Well, today I would like to talk about the ninth case of the Blue Cliff Record. This is the introduction to the case. When the bright mirror is on its stand, beauty and ugliness are distinguished by themselves. With a sharp sword in your hand, you can kill or bring life to fit the occasion. A foreigner comes and a native goes. In the midst of death, you find life. In the midst of life, death. But tell me, when you get to this point, then what? If you don't have the eye to penetrate barriers, if you don't have any place to turn yourself

[01:11]

around in, at this point, obviously, you won't know what to do. Tell me, what is the eye that penetrates barriers? What is the place to turn around in? To test, I cite this. Check it out. Then comes the main case. A monk asked Zhao Zhou, what is Zhao Zhou? Zhao Zhou replied, East gate, West gate, South gate, North gate. That's the end of the case. And Master Sui Do's poem on that case goes like this. In their words, they show their ability in direct confrontation.

[02:13]

The diamond eye is completely void of dust. East, West, South, North, the gates face each other. An endless series of hammer blows can't smash them open. So let's talk about that a little bit. So, it's traditional to talk about the person who appears in the case, great master Zhao Zhou. So, I'll tell you a little bit about him, just so that you can get used to him and feel like you know him. He's one of my favorite all-time Zen masters. And he was living during the time when the Zen teaching was really going through its

[03:23]

most creative development in China. And he lived from 778 to 897, that's a long life, 120 years. So he's famous for his long life. His teacher was Nanchuan, and he went to Nanchuan as a young monk when he was 18 or 19. And I like very much the story of their original meeting. Nanchuan was taking a nap or something when the young Zhao Zhou came to visit him, and so Nanchuan was lying down and asked Zhao Zhou the very common question, sort of a trick question, you know, where do you come from? And Zhao Zhou said, I come from the Great Image Temple, which was apparently the name

[04:31]

of the temple where he had traveled from. And Nanchuan said, did you see the Great Image? And Zhao Zhou said, no, but I can see a reclining Buddha right in front of me. And Nanchuan said, do you come here as a teacherless, masterless monk, or do you have a teacher? And Zhao Zhou said, these winter days are chilly. I hope your good health continues. And this was their meeting. And Zhao Zhou remained studying with Nanchuan for 40 years after that. And so you can imagine in 40 years many things happened.

[05:36]

And many of these old cases are about the days when Nanchuan was master of his monastery on Nanchuan Mountain, and Zhao Zhou was with him. And together how they had fun and how they helped the other students to realize their true nature, the basic, settling into the basic fact of their own lives. Many famous cases. One of them that's, I think, particularly salient is one time when Zhao Zhou asked Nanchuan again one of these old questions that was asked time and time again, Zhao Zhou asked, what is the way, the path? And Nanchuan replied, ordinary mind. It's just ordinary mind.

[06:39]

And Zhao Zhou thought about this and he said, if it's just ordinary mind, how can you know it? And Nanchuan said, if you try to know it, you'll only stray away from it. And Zhao Zhou thought about this for a while and he said, well, then how do we practice? Good questions, no? Yeah. How do we practice then, if it's already here and if we can't go toward it? How do we practice? And Nanchuan said, it's not a matter of knowing or not knowing. And knowing is always false and not knowing is just plain stupidity.

[07:53]

If you really are on the path, it's just a great void, an empty hall, just like this hall, completely empty, open, it's just the doors are just open. How could there be talk of affirmation and denial? So it's a very famous exchange between Nanchuan and Zhao Zhou. So Nanchuan died when Zhao Zhou was 60 years old, after 40 years, you know, about 60 years old, Nanchuan died. And so then Zhao Zhou thought, well, now, after 40 years with Nanchuan, I will go here and there to test my understanding and really begin my time of opening up my practice. So he went on pilgrimage and he said, when he was about to embark on his pilgrimage, he said, as I go, if I should meet a young girl of 7 years old who can teach me the Dharma,

[09:05]

definitely I will study with her. And if I meet an old man of 90 years old, a great Zen master, who has something to learn from me, then I will teach him. Which I think is a wonderful attitude for study and I recommend that we should all have such an attitude all the time, a beautiful spirit. Twenty years he tested himself visiting various masters and there are also records of his encounters with them. And finally after 20 years of this kind of travel, he finally thought, well, maybe I better start teaching now. Well, not that I couldn't travel 20 years more, but maybe I just might as well arbitrarily stop here anyway. So at the age of 80, he set up shop in a town called Zhao Zhou, which is a little unusual

[10:07]

because usually the great Zen masters had monasteries on lofty peaks, on mountains. But Zhao Zhou's place was in a town called Zhao Zhou that was not a large town, but it was famous for a beautiful bridge, a beautiful stone bridge that they tell me is still standing in this town in China, although I've never seen it or seen a picture of it. But I would like to see a picture of it, and he has a picture of the bridge of Zhao Zhou. I'd like to see it. Anyway, he settled in this town and into a temple dedicated to the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guan Yin, in the town of Zhao Zhou, and that's where he taught. And he lived for 40 more years and taught from the age of 80 to the age of 120, if you can believe the stories, which are probably almost true. I'm sure he was old, whether he was 120, who knows.

