ZEN NAIKAN

The ancient energy alchemyof the Rinzai Zen monks

Including 21 Traditional Exercises

Zen Master Leonardo Anfolsi Reiyo Ekai

Translation by Gay Hsiao-Lin Bardin

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ZEN NAIKANThe ancient energy alchemyof the Rinzai Zen monks.Including 21 Traditional Exercises

Zen Master Leonardo Anfolsi Reiyo Ekai

Gay Hsiao-Lin Bardin

17 x 24 cm26497888987505112018

Fontana EditoreCorso Ausugum, 98Borgo Valsugana (Tn)38051 Italyinfo@fontanaeditore.comwww.fontanaeditore.com

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• Introduction• The Eight Sources. The presence of Taoist Alchemy

within Zen• The First Source: The mysterious hermit Bodhidarma• The Second Source: Hongren The Fifth Patriarch and

the Secret of Zen Meditation. As Seen in the Sūtra of Meditation

• The Third Source: the Light Body of Zhenzhou Pu hua and the Fuke school

• The Fourth Source: The era of Kamakura or the First Martial Variable

• The Fifth Source: Takuan Soho or the Second Martial Variable

• Taiaki “The Annals of the Sword Taia• The Sixth Source: Hakuin Ekaku and Internal Alchemy• The Seventh Source: Kawaguchi Ekai – Kono Daikei

– Yamada Mumon. Internal Alchemy from the Meiji Period.

• The Eighth Source: The Naikan of the Strength Redis-covered in You

• The function of the breath in daily life and during zazen• Attention to the breath and the Western mind• Understanding the dantien• The Question of Energy• Electricity and Magnetism in the Human System• Zen Discipline and Naikan practice as an Endotropic

Adaptation Syndrome• The 5 Levels of Energy including Qi and Prana• Exercises to Strengthen the Perception of the Qi and

its Harmonious Mobilization• Embryonic breathing • The exercises of Master Hakuin, as described in the

Yasenkanna and the Orategama• The Three Secret Keys of Zen Naikan. Commentary

Sommario

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• Enlightenment. Spiritual realization• Signs of realization in Naikan and the Body of Light• What shall I practice today? Notes on Naikan Practice• Practicing. The first essential components of zen naikan• Yasenkanna A Chat on a Boat in the Dark

• Preface• Yasenkanna. A Chat on a Boat in the Dark• Meeting Master Hakuyū• My Cure• What does “Sustaining life” mean?• The remedies for sustaining life and achieving

immortality• Drawing the heart-mind into the lowerbody• Noncontemplation• How to cultivate the mind energy• The distillation of “So” Elixir method explained• Taking leave from Hakuyū• Introspective meditation. The benefits of visualiza-

tion in zen training• Epilogue

• A Deeper Treatment of Qi and Prana. For Advanced (Third Level) Practitioner

• Glossary

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Editor’s PrefaceWhile preparing this text, uniquely precise and clear among

its kind, I spoke at length with the Author. It is distinguished by being the only book revealing and explaining the use of the tech-niques taught by Master Hakuin Ekaku.

Master Leonardo Anfolsi Reiyo Ekai possesses an encyclope-dic knowledge of the field, as well as extensive personal experi-ence, having long practiced these techniques with - as he stressed to me - a precise and definite aim: for a Zen Master, satori is the ultimate goal.

Within the initiatic context of Rinzai Zen Buddhism, such an endeavor is unique. The books describes a dynamic zen practice - which in truth has its thousand-year-old history and tradition of transmission - but for the modern practitioner. For today’s practi-tioner, for whom understanding Master Hakuin’s work, and figur-ing out its possible applications to today’s context may be difficult, this book is a precious resource.

Some of the techniques are clearly interlaced with known Tan-tra yoga techniques. For this reason, the reader could easily misun-derstand their use within the Zen context, and how Zen provides a different approach to what would seem to be familiar material.

An impassioned practitioner myself, I have had the precious opportunity to ask Master Leonardo Anfolsi Reiyo Ekai some essential details concerning the techniques directly. This has re-iterated for me how personal the practitioner’s relationship with his practice must be, and how important it is to have direct oral transmission from Master to Disciple.

Nevertheless this book is an incomparable resource for anyone practicing alone, even though - personally - I strongly suggest par-ticipating in one of the Master’s workshops. The very act of put-

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ting oneself in relation with the Master is per se already a koan, essential for anyone who wishes to know zen, or oneself, at the most fundamental level. It is a very simple relationship, direct yet personal, in which the shared interaction is live and unmediated. Much of the initiatic knowledge related to these techniques may be transmitted solely through direct personal teaching, and cannot be recorded or published.

Rocco Fontana

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About the AuthorLeonardo Anfolsi received his training from Master Engaku

Taino, under the aegis of Master Taishitsu Yamada Mumon. The most beloved Buddhist Master of contemporary Japan and Presi-dent of the Imperial University of Hanazono, Mumon ritually wel-comed Anfolsi as a young monk.

Anfolsi obtained recognition as Master from the Tibetan Lama Gomo Tulku Sonam Rinchen XXII, and in fact received the se-cret teachings of Tibetan Buddhist Masters Kalu Rimpoche (1905-1989), Chogyal Namkhai Norbu R., Nyoshul Kenpo R. (1932–1999), and the Böm Master Tenzin Namdak R.. In 1990, in Dhar-masala, he received the complete teachings, or the the six Yogas of Naropa - which he practices assiduously - from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Master Anfolsi teaches Buddhism and meditation in the Amer-ican and Italian school systems, and lectures and gives workshops on the Zen Naikan technique he has imported from his own zen lineage. He has carried out institutional activities on behalf of the UBI, the Buddhist Union of Italy, under the protection of whom he is organizing the Mumonji Project.

