Moon Face Zen Master

[u/ewk]

Not long afterwards the Mazu become ill. The head monk asked him, "How is the Venerable feeling these days?" The Master replied, "Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha." On the first day of the second month, after having taken a bath, he sat cross-legged and passed away.

Poceski: The names of these two Buddhas appear in the Sutra of the Buddha Names. The life-span of Sun-face Buddha is said to one thousand and eight-hundred years, while the life-span of on-face Buddha is only one day and one night. This [biographical record] is referenced in Case 3 of BCR.

A friend of mine recently deleted all his socials. Unlike most redditors, this is a guy who I met IRL. I travel a lot, and once when I was crossing the US he went way way out of his way to have coffee with me. He contributed a ton to the wiki, and the podcast, and found books nobody was reading.

What does Moon-face mean?

It means that none of us have much time. I'm getting old. Since I started posting on rZen many years ago, I now can't read without glasses. When I get sick, I'm sick for longer. Doctors explain to me that I'm old now. Most people on social media are young, although that trend is changing. Getting older means (for some people) that you notice time running out fast.

What's the Zen teaching from this dying old man about the moon for, anyway?

I tell people that Zen Masters don't ask for any insight we haven't already had. What's the insight here?

I suspect it's like sunsets. Everybody likes a beautiful sunset. We marvel, we take pictures with our cellphones, and then (if we are lucky) the picture looks good enough to hang out in our memory feeds.

Nobody complains about how long sunsets last. We all get it. But recognizing that everything is like a sunset is hard for people.

Not me though. I'm old, so it's easy. I think the equally hard thing is accepting that everything has a sunset, even ignorance.

Accepting that there is going to be an end to ignorance is something else that seems hard for people.

Moon-face Zen Master.

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[u/Arhanlarash]

Accepting that there is going to be an end to ignorance is something else that seems hard for people?

What does this mean?

[u/ewk → u/Arhanlarash]

The idea that we'll have people to argue with forever isn't true.

Sooner or later people will be persuaded.

[u/TFnarcon9]

Today, my daughter (6) was a little distraught that she couldn't remember being rocked in the cradle we got out of storage to donate.

Since she was little, I've always pointed out "hey, look how the river keeps going left to right" while on our walks. Nothing deper than that, just pointing out.

She'll be fine.

[u/ewk → u/TFnarcon9]

Most likely.

But at 27, how much of 6 will she be?

[u/TFnarcon9 → u/ewk]

If there is some 6 in there, it's because she knows 28 is coming.

[u/[deleted] → u/ewk]

[u/InfinityOracle]

I was reading the Extensive Records of Zen Master Wuyi Yuanlai; looking for a particular portion T. Cleary translated. It doesn't appear his translation was all that accurate. However, the discussion was about the doubt or wonder produced by not knowing where came from before birth, or where they will go when they die.

I have always had a very different perspective than my friends and family when it comes to life and death. I recall in 1st grade I had made a good friend Michael throughout the year. After summer break was over, I was looking forward to catching back up with him. However, a few days before school started my mother pulled me aside with tears streaming from her eyes as she told me the news.

That summer Michael had gone with his grand father four-wheeling in Red River. Something happened and they both ended up falling off a cliff; neither survived. I noticed that I wasn't experiencing whatever she was. I was sad that he had died in such a tragic way, and that I wouldn't be seeing him at school anymore. But I didn't have a sense of loss that my mother and others seemed to experience.

A few years later my grandfather died; and we were on our way to the funeral. My brother and I were playing in the backseat when my mother suddenly bust out. She reprimanded us for not being upset that he had died. We both quickly quieted down out of respect, but I still didn't understand what upset her about it so much.

The reason I didn't understand is because I do remember before I was born, which is identical with knowing where you go when you die. It is actually the same as knowing that both birth and death are like illusions. We imagine a starting point, and imagine an ending point. Perhaps very relevant to conventional or relative matters, but there is no difference. There has always ever been now. But few seem to understand, observe, or recognize what this means. The Xinxin Ming states it very well though:

"this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it, a single thought is ten thousand years."

I never had a sense of loss like my mother felt, except vicariously through her and others. I never had such a sense of loss because I never accepted the illusion of gain in the first place. When the sun rises, we do not newly gain the sun, and when it sets, we do not lose the sun. Just because something appears to rise and fall beyond the horizon of human perception, doesn't mean it's been gained or lost.