[11:08]

So if you think about his life, you imagine that he must have been a person of great faithfulness. You don't hang around a place for 40 years unless you have a lot of faithfulness. He was not a person who was restless or flashy or probably very brilliant. Suzuki Roshi always said, the only reason I hung around with my master is because I was too stupid to leave. Everybody else left, and I didn't realize that I could, so I stayed. Maybe Zhao Zhou was a little bit like that. He didn't sort of have the pizzazz to look for greener pastures, so he just stayed. So he probably was a very faithful and very humble person to study for so long, you know, you can imagine. And he seemed to have a very simple, quiet temperament. I think one reason why Suzuki Roshi liked him so much, probably one reason why was because

[12:16]

Dogen liked him a lot, and Suzuki Roshi liked Dogen Zenji. But I think more than that, I think Zhao Zhou probably had a temperament very similar to Suzuki Roshi's, very sweet, very simple, and also, of course, very deep. And there are about a dozen cases in the Blue Cliff Record involving Zhao Zhou more than any other Zen master. And probably the most famous koan of all involves Master Zhao Zhou, the one that opens up the Mumonkan, the gateless barrier collection. Probably everybody knows the koan, does the dog have Buddha nature? Zhao Zhou replied, no. It's usually left untranslated from the Japanese, mu, but it just means no. And this way that the koan is usually presented, does the dog have Buddha nature, mu, that's

[13:24]

more Master Mumon than it is Master Zhao Zhou. Master Mumon cuts the dialogue off there and makes it sound like a big thing, you know. But actually Zhao Zhou just said, no. And in other sources you see that in fact the dialogue went on from there. Does the dog have Buddha nature, no. Well everything has Buddha nature, why not this dog? And Zhao Zhou said, oh it's just because he still has discriminative consciousness, which must have left the monk scratching his head, I would think. So I think because of his temperament and also probably it was also relevant that he

[14:26]

began teaching at the age of 80 with probably very little that he needed to prove to anyone, including himself, that his teaching style was very much like that, very, very simple. Some Zen masters like Linji or Rinzai were very strong and harsh, fierce, you know, even physical with their students. Some like Dengxian, Tozan, were lofty, poetic or philosophical in their sayings and doings. Some, like the great master Yunmen, were famous for posing unanswerable questions and answering unquestionable answers. And we think of these people when we think of the Zen approach. But actually Zhao Zhou's responses were always this way, you know, very simple and plain.

[15:32]

But at the same time, very, very deep. And I imagine that his encounters with students left the students often not sure at all what had happened. Whether something very profound had just occurred or whether the teacher was asleep at the wheel. It's hard to tell, I think, sometimes. And often, you know, you don't know if he's saying anything or not, you know. For instance, there's a case in the Mumenkan where a monk newly arrives at the monastery and says to Zhao Zhou, as one would certainly ask, you know, Please, teacher, tell me, how shall I practice? And Zhao Zhou said, Have you eaten yet?

[16:33]

And the monk said, Yes, I have. Zhao Zhou said, Then please wash out your bowls. You know, was he saying anything or not? Today's talk is actually the inaugural talk, I think it is anyway, of a seven-week, 49-day fall practice period. And all the students have come from all over the place, all over the country and outside the country, to spend this fall period together practicing the Buddha way. They and we at the temple have been preparing for this for a long time. And so maybe you who are in the practice period are wondering, How should I practice during this precious time?

[17:39]

And I would echo Master Zhao Zhou, Have you eaten yet? Have you had your breakfast this morning? Will we have lunch soon? Is there anything unclear in your life? Aren't you a human being? And don't you, as a human being, already have the light of consciousness in the center of your heart? How could you even know your own name, if you didn't? How could you respond? When you were called, if this wasn't so? And isn't the relief or the wisdom that you seek, actually only the essence of who you already are? So, just wash your bowls.

[18:50]

Don't get stuck anywhere. All you have to do, as we said the other day in the orientation, is follow the schedule. Zazen, kin-hin, service, breakfast, work, service, lunch, work, study hall. Zazen, service, dinner, zazen, sleep. Zazen, kin-hin, zazen, sleep. So on, like that. That's all you have to do. Just do each thing completely, understanding that each thing that you do as the enlightenment you seek and already have, and then forget about it, and let go of it, and meet the next moment. It really is as simple as that. So, that's all by way of introducing Master Jajo.

[20:02]

Now we have to... See, Zen teachers don't really have to worry about how they organize their talk. All you've got to do is read the case and then talk about the pointer, introduction, and so on. So that's what I'll do now. The introduction says, When the bright mirror is on its stand, beauty and ugliness are distinguished. With a sharp sword in your hand, you can kill or bring life to fit the occasion. So these lines in Zen lingo bring up really the whole, the completion, the whole ball of wax of our practice. The bright mirror is the human function, the human possibility of being able to clearly observe what's going on

[21:03]

without being caught by desire and ego and projection and confusion, just to see what's happening, just to see things as they really are. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad. If it's pleasant, it's pleasant. If it's unpleasant, it's unpleasant. And it is extra, counterproductive and completely unnecessary for us to interpret or judge or wish for anything other than what is simply there in front of us. So that's the first thing. Not easy to do, but that's what we work with in our Zazen and in our approach to our daily life. It would be nice if that were enough, but it can't be enough, because every moment of our lives calls us,

[22:04]

and we have to answer. Every moment, we absolutely must do something. We must respond to conditions. How are we going to do this with clarity and kindness? How are we going to do this without holding on to a shadow of the past, a shadow of desire? And this is what Zazen is all about, and this is what practice period especially is all about. The bell rings, and it's time to move on to the next thing and bring ourselves completely to it, ready, fresh. And moment after moment, our lives are always like this. We eat, we wash our bowls. Then Yuan Wu's introduction goes on, A foreigner comes and a native goes.

[23:10]

Again, more Zen lingo to express something very simple. Always in our lives, we are either foreigners or natives, we're old or young, experienced or inexperienced, and everything in between. And life is an endless series of initiations and culminations, beginnings and endings, excitements and letdowns. And that's really true. So how do we experience these things and not pretend that we don't, but experience them without being caught by them? In other words, how can we admit our actual state of mind without clutching it and digging a big hole for ourselves? How can we own the experience of our lives without becoming victims of it,

[24:17]

blinded by our experience? Sometimes a foreigner, sometimes a native. In the midst of death, you find life. In the midst of life, you find death. I like this time of year, the fall. It's my favorite time of year. It's interesting, everyone in my family was born in the fall, and everyone in my immediate family who has passed on, passed on in the fall. So for me, the fall feels like a bittersweet time of beginning. To me, it makes sense that life begins in darkness. Because life needs to gather energy before it can burst forth.

