lot of a lot about thai yes because it’s so open and so we tend to think that you
know the thai buddhism is very old but i’m my point is that it’s actually not very old it’s actually there’s nothing
quick aside there’s uh some thai forest traditions here uh oh in california’s uh by giri is one of them absolutely
absolutely again i i call that i i’ll call that immigrant buddhism right so so
they were here you know initially to serve the thai immigrants or maybe maybe um but now at one point uh buddhism
actually went all the way to indonesia which is down here this is philippine but it actually went all the
way down to indonesia you can you can see a lot of the ruins uh in in indonesia of
course then um when indonesia became um uh islam muslim
then than that then that that they got kicked out okay so so all of that is is called
terravada okay that’s all called teravata now then this part is what we
call mahayana but actually there’s two two in distinct uh sec one is what we call the chinese
buddhism and one is called the tibetan buddhism both of them are considered
mahayana buddhism okay and initially the the buddhism actually went to
the this this region which is which is now this is north india and then of india borders with pakistan
pakistan borders with afghanistan and what we know about
kashmir is actually right at the hana triangle so it’s interesting that actually uh
buddhism went to kashmir first nature went to kashmir and went to and
again you can see a lot of relics you remember back when taliban was in control of the
northern part of pakistan and northern part of afghanistan one of the things that they did was they blew up all the
giant buddha statue okay so you can that’s that’s a sort of
a relic of of uh buddhism you know efforts and then from here they actually
went to you know kazakhstan and all that and then eventually came into china so that was the first time that that
buddhism was brought into china now this says that first century common era so this is this is like four or 500 years
after at least 400 years after the death of of buddha but i will talk about this a
little bit because initially when it came to china it wasn’t
mahayana if you look at the scripture that that came at that time it was it’s actually a
lot closer to the agama teaching a lot closer to the talabada teaching okay which is very
interesting now then eventually it from here it went to um went to korea uh and
then from korea and it went to japan now these this is this is actually fourth century
and and and sixth century this is when buddhism first went to korea and japan but not zen
buddhism zen buddhism actually went there much later than that okay because the tong
dynasty is is six around six centuries uh sixth or seventh century and uh when we say you know the soto zen
uh and uh and those are actually uh hundreds of years after the death of the
sixth patriarch which so they’re they’re more like the 11th century in the 12th century
okay all right so this is this is a chart so what i want to talk next is then um
how what was the initial uh proliferation of buddhism right so if you borrowed this work of bulific where
did it go first where did it go first because they didn’t have none of these happens these are kind of all kind of uh was
much later when it first went out of india it started um um
and so so the next chart is is uh it’s a good one so the next chart um
is the so this is this is these are the dates that are kind of more or less uh
agreed upon except that um the chinese buddhism tend to think that it’s it’s much earlier than that and there’s a
whole story on why they think this earlier than that because they have the data before the birth of confucius okay
crazy [Laughter] so anyway but this this is internationally this is what we sort of
agreed on okay that that buddha was born and then buddha passed away and he was
you know 80 years old when he passed away and then um and then a king a king asuka
and then eventually there was what we call a council so so historically there has been three three
or four councils we’re only going to talk about three councils the first council was right after the death of
buddha was immediately after the death of buddha it wasn’t exactly immediate but
only because they have to wait until the end of the rainy season and they have to wait for people to come back and so um
maha kasapa is the most senior said did i pronounce that right josh
that sounds right okay all right maha kasaba maha just means big maha means now let me let me talk about
this so kasapa is the name of the three brothers
who actually brought about a thousand students to buddha so so buddha buddha was not in the
retail business he was in the wholesale business he he didn’t actually have one or two you know he didn’t get students
one at a time so when we talked about like the the suitors we say oh you know we always say like he had 2500 students
this is always the suta they say that the first thousand student came from
three brothers who also have the name of kasapa and so the oldest brother brought 500
and then the younger two brothers bought 250 each and so that so he you know he was he he he
there’s a lot of discussion on that because that was intentional that buddha decided that what he wanted to do was
to really enlighten the leaders the religious leaders and then and then they
brought them uh with them now that also explains why uh buddhism is so complex
because when you talk about the different sex they actually start with they already exist before buddha
they actually exist before buddha and buddha kind of brought them into the foe and so they each have their own
kind of unique uniqueness because not because of buddha’s teaching but because of the initial condition
you’re talking you’re talking about like um they were aesthetics before right they were aesthetics before they had
their own methodology okay and then they then became under that you know they joined the buddha’s
kind of order right right right so as a side note here an addendum that uh
there’s plenty of sutas too that where you know just you know here and there people would come to see the buddha or
he would encounter people and they would end up joining too but it was more kind of an individual one but you’re talking about more of the
the the massive or the massive amount right so this this the first business council is is is uh there’s no