Anfolsi made his debut as a writer with an ironic spiritual auto-biography (Banananda, 1989), an immediate bestseller edited and published by Franco Battiato in his L’Ottava Edizioni (reprinted by Fontana Editore); he shares his position in the series with the Nobel Prizewinner Natsume Soseki’s texts from the Sufi scriptural tradition, as well as Gurdjieff’s classic texts. Anfolsi continues his writings on Buddhism and zen; his lectures are appreciated inter-nationally for their humor and erudition. He directs Nitrogeno, the international review of operative alchemy and the project rela-tive to it in collaboration with Fontana Editore.

Leonardo Anfolsi also collaborates with artists and entrepre-

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neurs, guiding them and having served in that same environment as publicist, as for example in Opera Unica, co-authored with Marco Bagnoli, Alessandro Magini, and the editor Sergio Risaliti (Mondadori Arte Electa 2016). In 2007 Anfolsi participated as a multimedial artist in the space at the 52nd Biennale of Venice ded-icated to the celebration of Joseph Beuys.

Since the 1980’s Anfolsi has studied and practiced naturopa-thy, a discipline he combines with his role as minister of the faith. In the 1990’s he was called to direct the therapeutic division of the Bologna Naturist Association, at the time the most respected, well-articulated and advanced organization of its kind in Europe. The organization has produced several leaders in the world of physical education and physiatry, yoga, and contemporary med-ical philosophy.

To contact the Master directly: contattoesterni@gmail.com

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“When one learns to be calm and tranquil, without turbulence, the ancestral energy adapts itself spontaneously, producing an all-perva-sive and unbroken qi energy[1]. If I hold this energy within me, how

can I possibly fall ill? The point is to keep this energy-qi inside us, pervading and providing support to the whole body[2] so that between

the 360 points and the 84,000 pores, not even a hairsbreadth lacks it. Know that this is the secret to preserving life.” - Hakuin zenji

IntroductionZen Naikan brings to those who practice it harmonious well-be-

ing, continuous joy, and the most solid aid to healing, encouraging the highest form of spiritual realization.

Zen Naikan is a gift of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, from the monks and laymen dedicated to developing spiritual, mental, and physical strength.

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While we have invented technological prostheses external our-selves, thanks to the current materialist mentality, Zen Naikan encourages us to become our own internal source of passion, strength, awareness and freedom.

Historically, Zen Naikan had various sources within the Rinzai school, and even today in China we have examples of this dynamic Zen teaching. The word naikan was used by Master Hakuin Eka-ku only three centuries ago to define expressly a method of culti-vating energy associated with a new concept of dynamic medita-tion practice, suited both to laymen leading a life active in society as well as to practicing monks.

In 1977, at the age of 18, I had the honor of being received at sanzen - debate of Zen koan with the Master in the secret room - by Master Luigi Mario Engaku Taino at the Zenshinji temple. Two years later I was welcomed in sanzen also by Master Yamada Mumon. That was when I gained a clear understanding of what the power of the dantien can be in an eighty-year-old man, even one who had been ill since his youth. Everyone remembers Master Mumon for his inexhaustible energy, in spite of possessing only one functioning lung, and the stunning power he commanded with his ki-tentai, externalizing his qi[3].

It is certainly thanks to the strength that Master Mumon manifested, as well as his humanity and open-mindedness, that

1. The production of the highest-quality qi - thanks to the integrity of the ancestral energy ( jing) - is due to the dynamic quiet induced by medita-tion, in which, ultimately, one experiences satori. Hakuin specifies that the term meditation should be understood not only as quiet or mere men-tal practice (zazen + koan = rikan), but also as an active life. Thanks to the power that zen yoga meditation (naikan) has to distill the elixir, the innate potentialities of the practitioner are brought forth.

2. The energy held in every point and pore of the body is not simply a saying, but the substance of exercise 19.

3. The bio-electric energy is called “qi” in Chinese, while the same ideogram is pronounced “ki” in Japanese.

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he became not only head of the Rinzai school in Japan (Rinzai shu), but also president of the Imperial University of Hanazon [4]. Even more importantly, it seems to me, he was also the first Zen Master to open the dialog with the West and the Christian world, capable of receiving the first Westerners seeking monas-tic training. All of this Mumon accomplished earning fame as a calligrapher alongside all the other activities that caused him to become a landmark for contemporary Japanese lay society.

I came to appreciate Hakuin’s genius through my practice and study of zen methods both of the Rinzai (línjì) and Soto (caodong) schools, as well as of vajrayana and dzogchen. Hakuin was able to read the traditional Mahayana sūtras and decipher their densely codified, highly symbolic subliminal teachings. The reader may, if desired, consult the third part of the Orategama, where Hakuin hints at a deeper meaning of the Lotus Sūtra, and communicates this reading in a letter to a Nichiren nun. It is certain that Hakuin practiced meditations specifically meant as strong stimulation for not only his vitality but also his intelligence.

This is the purpose of this book: to make those methods avail-able to today’s practitioner, and to explain and comment on their application so as to present an operative introduction with useful techniques derived from both Chinese and Japanese Zen tradi-tions, in preparation for further possible developments in respect of Hakuin’s desires. In certain instances, the Master’s explana-tions of how to execute the techniques are complete, but often they seem bare sketches, as if he were relying on the monks’ intuition - sharpened by the intense ascetic vows typical of the Rinzai - to bring them speedily to complete comprehension.

Historically, Naikan has demonstrated three salient properties. It is able:• to facilitate the understanding of zen practice by both monks

and laypeople,• to heal monks of the zen sickness - zenbyo - that causes the heat

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to rise and the water element to sink,• to stretch the muscles, to heal, and facilitate life in general.

Note that from what Hakuin says, naikan was taught also to laymen. This encourages us not to be tempted to keep this infor-mation secret, as Hakuin himself had no desire to hide it, but as the Dalai Lama advises[5], to offer the opportunity for self-devel-opment to those who are ready.

The better WE are, the better a world we create.

The contents of this book, over the course of two years, ended up inspiring and astonishing me. The most important thing is to continue reading, always, even if you don’t understand. Better to be patient and practice the exercises until you gradually penetrate the secret hidden within the teaching. It is well worth your trou-ble. I promise that, with the help of my most advanced students, I will answer all your questions on line.