[25:21]

A seed has to grow in the dark. If you put a seed out in the light, it dries up and dies. So I think it's good that we begin our practice period in the fall, in the darkening time of the year. And it feels now, the practice period, fresh and bright. Like it's just being born, full of expectation and promise. And, this afternoon, in the garden, we'll have a memorial service for Fran Tribe, who is a dear friend and a sister priest, who was perfectly fine,

[26:32]

young person, maybe, I don't know how old she was, maybe 50 or 51 or something like that, five months ago, perfectly fine, and then received a diagnosis of serious cancer, and died just about a week ago, tonight. She was just beginning to teach Dharma and to find her own way. She was an extremely courageous and clear person, and I really enjoyed my time of study with her, and I really will miss her, you know, coming to session, and especially her brilliant letters. She was a wonderful writer, and the way that she pursued her practice with such passion and such tenacity. But I have to remember, too, that in her death,

[27:39]

there is also life. And if I really appreciate my grief in losing her, I will understand my own life, and I will know that her life, although it appears to be gone, isn't actually. In the same way that if I really appreciate the beginning of this fresh, new practice period, I will also appreciate that in another way, it is already over, and that everything that we will realize in our seven weeks of practice together is already realized, and that if this were not so, we could never appear here together in the first place. So a monk asked Master Zhaozhou, what is Zhaozhou?

[28:41]

And Zhaozhou replied, East Gate, West Gate, North Gate, South Gate. As I said, Zen teachers are usually named after the place where they live and teach for many years. Almost as if the person disappears completely and there is only the spirit of the place. That's what the person is, the spirit of the place where he or she lives and teaches. Or as if the place disappears and only exists as the Dharma itself. So when the student asks what is Zhaozhou, he's asking, this is a clever student, a good student, who knows this, and he's asking a simple question but a deep question. What is the objective world and what is the subjective world?

[29:43]

What is the person and what is the environment? Is it possible, really, to bring up one without the other? When our students went some weeks ago up to the headwaters to stand up for the ancient redwood trees, really they were standing up for their very own lives, their very own minds. When all of us here participate, as we have to now, in conserving water here at Green Gulch and resources so as not to make a mess and a problem in our temple or on our planet, it's really our own minds and hearts that we're conserving. And everything is precious because there is no inside and no outside. So all of this is implied and brought up in the student's very simple question.

[30:44]

What is Zhaozhou? And Zhaozhou replies to the monk, East gate, West gate, North gate, South gate. He doesn't give any explanations. He doesn't shock or confront the student. He just points to the gates of the city. East gate, West gate, North gate, South gate. Just a simple fact. There is no fixed person called Zhaozhou. There is no fixed place called Zhaozhou. To get caught on that is already to be doomed. Things just come and go freely. Not just the things that we like, but everything. Everything and anything comes and goes through the open gates of the city. If you want to know what the city of Zhaozhou really is,

[31:52]

if you want to understand the teachings of the great Zen master Zhaozhou, that's all there is to it. Everything is coming and going, moment by moment. Nothing is excluded and nothing remains. And the gates of the city are the city. The activity of eye and ear and mind is Zhaozhou. Everywhere gates, open gates. We say Dharma gates are endless, are numberless. I vow to enter them. And there are gates. Gates define a city. Or they did anyway in ancient China. Just like our history, our mind and our body define us. And just as the cushions

[32:54]

and the tans and the rules for using the zendo define the zendo or the schedule defines the practice period. In this world of appearances there must be such definitions. But the definitions are opportunities, not fixed things. And if we make them fixed, we close the gates and we can never get in. The gates are open, useful and free. As Suzuki Roshi says somewhere in Zen Mind, beginner's mind, eye is a swinging door, breathing in, breathing out, moment after moment. So this is a really important point in our Zen study. Not to have fixed ideas. We all are philosophers, you know. Whether we are professors of philosophy or

[33:57]

gardeners or cooks or Zen teachers or whatever we do, we're all philosophers. We all have our idea about how things go, how things are. No matter how unexamined that idea may be, it's there in us. And one of the things that happens in our practice is we get to see how much that's true and how those ideas are arbitrary and cause us to suffer. And the suffering nature of fixed ideas and the pivotal aspect of fixed ideas to be let go of as the linchpin of our practice was something that the Buddha saw very early on. And we were studying lately a sutra and I want to tell you about this sutra because it's got in it a very famous image that I think is instructive.

[35:01]

This sutra appears in the old first teachings of Buddha in the Majjhima Nikaya, the middle-length discourses of the Pali Canon. The shorter discourse on Malayunkaputta, number 63, in the Majjhima Nikaya, it's kind of a funny story. Once there was a monk called Malayunkaputta who was sitting meditating and all of a sudden, maybe this happened to you one time, all of a sudden in the middle of his meditation he got really angry and upset with the Buddha. He was sitting there and all of a sudden he thought to himself, you know, I really want to know, is the world eternal or not? Is there life after death? Is the world finite or infinite? Is the soul the same as the body or not? And so on, he rattles off a list of all these sort of things

[36:07]

that he really wants to know about. And the Buddha never mentioned anything about these things. And I'm really a little upset about that. He's sitting there meditating thinking it's getting more and more upset. And he says, and you know, I'm going to go ask him. And if he won't tell me, I quit. So, he gets up from his meditation seat, he goes right to the Buddha and he says, you know, like this language of the sutra, you can imagine this monk saying this. He says, Venerable Sir, addressing the Buddha, while I was alone in meditation, the following thought arose in my mind. And then he tells him all this stuff. What about it? Is the world finite or infinite? Is the world eternal or temporary? Is the soul the same as the body or not? And all these things. And he says, now, if the Blessed One knows, that's the way that they address the Buddha, if the Blessed One knows the world is eternal, etc., etc.,

[37:09]

all you have to do is tell me. If the Blessed One knows the world is not eternal, etc., etc., just tell me. On the other hand, if the Blessed One does not know whether the world is eternal or not, then it would be straightforward for one who does not know and does not see to simply say, I do not know, I do not see, and I will be satisfied with that, but I don't like it that you're not saying. And if you don't say, I'm out of here because it's not right that you don't say. This it says in the sutra. This really happened to one Buddhist student. And so he repeats all this and the Buddha listens to it and he thinks about it and he says, well, he says, I'll ask you, did I tell you when you came that if you come and study with me I'm going to tell you whether the world is eternal or not eternal and whether there's life after death? Did I say, did I mention that these things would be forthcoming?

