I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. So, as I said earlier this week, I've come to Tassajara with some of my very good friends. We've come to be part of your community for a while to take advantage of the fact that you exist, that you offer this practice schedule that we can't get anywhere else, so that we can come here, get up in the morning and sit with you, eat with you, work with you, and then have our own class in the afternoon.

[01:06]

So, this is a wonderful opportunity that we have. I just went a couple of weeks ago to New York, thinking that New York being the other coast is probably very much like here, and that practice opportunities are quite bounteous, but it's not true. This really is unique. It really is unique to have a place like Tassajara that's so accessible, that's so accessible to us, that so when I said that I wanted to bring twenty of my very best friends to Tassajara, they said, When? Okay. Anyway, I'm very happy that we are able to do this. So, basically, we're hanging out. I mean, that's our basic agenda, hanging out with each other and talking about how we practice.

[02:12]

But since we did need an object of focus, I chose the Xin Xin Ming, the Mind of Absolute Trust, which is the first Zen poem, and it's in Chinese, wholly in Chinese with no Sanskrit or Pali, and it's 146 four-word lines. I assume that's the Chinese, you know, four-figure lines. And it expresses the essence of Zen practice. It's amazing that you could actually express the essence of Zen practice in a poem. Dogen's poems, if you're familiar with Dogen's poetry, they're very indirect. You know, a fish swims like a fish, a bird flies like a bird, and, you know, lots of references to nature.

[03:14]

But this poem is different in that it doesn't express Zen practice by pointing to other things. It talks very specifically about stages of practice or states of mind of practice, however you want to look at that. So it's attributed to the third Chinese ancestor, San Chuan, San, Sang Chuan, and a Kanji Sosan. We know that from our ancestor chant, Kanji Sosan. But the scholars think that it was probably written later. Kanji Sosan died in 606 CE. They think from the nature of the language that it was probably later. So according to the commentary by Dennis Merzl,

[04:15]

Dennis Genpo Merzl, a student of, an heir of Maizumi Roshi, the title means, this is Xin Xin Ming, the title means, the verbal expression of the fact that the very nature of existence and of all phenomenal world are no other than the faith mind. That's his translation of that title. My personal translation of this title is, we have no idea what's going on here. And if we did, we wouldn't like it, because it means we're nobody. And so out of vulnerability, out of bewilderment and desperate heartbreak, we settle down enough to find comfort and ease in the free fall itself. That's my translation.

[05:17]

So basically, the poem describes the evolution of our refuge in practice, the evolution of our refuge in practice, or our ground of being, how that is constantly pulled out from under us at each insight that we have, or each turning point in practice. And so it starts with our assumptions about reality, and about our place in it. And as you know, when we start practice, and actually forever, not just when we start practice, but forever, we have a really huge place in our scheme of things. We use ourselves as a reference point. This does undergo some shifts as you practice longer, but it's always there, even if it's kind of, you know, in a further out coencentric circle than it used to be.

[06:21]

So this is the first thing we look at. And this is scattered mind, looking for refuge outside of ourselves, just looking. And of course, if you go that path, it's endless, right? You'll always want something else. Our mind is attuned to novelty. So the Xin Xin Ming, the mind of absolute trust, the long poem takes us from this first mind, and I'll read you some parts of it, not that it'll do you any good, but I just want you to have some taste of it, some taste of the flavor, maybe enough to stimulate you to read it, or study it with other people. So it takes you from this scattered mind to a quieter mind, and then to one mind, and then to no mind, nowhere standing. Or finally, faith and trust mind,

[07:25]

faith and or trust mind. So the poem can also be read as all these stages that I'm mentioning as happening simultaneously. In fact, that's probably closer to the reality of the situation, that all these states of mind that I just mentioned are happening simultaneously. That's probably the reality of it. But we separate them out so that we can talk about the poem. I mean, we have to talk about it, so we have to divide it up into these stages that I'm talking about. So I'll get it out here. So the first lines are, The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

[08:30]

If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. So this is the beginning of practice, but it's also, you know, at a much later stage as well. You begin by struggling with your preferences. I mean, this is what usually happens is you notice that you aren't happy. And then you say, Well, what are my options here? You know, what is making me unhappy? Sometimes people begin this questioning very early in their life. I've talked to people who begin this kind of, What's going on here? I'm not getting what I want. And begin to suspect greed as a strategy early on. As I've said before, greed is our first strategy.