Zen Naikan, practiced by Chinese and Japanese zen monks, is a form of yogic ascesis:

1. Mental, given that it operates through visualizations and the breath.2. Energetic, encouraging the flow of emotional/nervous/pranic energy and the bioelectric/respiratory power of the qi, and3. Physical, using particular movements and breathing tech-niques to develop the bioelectric and staminal forces.

4. Yamada Mumon dissociated himself completely from the hyper-national-istic ideology of one of his Masters, Seise’tsu Gensho, before such matters reached the extremes they later would; but this was insufficient to inhibit the zeal of the school’s habitual antagonist, who launched headlong into his criticisms in complete disregard of the reserved manner that the Jap-anese express their disagreement, and without even bothering to inform himself as to the Master’s point of view, so in complete ignorance that Mumon was considered by many in Japan as a pacifist, opposed to war.

5. See the chapter on the Eighth Source.

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To use the current terminology, Zen Naikan integrates the principle of yoga, which works with the five pranas, with the essence of qigong, which works with the jing and the qi to real-ize the shen[6].

By ‘staminal’ we mean the germinative, constitutional princi-ple of living organisms of all kingdoms, from the vegetable to the animal all the way up to human beings. The word’s Greek and Latin roots evoke the concept of something ancestral, structural, tied to the idea of “to stand”, “supporting structure”, “fulcrum”, “thread”. Stem cells may truly be considered a primordial fulcrum, a structure or basic fiber of life. Just as the bioelectrical voltage differential acts as a fulcrum, the flow of electrical current lies at the base of life and our wellbeing as it moves every function at the cell, tissue, and organ levels.

Let us add that the latest scientific discoveries pertaining to the extrapyramidal nervous system and the enteric nervous system, or epigenetics and the development of the concept of resilience only provide contemporary scientific confirmation of the principles guiding the ancient methods of Naikan.

We may certainly state that the practice of Naikan strengthens our immune or adaptive capacity. It is a rapidly-applied technique allowing one to realize those tangible effects commonly termed miracles that I witness every day of my life. These experiences are certainly encouraging, but should not so much distract us from

6. Jing = genetic and nutritive strength / qi = bioelectric force / shen = spiri-tual power. In yoga, prana is the energy that innervates the whole system, reaching all points of the dense physical body through the imagination (psycho-soma) and the endocrine secretions. We can define the pranic level of energy as biomagnetic. The qi, according to Chinese tradition, runs over the surface of the body and along the internal fascial system, and is tied to the ‘functions’ of the various organs. The qi is thus anchored to the dense body, which it fills with bioelectric strength as the wind fills a sail. Further on we shall specify the nature of these two energy lev-els, and at the end of the book is an appendix explaining them in detail.

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our inner seeking as nourish it, opening us to a sense of wonder at once innocent and responsible. We must think about this, consider where we are, what times these are, and how we must all - sooner or later - confront the mystery and how it constitutes the very breath of our daily life. In other times, neither better nor worse than today, this perception was an inborn part of humanity, al-though the human race was more ingenuous and instinctual.

The zen monks of the past were taught - as standard practice - that ecstatic states, the manifestation of powers or even having thoughts was makyo, or demonic. In this way they prevented the most serious and dangerous errors. Today however similar affir-mations would be considered undue, exaggerated and even con-demnable - today, when our inability to generate ecstasy, or psy-chic and magnetic energy places us at risk of developing all those maladies provoked by an over-crowded, extremely complicated existence and where, in contrast with the past, everything is mon-itored, rushed and held maniacally under control.

This mistake is not yet understood by those who still possess the instinctual force of our ancestors but have been captured by the new religion of Science, which allows them to identify themselves in a freer, more literate and cultured world, or so it appears to the senses, free of the fideistic obscurantism of the past. And yet since Science, like religion, is a mass phenomenon, for most it becomes an experience of standardized identity, bearing nothing in common with the lofty ideals of those minds which truly are more open and more accepting of possibility. In this way we subscribe en masse to that need to identify ourselves in something, forcing us to apply our faith to discoveries, assumptions, and theories, the same that tomor-row will be rejected as unfounded, if not foolish or even criminal.

This is how the mandate of the seekers of so-called Truth, whether religious or scientific, betrays itself. From the Zen point of view, in contrast, the disinterest in truth is definitive. Buddhism deals with reality, and what is real must simply be recognized,

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adhering to what is for what it is, and thus on a level that is at once pre-verbal and usable. This occurs in silence, listening and returning to that place from where all knowledge stems, that mo-ment of glorious enlightenment rarely attained by either religious or scientific genius, and rarely recognized when it occurs, as its brilliance surpasses the possibilities of its historical time. In gen-eral, Buddhism has this unique capability: it does not permit any-one to own the truth, or even to nurture the vaguest idea of a similar hypothesis. This principle remains constant, even though someone has tried to contest its parameters every century. Even Pure Land Buddhism, which sustains the possibility of salvation, is only a method and is expressed as such to its followers, who thus share the responsibility of salvation through a method, a concept totally alien to the monotheistic religions. For Zen in particular, the methods, well-applied, force us to accept that even though the execution may be perfect, it comes into being only in the mo-ment in which we abandon ourselves to the evidence of reality.

And the evidence, which Buddhism considers innate, precedes all concepts: the very silence of meditation itself. Thanks to this, Buddhism teaches us to see everything and understand it for what it truly is, silent, nude, with no intromission of ideation-ideal-ism-ideology. Buddhism as it is practiced is an innate religion that does not require the revelation of some absolute truth by some in-vested person. It is a religion from which background one can un-derstand quantum physics, or other religions, or certainly admire them, without being understood by anyone who has not trained himself in that extreme, unexpected and sustained form of liberty called meditation, or encountered those undefinable, unfathomable individuals called Masters.