controversial in that everybody agree on that that immediately after uh the death
of the historical buddha his most senior student
called together you know 500 of his his disciples his most seniors disciples
these are all arahan and and the word theravada meant that
meant the the the the the vaniables except for ananda has that’s an
interesting story he was in our our heart but just at the last minute before he joined right well the reason for that
is that he couldn’t be in our hand he couldn’t he he was he was joining unless he was an argument he wasn’t in
he because had he been talking about the first council i understand that what i’m saying is that
um uh uh alanda who who was um who was
buddha’s cousin born on the day that he became enlightened who later on became his uh
his attendant he he had to be uh a novice monk
because had he graduated himself to become a fool full blood
he would have been sent away so he didn’t want to be sent away so he he never actually practiced he he was
the guy he was like me you know just like except that you know i didn’t use my memory i used my my
my video recorder you know but i’m talking about that to be able since he memorized pretty much all the
teachings right he had correct correct so he had a he had an agreement he had an agreement with buddha in that
um he had to attempt you know to be for him to be the disciple he
has to attend all the the lectures and not only that but had if he were to miss
one for example you know if buddha had went to a different realm for his teaching where another couldn’t follow
he has to come back and and repeat it and so that’s why you know he has his this incredible photographic memory and
so so he was invited into the council except that he wasn’t a he was in the arahant because he never actually so it
took him three days and then the the interesting part is you know he was trying so hard and and at
the last minute right when he was laying his head down to go to sleep is when he
you have to give up your heart ship right yeah yeah no no it’s true i mean this is this the moral of the story is
that the harder you try the worse it gets you know the dollars uh if if
in the future we will we’ll have it we we might have an um a time to talk about the taoist teaching
and you know the daoist teaching comes from lao tzu uh you know um and his his
writing was something called the uh teaching i don’t know the english and in
there there’s a there’s a very famous phrase that says that you know if you were studying if you were studying if
your purpose is to study as if you’re you know like book knowledge then you would gain every day
you know the more you the more the more you study the more you gain and then it says right there is that but
if you if your purpose is to practice then the more you study it the worse it
gets it’s about yeah surrendering that’s a great story for surrendering
relinquishing um you know abandoning those are all languages used renowned renunciation so
yeah those are um but in a it’s it’s most people in the west think of those things as negative
thing it’s more about renouncing and abandoning you know the unwholesome yeah we need to talk about that in the future
so let’s continue with this and so the purpose of the of the gathering wasn’t even about uh ananda
it was about another uh another uh uh senior student and and the reason
for that is that as soon as uh buddha passed away all the students can’t say hey we’re
free and then and then pasta said no not so fast so he called
the council and they spent most of the time um you know really
put together a set of rules a set of uh for the for the monastics
you know and then they always said only after they did that then they call upon uh anonymous to say hey you know let’s
focus now on let’s let’s now agree on buddhist teaching so when we talk about the sutas
that are studied in southeast asia the televata uh all the telewater teaching
um they came from that they were they were past and of course back then there were no right no no written language but
they were actually passed on from generation generation by oral by essentially
uh you call that high singing right say it again
singing a lyrical language and the buddha’s
teachings were kind of excuse me with my eye there were structured so where it has like a
refrain like a song you know and repeat it over and over again for memorization uh yeah and we
also have to realize that you know this is what um was heard right it’s not
exact you know it was based on the level of um kind of accomplishment of whoever recorded it as
well and like like i think we said earlier you know one person will say one thing but if another person says oh i
don’t remember that well then it didn’t go in right there had to be consensus correct correct so it was very very um
so they were they were throwing out things more than they were they were accepting things you know if one if one
one disagrees i didn’t hear that i said well then okay and which is amazing because the poly cannon is so massive
the three best yeah yeah yeah so then that’s that’s what we call the first council is that
that’s the that’s the beginning of all the taliban teaching uh keep in mind that the chinese
buddhism the tibetan buddhism they didn’t that wasn’t even in the horizon yet okay
now the second interesting new and we talked about that last time so this is in some way this is still a review
the second council happened about 100 years later and so um either hundred or two hundred
but i i um a hundred that’s a hundred years later um and it came from a a disagreement uh
between two different groups of of monks two queens of monastics and it has to do
with the issue of money and the original teaching of of uh
buddha was that um they have to renounce the aim so when they were announcing they have no use of money now of course
they did that he did that because all her students were like super rich you know like they were just super rich
so they have in order for them to to to be his student you know they have to give up right so they have to he he
would make him make them into beggars you know that’s that’s what biku means
and so um then of course as time goes on it becomes impractical
and and still they would not accept money and so the the story was that then they put a a pot
and they allowed to decide that the disciples to throw money into the pot and then they would collect it