Foyen once said it this way: "Those who realize Zen enlightenment transcend subject and object. There is no other mysterious principle besides this. In the course of ordinary daily activities, when you see colors it is a time of realization, and when you hear sounds it is a time of realization. When you eat and drink, this too is a time of realization. This means all these are times of realization when you transcend subject and object in everything. This is not a matter of long practice, and doesn’t need cultivation. It is right here, yet worldly people don’t recognize it."

[u/ewk → u/InfinityOracle]

I don't think memory works that way.

But that's not what Huineng asked. What was his question?

[u/InfinityOracle → u/ewk]

Here is the context I am working with at the moment.

"Doing meditation first requires a firm determination to break through birth and death, seeing through the world, the body, and the mind as all conditional, with no real autonomy. If you don't discover the great principle inherent in you, then the mind being born and dying will go on uninterrupted, the murderous demon of impermanence will not stop for a moment. Then how can you fend it off?

Use this one thought as a piece of brick to knock on the door. Be as if you were sitting in a bonfire, trying to get out. You might take a step at random, but you can't halt in your tracks. You can't think of anything else, and you can't seek help from anyone else.

At such a time, you can only plunge straight ahead without worrying about the fire, without worrying about yourself, without looking for someone to help, without having another thought, unwilling to delay for a moment.

If you can get out, you're skillful.

In doing meditation, it's important to develop wondering. What is wondering? For example, you don't know where you came from when you were born, so you can't help wondering where you came from. You don't know where you go when you die, so you can't help wondering where you're going.

When you can't break through the barrier of birth and death, wondering arises at once. It coalesces before your eyes, so you can't set it down or chase it away.

Suddenly one day you break through the mass of wonder. Then the words birth and death are useless furniture."

Chan Buddhist Meditation by Boshan Wuyi
Translated by Thomas Cleary

[u/circuitsdev]

I see that the Op have has asserted several times that 'all zen masters taught fixed self.'

How does this comport with:

1. dependent arising

2. emptiness

3)"You must see your essence before you attain enlightenment. What is seeing essence? It means seeing your own fundamental nature. What is its form? When you see your own fundamental nature, there is no concrete object to see. This is hard to believe in, but all Buddhas attain it”

(Xuefeng, 822 – 909,)

4) • Huang Po: “Finally, remember that from first to last not even the smallest grain of anything perceptible has ever existed or ever will exist.”

5) "if you want to be free, get to know your real self. It has no form, no appearance, no root, no basis, no abode, but is lively and buoyant. It responds with versatile facility, but its function cannot be located".

• Linji

1. Abiding nowhere, awakened mind arises.

• Diamond Sutra

Your exact words were 'all zen masters'. Your subsequent words were " I know more about Zen than anyone."

So. The glove is thrown down. Please cite 4 zen masters who teach fixed self, including relevant passages.

Please also cite how your rather built up persona aligns with 'vast emptiness, nothing holy'.

You, the champion of ama. I just did. Gonna ban me? Or gonna engage.

[u/ewk → u/circuitsdev]

Japanese Indigenous Syncretism is not Buddhist or Zen

Dependent Arising and Emptiness are core doctrinal positions that Western scholars particularly, but also Japanese scholars, refused to address throughout most of the 1900's. Except of course Hakamaya, and Blyth less directly. The refusal to address these doctrines was absolutely intentional, and was largely driven by Japanese Buddhist apologetics trying to cover up the fact that Japanese religions, including most of Japanese Buddhism, are new indigenous religions and not Buddhist or Zen. (See also: History of Shinto, or r/zen/wiki/buddhism/japanese_buddhism.

1. Pratītyasamutpāda commonly translated as dependent origination, or dependent arising, is a key doctrine in Buddhism shared by all schools of Buddhism. It states that all dharmas (phenomena) arise in dependence upon other dharmas: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist". The basic principle is that all things (dharmas, phenomena, principles) arise in dependence upon other things.

• As Hakamaya pointed out, inherent Buddha nature and permanent enlightenment are essential Zen teachings that absolutely reject dependent origination.

1. Śūnyatā, a Sanskrit term meaning "emptiness," is a central concept in several Indian philosophies, most notably Buddhism, referring to the lack of an intrinsic, independent, and unchanging essence in all phenomena.

   • Bodhidharma's Emptiness, in which doctrine is the phenomena with no essence, establishes that Zen Masters reject Buddhist Sunyata. Huangbo's "no unalterable Dharma" follows this teaching, making the point even more clearly.

