Good evening, everyone, and welcome. I'm Taigen Leighton, the teacher here. And tonight I want to talk about an old story, an old Zen story. And maybe it's the primary story of Zen or Chan. So it was called In China. And there's a special occasion we have for this story now. So this is a story about Bodhidharma, Indian teacher who came to China, according to legend, in the, oh, maybe the 500s. The story I want to tell is the first case in the Blue Cliff Record, one of the main collections of koans or teaching stories in China. And Bodhidharma's kind of controversial. There's an image of him standing on this side of our altar.

[01:06]

And there are many, many legends about him. And I think scholars, academic scholars, anyway, up until maybe, still some don't. So many, many didn't believe that he actually ever existed historically. up until pretty recently. I think it's pretty well established now that he actually did live. There's all kinds of stories about him that are very colorful and legendary, and maybe I'll get into some of those later. Andy Ferguson has researched this a lot, has some at least it says he thinks he has some verification of at least even parts of this story. But this is the first story in this great collection of Zen stories and Our special occasion for talking about this tonight is that we're in the middle of a practice period, two-month practice period, and in a couple of weeks, we'll have our closing three-day sitting, as part of which, at the end of, as the part of the end of the practice period, Nyozan Ericshot, sitting next to me, will have a shuso ceremony.

[02:20]

He's the shuso, or head monk. in training as Xu Shou for this practice period. In the final Xu Shou ceremony, all the practice period students go around the room and one after another ask him questions and he has to respond. So that's something that part of training of Osen teachers. And part of the context of that ceremony will be this story. With that introduction, here's the story. Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma said, empty, without holiness. The emperor said, who is facing me? Bodhidharma replied, I don't know. The emperor did not understand. After this, Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze River and went north and came to the kingdom of Wei.

[03:24]

Later, the emperor brought this up to Master Jue and asked him about it. Master Jue asked, does your majesty know who this man is? The emperor said, I don't know. Master Jue said, he is the Mahasattva of Alokitesvara, transmitting the Buddha mind seal. The emperor felt regretful, so he wanted to send an emissary to go invite Bodhidharma to return. Master Jue told him, your majesty, don't say that you will send someone to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country wants to go after him, he still wouldn't return. So this is a story. And there's actually stories around that. So let me go over it again with some background. Actually, part of the story that it talks about in the commentary precedes this. But this emperor was the emperor of a medium-sized maybe kingdom in what's now southern China. Bodhidharma, the story goes, went by boat from southern India, where he lived, to China and came to this kingdom.

[04:31]

And this emperor was a great Buddhist patron. It says, and also, well, this earlier part of the story was before the actual case. When Bodhidharma first met Emperor Wu, the emperor asked, I have built temples and ordained monks. What merit is there in this? Bodhidharma said, there's no merit. So this might seem like a kind of self-centered question to ask, you know, how much merit do I have? But actually in the sutras of Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddhism of Northern Asia, including China, the sutras or scriptures that center around the bodhisattvas, the great enlightening beings who work for the benefit of all beings, it speaks very often about all the merit that one gains from reciting these sutras, from remembering them, from studying them, and so forth, as well as from doing things like the emperor had done of building temples

[05:43]

ordaining monks. So there was a lot of emphasis on this merit. So it's not that strange a question that this emperor asked this great teacher coming from India to China. But Bodhidharma said, no merit. And the commentary here says, he immediately doused the emperor with dirty water. If you can penetrate this statement, there is no merit. You can meet Bodhidharma personally. So, again, this idea of merit is very important in Buddhism, that there is some kind of energy, some kind of, we say sometimes good karma, some kind of positive benefit that comes from doing all these practices. And Emperor Wu was actually, you know, learned in Buddhism. He had held discussions with Dharma Master Luo Yue, with Mahasattva Fu, a great, famous, enlightened Chinese layperson, and with Prince Jiao Ming about the two truths, the real and conventional.

[06:55]

As it says in the teachings, by the real truth, we understand that it is not existent. By the conventional truth, we understand that it is not non-existent. That is, that the real truth and the conventional truth are not two, is the highest meaning of the holy truths. So that would be one kind of answer. But Bodhidharma said, when asked about the highest meaning of the holy truths, said, vast emptiness, nothing holy. So this relates to this Heart Sutra we just went through, this sutra about emptiness. So this term emptiness, a technical term in Buddhism, you may have heard in your classes, but this doesn't mean nothingness. It means that actually everything is interrelated, that each one of you is empty of substantial, inherent, permanent existence on your own. That each one of us is a product of many, many causes and conditions.

