RICE SIFTING

The Story of Daikan Eno (Huineng), part 1

Susan Ji-on Postal

Rohatsu Retreat, December 1998

From the Denkoroku, the Transmission of Light, Case 34

The Case: Eno (Huineng) worked in the mill where the Zen Master Konin was teaching. One night the Master came to the mill and asked Eno,"Is the rice white yet?" Eno said,"It’s white, but it hasn’t been sifted." The Zen master knocked the mortar three times with his staff. Eno shook the rice in a sieve three times. Then he opened the door to the master’s room.

The door opened. Transmission was ready to happen! Master to disciple, mind to mind, heart to heart. Today, after some three years of studying the transmission stories from the Denkoroku, we reach the last one in the official lineage that we recite in our service. Maurine didn’t pass on her Rinzai lineage to us in a formal way; we didn’t recite any lineage at all at her Zendo on Sparks Street. Although I spent many years studying with Soto Zen teachers, I certainly don’t formally represent that lineage either. Looking at different ancestral charts, we find that it is from the Sixth Ancestor that the lines branch forth, especially into what later became the Rinzai and Soto lineages. So in our service, we recite our common heritage from Shakyamuni to Daikan Eno and then add special mention of our gratitude to Nakagawa Soen Roshi and Maurine Myo-on Stuart.

Preparing to look at this most intimate master-disciple connection, I would like to go back further in time and look a bit at Master Konin and his teacher. Their stories really set the stage for the 6th Ancestor’s journey. Daiman Konin, the 5^th Ancestor, was a very old man when he first met his teacher, Dai-i Doshin. Master Doshin told him he was much too old to begin zen training, but sensing some real promise, suggested that Konin come back again soon as a child. Saying "I’ll wait for you." What tender compassion!

So the old man Konin selected a place to stay with a suitable peasant girl. He died. She discovered she was pregnant and in big trouble with her family, who asked her to leave. When the baby was born she didn’t know what to do so she threw the baby away. She threw him in the river and he just floated down into the reeds. The birds came and put feathers on him, the little animals came and kept him warm. Seven days later she found him and the baby was fine. She realized there was something extraordinary about this child, and she began to take care of him. At age seven this little boy Konin walked down the road and, for the second time, met Master Doshin. The Master asked the boy "What is your name?" He answers that he has an essence but not a common name. The Master asked " What is that?" The child replied that it is the essence of Buddhahood. The Master recognized his capacity for truth, accepted Konin as his close student, and soon passed the teaching and the robe on to him. We see an extraordinary relationship of recognition and acknowledgment in which conventional step-by-step advancement in training was totally disregarded. Dharma-father really nourishing and taking care of Dharma-son, not getting stuck on regulations and procedures. This Konin, who as a mature teacher became known as the great 5th Ancestor, demonstrates that same recognition and compassionate care in his relationship with Daikan Eno, as we will see.

The story of the 6th Ancestor is already familiar to most of us. It’s a wonderful story which gives us heart to continue, even if we are not well educated, knowledgeable about Buddhist studies, or economically secure! Here we have a young fellow, perhaps 16 years old, who supports his widowed mother as a woodcutter. He is illiterate and dirt poor. One day while he is out delivering a load of wood he hears someone inside a house reciting a verse from the Diamond Sutra. "Dwelling nowhere, the mind comes forth." Something resonated profoundly, a deep realization began to unfold. He knocked on the door to ask about the Sutra and where it had been learned. He was told that it was learned at the monastery of Zen Master Konin in Obai Prefecture. Hearing this, the young Eno was determined to make his way to this Master. With the generosity of neighbors who helped support his mother, he eventually made the long journey from the south to the north and to the mountain.

Upon his arrival he was able to meet straight away with Master Konin. Their dialogue was pivotal.

Konin: "Where have you come from?"

Eno: "From Reinan (south of the mountain)"

Konin: "What did you come for?"

Eno: "To become Buddha."

Konin: "You cannot become Buddha because the

people of Reinan don’t have Buddha nature"

Eno: "Though there is south and north for man,

how can there be a south and north for Buddha nature?"

