Right. Well, this is these are relics. That's what we're going to talk about today. Relics of hair. OK, thank you. Still a little what? I'm not hearing any feedback, so it's that's good. Too loud in the back? How about now? Let's vote on it. Okay. Now you've ruined my mood. I'm going to get back into it. The hairs of the Buddha, these are relics, seriously.

[01:09]

I'm going to talk a bit about relics and this koan. In Sri Lanka, I visited the temple of the tooth, which is a very famous and very deeply revered place in the city of Kandy. And boy, there were hundreds and hundreds of people filing by the purported tooth of the Buddha, which was held in a box that was [...] in a box, and probably more. And then just recently in Burma, the Shwedagon Pagoda, which is about 340 feet high, contains two hairs of the Buddha. Now, since he shaved his head, you know, that gives one pause.

[02:11]

How big were these hairs? And I was going to bring you, and I forgot, at a meeting I went to last year, they gave every participant, and there were about 300 of us, little plastic cases with relics, Sharira, purportedly of the Buddha. And, you know, if all of the relics and hairs and various teeth were added up, you know, this would make a Buddha that was probably taller than the Empire State Building. So, I don't know. At any rate, the question that seemed to be on people's minds was incomplete yesterday and then some people talked to me about it, is this perplexing question of How do you reckon with the fact that the Buddha was saying he had a choice to live till the end of this world system?

[03:21]

This is quite aside from thoughts that people had about how he was in relation to Ananda, not asking him the question. Really, the question is, how could he have had a choice? And that's an interesting question, which will have to go unanswered. I think, when I was thinking about it last night, I realized it's as perplexing a question as perhaps go back to the Gospels, the resurrection is, you know, so if we're talking about a man, a human with a body, how does this work? How is it resurrected?

[04:25]

Or how does it live forever? And then I was thinking, I was listening to the as Ross was reciting it yesterday, and the first two lines of the echo in the ceremony is, the Dharma body of the Buddha cannot be seen within duality. For the Dharma body, there is no coming or going, for it fulfills all things. In the sutra, and in those sutras, and even more in the Mahayana Sutra, there's not a distinction made between the Dharma body and His manifesting human body. So the Dharma body cannot be seen within duality, then what is the body that we are seeing?

[05:30]

And what is, if this is true for the Buddha, and we are all embodiments of Buddha nature, then what body is it that I am seeing, if I look at Alexandra, or I look at Matt, or I look at Sue, which body is that? can we actually make a distinction? And also, how much or how little of it am I seeing? And when it comes right down to it, how much or how little of that dharma body, of my own dharma body, am I seeing? I think again and again the Buddha was exhorting his followers, when he was saying, be a lamp unto yourself, to do this difficult task of seeing your own light.

[06:48]

Seeing it as completely as you can. And how do we do that? I mean, that's actually, that's I think why we're here this weekend, right? even though we may not know quite clearly that that's the reason why we're here, we may not be able to answer if somebody asks us, what were you doing this weekend? Our Dharma body brings us here, our Dharma body knows why we're here. The question of birth and death is of course the perplexing question for all of us. And we get scared. Understandably. I've been there, I'm sure many of you in this room have been there.

[07:51]

Touching the fear of one's own death, whether it be imminent or at some unknown time in the future, and touched by the death of those that we love, even though in some deep way we comprehend that all things are fabricated and compounded. I think last, about a week or so ago, when I was on the East Coast, I had dinner with, I was playing music in a bar, and one of my oldest musical friends, he has a new girlfriend or partner, and he said, well, she really wanted to get together and have dinner because she had been a very close student of Alan Liu.

[09:04]

Alan Liu was a BCC student. That's where he began. He's a poet and a rabbi at, was it Bess Shalom? Does anyone know? And he is a sort of co-teacher and partner and collaborator with Zouketsu Norman Fisher, who also began practicing here. And they were both students of Sojins for a time and saw that as their root. And Alan, after a career as a, not a career, a job time as a bus driver, decided that he was going to go back to school and he became a rabbi. And he combined Zen teaching with Judaism as his friend and fellow poet Norman combined them as well, and so they did a lot of co-teaching.

[10:10]

He was a very wonderful teacher with a great heart for people and a great heart for society, and he died very suddenly about four weeks ago. He was out for a walk, and he had been training some rabbis in Baltimore, and he just died of a heart attack. So this woman, my friend's friend, we had dinner together and what she asked was, well, what does one do when one's teacher dies? And what came to mind was the following koan, which you probably know. I told her the story and when I got home I copied it out for her.