[38:10]

And Mahayana Kaputa says, well, no, it's true, you didn't say that you would tell me or not. And the Buddha said, if you or someone else were to wait around for me to make assertions on these topics one way or the other, you would die before I did. And wouldn't that be a waste of time? He said, and here's the part that maybe you heard about this part, very famous image from the early sutras. The Buddha said to him, it would be like a person who was wounded by an arrow which was thickly smeared with poison and his friends and companions, his kinsmen and relatives, they brought a surgeon to treat him. And the man would say to his gathered kinsmen and friends and the surgeon, I will not let the surgeon pull out this arrow until I know whether the man who wounded me

[39:15]

was a noble or a brahman or a merchant or a worker. And he would say, I will not let the surgeon pull out this arrow until I know the name and clan of the man who wounded me. Until I know whether the man who wounded me was tall or short or middle height. Until I know whether the man who wounded me was dark or brown or golden skinned. Until I know whether the man who wounded me lives in such a village or town or city. Until I know whether the bow that wounded me was a big bow or a small bow or a crossbow. Until I know whether the bow string that wounded me was fiber or reed or sinew or hemp or bark, until I know whether the shaft that wounded me was wild or cultivated, from a wild or cultivated tree or bush, until I know with what kind of feathers the shaft that wounded me was fitted, whether those

[40:17]

of a vulture or a crow or a hawk or a peacock or a stork, until I know with what kind of sinew the shaft that wounded me was bound, whether that of an ox or a buffalo or a lion or a monkey, until I know what kind of arrow it was that wounded me, whether it was hoof-tipped or curved or barbed or calf-toothed or oleander, anyway, asking all these questions. And then Buddha said, and all this, the person would never know the answer to all this and he would die. And it's just like you, Manjunkeputra. You ask all these things of me and I'm not going to tell you anything. It's not that I know or that I don't know, you see? Not that I know or that I don't know, that's not the point. The point is, Manjunkeputra, if there is a view, the world is eternal, or the world is

[41:23]

not eternal, etc., etc., if there is such a view, the holy life cannot be lived. So that's why I don't say one way or the other. And he said, Manjunkeputra, what I have left undeclared, I have left undeclared on purpose. Why? Because it is unbeneficial, it does not belong to the fundamentals of the holy life, it does not lead to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to nirvana. But it's not that I've said nothing. In fact, I have declared something and what I have declared you should pay attention to. So, what have I declared? I have said, this is suffering, this is the cause of suffering, this is the end of suffering,

[42:28]

this is the path. I have declared that and why have I declared that? Because this is beneficial, this will lead to peace, this will lead to direct knowledge, this will lead to nirvana. So don't bother about what I have left undeclared, I have left it undeclared on purpose. And although this sutra doesn't mention it, later on in his life, Manjunkeputra did become enlightened and let go and find real peace, letting go of all these views. So the point of this present case and the point of our practice, the point of Buddhadharma, is to see suffering honestly and deeply and to let go of it by allowing life to be life

[43:36]

and ourselves to be ourselves as we are and just cooperating with that, come what may. In his commentary to this case, Zen Master Yuan Wu says it very nicely, it is necessary to cut off views, to see the truth outside of any pattern, to see the truth outside of any pattern and it's only when you can do this that you can penetrate through to freedom, he says. And then, you are like a dragon who gains the water or a tiger who enters the mountain. In other words, you are in your element, you cooperate with your environment, no difference between you and your environment. When you let go of blinding views and projections and desires and notions,

[44:37]

you can be free and easy in the dance of your life. And, you know, this is a tall order and takes time and patience and there's no end, I think, to confronting our views, our deeply held notions and letting go of them. Somebody, Jordan actually, gave me a wonderful newspaper article the other day about Akin Roshi, he's a wonderful Zen teacher from Hawaii, a dear friend and teacher of mine whom I love very much and now Akin Roshi is retired, he's practiced Zen for about probably 50 or 60 years, somewhere between 50 or 60 years and taught Zen for maybe 25 or 30 years. Now he's 80 years old and he's retired and as soon as he retired, we actually had an 80th birthday party for him at Zen Center over in the city

[45:43]

and he came and he had a great big swollen ear and I said, geez, what's the matter with you, what's that? He said, I don't know. Well, it turned out to be Hodgkin's disease, so now he has to have chemotherapy and everything. So this was a newspaper article from a newspaper in Hawaii about him and he says in the article something that I want to read to you, it's very beautiful. He says, The realization I experienced years ago and subsequent glimmers of understanding were in effect within a personal container that rested on a state of deep self-doubt The shock of massive doses of chemotherapy drugs has been to break up the strata and now all my doubts have dropped away At 80 years old I am at last liberated from the resistance I have long felt

[46:48]

to other people and to the outside world generally Every day is a jewel and every jewel is completely different Every act, every thought is new and precious I read the words of the old masters and laugh and laugh and laugh what hilariously funny fellows they were I remember the words and the kindness of all my teachers and weep with gratitude I listen to the music of Bach and Mozart and Haydn and thrill to the gorgeous sound The thrush sings in the early morning in my heart So 80 years old, after 55 years of Zen study and teaching and not only teaching but one of our greatest treasure Zen masters our deepest, most experienced ancestor in the West

[47:49]

at the age of 80 begins again to let go of views and see life fresh So this is necessary for all of us to make that effort to open up the gates of our city and see that the city is nothing other than gates, gates, gates, gates on all sides If we don't do this work, we are going to suffer and those around us will suffer because of our suffering I'm sorry that that's true, but it is, I didn't make it up and it isn't even, you know, about Buddhism it's just true, look around and see, and look inside and see So this is a job that we can't refuse to do