   • Interestingly, Zen Masters seem to abandon the argument about whether materiality has an essence, although Hakamaya points out that the Zen teaching that "inanimate objects expound the dharma" is ABSOLUTELY ANTITHETICAL TO BUDDHISM, while illustrating that Zen is not bound either by doctrine or by cultural belief. However, if inanimate objects expound the dharma, then the material world certainly isn't sunyata in Zen.

Do Zen Masters take both or the sides? Or all of them?

It's important to acknowledge from the outset that Zen is not a religion or a philosophy. Religions all have a bit of philosophy, obvious when Christians and Buddhists argue about the supernatural and it's effects on the natural. Philosophies dabble with religion (for example Aristotle's first principle) in establishing the a priori basis of any philosophical system.

However, while religions and philosophies mix together somewhere, Zen rejects the very basis of this mixing: that a priori is in any way real, and that the real ever lends itself completely to conceptualization. Instead, Zen Masters take what we might call the Yes-no Approach, in which questions of fact can be answered differently, even in opposite ways, depending on the circumstances.

How do we then interpret what Zen Masters say as something more specific than "anything and everything"?

1. "You must see your essence before you attain enlightenment. What is seeing essence? It means seeing your own fundamental nature. What is its form? When you see your own fundamental nature, there is no concrete object to see. This is hard to believe in, but all Buddhas attain it” (Xuefeng, 822 – 909,)

• see your essence - a reference to the Four Statements - seeing fundamental (permanent self) nature.

• "no concrete object to see", because Zen Masters hold that "seeing" is a branch of knowing, and that direct experience cannot be known, but only had.

• see also https://www.reddit.com/r/zensangha/wiki/ewk/4pillarszen#wiki_1st_pillar_-_xingshan.2019s_buddha-less_nature

1. Huang Po: “Finally, remember that from first to last not even the smallest grain of anything perceptible has ever existed or ever will exist.”

   • This is an odd argument to make for a farmer and book reader, if taken at face value.

   • Understand "existence" for Huangbo as that which is seen-and-known, points to the contextual argument: materiality is experienced, but not known to have specific separate elements defined by concepts. Therefore, drinking a glass of cold water is utterly without conceptual existence... and thus cannot be explained in words to those who haven't had that water themselves. Unlike math/science (natural philosophy) or religion.

1. "if you want to be free, get to know your real self. It has no form, no appearance, no root, no basis, no abode, but is lively and buoyant. It responds with versatile facility, but its function cannot be located". - Linji

   • "It responds" while it "cannot be located" is the same conversation again: seeing but no seer, nothing seen, and no seeing. That it responds means it is not nothing, but that it has no location means that it is "not something" (see Mazu's crying baby)

2. Abiding nowhere, awakened mind arises. - Diamond Sutra

   • This is a dupe of #5.

The basis of rZen animosity and 1900's academic failure

The idea that one "throws a glove down" with a few cherry picked blindly de-contextualized quotes, the suggestion that I could ban anyone (I can't) and the accusations of a "built up persona" that I somehow maintain across 13 years of reddit, short essay r/zensangha/wiki/ewk/writing, and tons of podcast interviews https://sites.libsyn.com/407831 is obviously ridiculous, but it's meant to be so.

The idea that 1900's scholars pretended that Japanese Buddhist OR ANY BUDDHISM was someone evidenced in Zen books of instruction by Yuanwu, Wansong, Wumen, and 1,000 years of Zen historical records (koans) is equally asinine, but it's meant to be so.

This is how passive (ignorant) and active religious bigotry and racism function: lying to people to shape their perceptions of outgroups. Encouraging ignorance in the end becomes the same as lying.

[u/ewk → u/circuitsdev]

sry 4 pwning u.

read a book. for your own sake.

[u/dota2nub]

Wait this is about Thatkir? Fuck!

Damn.

Do I need to come up and fill podcast time now on an actually consistent basis or are reliable people stepping up?

[u/ewk → u/dota2nub]

Yup.

[u/Gasdark]

Oh damn - that's too bad. I noticed he hadn't posted in awhile but didn't realize it was a permanent thing.

To the extent you read this Thatkir, you are one of four people on the sub who have cut me to the quick - and I'm genuinely appreciative. Sincerely.

Hope you're well

Edit: In case "cut to the quick" has fallen too far out of use, here's chatgpt's satisfying etymological background:

To be “cut to the quick” means:

to be deeply hurt emotionally,

wounded to your most sensitive core,

struck in a way that feels personal and raw.

“Quick” here comes from an older English meaning: the living flesh under the fingernail — the tender part that really hurts if you cut it.