indirectly and so the other side said no no no that’s not they can’t do that and so they had this this big pow wow and
that was sort of the split you know their initial split now between some people would argue that they’re the
mahayana and the hinduyana but that’s that that’s actually not accurate uh but it is accurate that there was a split
and always about money huh that’s it it comes to this religion religion
is all about money well i mean just pretty much organized religion is all about money
and it has always been about money and one of these things and the systems we’re living in now as well but i mean
that’s for good and bad you know well money money just keep in mind that money religion is a language and money is
another language exactly yeah it’s it’s it’s an idea at the heart too you know
yeah there’s a nice so so so that so we talked about that there was this ten pointer controversy which very
interestingly the money was the last one the first one is about salt yeah it was about you know can you preserve your
offering you know if you get enough today you know is it in other words can you can i is it okay for me to carry an
icebox with me right that kind of thing right and and so the the the very rigorous orthodox orthodox
sex says no you can’t do that you can’t even carry salt because the buddhist original buddhist teaching is very clear
that you don’t do any cooking you don’t do any any farming you just go out and bag for food and you do that once a day
and you pick a random direction so you’re not repeating yourself and you go down and you go down five houses it was
very very clear and so every house you don’t enter you’re not and you don’t say anything and if they
don’t come out offer you food you go to the next one and if you go through five and you didn’t get any offering well
then sorry try it again next next you go hungry but if you if you go five
uh you can’t go to the six and if you if you go through three and you have enough for the day you still have to do five
you know you can’t stop it you know when you get enough food so it’s very very rigorous you can’t accept money um
you can just have your bowl just have your bowl out just have your bowl and you can’t you can’t yeah you cannot preserve them uh for tomorrow if you get
too much you have to if you you take what you can and then you give it to the poor it’s very very clear this is this
is about um uh you know an ascetic lifestyle but a middle way not too acidic where you’re starving yourself
but you’re you’re relying and dependent on the community and also you’re out there amongst the community you know
regularly and not just off you know on the mountaintop all the time so yeah
actually it actually practices two of the ten per me right the monks are practicing
um he’s practicing the the uh what’s the word that you you give things away
generosity yes no people are practicing generosity he’s
practicing renunciation yes so the monks are practicing renunciation practicing
um uh being humble and you know uh being uh disciplined and then the the the
the the the normal people are actually practicing generosity and also equanimity yes
you know because you’re supposed to offer and not expect anything back right so it’s actually part of the
practice so anyway um so that was the second buddhist council there’s not much uh um
disagreement on that the important things here is really the start of the beginning of the split
you know of different people’s interpretation one being very very rigorous you know
don’t change a thing and the other one says well the words change so we should change with it now finally um the most important the
most important uh person um in the again proliferation of buddhism
is king asuka asuka right so he was he was born about um 300 years after buddha
um he wasn’t a buddhist uh to begin with but he became one and then he decided that he you know he
really wanted to tighten up the the because he just saw too much
too many people are are not following what he would consider the the the buddhist teaching so then um he got all
the all of them together and then there was a third council so the third council was really to first kicked out all the
non-pro non-conforming monks and then then they got together and they
this is actually the beginning of the so we talk about the three we talk about the two
one is the the disciplines the vinaya the second is the
buddha’s teaching which is and then there’s a third the third are all the writings by
the monks okay and that started with the third prism so so when we when we talked about
um uh what’s uh abidama abhidama you know well there’s some controversy not
controversy but there’s differing opinions in that and i’m not really qualified to talk about that yet but uh
the other ones are uh commentaries too so that’s like the third yeah that’s the third basket so those
that’s not that’s not that’s not unique to buddhism all religions are like that that’s right it’s like that so yeah for
example in enlightenment poems too to throw in there so yeah i mean look right i know i
know nothing about uh islam but i do know that in islam you have the
the you know what what came from muhammad and then you have other stuff that came from other you know scholars
and people don’t necessarily study the quran you know they they could be studying something else so this happens
a lot so then what’s interesting is that once he got all the documentations
together and you know they start to say okay here’s a set of you know complete
uh set a teaching with the three parts the what came from buddha directly called sutas the a code
of conduct uh we called the pinnana and then finally the
something like the the akidama some some of the commentaries some other things that are supporting interpretation so
all that together it’s like encyclopedia now okay so now it’s time to send out the encyclopedia salesman so the the
history is that he uh the king actually sent out nine different uh uh
missionaries nine different groups of missionaries um the one that one went as far as greek
and so actually like in the museum in in san francisco if you go to the top four the asian pacific museum you go to the
top floor they they would have the different buddhist culture and they would talk about how the the
buddhist statue uh how they change over time and there was a period where it
looked very much like the the greek uh artwork and so that was heavily