The Naikan we present in this introductory document is not the Naikan of Yoshimoto Ishin - who has all our respect - but the alchemical training taught for thousands of years in the Rinzai School of Zen. The tradition is clearly traceable back to the teachings of Hongren, the fifth Chinese patriarch, continued in

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Rinzai’s day and - either in accordance with his desire or that of his descendants - represented in the figure of Master Puhua. We may recognize this continuum through two historical moments in which the Rinzai school gained eminence, first through its influ-ence on the samurai class and finally with Hakuin Ekaku. Mae-stro Hakuin, true cornerstone of the Rinzai tradition in Japan, authored the two fundamental texts on Naikan that we include at the end of this volume. More recently, we rediscover Naikan in Kono Dakei and Kawaguchi Ekai. Kawaguchi Ekai was the master of Yamada Mumon Roshi, who in turn taught Engaku Taino, who is my direct Master. This teaching thus arrives to us through an unbroken line of transmission from Hakuin Eka-ku, who rediscovered it thanks to his boundless scholarly zeal.

Among the principle studies on the material mentioned above relative to the Rinzai school, we find the research realized in part by the prestigious scholars of the University of Hanazono - for many years directed by Mumon Roshi himself - and a few studies and translations of texts into Western languages[7]. A note on the transliteration of names in Chinese and Japanese. We have chosen:• to use the pinyin transliteration for names of people or places,

and also dharma names, in accordance with typical academic usage today.

• to leave the transliteration from the Chinese used in our trans-lations of the Yasenkanna and the Itsumadegusa as they are translated respectively by Waddel, Legget, and Yampolsky, who write the more commonly-known names without accents, and the lesser-known ones following the Wade-Giles system (i.e. Chuang Tzu, Chih-i).

• to prefer the term zen often over Chan for simplicity’s sake, as is common usage in academic studies on the subject.

7. Akizuki Ryūmin, Yanagida Seizan, Iriya Yoshitaka, Daisetz Teitaro Su-zuki. Paul Demieville, Gregory and Daniel Getz, T. Griffith Foulk, Pe-ter Gregory, Chi-chiang Huang e Ding-hwa Hsieh, Whalen Lai, Lewis Lancaster, Trevor Legget, Miriam Levering, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Morten Schlutter, Philip Boas Yampolsky, Burton Watson.

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The Eight Sources. The Presence of Taoist Alchemy within Zen

For Eighteenth-century practitioners, Hakuin’s naikan was useful for healing energetic ailments of the qi caused by the ob-sessive asceticism and extreme trials that the monks inflicted on themselves, the long hours of meditation withstanding with un-bowed heads the scoldings of their relentless masters, but with no comprehension of their own emotional and energetic impulses. Hakuin invented naikan as a form of energetic gnosis designed to correct the Japanese Zen practice, which had by then become obtuse and unnecessarily exhausting.

Master Hakuin Ekaku imagined a practical Zen training; thanks to his meticulous historical studies, he was able to trace it back to Master Da Hui’s teachings - that same Master who had so irritated Dogen because of his obsessive use of the koans.

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For today’s students of zen, the Naikan techniques are useful as a way to approach the practice of zazen and the koans without mis-understandings. For non-practitioners they constitute an excellent approach to meditation, whether seated or active as conceived by Hakuin. Naikan remains universally the best practice to maintain one’s health in this difficult historical moment, especially since the message broadcasted by the medical profession and some multi-national pharmaceutical companies tends to erode our faith in the natural human capacities for immunity, resilience, and recovery.

The origin and tantric/magical inspiration of the dharani re-cited during the okyo ritual practiced daily by zen monks - the intoning of the Sūtras - speaks clearly: for example, if we read Daihishu’s translation, the Se Son Myo So Gu - in Sanskrit Sa-manamukha Parivarta - or the translation of the Prayer for the Offering of Food to the Hungry Spirits[1], the textual content is clearly Tantric[2], aimed at the evocation of archetypes. Thanks to the translations of the Gobi desert scrolls found the near the the oasis of Dunhuang by A. Stein et al., we have become aware of the deep connections between Chinese Zen, Tantra, and Tibetan Dzogchen, where Chan came to be defined as Heshang Moheyan, or the Mahayana elders.

It is a well-known fact that some Tibetan dzogchen lineages incorporate Chan teachings; probably the semde approach to dz-

1. Daistez Teitaro Suzuki attempted to translate some phrases of the text back into Sanskrit from the Chinese, in which the evocative sense comes through clearly [Respect to all of the Benandanti-Who-Keep-Watch-Down-Here! Om!] which in fact uses terms typical of mantras: “Namah sarva-tathagatavalokite! Om! Sambala, sambala! Hum! Namah surupaya tathagataya! Tadyatha, Om, suru[paya], surupaya, surupaya, suru[paya], svaha! Namah samantabuddhanam, vam!”

2. 2. This ritual is identical to the ritual offering of the relative body con-tained within the chöd-pa (tib. gcod) rite celebrated (often during long isolated retreats) by the Tibetan exorcist-yoghins.

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ogchen derives from them, just as some Tibetan methods have assuredly conditioned the Chan practice. So, as noted above, the visionary penetration of the substance of reality so typical of dz-ogchen, is evidently part of Hongren, the fifth Chan patriarch’s teaching. I discussed this with Prof. Paul Harrison at Stanford[3], who also found it peculiar that Hongren would cite the sūtra of Amitayus[4] as a fundamental text for the practice of Chan in Chi-na. More about this soon.

To conclude, we must add that the Chan teaching, like almost all branches of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, was absorbed and then apparently re-proposed several times by the Tientai school. The Tientai school constituted the ideal heir to the Indian monastic universities in which each Buddhist school, with its relative meth-ods, commentaries and sūtras of reference had space and expression. The same thing happened in Japan, given that the Tientai, or Tend-ai in Japanese, trained all of the founders of the different Buddhist schools, the Zen, Shingon, Nichiren and Jodo, so that initially they were all Tendai monks. Among these we have Eisai, Dogen, Kobo Daishi, Nichiren and Honen, to name only a few of the best-known.

