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Certainly it is true that many of the Awakened Ancestors were giants in terms
of the impact they had upon the practice and lives of others. Even to this day and
right now. And certainly it is even true that there has been a kind of a golden age in
which hundreds of Great Masters such as Mazu, Zhaozhou, Dongshan, Linji and so on
were alive. But Dongshan, Huineng, Sakyamuni were all skin, meat, bone, and
marrow. Regardless of legends about miraculous births, they were all born of
mothers and all had to learn to walk before taking seven steps, and to talk before
proclaiming the Lion’s Roar of the Dharma. They all ate and shat and stank and
washed. They all lived real lives although much of what has come down to us now
are mere legends.
My point however is not that we need to pull them down and push their faces
in the mud and pretend that they were just like us. The point is not that they are like
you but that you are like them. We need to see through the mythologies and legends
of the ancient Ancestors to see, not so much the details of their historical lives, but
of how and why they lived as they did. We need to know what they were doing when
they did what they did. Through doing what they were doing in what we do, we come
to realize what they realized. And what we realize is that we are who they were.
Which brings me to another thing we might do with inspirational exemplars.
Someone once told me that I must have deep admiration for Dogen zenji and I
looked at him in astonishment. He meant that he thought that I regarded Dogen as a
kind of saint or great historical figure the way that some people might regard Saint
Francis of Assisi or Alexander the Great or Albert Einstein and that I was inspired by
and wanted to emulate him. As a kind of hero or “star”. I was shocked and disgusted
because that is not at all how I perceive Dogen or any of the Ancestors of our
Lineage nor how I would have you know them. 
Dogen was just how Sakyamuni would have presented the Dharma if he had
been Dogen. Huineng was just how Hongren would have been if he had been
Huineng. I am just how Joshu Dainen would have been if he had been me. Dogen
was just how I would have been if I had been Dogen. Joshu Dainen was just how
Eihei Dogen would have been had he been Joshu Dainen. Shikai Zuiko will be just
how I would be if I were her. Some of the Ancestors have been greater than others,
better calligraphers, more or less articulate, more or less effective in this way or
that. But what each of the Ancestors essentially was is always the same. They are
not people out there, apart from us. Who we are is what they were and this is the
source of what they were doing when they did what they did. This is how I would like
you to use the examples that Dogen brings up. Not as great heroes, not as someone
other than you. 
Let us turn again now to what Dogen says about Huineng.
The Sixth Ancestor, Huineng, had been a woodcutter in the Xin region and
could hardly be called learned. He lost his father when he was young, and had
been raised by his aged mother. He worked cutting wood to support her. One
day, at a crossroads, he heard a passage being recited from a sutra² and he
left his mother and set out to seek the Dharma. He was a great vessel, the
kind of person rarely seen in any age, an exemplar in his practise of the Way.
There are a great many sources for stories of Huineng’s life and Teachings but
they were all composed or at least collected after his death. As the Thirty-Third
Ancestor, the Sixth in China, he was used by a student named Shenhui³ as a kind of
trump card in the game of patronage in the early days of Chan against the Ox Head
and East Mountain schools of Chan. By insisting that only Huineng had received the
Fifth Ancestor’s Transmission and that there could be only one Ancestor in each
                                                
2
The phrase “give rise to the mind which abides nowhere” from the Diamond sutra.
3
Heze Shenhui (Ho-tse Shen-hui, Kataku Jinne), 670-762.