[48:53]

and it's a job that no one can do for you you have to take care of it personally There's a story of another old master who went to the toilet and was urinating and he said, see, even this I have to do personally So you have to do it personally and time is short and there is no more important concern in your life How do we live? What are our lives? The Zen style is very simple

[49:56]

We just sit up straight We just breathe in and breathe out We just try our best to remain aware with passion and insight of each present moment of our lives Not regretting the past or getting stuck on the past Not chasing after the future or being anxious about the future Just investigate closely right now your life as it really is Seeing that absolutely nothing is excluded from your life and absolutely nothing remains When you appreciate this then quite naturally you will be very kind to yourself and very kind and patient with everyone and you will appreciate as Akin Roshi does

[50:59]

what an improbable and marvelous gift this world is So now it remains to discuss a little bit the verse In their words They show their ability in direct confrontation The diamond eye is completely void of dust East, west, south, north, the gates face each other An endless series of hammer blows can't smash them open If we are convinced, as we all are that the gates are closed they're closed and the biggest hammers in the world

[52:01]

pounding on the gates will not open them No amount of struggle, no amount of skill or determination will make any difference at all So I always say that it's embarrassing to spend one's life as a professional Zen because there's absolutely nothing to it There's nothing to it at all And this is literally true And I think this is why Akin Roshi laughs so hard at the hilarious words of the ancients So many words to open up gates that are already open Life is so simple and we make it so difficult So we have to just let go

[53:04]

and take one little step Not later, not from elsewhere but from right where we are wherever that happens to be So I'm finished talking about case nine but before we go, I know I've been going on a long time but I read this great poem today and I want to read you a little poem and then that'll be all This is by the really wonderful Polish poet whose name is Wislawa Szymborska maybe some of you know her work Her poetry is very simple and wonderful and this poem is called The Century's Decline and I can't tell if it has anything

[54:05]

whatever to do with what I was talking about but you'll see yourself Our twentieth century was going to improve on the others It will never prove it now now that its years are numbered its gate is shaky its breath is short Too many things have happened that weren't supposed to happen and what was supposed to come about has not Happiness and spring among other things were supposed to be getting closer Fear was expected to leave the mountains and valleys Truth was supposed to hit home before a lie A couple of problems weren't going to come up anymore

[55:09]

Hunger, for example and war and so forth There was going to be respect for helpless people's helplessness Trust, that kind of stuff Anyone who planned to enjoy the world is now faced with a hopeless task Stupidity isn't funny Wisdom isn't gay Hope isn't that young girl anymore et cetera, alas God was finally going to believe in a person both good and strong but good and strong are still two different people How should we live? Someone asked me in a letter

[56:10]

I had meant to ask him the same question Again and as ever as may be seen above the most pressing questions are naive ones So, thank you very much for your kind attention and patience this morning I hope that you have a wonderful rest of the day May our intention include So, what shall we discuss now? What would you like to bring up? I was wondering if you could talk about mandalas and how they relate to the East, West and South East Mandalas are

[57:28]

symbolic representations of gates So, practicing with a mandala we can enter into the depth of our living But everything is a mandala It's just that since it's hard for us to recognize that we need to set up sometimes artificial mandalas But we could visualize anything and practice a mantra with anything So, the Zen style doesn't use, in a way, the koans or mandalas, right? They're artificial stories from times gone by and people other than us that we can use as gateways into our own experience But if we get hung up on the stories themselves

[58:37]

and not see them as entry points to our own life then that's counterproductive Just as if we make a mandala and we get hung up on the mandala as a physical object and don't use it as a gate So, the Zen tradition doesn't use mandalas in a literal sense other than to enact mandalas in our rituals So, the rituals are all You know, we have a very strict sense of space and entering space and creating mandalas in our daily services and in our various rituals But we don't have that practice that they have in Tibetan Buddhism of creating on the two-dimensional surface a mandala that one would look at and then of visualizing a mandala in our mind's eye as a form of practice It's not characteristic of Zen But having said that, of course, like all traditions that you borrow I'm sure you can find Zen teachers who have worked with mandalas in the past or in the present

[59:40]

But generally speaking, it's not one of our methods Ah, easy job today Since I've been reading a great deal of Zen and come to various services I've been hearing all this about living within the moment and not chasing the future, as Lee Davis mentioned One of the things that comes to my mind is how do you plan it? How can you set your life forward? How can an architect build a house without a plan? And I was just wondering if you could comment on that He basically gives a poem which says

[60:56]

don't get entangled in the future and then he gives a little commentary to his own poem and when he gives a comment to the part about not chasing after the future and not getting entangled in the past he says, and I'm paraphrasing fairly heavily here but he says something like it's not that you shouldn't think about the future or allow thoughts of the past to arise in the mind it's just that you should hold those thoughts wisely and without getting caught by them So, obviously thoughts of the past arise in our minds and that's normal Sometimes you read these Zen texts and it sounds like they're trying to tell you to be like a machine or like a dog that you should only be concerned about lunch and then the rest of your life is gone like you have Alzheimer's

[61:57]

I was reading some Oliver Sacks and he's talking about one guy who had brain damage and so he kind of lost the past and the future and he was living in an ashram and the students in the ashram thought that he was enlightened because he was brain damaged and if you read about his demeanor and the way he was and then you compare that to what it sounds like the Zen texts are saying you would say, oh yeah, that's right, that's how it is to be enlightened is to be like a brain damaged person, you know not having any idea of the future, not having any idea of the past having no identity, just reacting in the present moment but I don't think myself that this is what is meant I don't think that the Buddha was trying to teach that I think that the Buddha was trying to get us to see that when we get hung up on ourselves and therefore, by virtue of being hung up on ourselves