influenced by so the buddhism went to one degrees and then it came back with the artwork okay
speaking of that real quick um this is a kind of a fast forward and then a quick rewind i just got a book haven’t gotten
into it yet it’s called the search for the buddha the men who discovered india’s lost religion basically about
you know how it died out in india but then was rediscovered by some of these westerners so
it’s um i’ve heard a little bit about it so i’m looking forward to reading that so so it went as it went as far as greece
greek greece i mean guys i don’t mean greek and then and then it went to kashmir we talked about that
um and then it went to miramar in sri lanka okay and that was in that was in the the
third century so if i now go back to
if i were now go back to the first slide the first line
so now so this is this is what happened is that is that during the
king asuka time the buddhism started to propagate and it
went to kashmir and from kashmir it went to greece and went to
afghanistan kashmir all that and then it went to different parts of india and then it came down to sri lanka and then
it went to maryland so that was in the third century bc bce before common era
okay so that hasn’t changed you know practically it hasn’t changed
you know in terms of their what what their appearance their practice
the literature that hasn’t changed now so that that’s tarabata that’s a lot of buddhism so how did what happened with
the chinese buddhism or the mahayana so again let’s go back let’s go back to
why why the word yana yana so
again we last time we talked about the the lotus sutra and there was a there was a analogy of a old man with his clan
he’s trying to get them out and and the house was on fire and so this this is about this is really like
us who are so still very much enjoying a material existence and so the old man is like
buddha he’s trying to get us you know enlightened going back to to being an enlightened uh
entity and and so he he pulled out this three different cart
one is pulled by a deer and one is pulled by a horse and one is pulled by an accident
so the idea is the small vehicle the medium vehicle in a large vehicle and so what buddha was basically saying
is well the small vehicle is is about practice of yourself you know how you
would um uh relieve of your own suffering okay and then the middle vehicle and
then the large vehicle uh is about helping as many people as you can but he meant it as progression
he didn’t meant it as a choice so what about the middle vehicle though the middle vehicle is is uh i don’t i forgot
the one i know the chinese word it’s um it’s people who become enlightened on their own without
actually studying business oh it’s uh yeah it’s the private buddha right yeah is that the one
yeah they can actually just so so people who think that the
uh the taoist the the original you know the the first patriot of the taoist the lao ji was was one of those that he was
able to enlighten without actually you know without the buddhist teachings or without the buddhist teaching yeah he’s
fully capable of doing that by just observing the nature the rising and failing of the nature and so that’s different than full buddhahood
though right no i mean it’s all a path oh you can’t still get there yeah oh no absolutely
well the historical buddha you know he he had teachers but he had to end up abandoning them you know yeah yeah i i
think i i guess what what’s important to me is that um people think that there are three different choices they’re not
three different choices there’s three different progression yeah you know i i always thought i always
said that you know you can’t be a life saver you can’t without knowing how to swim that makes no sense to me
right and on the other hand you can’t be an expert olympic swimmer you know without wanting to be a life
saver because then it’s all about you that that makes no sense neither right because in the end to be a full
buddhahood to be fully enlightened you have to have compassion loving kindness
you know uh empathy and equanimity you you can’t hide in a cave and become
a buddha it doesn’t work like that right anyway um so so that’s the word yana and so
unfortunately um the chinese buddhism interpret it as a choice as opposed to a progression so they
focus on mahayana which is which is the way of the buddhist
focusing on helping others thinking that in the process you will help yourself that would be like saying that i don’t
know how to swim but if i put on a pair of red trousers you know red shorts and become
lifesavers and you know something happens i’ll jump in the water i will be expert swimmer automatically that makes
no sense to me but anyway i don’t know okay so so what’s important to so so then after it went to
um uh the south sri lanka in myrma then it started to and then it died out
in in europe right because of because uh islam so then it it it went to china and
when we first found china it was first century it was uh you know within a
hundred years after the birth of jesus so just looking at that you can see that
there’s a difference of 400 years just just looking at that right that
when they first went to sri lanka and and when they first became the practice of the talavada to the point where he
went to china it’s already 400 years except what is called the mahayana didn’t even
start there didn’t even start when they first so when they first came the most famous
the full most famous uh
reddick of how buddhism went to china is this temple or this this
pangoda called the white horse pangorda there’s a very famous uh so when you talk about the silk roll so this is in
fact a silk roll right so this is in fact a steel road let me go back
so this is in fact the sit what’s called the silt roll okay there’s another one that goes down but this is in fact the
original silk roll and so there’s somewhere in here uh um there’s there is a very famous uh pangolin called the
white horse pagoda and this was uh was a first century first century so this is uh this is um
so this is this was in uh 67 67 common era okay so it was it was uh 6
67 years and two monks uh actually came from uh
ken schmier it actually came from kashmir and then they they reached they they they
they uh they settled into consensus and they they came into china and the
story was that one day the chinese emperor had a dream and the dream was that there
was um you know really bright light from the west and so he called in his his uh his all