Let me emphasize again that all of these initially started out as Tendai monks, and developed only later as Zen, Nichiren, Jodo, etc. This undeniable fact allows us to recognize the effec-tive historical connection of Zen with the practice of ritualistic, yogic, and esoteric techniques, even if practiced with an essential, self-significant hermetism - always characteristic of Zen - with that inspiration that caused exceptional individuals like Esai and Dogen to become enamored of it. Soon we will see how Japanese Zen, ever since its origins in the Kamakura period, was direct,

3. Paul Harrison is Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Hav-ing completed his studies in his native land New Zealand and Australia, he specialized in Buddhist Literature and History, particularly Mahaya-na, and study of Buddhist manuscripts in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan.

4. The XLIX Volume of The Sacred Books of the East series, Oxford, 1894. See note 3, p. 29.

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incisive and unavoidably magical. I understand that this may be difficult to digest for those raised in contemporary Japan, with-out a complete historical background, and even more so for those formed under the guidance of a Zen master coming from the pos-itivist-reductionist mentality that has conquered so many in mod-ern hyper-technological Japan.

Students of the history of Buddhism and the history of ideas well know that the reductionist-materialist mentality is only a fatal reaction to the degeneration of unquestioning monotheistic belief; at the same time, magical idealism is the involution and/or syn-thesis of thought capable of gnosis, or the highest psychic capacity man can attain, able to deconstruct and reconstruct knowledge by means of archetypes, thus giving shape to methods.

The next step is complete the penetration of the fabric of re-ality, something that a very few gifted individuals are able to do, and which, again, is an innate ability, neither learned nor cultivated but a legacy inherent in the hidden eternal nature of the human race.

What I have just explained, in addition to the vicissitudes and the techniques I will treat further on, will help you understand why at the end of the XIX century an intelligent, cultured man such as abbot Kawaguchi Ekai, with a future of certain success, decided, instead of going on a pilgrimage to India, Tibet and Nepal, to go in search of the earliest roots of Zen outside China. He was to re-turn to Japan and with Kono Daikei helped heal Mumon Yamada, a young monk then suffering from tuberculosis, but destined to become the very incarnation of XX century Zen Rinzai in Japan.

As mentioned, I had the honor of being ritually received at sanzen by Master Mumon Yamada, who filled me with the strength of a world that no longer existed, and encouraged me in my work with the series of koans, in which I was taught in every particular along with other courageous companions by Engaku

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Taino, Luigi Mario, formed under Mumon himself.

Engaku Taino encouraged me to study the history and meth-ods of the Zen tradition, and the enigmas - koan - left by the old Masters, and so all of us who followed his teaching, monks, nuns and laymen sought to do.

I pause here and invite the reader to follow the history of Naikan in the next chapter, in which I relate how there is documented historical evidence of the practice of this internal alchemy since the days of Bodhidharma, how it arrived to the Fifth Patriarch Hongren and was passed on all the way to Rinzai. Thanks to the energy teaching given the samurai and practiced by the Tendai and Yamabushi hermits, we may assert that Hakuin simply rediscovered it, transmitting it with knowledge, experience, and great wisdom.

For his part, very sensibly by my view, Master Engaku Taino added some physical exercises such as yoga and t’aiqi to the prac-tice of zen. He encouraged those who meditate to practice sports, in particular extreme rock-climbing. Besides this, he taught a self-healing practice using the breath that he learned from the Zen monk Inoue Muhen. All told, we could say that he was encourag-ing the practice of something similar to naikan.

This demonstrates how, inevitably, we find what we need to teach our Students best, as long as we remember how the teaching may become degraded, just as the energy of the practitioner may become degraded.

Let me tell you something I heard from Imei Emmyo Mi-yamoto, the current abbot of Shoinji, the Temple of the Shade of the Pine-tree, the seaside temple personally found-ed by Hakuin Ekaku at Hara, not far from Mount Fujiyama.

Abbot Emmyo insisted with great fervor on what Hakuin says in the Yasenkanna, the same passage cited at the beginning of this

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book. The abbot, who like Master Engaku Taino looks at least fifteen years younger than his age, wanted to specify that the entire body system is strengthened only when the circulation in the dantien is accelerated, and as it were dynamically compacted.

The dantien becomes elastic, and as the kikai dantien is activat-ed, particularly the larger receptive kikai that spans the area from groin to chest, the flow of exchange between the surrounding en-ergy and the human dantien is intensified. This activation becomes increasingly perceptible over time as a pulsing in the whole system. At this point, as Hakuin says, every cell of the body is filled with energy-qi. This experience is certainly strengthened by the prac-tice of the Mu koan; we will treat the practice of the Mu koan in conjunction with naikan in greater depth in the chapter discussing the techniques taught by Hakuin.

It is fundamental toextract and develop a protocol for the cur-rent day from the documents and information arriving through oral transmission from zen lineages, so that these naikan tech-niques besides giving health and satisfaction, may serve as a short-cut for Westerners in their practice of Zen, so that they may real-ize the absorption in samadhi/zanmai even while fully immersed in life, navigating its unpredictable challenges, playing it by ear.

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The First Source:The mysterious hermit Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of the chan/zen school, taught a few yoga and physical exercise techniques to the monks at the old Shaolin temple. At that time the temple was in a marshy area, and it seems that these exercises were meant sim-ply to help the monks keep their strength up, the way Tibetan monks practice Lujong. Only centuries later Bodhidharma’s ex-ercises evolved into wing chung, the discipline invented by the nun Wu Mei as a martial exercise to increase vitality. “Wing Chung” in fact means “eternal spring”. This technique, becom-ing ever more a martial art, in time evolving into xingyiquan, taijiquan or baguazhang, or generically, wu shu. Still later the Shaolin style would be invented, at the temple which then took the name of Bodhidharma’s old monastery. These gave rise to the disciplines which later became famous as kung fu and qigong.

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For reasons of space, here we will talk about Bodhidharma only regarding the subject at hand, naikan.

Bodhidharma was said to have written a text, the Yi Gin Ching or Book on Muscular Development, and for centuries the techniques taught therein were called called wai dan or weitan, that is ‘ex-ternal alchemy’ (or ‘cinnabar’ [can you explain why ‘cinnabar’?]), which usually would indicate laboratory alchemy, but in this case refers to the physical alchemy of muscles and tendons.

