The Flatbed Sutra of Louie Wing The Second Ancestor of Zen in the West

_{When the Indian Prince, Siddhartha, discovered that everyone eventually suffered from old age, sickness and death, he was so horrified, he refused his throne and set out to liberate all beings. After trying a variety of practices, he finally sat down under a tree and meditated. After six years, he suddenly realized that all beings were free from old age, sickness, and death, and only delusion kept them from realizing this fact. Thus, he became known as the Buddha ("awakened one").}

_{^{About 1000 years later this teaching was brought to China by another "awakened one" named Bodhidharma. Like the Buddha, he claimed people had always been free from old age, sickness, and death and needed only to "see their nature" to realize it. To "see their nature" people needed only "behold their own mind."}}

^{_{Observing Bodhidharma’s students practicing "dhyana" (meditation), people called the teaching "Ch’an", which is the Chinese pronunciation of "dhyana." So began the tradition known to most westerners by its Japanese pronunciation, "Zen."}}

^{_{For more than 1500 years the Zen masters have affirmed the teaching of awakening by pointing to the human mind.}}

Buddha means "one who is awakened." Once you have awakened, your own mind itself is buddha. By seeking outside yourself for a buddha invested with form, you set yourself forward as a foolish, misguided man. It is like a person who wants to catch a fish. He must start by looking in the water, because fish live in water and are not found apart from it. If a person wants to find buddha, he must look into his own mind, because it is there, and nowhere else, that buddha exists.
~Hakuin (The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin, Norman Waddell)

In the past there were many examples of enlightened lay people who combined worldly achievement with profound mystic realization. It wasn’t so hard—all they did was directly comprehend this one Great Cause. Once they had this Tao as their foundation, they were able to disregard other people’s conventional judgments and mobilize their own courage and boldness. When interacting with people, they focused the eye of enlightenment and set in motion their quick potential and sharp wisdom to turn all the myriad forms of being around, back into their own grasp. They rolled out and they rolled up, they released and they captured. Thus they were no different from all the people of great attainment down through the ages whose practice was pure and ripe and who held within them the virtues and power of the Tao.
~Yuanwu, Author of the Blue Cliff Record (Zen Letters, Thomas Cleary)

^{_{If anything should be revered, it is enlightenment. If any time should be honored, it is the time of enlightenment.}}~Dogen, Tenzo kyokun
Trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi & Arnold Kotler

A student asked, "Do all the religions and spiritual traditions differ, or are they the same?"

Louie Wing said, "From the perspective of the human intellect, they differ. From the perspective of the vast unnamable fathomless void, they are the same."

There is a name that is not received from one’s father, not received from one’s ancestors, not inherited from Buddhas, not inherited from Zen masters; it is called the buddha nature, or essence of buddhahood. Zen study is basically to reach the fundamental and clarify the essence of mind. If you don’t reach the fundamental, you live and die in vain, misunderstanding yourself and others. As for what this fundamental essence is, your features may differ as you die and are born over and over again, but at all times there is an inherent awareness.
~Keizan, Transmission of Light, Thomas Cleary

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