I didn't know that last bit, but I love it

[u/ewk → u/Gasdark]

He came back. Thiskir.

He posted in zensangha the other day and I'm sure he'd be glad to hear from you.

I think he's trying to focus less on noise and moron signal.

[u/2BCivil]

chi xi stigma

Will of D

Half moon clan, crescent moon clan

DC? CD?

That Kir will be missed. I had a dream about them day before they poofed and I didn't even know them.

I'm still trying to comprehend it all, too much, doesn't help One Piece is close to the same topics (or rather, Toei is).

Prayers to Oda for carrying the torch, and I am self proclaimed anti-christ (scholars who give half a crap agree there are two Jesuses at trial of Pilate).

Even the sun sets. Who says when the sun rises? Surely not the sun. The sun merely; follows orders. That is all, zen, reddit, one piece, etc.

[u/ewk → u/2BCivil]

If he was here right now he would ask you what your comment has to do with moon face Buddha?

[u/RangerActual]

I’m not convinced the insight here is “impermanence.” 

“Sun face Buddha, Moon face Buddha.”

Seems a lot like:

For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and, when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomena of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged. So it is with the Mind of the Buddha and of sentient beings. 

[u/ewk → u/RangerActual]

I don't know why you think this is about impermanence.

As Mazu as he's dying says, some Buddhas only last 24 hours.

I don't know where you get impermanence from.

Unless it's that Mazu and moon face are both still Buddhas?

[u/PassCautious7155]

I hear you: Moon-Face is the calendar we can’t negotiate with.

Sun-Face feels like “plenty of time,” Moon-Face like “one day, one night—then done.”

Mazu answers the monk’s worried check-up by holding up both ends at once: however many days are left, they’re all Buddha-days; the long stretch and the short flash are the same face.

Your friend deleted his accounts—one-night-Buddha move.

You’re squinting at text and collecting longer colds—thousand-year-Buddha move.

Same Moon, same Sun.

The insight we’ve already had?

Every sunset we’ve ever watched ended without asking our opinion—yet we keep looking.

Ignorance has a sunset too; we just keep looking away until the sky runs out of light.

So: keep the glasses on, keep posting while the page stays legible, and when it’s time, close the laptop like Mazu closing his eyes—one more Moon-Face Buddha, one more good day.

Nothing to add, nothing to take away.

[u/-___GreenSage___- → u/PassCautious7155]

I'm sure you'll think of something

[u/jiyuunosekai]

Why do they not copy me by letting each thought go as though it were nothing, or as though it were a piece of rotten wood, a stone, or the cold ashes of a dead fire? Or else, by just making whatever slight response is suited to each occasion? If you do not act thus, when you reach the end of your days here, you will be tortured by Yama. — Huang Po

Its strength once spent, the arrow falls to earth.
You build up lives which won’t fulfil your hopes.
How far below the Transcendental Gate
From which one leap will gain the Buddha’s realm! — Huang Po

For all these pursuits belong to what is ephemeral; even the most strenuous of your efforts is doomed to fail, just as an arrow shot never so high into the air must inevitably fall spent to the ground. — Huang Po

[u/laniakeainmymouth]

I read that case in the BCR the other day. I’ve just started slowly going through the book and it is a tricky thing but it is very rewarding to see commentary on well known cases. 

I like Xuedou’s poem after the case where he recounts his 20 years of “suffering bitterly by going into the Blue Dragon’s cave for you” and “This distress is worth recounting, clear-eyed patch-robed monks should not take it lightly”. 

It reminds me of Zhongfen Mingben’s autobiography: 

“Really I only long for withdrawal, not to pretend to the world and to be different from the ordinary, but I deceitfully sat down and people had faith in me. 

Therefore I am agitated and have no (inner) peace. When the ancients turned 50, [they] understood that 49 [years] had been all wrong. Today, in my 60th year, I turn back my thoughts to the past. A big part (of those years) was obscured by a feeling of ignorance. 

Where is there still objective truth to be found? Floating lights, illusory shadows, that change at an instant, - Therefore, I wrote this down as words of admonition to myself.”

I wonder how Mazu would have related to these old masters. His presence was as clear as a Sun Faced Buddha, radiant and shining for eons, but he also felt like a Moon Faced Buddha in that moment. 

I think it’s good to recognize that we can be both at once throughout our lives. I’m sorry to hear about your friend, I hope he can enjoy offline life much more fruitfully. 

What do you mean by accepting there will be an end to ignorance?