his uh his uh his uh his his his prime ministers and whatnot
he says i have this stream and so one guy says oh there is because a great man just was born in the west
and so he says well then we have to send people there to find out what’s going on so he sent a whole bunch of people and
then this this group kind of left the capital and and and worked towards the west and so of course they were
complaining about how they had to live the life of richard’s you know to go west you know where there’s nothing but
desert and then halfway there and they saw these two monk you know carrying all these books on the
back of a white horse and they said well where did you come from he says oh we came from the west
we were going to bring this teaching from buddha to you and he said well then you know that’s the end of our journey
let’s go back so they they built this uh this white horse pangoda and and they so the two
monks live there live in this temple and they start to translate and uh so the first
the first um the first uh sutra that they translate is called the sutra of the 42 chapters
and it’s a very simple it’s the style is very much like the the
the the tarabata teaching okay so that wasn’t even mahayana that was the
original and now now let’s go back that came was that was that that was in
sanskrit but where did that come from what country or well the two monks uh supposedly came from uh
uh a part of uh uh not too bad but this is the bad but there’s another one here called the uh
you know where all the all the readers live now no
there’s a controversy now see uh uh xinjiang okay this is this is the part that is
very controversial right now because of the minorities all the other uyghurs live there
and all the han the han han chinese you know went in there and there’s a lot of problem here so they they
they were actually they were actually traveling scholars so even though they came from that part
came from kazakhstan they actually originally came from kashmir you know but they were traveling and
they their idea was to travel to china bring the the teaching to china and so so
um so there there are three such ones that are very very famous that were from that
era um you probably know them one uh master taco i i wish i i i did well
anyway the chapter 42 chapters is one uh i know the chinese word i just don’t know the english they’re two others
they’re very famous all three is it the 30 verses no that’s that’s not that’s master actually taught
one of them one time oh it’s a well the retreat i was on we did the um the eight
realizations of great beans but i think exactly exactly okay yeah that’s another one and then there’s one more oh i see
yeah those are very famous i’ve always yeah we probably will think of it here in a second maybe but um you know it’s
i’m wondering you know i always loved tracing the origins and i drive some people batty you know like where did it
come from in cash it came from that era they came back so this is this is worthy of another show it’s really the original
pre-pop
yes yeah writing because there’s another there’s a there’s another another story
that that um there’s another set of uh tsutor that that came from the south
which came because so we we did the elephant thing right the guy that wrote on the elephant and um
we’re going off a little bit but just quickly you know we all talk about this one monk the
monk that went to india but there was another one that predated him okay he went he actually went there uh on
land and then he came back on sea and interestingly when he came back he went to sri lanka
and he took with him the what we call it the gamma sutra
so so let’s let’s talk about that’s in in the future so the point that i’m trying to make here is that
uh there’s a 400-year difference between uh buddhism first went to sri lanka and
buddhism went to china except that there’s another two or three hundred years difference
between when they first went to china and then what eventually became mahayana and the
only thing that i wanted i don’t want to give a lot the the details are not important what is important is that
again we’re going back to how in every place that buddhism goes it
has to get localized that it failed the first time and so
when we talk about the buddhism going to china it was all about renunciation
so if you if you read the three sutra the one that you talk about which is the eighth realization and then one here
with 42 chapters that’s another one it’s it’s it’s original buddhist teaching it’s all about renunciation it’s all
about practice on that didn’t work for the chinese yeah we forgot about bodhidharma that’s uh what a domino is
much later okay that’s that’s another 700 years later okay yeah so we got a lot of ground to
cover yeah so so um so so um so in order for it to
to um uh be successful in china it again it had to be localized it cannot just be
translation it had to be localized so one example i use is that when i travel
especially when i travel to south east asia i love visiting mcdonald’s and kentucky fried chicken
well not united states i never go and the reason is that i’m not interested in the american version of
mcdonald’s or the american version of kentucky fried chickens because all of those have failed
and what i’m more interested is the localized version of the mcdonald’s and the localized version of the kentucky
fried chicken and they are fun they’re interesting yes yeah they are really really interesting we mentioned the
pizza factory i mentioned the pizza effect last year yeah we were talking kind of similar like it was like um it was like pizza went to it or from italy
to new york and the states but then whatever happened with pizza in the united states went back to italy and
they incorporated that there but it doesn’t seem like america so it’s a localization that is that is
interesting so again you know the original idea of wanting to talk
about american buddhism is that american buddhism doesn’t exist yet it will exist
and it would exist when we finally take the teaching and localize it to our need
okay so what we have today in america is not yet the american american buddhism
what we have is immigrant buddhism okay and so but even in china in order for it
to be successful in china it had to be it had to integrate um confucianism and taoism
okay so so when we say mahayana what we’re really saying is chinese buddhism and