[62:59]

hung up with our anxiety about the future and we can become paralyzed with anxiety about the future and we can become totally paralyzed with concern over the past and repeating patterns of the past so he was saying, when you get stuck on yourself and you're not free with yourself or within yourself or outside yourself or however you want to say it that's neurotic, right? So it's a question of, of course, in the present moment now, today, I mean I have this big fat appointment book myself I have a big fat appointment book in fact, I would say that it's one of the things that I don't like about my life right now is that I seem to spend a huge amount of time planning for the future like I'm going to show up there and do this retreat and then I'm going to go to this and do that but I know that now I'm planning something

[64:00]

see, it's now, this is my activity now and if the past arises in my mind now I know that this is my activity now is to have this thought of a past and so I don't have to be hung up about it I don't have to be nervous about it it's just like anything else that arises in the mind, it comes, it goes so now I plan, if I were to think about the things like I don't even know what I'm doing tomorrow but I have it written down in my little book so I open up the book and I see, oh that's what I'm doing if I were to think about all these things that I'm supposed to do and get anxious about them, oh how am I going to do this and that I would be a very unhappy guy, but I don't think about it I just, now I write it down and do this and it's in the book and that's it so of course we live in a world where it would be quite unkind not to plan for the future like, oh yeah, I'll show up to that retreat

[65:03]

and then the day comes and I say, oh, it was then fifty people are there waiting for me but I say, yeah, that was then I said I was going to do it but now it's a new day, it's fresh, what are you worried about that would be very unkind, right? it would be nasty in a way to do that so one has to be practical, that's why we have a future we have a future so that we can meet each other that's why, because the future and the organized time Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, September, October, November all these things are like agreed upon demarcations in the middle of empty space that we can all agree to meet each other at that, and that's how we do it so it's because of, out of love that we have a future and a past and we must take them seriously in that style, in that way but if we have too much self-concern

[66:05]

and then we get hung up on the future and the past this is a real problem and we create suffering so our practice is very practical it's not about having Zen ideas or something forget Zen ideas, they're the worst ideas you might as well have another set of ideas if you're going to have any ideas Zen ideas are really not helpful it's just practical, how do we live, what are we going to do how do we have some clarity and some kindness in our lives and so the past is gone the future has not yet arrived remember that when you have a memory remember that when you plan for the future if you are clear about that then you can go ahead and have a memory and you can go ahead and plan for the future without too much concern you don't know, I don't know whether I'm going to go to any of those retreats

[67:06]

I really don't a lot of things could happen between now and the time that that retreat comes and I'm quite aware of that and you need to be aware, the future has not yet come, the past is gone that's how we have to hold it I have a friend who is anxious about something that might happen in the future she doesn't have a practice what is good advice to give her well, it would not be good advice to say don't be anxious, the future has not yet come she would say, don't give me that Zen baloney so this would not be a good idea I think the best thing would be just to be sympathetic there's no advice for anybody right nobody has any, no advice you hear what you're ready to hear all the advice in the world doesn't mean anything

[68:08]

avoid advice altogether I would say but do be sympathetic if someone says to you, I'm really anxious about such and such and so and so in the future you look and see and you see that this is a true thing someone really feels that way has a feeling of, it's an unpleasant and difficult feeling and you should be sympathetic to that and say, oh I'm so sorry I'm sorry that you feel that way that's what she tells me, don't give me any advice yeah, well she's right what is emptiness empty of? what is emptiness empty of? emptiness is empty of anything fixed anything hard and fast all our ideas, all our projections, all our notions all these things are figments of our minds empty, it's empty of that

[69:09]

how's that? ask me again next week and we'll see what happens yeah what is emptiness empty of? yeah, so you asked me again thank you very much for your talk Norman it was very good to hear some things that I was reading in Saint Keith by Thich Nhat Hanh the example of the arrow and go and wash your bowl and I have experienced in this week three different losses and I'm trying to be mindful with what I'm doing and just being aware of what is in front of my nose and enjoying life but somehow I feel that I'm walking in the edge of mindfulness and denial by not really I would like

[70:12]

just maybe concentrate on one or the other loss or this sometimes and I know that you said that there's no advice but maybe there's something mindful that you can do with losses and so you don't go into a denial that say well now I'm cutting the wood or I'm doing this and doing that I'm just going to enjoy that or the music somehow there is a place there yeah, well last week I was talking about loss you know the Vipassana newspaper just came out Inquiring Mind and the talk that I gave last week is in the newspaper in the Vipassana newspaper and I was saying in that talk that this is the nature of experience is loss every moment when we have a big loss in our lives we take notice of that but actually every moment you're losing your life

[71:15]

that's why you know we're in a very dangerous situation truly you know we laugh but it's really the truth think of it every moment we're losing our life and so Zen practice is not about denial of loss it's about finding our ease within the actual situation that we're in so when we suffer losses in our lives we have to look at that and use them as ways of deepening our understanding now there's a difference between looking at loss truly and becoming obsessed with our grief grief is proper and not only useful but absolutely necessary but getting obsessed with grief is counterproductive so this means that if you say just like you were saying you have a loss, you're in a grief over something and you go out and you chop wood

[72:16]

you should be aware of chopping wood and when thoughts of your grief arise in your mind you should be aware of that and greet those thoughts of grief and let them go and know that they're there that's why in most societies that are reasonable when there's a big important loss in our lives we take time to grieve that's why it's not a good idea when you're in grief to run around doing a million things and pretend like life goes on because actually if you're really in grief and those instances of major grief don't happen so often a loss of a loved one or something like that or a loss of a part of your body or I don't know what those kind of major losses one needs to say I'm suspending all other activity and I'm just going to make my life very simple and just take care of myself and grieve if at all possible and that's very much what we need to do but it's a process of letting what arises arise and letting it pass away

[73:22]

that's what grieving is, letting the sorrow arise and letting it pass away and letting it come and go and letting ourselves be open to it rather than picking up our grief and waving it around and getting obsessed with it and entangled in it and stuck to it like a tar baby and raging around the world and getting all our friends upset with us because of our grief and getting angry and all the ways that if we don't acknowledge our grief we get really messed up so the Buddha really expressed to us whatever is there, be open to it don't be obsessed with it, don't make a big deal out of it but really and truly be open to it and allow it to be there whatever it is, this is the most important thing whether it's the future or the past or whether it's grief or joy or whatever it is be there for it and don't get stuck to it so I think we have to practice in loss you see that when you appreciate that life is nothing but loss