[11:13]

This is case 55 in the Blue Cliff Record. It's called Dawu's Condolence Call. Dawu was one of the early Tang Dynasty masters. He was It's a very strong teacher and there are other cases involving him. So, Dawu and his disciple Chinyuan went to a house to make a condolence call. When they got there, Chinyuan hit the coffin and said, alive or dead? Dawu said, I won't say alive and I won't say dead. Yuan said, Why won't you say?" Dawu said, I won't say. A little later, after they had done the service, they were returning to the temple and Chinyuan said, you're going to have to tell me right away, because if you don't tell me, I'm going to hit you.

[12:33]

which is kind of radical behavior for a student towards a teacher. Dao Wu said, you may hit me, but I won't say. And then Chen Yuan actually did hit him. After which, when they got back, Dao Wu suggested that Chönyuan should probably leave the temple for his own safety. Even though, you know, you would imagine nobody could see this exchange, still, everything comes out. There are no secrets. So, later, Dawu After Dao Wu had died, Chen Yuan went to another student who had become a master, another student of Dao Wu's, Shi Shuang, and brought up the story and said, well, what do you have to say about this?

[13:53]

Shi Shuang said, I won't say alive and I won't say dead. Yuan said, why won't you say? Zhuang said, I won't say. I just won't say. And at that moment, Qin Yuan awoke. He came to some awareness. So then the story continues. A little later, Qin Yuan took a hole into the dharma hall, a place where they would do their recitations and chanting. And he went back and forth from east to west and from west to east with his hoe. And Shishuang came in and said, what are you doing? Yuan said, I'm looking for relics of our late master.

[14:59]

Where else would you look for them but in the Dharma Hall, which is where the Dharma is transmitted and conveyed. Shishuang said, vast waves spread far and wide, foaming billows flood the sky. What relics of our late Master are you looking for? Yuan's comment, response to that was, this is just where I should apply my effort. So that's the story. I thought I would talk about that just a little bit. This is an urgent question for Chinyuan, this question that compelled him to strike the coffin.

[16:12]

It was clear that this physical body that was contained in the coffin was not alive. It had died, but alive or dead. it perplexed him, it worried him. I was thinking this morning, for some reason it occurred to me, I have a friend who collected music in Madagascar, and in Madagascar they have this interesting ritual, it's called famadina, or turning of the bones. So in the winter time, Every year, the families go out to the cemetery and they dig up the bodies. They dig up their ancestors.

[17:15]

And they unwrap them. They're wrapped in expensive cloth. They unwrap them and kind of take measure of what's happened to these compounded things in the year that's just come and then they re-wrap them in fine cloth and then they take them out and they parade them all around the village and they have a big dinner and the corpse is the guest of honor. because they want to make sure that the ancestors are not uninformed about what happened in the village in the previous year and this is still a tradition that lives on there and I think that one could realistically ask dead or alive

[18:24]

when they're taking out the corpse. In a sense, I think it's because what they are really caring about is the Dhamma body. And that whole body is then a relic. So that's one realm of relics. But this is an urgent question and I think that we can also look further if we look at Chinyuan's question, alive or dead, perhaps he's coming from one place. But where is Dawu answering from? Dawu won't say, I think, because he is reluctant to answer the question that he believes Chinuan is asking.

[19:44]

Does that make some sense? He has a different, he has an entirely different question about what is life and what is birth and what is death. He's coming from a place where, and I think this goes back to, this goes back to the echo that we use. He's coming from the place of understanding that for the Dharma body there is no coming or going. And if he were to answer Chinnuwan, he would be putting birth and death in a box, which is precisely what he doesn't want to do. He wants Chinnuwan to understand how to see reality

[20:55]

as something that cannot be put anyplace. There's a poem at the end of this koan. Rabbits and horses have horns. Oxes and rams have no horns. Nary a hare, nary a wisp. Like mountains, like peaks. The golden relics still exist right now. With white foaming waves flooding the skies, where can they be put? There's no place to put them. Even the one who returned to the West with one shoe has lost them. So, these lines, the golden relics still exist right now. With white foaming waves flooding the sky, where can they be put?

[22:00]

There's no place to put them. There's no... The relics of the Buddha, the Dhamma body, includes everything. It includes all of us. It includes this room. It includes this planet. It includes everything that is happening at this very moment. You can't place them anywhere because you can't separate them from what is continuously unfolding. When Chinyuan went to Shishuang and asked the question, All the commentaries say, Xi Shi Huang's response was fresh. Xi Shi Huang wasn't just saying, you don't get this, so I'm going to, I'm just going to give you the same answer that Da Wu gave.

[23:13]

I think the freshness of this response in a sense, one way that I'm looking at it is that Qishuang's refusal to answer was out of his understanding that Dawu had given Qinyuan everything that he needed. that it was right there. And for him to give an answer would have been to put Dawu in a box. So maybe this is a little abstract. But I think when I was talking to this woman Sarah, and she was saying, how do I, what do I do when my teacher has passed on?