chinese buddhism is this crazy mix
of buddhist teaching taoist teaching and confucius teaching
so there is no pure buddhism so if you if you just if you say okay i want to study mahayana i want to study chinese
buddhism just keep in mind that you’re studying buddhism in china
okay now because that continues that continues so so now when you talk about tibet
so here is how it says the 8th century to bed now
this is actually not true when when buddhism first went to tibet it it came
from china and so there’s a very famous princess
there’s a very famous princess that was married into tibet at the same time a very famous princess
was married into tibet from nepal so this king in tibet actually had two wife at the
same time one from china and one from one from nepal they broke they both
brought with them their version of buddhist teaching and in fact um the the
we we talked about um the guan yin the guanine buddhist alpha
and then we talk about the um uh what what’s the green and the white
uh [Music] there’s many many different colors red
tara and there’s all that because because in in tibetan buddhism most of the figures are male so
even in guanine has has much sash okay so they had to kind of have this female version of all these because in
order for them to practice to practice uh to to to con you know convey uh compassion
they have these females there’s females algorithm and so the story is that one day guan yin flied over to
batman to see all the suffering and she or he uh she had two tears
and one was the green tara and one was the white tara the green taro was the princess from
china and the white tower was the princess from nepal and so they were they brought the buddhism into into
tibet again that was immigrant buddhism right
and they failed they failed miserably i mean it lasted about 100 years and then they failed
and so the tongue dynasty was eight centuries so so the buddhism actually went to tibet 200
years before you know what is said here which is the eighth century common era but it died
it died then then then buddhism kind of resurrect itself by going back to india
and bringing the teaching back to tibet but by that time
it had to be integrated with his local religion
bond okay and bond is a is an animalistic religion
well they i think that what is that what are the term that uh is used it’s um or shamanism or uh uh and animism i
think a lot of enemies enemies yeah but that that’s okay that’s okay right that’s okay i mean before
catholicism became the religion the state religion in in italy
what do you think they they worship right everybody worship that and so then then
what we call tibetan buddhism is another mixture unique mixture
between what they would perceive as buddhist teaching and then the local culture
and so there’s a lot of ritual and there there are basically there those predates buddhism
okay so uh very quickly buddhism went to korea
and it wasn’t fourth century was was uh was not to be there buddhi dhamma came
to china in the sixth century in the sixth century so
so this this this was this predated zen okay and then um then eventually buddhi
dharma buddhi dhamma came in into china and brought
zen meditation uh into china and then um
then we have he was the first patriot and then there we now talk about the sixth patriot which is another 150 years
100 years later 7th century now and then uh eventually
um the zen so so once once after the sixth uh patriot
then um there were five different schools okay so
from the first to the second from the second to the third and so forth it was actually like one two one
it was really one to one now i i hope when we talk about um no that
by that you mean like a transmission from master to student or the master student and then
lineage holder to the new lineage holder right yeah patreon it wasn’t
yeah so there’s a very very famous thing called the one french
five leaf so there was a just a one branch from the first to the sixth and then five
leaves go to the fire so what we know about the japanese zen buddhism we call the soto zen
and then we call the ra ranzan sand those are the rich of the enzyme yep renzizen those are the two of the five
branches now very quickly um we will talk about chi
in chi gong and talk about yi jing jing okay so master always talk about yi jin
jing like he he learned that from his grandfather okay he always say that he learned it
from he learned it when he was five years old and then eventually he came to united states and he met this one
chief monk vanderbilt uh minchi who who was the chairman of the buddhist
association uh in new york okay and then um one day
this monk decided to teach master and after he taught master master
repeated it right away and so the monk the the oman was very surprised and and master said oh i already learned that
from my grandfather okay well what master didn’t know
well he knew he knew what is that this this munchie monk was the 49th abbott
of a very famous temple in china and of course in 1949 when the
communists took over china everybody left right those who who were behind got killed
buddhism no longer exist the temple was completely destroyed so he was the 49th
abbott well the first abbot although maybe not even abbott the guy who actually built the temple
was a student of the fourth patriot so i have every reason to believe that
the yi jing jing that we learned from master was hand done
by buddhi dhamma himself very well could be well and where did his grandfather learn it from
well he his grandfather was a shaolin he was a disciple of the shaolin martial arts school
so you know there’s that and then uh real quick how do we explain for the other versions of the yi jinjing isn’t
there like two others we’ll save that for another show yes yeah we’ll have to do you’ll say that in our show okay so
so then i want to talk about zen meditation buddhism how did they first went to the buddhism went to korea in
the fourth century but um actually um
the zen the zen buddhism went to korea um in around the ninth century
okay in nice because it had to be after the sixth patriot right it had to be after the sixth grade so he went and and today
we call the sun meditation s-o-n okay that’s in korea that’s what it’s called sun meditation and that’s
that’s basically ranzan mostly runs in okay and then from there it went to
japan and runzan went to japan in around the 12th century
um and there was a there was a very famous monk from japan that went to china and