[09:32]

You know, just watch a baby or a child, you know, just anything they can get in the mouth. My son, when he was little, if I was lying on the bed or something and he was nearby, he would just suck on whatever part of me was there, my thigh, my foot, my hip. I mean, it was just a, you know, bread-in-the-mouth kind of approach. And some of us never grow out of that. But, because it's our first strategy to be happy. But, if you're a thoughtful person, all along about the time for a lot of people, when they're teenagers or in their early twenties, they try the next strategy, which is, This doesn't make sense. Whenever I chase something, it ends in heartbreak. So, I'm not going to chase things anymore. And I won't eat a lot of food, and I'll be very pure, and I won't have caffeine or chocolate

[10:35]

or anything with trans fat in it or anything like this. And this is called the hate strategy. You now identify with whatever you're not having. So, this doesn't do you any good happiness-wise, but it's still a more sophisticated strategy than just cramming everything in the mouth. So, this first stanza that I read you is about when we start questioning conventional reality, which is get this, get a nice house and get things, and you'll be happy. When we start questioning, this is a strategy, and start to suspect that the problem is setting up our likes and dislikes against each other, when we start suspecting this.

[11:36]

And even though we might just be beginners as far as sitting goes, and the pond hasn't settled yet, you know, the old metaphor to meditation practice that, oh, the clouds, when it's kicked up all the time by emotions or thoughts, then it's real muddy. But, you know, when you sit, it starts to settle, and pretty soon you can see all the way to the bottom. So, even when you're first sitting, there are moments of clarity. I mean, it's not a matter of, as Dogen, you know, if you read any Dogen, then you really get the impact of it. It's not a matter of time sitting. It's the sitting itself. Dogen says that the beginner, the person who's sitting for the first five minutes of their life is just as enlightened as the person who's been sitting for 30 years, because you're in that enlightened activity, the activity itself. So, oh, dear.

[12:37]

Oh, I've only gotten to the first stage. Oh, well. So, we start with this questioning conventional reality or our idea of what will make us happy. So, the next thing that happens is we do quiet down. We're able to watch our thoughts as they arise, and this is the practice we're given in this particular school, just about all schools of Buddhism, watching your thoughts as they arise so the mind quiets, and I picked out a couple of lines in the Shinshin Ming that just let things be in their own way, and there will be neither coming nor going. Obey the nature of things, your own nature, and you will walk freely and undisturbed. When the thought is in bondage, the truth is hidden,

[13:42]

for everything is murky and unclear. And the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations? So, you're beginning to quiet down here, and now you have enough experience that you're no longer just completely hating some thoughts that you have and loving others, oh, I'm so creative, or, you know, loving other thoughts, or, oh, God, I've got to get rid of these terrible thoughts, I shouldn't even have to. You're not doing that anymore. It's more like watching the scenery when you're driving in the car. You know, they come and they go, they come and they go, they come and they go. So, you stop settling down or abiding in your thoughts, in your likes and dislikes. And so, this means that we stop thinking of our preferences as ultimate reality.

[14:43]

We start questioning that process. So, now we're, before we were identifying with the waves instead of the ocean, and now we're identifying with the ocean instead of the waves. Is that Snorer, my grandson? He gets used to this. But if it's not disturbing you, I just assume he gets some sleep. So, we're okay. Then the poem warns us against settling in emptiness itself. You know, that's actually learning about emptiness. When you sit in Zazen and watch your thoughts arise and pass away, arise and pass away, you're looking at things from an empty point of view. You're learning about emptiness because you just see,

[15:45]

da, [...] da. You know, whatever comes up will eventually go away. And especially if you sit, you know, over weeks and months of your life, you see that you're different all the time. The thoughts that you're obsessed about, even if you obsess about them for a week, they eventually give way to some new obsession. This is the particularly boring part for me. So, but it's not a place to abide. You actually can tell when people find a new nest in emptiness. You know, they get a little more remote. They, you know, act like they're equanimous. Well, this is, you know, a misunderstanding of equanimity. Equanimity is not indifference. It's not not getting involved.

