So, here is this extraordinary phenomenon. Now let me say, having presented you with
 all these fireworks, let me say a few sober things about Zen as a historical phenomenon.
 Zen is a subdivision of Mahayana Buddhism. And as you know, that is the school of Buddhism
 which is concerned with realizing Buddha nature in this world. Not necessarily by going off
 to the mountains, or by renouncing family life, everyday life, etc., etc., as if that
 were an entanglement, but realizing in the midst of life the possibility of becoming
 a Buddha. And so, the great ideal personality of Mahayana Buddhism is the Bodhisattva, a
 word now applied to somebody who has attained nirvana, but instead of disappearing, comes
 back in many, many guises. There's a famous painting of one of the Bodhisattvas in the
 form of a prostitute. And Bodhisattvas in Zen art are often represented as bums. There's
 the beautiful one over there, painted by Sengai, of the bum, Hotei, or Putai in Chinese, who's
 always immensely fat. And he's saying, "Buddha is dead. My treya, who is supposed to be the
 next Buddha, hasn't come yet. I had a wonderful sleep and didn't even dream about Confucius."
 And he's just stretching and yawning as he wakes up. So, Zen is Mahayana, Indian Mahayana
 Buddhism translated into Chinese, and therefore deeply influenced by Taoism and Confucianism.
 Zen monks brought Confucian ideas to Japan. And the origins of Zen lie, actually, around
 the year 414, at which time a great Hindu scholar by the name of Kumarajiva was translating,
 with a group of assistants, the Buddhist sutras into Chinese. One of his students taught that
 all beings whatsoever have the capacity to become Buddha, to become enlightened. Even
 rocks and stones. And that even heretics and evildoers have the Buddha nature or Buddha
 potentiality in them. And everybody said he was a dreadful heretic. But then a text called
 the Nirvana Sutra came from India, which said precisely that. So everybody had to admit
 that this man was right. He also began to teach that awakening must be instantaneous.
 It's a kind of all or nothing state. I don't mean that there aren't degrees of its intensity.
 But once you see the principle, you see the whole thing. As they say, when the bottom
 falls out of the bucket, all the water goes together. Those men then promulgated the way
 of sudden awakening. Bodhidharma came later. And he is supposed in legend to have been
 followed by a line of six patriarchs, of which he was the first. The second was named Eka.
 I'm using the Japanese pronunciation. Who was formerly a general of the army. Then the
 third was Sosan, who wrote the Shinjinmei, which is the most marvelous little summary
 of Buddhism in verse. And so on till they came to Eno, the sixth patriarch. You know
 perhaps more familiarly his Chinese name, Huineng. He died in 715 AD. He's the real
 founder of Chinese Zen. The man who synthesized the whole thing and was the-- at least his
 collected discourses are contained in what is called the Platform Sutra. And any student
 of Zen should read the Platform Sutra. But Eno really fused Zen with the Chinese way
 of doing things. And he emphasized very thoroughly, do not think you are going to attain Buddhahood
 by sitting down all day and keeping your mind blank. Because a lot of those students who
 practiced Dhyana, which is the Sanskrit for Chan, which is the Chinese for Zen, which
 is in turn Japanese, means meditation. Or contemplation perhaps would be a better translation
 in English. And everybody thought that the proper way to contemplate was to be as still
 as possible. But according to Zen, that is to be a stone Buddha instead of a living Buddha.
 Now I can knock a stone Buddha on the head, clunk, and it has no feelings. And so it's
 a stone Buddha. There was a famous Zen master called Tangka who went to a little lonely
 temple on a freezing cold night. And he took the Buddha image, one of the Buddha images
 off the altar, split it up, and made a fire. And when the attendant of the temple came
 in in the morning, he was horrified. He broke at the image. And Tangka took his stick, started
 raking in the ashes. And the temple priest said, what are you looking for? He said, I'm
 looking for the sali, that is to say the jewels that are supposed to be found in the body
 of a genuine Buddha when he's cremated. So the priest said, you couldn't expect to find
 sali from a wooden Buddha. In that case, said Tangka, let me have that other Buddha for
 my fire. That's, you see, the difference between living Buddha and stone Buddha. But a person
 who thinks that in order to be awakened, you have to be heartless, to have no emotions,
 no feelings, that you couldn't possibly lose your temper or get angry or feel annoyed or
 depressed. Those people haven't got the right idea at all. If that's your ideal, said Eno,
 you might just as well be a block of wood or a piece of stone.
 What he wanted you to understand is that your real mind, while all those emotions are going
 on, is imperturbable. Just like when you move your hand through the sky, you don't leave
 a track. The birds don't stain the blue when they pass by. And when the water reflects
 the image of the geese, the reflection doesn't stick there. So to be pure-minded in the Zen
 way, or clear-minded is a better way of translating it, is not to have no thoughts, is not a question
 of not thinking about dirty things. One great master of the Tang Dynasty, when asked, "What
 is Buddha?" believe it or not, answered, "A dried turd." So it's not that kind of purity.
 It is purity, clarity, in the sense that your mind isn't sticky. You don't harbor grievances.
 You don't be attached to the past. You go with it, with life. Life is flowing all the
 time. That is the Tao, the flow of life. You are going along with it whether you want to
 or not. You're like people in a stream. You can swim against the stream, but you'll still
 be moved along by it. And all you'll do is wear yourself out in futility. But if you
 swim with the stream, the whole strength of the stream is yours. Of course, the difficulty
 that so many of us have is finding out which way the stream is going. But suddenly, as
 it goes, all the past vanishes, the future has not yet arrived, and there is only one
 place to be, which is here and now. And there is no way of being anywhere else, none whatever.
 If you understand that thoroughly, your task is finished. You then become instantaneous
 and also momentous.
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