brought it directly to broad renzen oh not dogan the soto no no that’s much
later that’s much later so it’s important to understand the difference between did i
did i say the right runs in
okay it’s very important to understand um zen buddhism in japan because zen buddhism
is very popular in america it’s very popular in america and you have to understand
where it came from okay so first of all um they actually came to japan in the in
the 11th or 12th century first by way of korea and then
eventually in in 1187 a monk went to china directly and brought it back now
this is very important because the renzhan buddhism was the basis for
what we called what we call the uh uh
bushito bushido is the way of the samurais
so the zen buddhism in the renzen buddhism in japan is a little
bit different from the renzen buddhism in china in that after they came to japan it had to be localized again
and it became it got localized with shintoism which is the worship of god
and then it also got mixed in with confucianism and it became
the basis for the samurais so when we talk about uh shigong in the
future we talk about qigong qigong is is really like just the body it’s not even
it’s it’s the body is the concentration of the body it’s it actually the ultimate goal is not thinking
not thinking in the sense of not using your analytical brain
therefore you react without hindrances
that was the basis for the samurai that if they study they practice meditation they became
a good sourcement and their sword would be so fast and
master actually talk about this that if they cut someone it was so fast that
they don’t no blood remain on the saw and the only reason they could do that
is because they’re completely in control of the five hindrances so they don’t let that
interfere with their reaction okay so the people who study the people
who are listening to this some of them are studying martial art they will study the the elite trend
and they talk about that too it’s up on no thinking okay so then when it blows everything it
slows everything down it takes too many resources right by the time you put language in your our images in your head
then you already lost time and reaction time in action time yeah correct correct
and then also there’s renzai in the lingy isn’t there’s there’s parallels between rinzai and japan in the lingy um
lineage of chan right but that’s not that correct yeah the pronunciation is different pronunciation but again i just
want to point out that it it had to be localized and it localized in japan by combining
confusionism and shintoism and then it eventually became bushido
okay and what’s interesting is that if you look at the history of japan is that the samurai up until then were servants
and they were working for the aerostat the the royalties there was aristocratic
and then and then eventually because of bushido they became more powerful
and so the shogun era okay the shogun era was one where the power resides with the samurais
and the court was just for uh um
peasants tom you know the court became just symbolic and and so that
that continued until like the mid 19th century
with what we call the mingy restoration when commodore um perry was sent by president roosevelt
to open up japan and then they decided that the only way that um
that that they they would survive is that they become modern themselves and so they switch this is the time when
they switch and they they give more power to the emperor and they took away all the power
from the samurai so if you watch the movie from tom cruise yeah that’s that’s a story now what’s
interesting is that that this is when they when they do that then they have to elevate shintoism
they have to elevate shintoism and so then they they push down buddhas of buddhism
and so when one of the things that we talk about is is the buddhists the buddhist monk in japan they can eat meat
they can drink alcohol and they can have wife and kids that’s not the history that only
happened in the last 150 years politics right
because because they go back they took the power away from the samurais from the shogun to give back to the emperor
in the process they elevate shintoism and then now buddhism has to survive on his own and the only
way that they survived his own is is then they became family business and they they were forced to have a wife
they were forced to eat meat otherwise they could have died out yeah yeah otherwise they couldn’t die no okay so
let’s go back let’s go back to ransai so renzy was brought into china and it
was embraced by the samurais because that was the way that they can practice their swordsmen
and and all that so then um about about um oh another
i would say another 50 years later less than a hundred another another month uh dojin
dogen yes logan went to went to china and he brought back a different set
called soto sack okay so the sec then he brought it back
and it was meant for the commoner and so there’s a very famous saying
uh it’s it’s called um the saying is is called uh
renzi for the shogun and soto for the peasant and sothosan became much simplified
very very simplified and so the renzai is focusing on what’s called a
con comrade you have this like yeah
that’s pronounced in the west i guess yeah come on uh you know where you’re supposed to like what’s the sound of one
hand clapping right that’s a very famous a lot of westerners know some of these yeah yeah yeah very very very very
interesting again it’s the it’s the idea is that it’s a no thinking
so you’re supposed to confuse your mind looking for an answer that doesn’t exist it’s a riddle yeah you can’t have a
logical answer to it yeah like yeah so if a month if i’m yeah if i’m sorry yeah go ahead how do
you feel how do you fill the um the c in a sieve you know um yeah in a calendar
right so so it was it was supposed that thousands of those so so they’re customized it’s customized so so the the
master would give that to the student and the student come back and say i figured out he got kicked out of the
mountain now what’s interesting is is that sort of then because they have to be
simplified for the peasants then there’s a very famous saying called shinkatasa
which translates in english into only we’re just sitting yep just sitting now
i i have a little bit uh uh kind of um
uh experience with with the sothosan and so
that’s what they do they just sit you know they just sit this is what they do and so it’s another method you know