Twelve centuries later Hakuin would call his method on the contrary naikan; pronounced Neidan in Chinese, or ‘inner alche-my’ because of its yogic-psycho-energetic nature.

The story of this discussion between Bodhidharma and the Em-peror Wu of Liang is quite well-known: a white-haired mandarin, to befriend the emperor who fancied acting as if he were a monk on a retreat, thought it would be nice to present him with a real hermit fresh from his cave. Unfortunately, it went badly. When the emperor began to describe all the good deeds that he had done, ordaining monks and founding monasteries, Bodhidharma scowled ferociously: “Monasteries? Monks?” he thundered, “What use are they for eternity - satori? Do they have any absolute, or dharmic value? No.”

Obviously.

The emperor took offense and Bodhidharma was allowed to return to his favorite activity, staring at the wall of his dark cave.

We have documentation that in China, a couple of centuries before Bodhidharma, there lived another traveling hermit called Gunabhadra, who like Bodhidharma spoke in paradoxes. Truth be told, the Dunhuang scrolls and other documents and epigraphs give us contradictory information on Gunabhadra. Even so, and even if Gunabhadra was a fictional figure, just as (much less prob-

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ably) Bodhidharma himself might be, we must understand that such apparently mad behavior is the natural consequence of the prolonged isolation of a hermit. The Zen idea of using cumulative shock to bring a Student to enlightenment is a teaching method that may be produced only by a mind that has lived long in soli-tude, in the fullness of contemplation, watching the days, the but-terflies, the river, the clouds, everything from within the deepest cave of interior absorption[1].

It seems that the Indian monk Gunabhadra focused his teach-ing on meditation, basing himself on the written authority of the Lankavatara Sūtra, which he had translated into Chinese. From his work sprang the Lankavatara School, leng kia tsung, in some ways the remote ancestor of Chan. To boot, the Lankavatara was one of the favorite sūtras of the Chan Masters, and Hui Ke, the second Chan Patriarch, came from the Leng Kia Tsung School.

Let us cite Gunabhadra again, from a text found at Dunhuang: “Buddha is not Buddha, nor does he save the beings. Sentient beings impose distinctions, and thus they think that Buddha saves the be-ings. But this way they cannot realize this mind[2]; and they have no stability.”

And also:

“Can you penetrate a jar? Can you enter a pillar? Can you enter into fire? Can you penetrate a mountain? And, tell me, would you do it physically or mentally? The leaves of a tree can preach the Dharma, a jar can preach the Dharma. This staff can teach the Dharma, a room can teach the Dharma, just as earth, water, fire, and air can. This heap of dirt, this firewood, this roofing tile or this rock can all teach the Dharma. What is this?”

1. Just as in Western alchemy the term alchemy = al+kemi (black earth) con-tains in itself the substance “lime”, so the term weidan in Chinese contains the meaning cinnabar.]

2. This mind’ = the mind that has the potential to comprehend.

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These ancestral lines of proto-Zen, shouted, almost screamed, are extremely important for understanding both Zen metaphysics and the energy concepts of Zen Naikan. Fundamentally, they are useful for understanding the relationship between Zen teaching methods and the cultivation of that energy, since in this phrase there is a continuous slippage between communication protocols based on facts and common objects (perceived however from with-in the enlightened state), a second level based on the use of sym-bols, and a third, as lightning-fast as it is paradoxical - or so it seems at least on first impact. Based on this we can recognize a sense of the use of energy (qi/prana) in Zen, and also that pecu-liar specificity regarding the activation of the will ( joriki), and the consequent metaphysical power (kenshō) in the Zen practitioner.

Now we cite a text traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma[3], on the techniques for developing energetic, and in this case vi-sionary powers. These are conceived in the context of realizing sudden, innate enlightenment, typical of the Ch’an vision. In the next chapter what the fifth Chinese Patriarch Hongren (thus the fifth descendent from Bodhidharma) has to say on the subject of the development and realization of vision.

3. Translated in 1987 by Sinologist Red Pine (Bill Porter) from a Qing dynas-ty (Manchu) woodcut. I believe these pages are original as they are rele-vant to what is seen in other Tang Dynasty texts. Interesting Alan Cole’s critical opinion, however incomplete, on this and Gunabhadra’s texts in his Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism, Uni-versity of California Press, 2009. His theories are founded on but also con-flict with the Dunhuang scrolls, as well as with the living reality of Zen. On the basis of what I demonstrate here, it is clear how the invention of the Indian Ch’an lineage, as well as selected moments of the Chinese is unde-niable, although this does not affect the existence of a Dharma taught that lived ab antico as the Meditation School, matured and exchanged with others, that developed and adapted its methods over the centuries. It is easy to understand how difficult it must be for reductionist academics to comprehend the bizarreness of Zen with its sudden shouts and incompre-hensible behaviors, issues that are intelligible only seen with a different superior logic. I have treated this material elsewhere defining what I see as three protocols of human communication.

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“But when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won’t [be] focused. But you shouldn’t doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else. If, as in a dream, you see a light brighter than the sun, your remaining attachments will suddenly come to an end and the nature of reality will be revealed. Such an occurrence serves as the basis for enlightenment. But this is something only you know. You can’t explain it to others. Or if, while you’re walking, standing, sitting, or lying in a quiet grove, you see a light, regardless of whether it’s bright or dim, don’t tell others and don’t focus on it. It’s the light of your own nature. Or if, while you’re walking, standing, sitting, or lying in the stillness and darkness of night[4], everything appears as though in day-light, don’t be startled. It’s your own mind about to reveal itself.”

4. Comparing this with the similar phrase earlier in the passage, those who know the oriental art of encrypting teachings will recognize the refer-ences to a particular meditative technique practiced in total darkness and immobility. The result is the apparition of a diffuse light, in which partic-ular experiences and scenes may manifest: the passage refers to a teaching known as mannagde in the Tibetan dzogchen tradition (Skr. upadesha), or more precisely, yang thig. This will be explained better further ahead.