[74:25]

and when you see that there's no joy without loss because there's no life without loss there's no life without change, that's what loss is, right? this is gone, now it's changed without that there's no flowers, there's no sky there's no you, there's no me, there's no love so when you realize that you see that in loss is all of that so then loss is a mixed situation loss is very sad and it's beautiful and then you can sustain your grief in a way that's not painful or so painful anyway, so the more you appreciate that the more loss you experience and the more sustainable that loss is and even the more beautiful it is I think it helps to be older also to appreciate this it's hard for people who are quite young to appreciate it but we better appreciate it when we get older, right? otherwise we're like Dylan Thomas, you know

[75:29]

rage, rage against the dying of the light have another glass of whatever it was that killed him diabetes, the latest thought is diabetes anyway, we have to make use of the conditions of our lives for practice, whatever they may be I was thinking of your talk this morning how it fits with the little saying you want to know the truth, let go of your opinions and I personally am working on that but it seems like, and I know that but I keep finding myself up against my opinions and like the police woman of the world attitudes are right would you just say a little more about also being open to that in yourself yes, yes, well

[76:31]

like most people think of themselves as open-minded probably I'm a pretty open-minded person, but then you start practicing and you start being with your mind and you realize, oh my gosh I have opinions about everything I don't like her hair, I don't like his coat I don't like the way he looks, I don't like the way she said that I don't like the way that they've decorated this room I don't like the way I am, I don't like the way I think I don't like the way she thinks, I don't like everything we're constantly, which we didn't notice before so I often say that the truth is that practice makes life much worse in the sense that before we were blissfully going along thinking everything was fine and now all of a sudden we're looking at our life and we're seeing much more persistent difficulty and confusion than we ever imagined was there and so it's necessary to experience that

[77:34]

so then we also learn to be very patient with that situation and where before we might have taken all those opinions very seriously and without even examining them held them and acted on them now we're a little annoyed with them because we see how much they cause pain so it's actually, we made an advancement there, right? to be a little annoyed with our opinions is better than accepting them on face value and running with them every minute so then the next thing to do is not be annoyed with them but just be patient with them, notice them and not get down on ourselves which just takes time because you see how your annoyance with your opinions is another opinion and makes more opinions you get to see how that works so then you realize, well, if I can just accept

[78:34]

that I'm as opinionated as I am and try not to pick up all my opinions every minute but let it be, okay, so she said that and I didn't like it, okay, so what? okay, so I don't like the looks of this person or this room so what, I'll be here anyway and you see, oh, I'm happier then you let go a little bit more, so little by little it's kind of a gradual process, but it's very natural that we notice a lot more opinions and we're annoyed with our opinions and then from there we go to just letting them be there without annoyance and then from there we go to there's not so many and then from there we go to, oh, I was wrong, there's still a lot, but so what, it's cute because, you know, I'm from Brooklyn so I'm going to feel that way, or whatever it is you accept that, see what I mean? and you see, what a neat thing it would be a drag if everybody was from Philadelphia it's good that somebody's from Brooklyn and somebody else is from, you know, Miami

[79:36]

that's interesting, you know well, there's this woman who came to our sangha and she was new and she came in and she took away the incense and put it outside because she was allergic to it, right? well, you see, if you didn't have people like that, you'd have to go out and hire them those are the people those are the people that show you your mind, you know we always have to have three or four people like that around here in our temple and if they don't show up spontaneously, then we go out and find them I know that there are some meditation practices where the goal isn't so much awareness but relaxation, let's say and I hear that when people practice these types of meditations

[80:41]

they almost very quickly become just more relaxed and in practicing Zazen I'm finding the opposite like we're discussing a lot of the points and I'm wondering if I'm missing something in Zazen if I were practicing those other ways would I be experiencing the same thing I'm experiencing or does meditation lead to a different result? well, yes, there are forms of meditation that emphasize relaxation and kind of like tranquility but there's pills too that you can take that would also bring tranquility that I guess are effective and I don't know how many side effects they have but also a little whiskey before bed temporarily can bring tranquility

[81:45]

and tranquility is not a small thing if we're enormously anxious, and there's levels of anxiety everybody has a certain level but if you have a very high level of anxiety to the point where you're really going a little bananas, you should apply some tranquility so I don't mean to belittle tranquility I remember I was at some big conference I forget how it went there was a Catholic, a bishop was there and this bishop had written an article where he likened meditation to a drug so actually he was sort of being misquoted because that wasn't afterward, we had a talk about it and he said that he didn't really mean it that way but anyway, so somebody quoted him and brought this up so would any of the Buddhists in the gathering like to speak to that? so I got up and I said something, well meditation isn't a drug and then Joseph Goldstein got up and he said

[82:49]

well, what's wrong with drugs? he said there are times when you need a drug or you need a break or you need a relax and cool out, so I think that's true so I don't mean to belittle tranquility however, I think that the Buddha's idea was that what's fundamentally peaceful not what will make your day a little better today but what's fundamentally peaceful what is the fundamental cause of your anxiety and agitation now if you're really anxious you can take a tranquilizer and it will cool you out if you are anxious maybe a little glass of whiskey will cool you out and there's nothing wrong with that if you are really so anxious that you're about to run off half cocked but what's the fundamental cause of that anxiety and this is what the Buddha was interested in

[83:51]

uncovering and interested in us seeing so that even though Zazen and Buddhist meditation practice can, as we've been discussing, at times make things worse in the sense that we uncover and notice so much more in our lives ultimately it makes things much better in a more fundamental and basic way than any kind of short-term tranquilizer because we get to see the fundamental causes of our anxiety and we get to let go of them then no matter what happens we have some tranquility oddly even in the midst of anxiety or loss we have some tranquility and equanimity and some sense of balance because we understand the nature of our lives which we can't understand unless we look and if we look we're going to see all kinds of things so in the long run I think that Zazen practice mindfulness practice is very relaxing but not the kind of relaxation of checking out going to sleep but the kind of relaxation that comes with