[16:45]

It's getting very involved. You know, being capable of having great passions. But there's an underlying, there's an underlying understanding that this is not ultimate reality. Even something you love very much or hate very much, it doesn't cut off the feeling at all. This is a misunderstanding of equanimity. And as a matter of fact, indifference is the near enemy of compassion. Equanimity is actually the ability to love and to care very much, to be willing to be hurt. To be willing to be hurt is equanimity. You're strong enough to love and to take risks. What? Sure. So, we can't settle down in emptiness

[17:49]

or get attached to it. And let's see. I'll read the part of the Xin Xin Ming about that. In this causeless, relationless state, consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion. Both movement and rest disappear when such duality cease to exist. Oneness itself cannot exist, cannot exist to this ultimate finality. No law or description applies. So, I'm running out of time and I really want to tell you a story. But I'll go on to the next thing. Oh, by the way, that didn't describe what I'm talking about. But forget that because we're running out of time. Okay, so the next thing is that the poem,

[18:53]

finally, because of the long journey of things keep being pulled out from under us, if emptiness is pulled out from under us, we realize that all this phenomena, all this phenomena that we're familiar with comes from our mind. And so we start abiding in our minds, that our mind is the source of everything. And this is the mind-only approach. I was saying to students today that when you die, the world ceases to exist. And to actually try that out and explore the truth of that is to begin to understand your responsibility in your life, to begin to understand your responsibility. It doesn't matter whether that's true or not true as far as science goes, that the world goes on or stops when you die.

[19:58]

But from a practice point of view, that's a very useful theory to proceed on, to say that everything comes from my mind, everything, because it makes you look out at the world from this reality. You own your own karma, in other words. You own your own body-mind. You're responsible to it. You're accountable for it. And that's a real turning point when you begin to understand how thoroughly, how thoroughly your preferences and your perceptions are your karma, to look at your thoughts and not flinch, not flinch away, because you have some idea of what you should be like. And then, just as you're settling into that responsibility and that mind,

[20:59]

again, the rug is pulled out from under you and you realize the emptiness of emptiness and so you're delivered back down the chute into just this, right where you started, just this, no mind at all. So this is the progression of the mind of absolute trust, the great way is not difficult. Just give up your preferences. So, along the way, along the way, you might notice or you might notice that something has come into being that you weren't aware of before, this thing that the title refers to, the faith mind, the mind of absolute trust. If you don't notice it, it's just fine,

[22:00]

you'll just ruin it anyway. But you might, you might notice it and I'll never forget the first time I noticed it, actually, was when a student in my Brilling Games Sangha, the Crystal Springs Sangha, she's here tonight, actually, she asked a question, she said, Darlene, you've been practicing for 30 years and how are you different than when you started? And I thought about it and I thought, well, if I went to a high school reunion right then, that people would say, oh, I'm the same old asshole I always was. That whatever had changed was too subtle, really, to be detected by my old high school buddies. But then I thought, well, so what is, what has, what is different? And I said to her,

[23:01]

well, I think I have faith. And she said, reasonably enough, she said, faith in what? So I thought, well, what is it that I have faith in? I don't think that this is a benevolent universe. I don't have faith that things will turn out all right. I don't have faith that the life force and the good always wins. I don't have faith in any of that. And I kept, kept trying to think of what I had faith in and I couldn't come up with anything. And then I realized that it's an attitude of faith. It's like, it's just an attitude. There's not faith in anything. There's just some sort of, well, you know, when you take Jukai, that's the first time that you, when you're asked to take refuge

[24:04]

in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, which when I took Jukai, I had no idea what that meant. No idea. I just thought, well, it's best to just keep my mouth shut and go through this. But I often wondered, what is this taking refuge in Buddha and Dharma and Sangha? And that is taking refuge in Dharma, that thing about faith. It's like there's some kind of willingness to see everything that happens to you, no matter how tragic and how heart-rending, as an opportunity for practice. So maybe that's some sort of, some sort of faith mind, is that that's always there for you. That's always there. Everything that happens to you, you can take it and watch what happens around it. I haven't manipulated my mind

[25:04]

for some time, and it's very hard to tell the difference between that, which I do consider some kind of faith mind. It's very hard to distinguish that from complete self-indulgence, to which I am also prone. So what can I do? I'll just have to try to be happy. So I wanted to tell you a story. Oh, but before that, I wanted to tell you that when you read this poem, and I hope you will, it's a wonderful poem, that any sense that the poem might make to the reader comes from your sitting practice. Because if you don't have a sitting practice, then this poem is gibberish, really, because it talks a lot about not one, not two, self, no self, the vastness of a tiny point.

