’12a: Instructing his monks, the master said: Followers of the Way, it is most important that you come to see clearly. Then you can go your way and confront the world without letting yourselves be deceived by those delusive fox sprites. Nothing is more precious than to be a man who has nothing further to seek. Just do not give rise to any fancies and be your ordinary selves.

The trouble is, you look to the outside, and, pursuing it hotly, you doubt whether you have hands and feet. Do not be deceived. If you only think of seeking Buddha, Buddha becomes a mere name. And the very one who runs to seek Buddha, do you know him? All the Buddhas and patriarchs in the Three Worlds and the ten directions have appeared only for the purpose of seeking the Dharma. And today’s diligent Followers of the Way are also seeking the Dharma. Only when one has got it, is there an end to it. As long as one has not got it, one transmigrates through the Five Paths.’

The Zen Teaching of Rinzai - tr. Irmgard Schloegl

In this talk:

•         Zhuangzi’s axe thief - Confucius and the  three men who witness the same event.

•         Compared to Right View which is not a new set of assumptions but the dismantling of them. Master Rinzai cautions about leaving one home and going directly into another which refers to the tendency to identify with ‘my views’.

•         There are often subtle desires and expectations that arise in us - hence the axe thief story - the same when we think about Buddha and enlightenment. We create a picture about it. Hence Buddha’s words on awakening in the Southern Tradition.

•         Looking to the outside - is a displacement activity that distracts from seeing inwardly the Buddha nature. Now, the Northern tradition of the Buddha’s awakening and the split off.

•         Rinzai’s ‘In this lump or red flesh…’

•         Fingers and moon; but when the words get in the way - If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha’.

•         At the word level or intellect level we are still going up and down in the ocean of birth and death. The C4 documentary about road rage and the man who nearly choked his son.