[84:52]

waking up and knowing what's really happening in the faith that being at one with life as it really is is fundamentally sane and positive and happy even though there's difficulties so that's how I would respond I say for people who find that their goal is to find some form of meditation that will cool them out and make their lives calmer that's okay I just don't think that it will in the long run be as effective and there are people I've talked to people who have done forms of meditation like that for many years and realized wow there's a big disconnect between my living and this cooling out meditation it's like yeah I'm cooled out but then I don't feel on some level happy and satisfied with my life it's true that when I meditate I feel very peaceful but then I get up I can't meditate all the time and I get up with my meditation and I'm really feeling like there's something not quite altogether there about my life and so we have people who are practicing with us

[85:52]

who have done in the past forms of meditation like that who have found them ultimately unsatisfactory however the people who find them totally satisfactory are not here so I don't hear about it so I don't know I don't mean to say that it can't be it's perfectly all right that's just my feeling about it speaking of traveling a bit could you talk just a little bit about the place of koans in Buddhist teaching and maybe for someone who doesn't know tell just a bit about the movement of the record oh okay sure koans some of you may be new to this idea of koans basically koans are the literature of Zen Buddhism it's the sacred literature of Zen Buddhism sort of equivalent to the Bible or the scriptures of other schools of Buddhism although the difference is that the koan literature

[86:58]

does not purport to give you advice and say here's a nice way to live or here's how to go about something they are little windows that we have to pick up for ourselves and open up and then we can see some view of our deepest life so koans require active participation not just simply reading them as you would read a scripture although actually when you really think about it any religious scripture if it's worthwhile always involves active participation koans are studies of records of the sayings and doings of old Zen masters just like the little stories that I told you this morning in the history of Zen they've been used in a variety of different ways but generally they're used by meditating on them taking the little story and taking the pithy essence of it and sitting with that story applying it to each breath of your meditation practice until you actually feel that that story is you

[88:00]

and you have made that story your own it's no longer an external something about someone long ago but it's truly expressive of your own experience some traditions within Zen Buddhism have curricula of koans and you do this koan and you do that one and you go to the teacher and there's frequent meetings and the teacher says good you passed that one now do this one and then you go through them and in this way you learn to see reality from many different vantage points each koan being another window on the ineffable in our tradition we don't practice that way not because it's not a good way to practice but just because it has been our way to focus more on everyday life in the present moment than to focus on these stories so the way we use the stories is that we tell them and we talk about them and we appreciate them and we have a kind of growing sense

[89:01]

of how the stories do represent aspects of our own practice and of our own life so we study them and we kind of saturate ourselves with them little by little rather than make a curriculum out of them our particular approach to Zen is resistant to curricula and any idea of progress Blanche Hartman my co-abbot was recently in New York and she was practicing with people in New York and she was saying that everybody in New York where apparently according to her the people that she encountered felt that they were living in an extremely competitive and fast-paced environment in which making progress and getting ahead was very important so they were very relieved to hear her teaching because she would say, well you know, there's nothing to get there's nowhere to go, it's all right here, what are you worried about and they were thunderstruck with this teaching and also she said that the Zen teaching that there is in New York

[90:06]

and there are Zen groups in New York teaching that just so happens that emphasize koans and progress and going on to the next koan and getting more enlightened and stages and this and that and the other thing so she said that the people in New York are starving for maybe it's not true, I don't know, I'm just telling you what she said she found that people are really starving for this kind of very simple no progress tradition and that is very much our way you know, no progress, no goal, nowhere to get to nothing to do is very characteristic of Soto Zen and of course it has its downside and Soto Zen historically has been criticized for this approach but one has to have some balance so it's not a matter of knowing or not knowing it's not a matter of progress or not progress it's a matter of opening ourselves and whatever it takes so if it works to use a koan in some way like a curriculum, great, and I studied the curriculum of koans

[91:07]

with other teachers outside of our lineage and found it very satisfactory and great fun, it's actually quite fun and interesting and very helpful so I recommend it but of course it's easy to get caught in what koan are you on, you know, oh I'm ahead of you I'm not going fast enough, you're going too fast, oh if he's going fast it must be superficial, oh but I'm going slow, but I'm really good all this stuff, easy to get, oh and it happens in our way of practice too but one knows, in our way, you really say, oh jeez you know, it's foolishness yes When you mentioned meditating on a koan it reminded me of a question actually that I've had for some time about meditating on anything I'm not sure whether I understand how that comes Meditating on something or not well in Buddhist meditation there are many things to meditate on

[92:09]

many assignments and so on to take up and again those things are provisional they're helpful sometimes because ultimately of course there's no such thing as meditation, right, there's just life I mean there's no difference between meditation and life you show up for your life, you show up for meditation, you're present for what comes and let everything go, that's just, that's about it doesn't matter whether you're sitting on a cushion, as Dogen says meditation has nothing to do with sitting, standing, walking or lying down so, however, in the meantime that's a good idea but the truth is that it's hard for us to appreciate that, you know, just like I was quoting this morning ordinary mind is the way, how do I know it? well if you try to know it, you'll only be going away from it so how do I practice? Not a matter of knowing or not knowing, just be there well how do you do that? Well, okay, we'll give you something in the meantime to think about while you're waiting as a way of focusing your mind

[93:10]

and then we'll give you something else and then finally we'll give you nothing and you just sit there. So our style is to start at the end that's why there's no progress we just start at the end, which is just sit there but there are other approaches to Buddhist meditation which say do this, [...] and then later on you can just sit there so actually, practically speaking, I think that it's very useful to have objects of meditation and I often, usually in my teaching, I feel like it's better to have objects of meditation than not because if you don't have an object of meditation, even though ultimately it's true there is no object of meditation

[93:50]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