Ah! Konin found some promise in this reply. He knew that this illiterate youngster was somebody extraordinary. How did he respond? He sent him to work in the rice cleaning shed. He didn’t shave his head and ordain him, didn’t send him to the senior monks so they could teach him how to sit, how to bow, how to chant, the natural things you would think he would have to learn on arrival at a monastery. No, he sent him down to the shed to polish rice. For eight months he was just polishing, polishing. What a very wise old teacher. He knew from the very beginning that this youngster was deeply open and awake. He also knew that there was no way he could throw him into the world of the monks, they would eat him up alive. He felt that Eno needed to polish his insight by himself, working tirelessly. Now eight months went by and the old master felt it was time for him to pass on the robe and bowl, pass on the Dharma. He announced in the great hall that he was seeking his successor and he invited all 700 monks to submit a poem that expressed their understanding. He made it a contest, everyone was welcome to respond, and according to the expression of the disciple, he would make his choice.

All the monks were apparently nervous and without confidence, and they all deferred to their head monk, Jinshu, who was greatly admired by all. He was also filled with apprehension, and it is said that he approached the master’s door 10 times, but was afraid to knock, afraid of a face-to-face presentation of his understanding. Instead, he wrote out his poem and hung it on the wall in a nearby hallway; it was something like this:

Master Konin, knowing immediately that this verse was the work of Jinshu, praised it and asked everyone to learn it by heart. A clever move, because this way the verse would, he knew, find its way to the rice shed. Down in the mill young Eno soon heard the verse, and he asked another student for an explanation. He asked for a second recitation, and then indicated that he would like to add a verse to this. That night, with the help of a servant boy, for Eno was still illiterate, he posted his verse next to the one written by the head monk; it went something like this:

The difference between the two verses rises up and hits home! Jinshu’s verse is about the "ascending" practice, aiming at actualizing Buddha-nature.. Eno’s verse expresses our essential nature directly. The 5^th ancestor immediately recognized the new verse as the work of the young Eno, but he did not praise it publicly, and took down the poem from the wall. That night Konin came secretly to Eno in the mill. That is where our case opened. "Is the rice white yet?" And Eno responded that it is polished but not yet sifted. Three times Konin struck the mortar and three times the disciple sifted. Calling - answering, responding in that silent interchange of mortar and rice sieve. You can imagine there is probably a bang, bang, bang... sift, sift, sift. Something got cleaned up. The chaff blown away; the leftover extra un-needed hulls sifted out. We might raise the question here: what is the "chaff" of our practice? What are the extra un-needed habits, hang-ups, attachments, thathave been seen through as essentially empty, but not yet blown away? In this case. Master Konin was satisfied and opened the door to his room at midnight.

Door opened: no gap, no space, complete intimacy,complete at-one-ment. But such a wise and careful teacher, always protecting the young Eno through each step. The Dharma was transmitted and the robe handed down. Konin warned him that this robe has become a source of contention. He asked that it stop with Eno, that he not pass it on. He also asked the youngster to go far away and conceal himself until the appropriate time for teaching came, taking at least 10 years to "ripen" and mature in the Dharma. Then master Konin personally escorted him to the river, and actually ferried his successor across himself. Returning alone, still deep in the night, he said nothing to his community. After that, he did not lecture any more, he said "my way has gone," They asked. "Who has your robe and your Dharma?" and he said "the able one has them.".

Do you also sense the tender protectiveness of Master Konin? He manifested "care-taking mind"so completely in the way he advised Eno to leave the monastery, encouraged him to deepen and mature his practice, and ferried him over the river. Remember, Konin himself was but a child when he received the robe and bowl. Who better to have a teenage disciple than one who had been a child disciple?

In closing let’s look briefly at the expression in the verses which set in motion this deep Mind-to-Mind transmission from master to disciple. Make no mistake, there will always be a place in our practice for cleaning things up. We begin our day with the "Verse of Purification." We acknowledge over and over where we trip ourselves up, where we fall off and land in the mud. That’s our humanity, and we will continuously need to deal with our conditioning, our ideas, habits, and also our inevitable neuroses. But that purifying and acknowledging is just setting the stage. It’s like putting a nice flagstone down so you can stand somewhere. That is not the whole of zen. Many of us have been practicing for a long time, have you noticed your ideas around being a "good zen student?" Can you see how we fall in the mud because we are really proud of our practice? The 6th Ancestor invites us to penetrate right through to the essential emptiness of all notions, including those about our practice. So many years we have been doing this together - empty , empty, empty. There is only today; there is only this talk to hear, there is nothing else. Whatever your history - black or shining - it has nothing to do with now. No bodhi mirror-stand, no thing, nada!. Then we begin the next turning in this wonderful spiral. Then the chaff can blow away. In his verse to this case, Keizan Zenji says,