[24:24]

There's really nothing to do but to be yourself. And to recognize how deeply one has been changed, one has been transformed or affected by one's teacher. And I use that word very broadly. In point of fact, it includes our parents, our friends, anyone whose influences, everyone with whom we are in relationship and interaction, transforms us in ways that's very difficult for us to see, but absolutely. And that's what I think Xi Shuang was paying respect for. There's another story which you've all heard many times.

[25:34]

The farewell story of another of our ancestors, Dongshan, when he left his teacher, when he left his teacher Yunyan. Yunyan said, As Dumsan was preparing to go, after this separation it will be hard for us to see each other. Dumsan understood to some degree and responded correctly, rather it will be hard for us not to see each other. And then Dumsan asked Yunyen, after you have completed this life, what shall I say if anyone asks? Can you still recall your master's true face? After a long silence, Yun Yan said, Just this one is. Just this one is.

[26:39]

This puzzled Deng Xian, and he didn't really have a response for this, so he set off on his journey. And when he came to a stream, he saw his reflection and was awakened to the meaning of just this one is and then he composed a verse. It's a wonderful verse that I think speaks exactly to both to how we're transformed by all of our teachers and what responsibility that places upon us to be ourselves. So this verse is do not see him anywhere else or he will flee from you now that I go on alone I meet him everywhere he is the same as me yet I am not he only if you can understand this can you manifest suchness so this is

[27:54]

what Suzuki Roshi was getting at when he said, when you are you, Zen is Zen. Often, I suspect, if you're like me, you compare yourself or kind of think about yourself in relationship to your teacher. Fortunately, he's not physically in that seat right now. So, you know, I can say this. You know, I am not he. But whom would I be if we hadn't met? I can't imagine, actually. I don't even think I'd be alive. But that goes for others too. There's both joy and grief in that.

[29:00]

I was thinking about relics. I was thinking this morning. My father died about 29 years ago. We did not have a great relationship. It was difficult. And I loved him. He loved me. But we didn't know how to deal with each other at all. And there was nothing I could do for him that was right or acceptable. Nothing. Except when he died. When he died, then I had to deal with the Dharma body and also I had to deal with the relics. I got there soon after he had died and his body had been shipped off to the mortuary for cremation.

[30:08]

He didn't believe in funerals or rituals of any kind, but we needed to do something. The immediate family and his wife my sisters. So a relative had a boat. My father was on the water all the time. This was in Florida. And I went to the mortuary and got the ashes. Has any of you ever done that? It came in this little cardboard box in a plastic baggie with a twist tie. And I just thought, oh, this is kind of tacky, but, you know, it's... Yeah, and there was this box that was a little heavy. You know, these kind of chopped up bones. But that's, you know, that was the residue of his physical body.

[31:11]

It was precious, and it was uncomfortably mundane. And we took it, we took out on a sort of windy morning, we took them out from Miami Beach, out the hole over the outlet, the inlet where the sea runs into the bay, and out a couple miles to where the Gulf Stream begins. And you can see that because the color of the water changes from a kind of greenish blue to a dark indigo. It was a day of intermittent sun and clouds, and I remember, you know, then we had to unpack this box and scatter the ashes, which was my job. That was finally something I could do. And I still, with absolute vividness, remember

[32:17]

this kind of sound as the ashes joined with the water and as the sun glinted off little particles and specks of white bone as they went quickly down through the blue waters. That is part of the Dharma body that is now indelibly part of who I am and yet I am not He. And yet I see the way I embody the good things and some of the bad things about who He was. So I want to close with When I wrote to Sarah, the student of Alan Liu's, with the whole case, she said, she was very moved by it, and she sent me back this poem, which had been in the last teaching that she had received, that she had been part of, which was only like a month or two ago, with Alan Liu.

[33:49]

And it was from Whitman, from Song of Myself. And it's completely on the same point. The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me. He complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me. It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any on the shadowed wilds, it coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I deport as air. I shake my white locks at the runaway sun. I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.

[34:57]

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again, look for me under your boot soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean. But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, and filter and fiber your blood. Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you. So, if you have some thought or question, Ken? There's another one that I have no idea of. It's something that I'm reminded of. It's a song.

[35:59]

Full fathom five, my father lies. Of his bones are coral eggs. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Thank you. We've all, age after age, across all the cultures, across all the world, We have these same concerns, I think, that manifest in different ways. Sometimes we return the relics to the sea.