okay so so um i think that’s probably what we should do today uh we will pick
a topic um for next week so again in summary in summary i just
wanted to say that that i look forward to the day when we actually have quote unquote
american buddhism and we could very well be a participant
in that in to figure out what buddhism means for americans or westerners yeah
and hopefully it won’t include celebrities or reality tv shows because that’s pretty much i think i think we
had enough of that for exactly well that’s america’s religion almost you know so how are you guys
yeah maybe when that gets when that fades away then we’ll uh you know we’ll incorporate uh something else from
america into i i actually think that well i don’t i don’t know that that is
the answer but my answer is that it it has to integrate with science
well a lot of that it’s already happening you know you have these monks that will go into machines and stuff
yeah i mean when you talk about when you talk about duality of particle and wave that’s yes that’s very that’s very
consistent with uh practice i have to agree with this once we get some of the issues out of science
because it’s that science has almost turned into its own religion now it’s become a scientism
so i think i think at the very minimum it we have to reconcile with science yes
okay we have to reconcile with christianity yep and technology wrote that one book
uh living buddha living christ but i don’t you know i don’t know how much of an impact that had but yeah
that’s another thing i always uh that came to mind as well and finally i i believe he has to reconcile with capitalism
are whatever economic system happened uh happens after all this i believe that i think i think i think going forward i’m
hoping that um that this is renaissance america is is you know we have enough of the other way
let’s try a different way and maybe compassion or maybe there’s such a thing as
compassion capitalism who knows right and it’s all that the uh it says this
great experiment here in america the melting pot and lots of experimentation listen listen every day every day i
i i i try to remember what the world was like when i was born
okay i was we were the first family that had a refrigerator with the first family that had a radio with the first family
that had the television when i came to america 15 years old 1971
we didn’t even have plastic bags there were no plastic bags when i went
to college when i went to college we didn’t have microwave so there’s no package frozen
food so i am sorry i am i am i am responsible
for destroying the world in a way but on the other hand no i if
there is money to be made in destroying the world i bet there is money to be made in restoring the world yeah
absolutely i bet compassion i i bet compassion capitalism is another it’s a as good a way of making money
yes the true honest uh the real version of that not just um pandering and having
window dressing and making yourself you know uh no i don’t like the word virtue signaling you know but unfortunately
some of the stuff that people are getting into which is a good start a lot of it is just a false veneer of you know
of goodness when behind the scenes a lot of stuff is still going on you know but
you know it’s a start uh better than just outright exploitation of everything you know it’s worthy it’s worthy of a
try yes right of doing because there’s not trying
right yeah yeah yeah okay anything else josh that’s it and
denny it’s been a pleasure and i gotta go down and try out my new refrigerator get some ice cream in it and see if it
melts again [Laughter] all right i still remember the day i was
five years old and my uncle bought a refrigerator isn’t that cool i mean i hear these stories from my grandparents
and folks it was really nice because because i saw ice in there and you know and then when they melt they became
water and then i remember um you know like um a mile away from a home it was the it
was the the place where the generation and they have cooling towers with water falling
down and i couldn’t understand how the water could get from the cooling tower into the refrigerator
you had the iceman come and bring it to you right no no no no this was a refrigerator this was
american-made emerald come on [Laughter] because i know they used to have people bring around ice and then oh no that’s
called icebox that’s not called that’s right okay so that was yeah okay
okay i really enjoyed this josh i was really really enjoying this yeah okay let’s do it again
okay next month uh same time last tuesday
what’s uh um we can join denny’s new adventure our continuing uh reimagined uh venture on
zoom right uh yeah so so we we have a thank you for that uh josh so um we we
have um a a practice on every saturday at eight o’clock
pacific time and there are two ways you can join um you can so this is like the the david
letterman show you can watch it on tv or you can come to the studio okay
if you want to come to the studio you go to dannykmu.com backslash fellowship
so then you can buy a drop-in ticket and then we can you can participate uh on this
thing called zoom so we can see each other and practice together so basically it’s a one hour of uh exercise and
meditation actually it’s it’s all meditation it’s just that the exercise itself is meditation
now that’s that’s if you want to come to the studio okay this is david letterman so if you just want to watch it on tv we actually
last week starting to do that on on youtube so if you subscribe to this channel and
you click on the bell then you will get a notification on email when we start
the show on eight o’clock pacific time on saturday all right so josh you have something
else too well yes shameless plug that you can read uh some of my work and see what i’m up to at
integratingpresence.com it’s uh two words integrating and presence exam put the dot-com in there
josh i didn’t put dot com in there no oh oh i don’t know if there’s enough room on my
on this oh maybe not talking about it okay so it’s simple enough integratedpresence.com yeah integrating
let me spell it real quick i n t e r g r a t i n g p r e s e n c e dot com
there’s a lot of good stuff on that a lot of good stuff yeah okay with that
thank you all right see you next week next month yes hope you enjoy this
Integrating Presence 
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