Zen in Ten: Lingzhao's Shining Grasses
Is Life Easy or Difficult?
Lingzhao was the daughter of the famed Layman Pangyun, and herself noted as an adept. For most of her life she traveled with him in poverty, seeking teaching and doing cave meditation. She is the model for Fishbasket Guanyin (one of the 33 forms of the Bodhisattva of compassion) and much admired for the simplicity and confidence of her practice.1
Linghzhao helped to support the family financially by selling baskets. She and her parents all shared a love for the Dharma and often engaged in friendly debates.2 Below is one such instance that’s recorded in The Sayings of Layman P’ang.
Layman P’ang was sitting in his thatched cottage one day, studying the sutras. “Difficult, difficult, difficult,” he suddenly exclaimed, “like trying to store ten bushels of sesame seed in the top of a tree.”
“Easy, easy, easy,” his wife, Laywoman P’ang, answered. “It’s like touching your feet to the floor when you get out of bed.”
'“Neither difficult nor easy,” said their daughter Lingzhao. “It’s like the teachings of the ancestors shining on the hundred grass tips.” 3
In the above passage, “The Layman’s daughter, Ling-chao, is referring to a line from the Third Ancestor’s work the “Treatise on Believing in Mind” that says, “Though the Great Way is expansive, treading upon it is neither hard nor easy."4
“Lingzhao teaches her parents that since we are surrounded by true realization, our awakening is dependent on seeing wisdom on each tip of grass. It is neither difficult nor easy, we just need to maintain the effort to keep returning to the practice, looking for the teaching fully manifest in every situation.”5
“When Lingzhao says it’s not the one or the other [easy or difficult], she’s not denying anything. The daughter is by birthright a synthesis of her father and mother. Reality is neither difficult nor easy: those are both opinions. . . Living beings encounter great hardship as well as great joy; we fulfill our humanity through both streams.”6
This exchange between Lingzhao and her parents displays “their training method and the lack of traditional Confucian boundaries as daughter challenges both her mother and her father’s understanding of how realization unfolds through Buddhist practice.”7
Lingzhao offers us the living Dharma. She wove baskets to support her family, and here she weaves for us a basket of all the myriad phenomena, often spoken of in Zen as ‘the hundred grasses.’ In this interwoven universe, the many contain the one, at the same time that one contains the all. ‘The teachings of the ancestors’ are the wisdom of the Buddhadharma, which naturally shines forth from the tips of every swaying blade of grass. How could it be otherwise, when the myriad beings are themselves the one Dharma universe manifesting itself.”8
Marcia Lieberman’s verse: “As we walk the Way, the heart-mind of the ancestors is in every blade of grass, and they all hold us up.”
One day, while they were meditating, the Layman turned to Ling-chao and said, “There is a man of old who said, 'Each blade of grass is clear-cut, the mind of the Patriarchs is clear-cut. What is your understanding of this?”
Ling-chao said, “Our old friend has said it well.”
The Layman said, “But what about you?”
Ling-chao said, “Each blade of grass is clear-cut, the mind of the Patriarchs is clear-cut” The Layman laughed.9
https://www.ancientdragon.org/women-ancestors/
Schireson, Grace. Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters. Somerville, MA, Wisdom Publications, 2009.
Caplow, Florence and Susan Moon. The Hidden Lamp. Boston, Wisdom Publications, 2013.
Green, James, trans. The Sayings of Layman P’ang: A Zen Classic of China. Boston & London. Shambhala, 2009.
Schireson, Grace.
Caplow, Florence and Susan Moon.
Schireson, Grace.
Caplow, Florence and Susan Moon.
Green, James.