[37:02]

Sometimes we take them out and parade them through the town and sit down and have dinner with them. Sometimes the relics are right here in this room, living and breathing. I remember at Greenville many years ago, there was this priest named Dennis from Canada. Yeah. Yeah. And he was into really knowing who the ancestors were. And he gave a class on the ancestors. And I think we're... Yeah. I think we'd be good to... Well, yeah, it's good to study them.

[38:18]

All those ancestors up to the women are in the Denko Roku, the transmission of light, and I think we're just about to have a class in March on the five houses of Zen which cover a bunch of the But I would turn it back to you in a broader way. Who are your ancestors? Not just, it's good to know our Zen ancestors, but that's not the entirety of the story. You've got these two, these streams that meet in you. This is where I think it's unusual we have We have this biological stream and then we have this spiritual stream and sometimes we have actually we have more than one spiritual stream.

[39:25]

How do they manifest in you? And then I was thinking this morning also like well then how is it going to be for my son and daughter? Who never did know my father or my mother or Lori's father. They know her mother. What continues in them? What form does that keep changing into? Rhea? You know, what I'm reminded of in this figure, or I'm thinking about, is I have a very close friend who's recently passed. And after a memorial, I thought about what She had inspired me, which I realized was what I did when my mother died. What was it that my mother did for me, I aspire to in some way. And so I was thinking about Lorna.

[40:27]

And as you were talking, I was realizing how when somebody dies, I hold them differently internally. I know that there's something about almost as if part of How they stay alive is within. And consequently, I think about them differently. I treat them differently. I think about what I'm inspired by, by them. And I think it was something about these two deaths coming, you know, about a year apart, so relatively close, that made me go, oh, this is what I do when people die. So this whole thing about alive or dead, and how it lives inside differently if somebody's actually alive in my life or not. I don't know if that's true for everyone, but it could be.

[41:30]

I mean, that's interesting. As you're speaking, what I'm realizing is this. I hold them... I really have to take responsibility for their life. in a way that's different than maybe how I feel when they're alive. I don't know, but I think probably each of us does that in a different way and has a different process, but yeah, that's really, I think that's very powerful. gathering stage and some kind of cedar and some other herbs and burning for my ancestors. And I kind of hold the idea of ancestral lineage on two hands.

[42:32]

On one hand, I have a really great reverence for my ancestors, my body, and my practice, my blood lineage. On the other hand, often times I say, these old and thin monks, what have they got to do with me? And I found it very important to balance the idea of obtaining relics. Like I have a little preserved note here, and I have it near me. It's called a relic of Buddha's tongue. I don't know how else to call it. And I also have a leaf that's supposedly from the Bodhicitta of Gaya. So I have these relics. But also, on the other hand, I have to just let them go and pursue my practice.

[43:34]

And I don't feel the need to reconcile these two ways of holding. I've got the one hand, deep reverence, and the other hand, low reverence. How is it that we... It's like, how is it that we take what we do, our activity, our action, seriously, respectfully, without taking ourselves seriously? without taking these things seriously, things go away. And yet we have to take this, we have to have responsibility for our actions. You know, the Buddha, I didn't read this, there's a whole long section of this sutra yesterday where he talks about how you prepare his body and what you do with it, but he never says you should worship these relics.

[44:40]

But then, of course, immediately after he dies, they had to have a whole conference about how to divide them. And they got divided into eight portions and shipped out to these different tribes and groups. But that wasn't actually his instruction. Alexandra? role is to transform and transmit to us the Zero Wisdom or whatever it is that they represent. They make change. We meet to make change. They try to make change and they will only make change so long as we're willing to work with what we're given.

[45:42]

Sometimes we resist it. But they're always offering. The offering is, there's just continuous offering. This is the challenge for us in practice. It's like, what do we do with what's offered? Right? Right. But... But then the thing that does not change, the Dharmakaya, or the no birth, no death element, That scream you talked about? It's not a thing. Yeah. As soon as you call it a thing, you've got a problem. I know. But it's hard to talk about it. Right. If you don't acknowledge it, you can dry up in the world of mundane things. Right. I like what Dogen... Dogen has this wonderful festival, Zenki, just total dynamic working.

[46:45]

It's like there's constant activity. There's stillness in the activity, and there's activity in the stillness. It's, uh... No. No. There was something else. Ed? Yeah, um... I was wondering about the Dharma body. And, uh... Also, put it in the car. It's encountering, you can't get your mind around the dharma body.

[48:04]

It's too large. It comes and goes freely. But you meet it in different ways, in different places. You meet aspects of it. Your children meet aspects of it. I wonder if you can add it on that book. I met it for a moment, but I wasn't done. That did not resolve all of the difficulties that I had with my father. But it was really, really important. We always have this work that we can do, so long as we're alive. Maybe that's a good place to end for today. Interesting stormy day.

[49:06]

Thank you.

[49:09]

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