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The Second Source:Hongren The Fifth Patriarch and the

Secret of Zen Meditation As Seen in the Sūtra of Meditation

Before the arrival of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, his prede-cessor Hongren had described himself as being a very diffident person, preferring to stay far from the world’s clamor. The conflict around the succession continued for several centuries, centering on the contest between two different trends, the Southern Chan championed by Huineng[1] and the Northern by Shenxiu, whose teaching was later absorbed into the Tientai school, in many as-pects more comparable to the caodong or Sōtō teaching. Hongren’s approach to Dharma was a Northern Zen approach. It still had a strong Indian flavor, in my opinion worth careful exploration to understand one of the founding roots of this Buddhist approach,

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as yet antecedent to the zazen-koan-mondò-hua tou scheme[2], that over the centuries, from Huineng’s day on, became the typical for-mula in the history of Zen.

Zen has always been considered the School of Meditation and, since even the Fifth Patriarch agreed with this reading, perhaps it would be important to understand what this meditation really was. And here our jaws drop.

By Hongren’s explicit public statement, the seated meditation of the Zen school must be practiced following the Sūtra of Medita-tion of Buddha Amitayus precisely, the first part of which I quote here on teaching meditation:

Amitayur-Dhyana-Sutra Part II, section 9.

Buddha then replied: “Thou and all other beings besides ought to make it their only aim, with concentrated thought, to get a perception of

1. rom the end of the VIII century, Huineng was accepted as Sixth Patriarch of all of the Ch’an schools. All of the current schools are thus traceable back to his two putative heirs, Nanyue Huairang and Qingyuan Xingsi. In spite of this, neither of these two Masters are cited as his heirs in the oldest writings, and yet Shenhui’s campaign was so successful that affirm-ing one’s descendance from Huineng became an implicit obligation. Three other Disciples continued lineages descending from the Sixth Patriarch: Shenhui, Nanyang Huizong, and Yo ngjia Xuanjue. However, let us include three more self-proclaimed descendants, in this case descended from the Fifth Patriarch Hongren: the notorious Shenxiu, but also Faru and Xu-anze, all in competition with Huineng. Seeing this, we understand how disputed the lineages were in China, and how often they were rewritten to accommodate the needs of posterity. Nevertheless these maneuvers affect neither the sense nor the scope of the Chinese Zen teachings.

2. Mondò is the ritualized encounter with the Master in which the Student poses questions, often in public. Conversely, the koans are questions posed to the Student, who must give his answer in private. Hua tou is the very root of the koan, in which the practitioner brings with him a phrase from a sūtra, or a question, for example, “Who is it who …” is walking, drinking, etc., thus creating with ever-greater subtlety the “Great Doubt”.

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the Western quarter. You will ask how that perception is to be formed. I will explain it now. All beings, if not blind from birth, are uniformly possessed of sight, and they all see the setting sun. Thou shouldst sit down properly, looking in the Western direction, and prepare thy thoughts for a close meditation on the sun; cause thy mind to be firmly fixed (on it) so as to have unwavering perception by the exclusive application (of thy thought), and gaze upon it (more particularly) when it is about to set and looks like a suspended drum.

After thou hast thus seen the sun, let (that image) remain clear and fixed, whether thine eyes be shut or open; — such is the perception of the sun, which is the first meditation”[3].

Before getting into the history of the connection between Zen tradition and that of the Pure Land - inspired by this sūtra - I would like to emphasize the great respect that Hongren has for this practice, which he here recommends as the most essential Zen meditation.

I believe that this information can help us understand a key point concerning the birth but also the eternal essence of Zen.

Let us return to the question of the passage from Hongren to Huineng, Fifth and Sixth Patriarchs. As mentioned in the previ-ous note, the historical sources now available to us disagree about whether the Patriarchate was conferred to Huineng or Shenxiu. The fact remains that the Platform Sūtra is the only Chinese text that was accepted into the Chinese Buddhist tripitaka, the canon of Mahayana Buddhist sacred texts. In any case, if as it appears

3. Buddha Amitayus’ Contemplation Sūtra, also called the Meditation Sūtra, is considered by all of the Pure Land schools one of the canonic sūtras, where-as the other sūtras are the Sukhavati-vyuha and the Abbreviated Sukhava-ti-vyuha. The first English translation is by J. Takakusu, published as Vol-ume XLIX of the Sacred Books of the East series (Oxford, 1894), reprinted by Dover Publications. This source was justly cited also by Leonardo Arena in Antologia del Buddhismo Ch’an, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 1994.

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from the Platform Sūtra, Huineng represented the continuation of the chan tradition for the following centuries, we may observe in his thought the philosophical turning point concerning how en-lightenment is realized. In his teaching, enlightenment is realized mysteriously, certainly not gradually, both because it is innate, and because it is actualized in an eternal instant that happens, yes, on a certain day of a person’s life - but not thanks to any ascetic striving, or the accumulation of some kind of spiritual credit. Thus according to Huineng dhyana does not produce prajna. Alongside the practice of zazen, silent, unstructured, open meditation, this possibility of sudden enlightenment became one of the fundamen-tal principles of Zen.

To the differences that Huineng the Sixth Patriarch felt and desired based on his comprehension of the Diamond Sūtra were summed the variables in methodology invented by his descen-dants. They all wanted to emphasize the concept of “un-produced” Prajna even more strongly, so that it could be understood even by the Chinese mentality - for it seems that the idea that enlighten-ment-does-not-depend-directly-on-meditation-practice was not immediately accepted into the methods adopted until the Fifth Patriarch’s day.

Nevertheless, the meditation practice as dictated by Hongren reminds us of something.

Recently various techniques defined as sun-gazing, phosphen-ism, etc., have been described on the internet, designed to stimu-late the brain, hypothalamus, and the production of new endocrine secretions. The practice consists in the contemplation of the light, preferably sunlight[4], an exercise I find worrisome, like the various attempts to nourish oneself with light. In truth, this stimulation may be produced also by protracted time in the dark, which explains why Bodhidharma meditated in a cave, facing the blind wall.