[26:05]

No, you'll just have to take my word for it. So actually, if you don't have the stability of a sitting practice, many of the things you read in this poem are inherently destabilizing. They are destabilizing or dizzying because things are constantly being pulled away from you just as you settle into them. And you can't bypass settling into form and emptiness and one mind and no mind. You can't avoid settling into those things because that's the point of view from which you can see that this is not a place to abide either, that you actually begin to understand what the Middle Way refers to as nowhere standing. So you don't want to avoid these settling points. But it's Zazen,

[27:08]

only Zazen gives you access to this poem. So the story I want to tell you is about Wu Ming. And this is in the form of a letter which I won't read it to you, written in 898 from one Zen teacher to another. This letter was pinned to the robe lapel of Wu Ming as he presented himself to this new monastery called Han Xing. Part of the letter said, I ask that you now draw your attention to the young man to whom this note is attached. As he stands before you, no doubt smiling stupidly as he stuffs himself with pickled cucumbers, you may be wondering if he is as complete a fool as he appears. And if so, what prompted me to send him to you? In answer to the first question, I assure you

[28:09]

that Wu Ming's foolishness is far more complete than mere appearance would lend you to believe. As for the second question, I can only say that perhaps he can be of some service to you. Allow him 16 hours of sleep daily and provide him with lots of pickled cucumbers and Wu Ming will always be happy. Expect nothing of him and you will be happy. So Han Xing was indeed a most severe place of training. The winters were bitterly cold and in summer the sun blazed. The monks slept no more than three hours each night and ate one simple meal each day. For the remainder of the day, they worked hard around the monastery and they practiced hard in the meditation hall. The monks could hardly be faulted for complacency or indolence. Their sincere aspiration

[29:11]

and disciplined effort were admirable indeed and many had attained great clarity of wisdom, but they were preoccupied, as monks will be, with their capacity for harsh discipline and proud of their insight. They squabbled with one another for positions of prestige and power. Imagine that. And vied amongst themselves for the recognition of their teacher. Stretch a little. Stretch. Jealousy, rivalry and ambition seemed to hang like a dark cloud over Han Xing Monastery, sucking even the most wise and sincere into its obscuring haze. But Wu Ming took to life at Han Xing like a duck to water. At the abbot's request, he was assigned a job in the kitchen pickling vegetables. This he pursued tirelessly. And with a cheerful earnestness,

[30:13]

he gathered and mixed ingredients, lifted heavy barrels, drew and carried water and, of course, freely sampled his workmanship. He was delighted. Day after day and month after month, as the monks struggled to meet the physical and spiritual demands of monastery life, Wu Ming, with a grin and a whistle, sailed through it all effortlessly. Even though, if the truth be told, Wu Ming's Zen practice was without the slightest merit, by way of outward appearance, he was judged by all to be a monk of great accomplishment and perfect discipline. Of course, the abbot could have dispelled this notion quite easily, but he sensed that Wu Ming's unique brand of joy was taking effect and the abbot was not about to throw away this most absurdly skillful of means. By turns, the monks were jealous, perplexed, hostile, humbled and inspired

[31:15]

by what they presumed to be Wu Ming's great attainment. Of course, it never occurred to Wu Ming that his or anyone else's behavior required such judgments, for those judgments are the workings of a far more sophisticated nature than his own. Indeed, everything about him was so obvious and simple that others thought him unfathomably subtle. Wu Ming's inscrutable presence had a tremendously unsettling effect on the lives of the monks and undercut the web of rationalization that so often accompanies such upset. So, blah, blah. Attempts of flattery and invectives alike were met with the same uncomprehending grin. A grin the monks felt to be the very cutting edge of the sword of perfect wisdom. So, Wu Ming caused to arise in the monks

[32:16]

the unconquerable determination to fully penetrate the teaching the great ways without difficulty, which they felt that he embodied. Once a monk approached Wu Ming and asked in all earnestness in the whole universe what is it that is most wonderful? Without hesitation, Wu Ming stuck a cucumber before the monk's face and exclaimed, there is nothing more wonderful than this. At that, the monk crashed through the dualism of subject and object. On another occasion, a monk asked Wu Ming, the third ancestor said, the great ways without difficulty just cease having preferences. How then can you delight in eating cucumbers yet refuse to even taste one bite of carrot? Wu Ming said, I love cucumbers. I hate carrots. The monk lurched back

[33:19]

as though struck by a thunderbolt. Laughing and sobbing and dancing about, he exclaimed, liking cucumbers and hating carrots is without difficulty. Just cease preferring the great way. That's enough. Thank you very much.

[33:46]

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