How can I allow myself such a conclusion? Those unfamiliar

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with the latest archeological and historical discoveries, and the specific Persian, Tibetan and Indian teachings may be perplexed, especially those who have never heard of the by now evident his-torical and methodological connections between Chinese Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, or, to be even more precise, the connections between zen and dzogchen, as testified by the scrolls found at the Dunhuang oasis in the Gobi desert[5].

As soon as they were discovered, first the Orientalist and sinol-ogist Stein, and then Kvaerne, each with his respective research team, began to translate pages and pages of Buddhist, Man-ichee, Taoist, Nestorian and Confucian texts. The astonishing thing was that these texts were discovered in a Buddhist context, as if the confrontation between religions were perfectly normal.

Not only: Tibetan sources as well document a centuries-long history of those entwinements; entire lineages of dzogchen, from the Council of Samye on, were penetrated by the hansan moheyan doctrine, or by the Oshang Mahayana, the ancient Mahayana mas-ters. Though the etymology of the word is not yet entirely clear, we know by now that it refers to zen.

Simply because of the assonance, Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci intuitively associated the Chinese term tsochan (= seated medita-tion) with dzogchen[6]. Etymologically there is no reason to think this, but it shows that Tucci may have guessed, or perhaps already knew something.

4. These exercises should be practiced with extreme caution and for a very brief time so as not to provoke serious consequences.

5. See The International Dunhuang Project, and in particular the studies analysing these scrolls by Yanagida Seizan, Iriya Yoshita- ka and Tanaka Ryosho on Ch’an, particularly the study-guide Tonko zenshū bunken no kenkyū, or “Studies of the Dunhuang Documents Regarding Zen”.

6. Le Religioni del Tibet, Giuseppe Tucci, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma, 1983.

7. Obaku was Rinzai’s teacher.

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In fact dzogchen contains a group of practices called mannagde in Tibetan (Skr. upadesha) involving concentrating on the sun. At the same time, in the semde section, we find the practice of seated meditation, exactly as taught in the Northern Chinese Zen school. Furthermore, the connection between the Ch’an and Pure Land schools dates far back in time, not just to the Sung period when the two schools both practiced the cult of Buddha Amitabha, as was thought until just recently, but evidently much earlier. The Obaku[7] school, the third Zen school present in Japan today after the Rinzai and Soto, contains the cult of Amitabha in its teach-ings. Everything we can add appears to take us further in the same direction.

Etymologically, the two archetypical Buddhas Amitayus and Amitabha are related to Life and Light, respectively, thus defining themselves as two manifestations of the enlightening sun. It seems to me that the former is related to the evocation of vital force, called joriki in Japanese, and the latter to the salvific force called tariki. Joriki is an early but important moment in the development of the student of Zen, the development of the will, strength of character and vital force, while tariki has to do with the aperture to the salvific function of Amitabha Buddha, called Amituofo in Chinese, or Amida in Japanese.

In some ways Amitabha has to do with the innate enlightened nature of all beings, which must be ritualized or recognized before it may be realized. If it is true that the common man has trouble understanding how he can possibly already be Buddha, he can still comprehend how Buddha will save him, even if he is no saint. This is why we invoke Amitabha in order to be reborn in the Pure Land of the West, even if the priests of this cult hint at the congruous, if apparently romantic idea that the entrance to the Pure Land hangs in the dewdrop awaiting the first ray of sunlight to strike the blade of grass.

Amitayus, the divinity that grants Longevity is particularly

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worshipped in Tibet. I myself was initiated to this divinity sev-eral times, according to various lineages. I also received the ini-tiation to Amitabha, tied particularly to the practice of po-wa, or the great transferral, one of the six yogas of Naropa[8]. Curiously, this teaching is tied to Avalokiteshvara (Tib. Cenresig), both of which emanate from the paradise of Dewachen (Skr. Sukhavati).

I fondly remember my visit to a Ch’an temple in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where they practiced zazen, the classic Zen seated meditation, and during the walking meditation, between sessions, they sang the praises of the salvific power of the vow of Amitabha, explaining how this was implanted in us like an eternal seed. Dev-otees of this cult, many of whom were laymen, were gifted with a very comforting sweetness. I warmly recall my visit to the princi-pal Jodo-Shinsu temple in Japan, Kyoto’s Hongagnji, where I had a friendly chat with an elderly practitioner. Similarly, I remember the chanting of the sūtras at the butsudan or family altar of a group of Amidists where I had been invited to officiate even though I was a monk of the Zen school.

Within and around the Obaku school temples where the cult of Amida is practiced within the daily zen discipline, there is an air of peace unique in the world.

Zen discipline may be summarized like this:

• Kyoge betsuden: a living communion that has no need of doctrine,

• Furyu monji… and is thus beyond the canonic scriptures,• Jikishi ninshin... that, aiming straight to the heart,• Kenshō jobutsu... directly reveals the illuminated nature of

my being (Buddha).

All of this informs the practice that in Zen has three precise, essential ends:

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8. The Six Yogas of Naropa (tib. Naro-cho-yung, or the six dharmas of Na-ropa) are a group of Indo-Tibetan initiatory techniques transmitted with-in the kargyupa lineage. The guiding technique on internal heat (Tib. dumo) is practiced in a simplified yet still incisive way in the ruxan and semzin teachings in the Tibetan dzogchen lineages. Hakuin too teaches it, though re-translated from the pranic energy sphere to that of the qi with the So Elixir technique. Nevertheless, further ahead I explain the technique of dumo or internal heat as it is given in the dzogchen tradition.

• Joriki, or the development of concentration through medita-tion, influence of the Masters, and force of character.

• Kenshō-godo, or the realization of enlightenment-Kenshō as the original peak experience and as original reality-Satori without return.

• Mujodo no taigen, or full realization of Satori in daily life.

This dry, essential presentation, besides what is explained in it, is intended to help understand the quality of the spirit of Zen, the same quality we find ever since the beginning, thanks to the silent, ascetic figure of Bodhidharma.