[07:59]

Actually, that which is sitting on your cushion or chair right now is a product of many, many, many beings. Parents, teachers, siblings, friends, All kinds of people contribute to what it is that is sitting on your Krishna chair. We are not separate, isolated, substantial beings, and nothing is. That's this teaching of emptiness. Of course, emptiness is not separate from form. So these two truths, Nirzana in his talk, I think yesterday and previous talks, talked about this. It's very important teaching in Buddhism. The ultimate truth is that everything is empty. And this is where Bodhidharma is coming from in his responses to the emperor. So I'm going to go back to that story and go over more of it, but this is kind of background. So of the two truths or two realities, they're both true. But the ultimate truth is that the conventional truth is an illusion or a delusion.

[09:06]

The ultimate truth is that we're totally, totally interconnected with everything. We've been studying the Mountains and Waters Sutra, the Sutra from the Mountains and Waters that was transcribed by the great 13th century Japanese monk Dogen who founded this branch of Zen. But, you know, the mountains and waters is the landscape of our world and it's all empty, which is to say that everything is interconnected. One of the statements in that text we've been studying is that the green mountains are constantly walking. We think that mountains, above and beyond everything, are solid, substantial. But actually, everything in our landscape is constantly shifting. The mountains and waters, the prairies and lakes, everything is in process and interconnected and helps together to cause everything else.

[10:10]

So this is the realm of the ultimate truth, which we could just say, emptiness. There's nothing separate or isolated. There's nothing to hold on to. Everything is in the process and flow. The conventional truth, on the other hand, is that we are the usual self, the usual truth, the usual idea of the world and ourselves, that we all have identities, that we're separate. And on one level, of course, that's true. So we have to honor the conventional truth. We stop at the corner when the light turns red. The conventional truth is a kind of truth, but the ultimate truth is that it's all relative, that it's all interrelated. So this is sort of background for the story, this important teaching about these two truths. And they relate to form and emptiness, too, that we've just been chanting about. Form is the particular realities of the conventional world, our usual sense of the phenomenal world.

[11:19]

Emptiness is that It is all interconnected. And yet they're not at all separate. Form is exactly emptiness. Emptiness is exactly form. So this is sort of background for this story. So Bodhidharma comes to visit this and pays his respects to the court of the great Emperor Wu of Liang and tells him, first of all, no, there's no merit. There's no merit to anything you've done. even though he's studied Buddhism and built all these temples and so forth. And the emperor is, of course, taken aback. And this is where the story actually begins. Then he asked the great master Bodhidharma, well, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? And Bodhidharma says, empty, nothing holy. The emperor said, well, who is this facing me? He was perplexed. This is not what he'd been taught by reading all of his Buddhist texts. And Bodhidharma said, I don't know.

[12:23]

The ember didn't understand, and Bodhidharma headed across the Yangtze River and went north to the kingdom of Wei. And there's more to that story that isn't part of this case itself. But this vast emptiness, nothing holy, and the ember asking, well, who are you? Who's facing me? And Bodhidharma said, I don't know. And part of the ultimate truth is we don't know who we are. Of course, you could probably all recite your social security number and your address. You have personal history. You can tell me what classes you're taking. There's all kinds of things, and more and more and more of them as we grow older, that we can't call our self. But Bodhidharma saw through all that and when asked who was he said, I don't know. So part of this highest meaning of the holy truth has to do with this I don't know.

[13:28]

Bodhidharma being willing to admit or speaking the truth of not holding on to any knowledge. Anyway, this is the first part of the story. Later, the emperor brought this up to Master Zhe, who was his Buddhist teacher, and asked him about it. Master Zhe asked, doesn't your majesty know who that person was? And the emperor says, I don't know. It's a different I don't know. Master Jus said, he is the Mahasattva, or great being, Avalokiteshvara. So we just chanted about Avalokiteshvara. He's one of the great Bodhisattva figures, the Bodhisattva of compassion. So usually this kind of emptiness teaching is associated with another Bodhisattva, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, which is what the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras are about. And on our altar, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, sits below the Buddha. In the back you can't see him, but you'll come around later.

[14:30]

And he sits on a lion, because Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, is fearless. and also often depicted as kind of youthful. The wisdom he represents is not the wisdom of lots of learning and going to lots of classes and reading lots of books. This is the wisdom of immediate insight, just seeing clearly. what's most important right now, right here. And this is what Manjushri does. And the image we have in front of the Buddha there, he's holding a staff like this, a teaching staff. Sometimes he carries a sword to cut through delusions. So he's kind of, Manjushri is kind of, fierce and stark, but he's also very youthful. He's also sort of can be in some of the stories about him sort of amusing. So that's one Bodhisattva, but the Bodhisattva that the emperor is told that

[15:34]

Bodhidharma represents is named Avalokiteshvara. We say in Japanese, Kanzen or Kanon. You may have seen the white porcelain goddess of mercy if you've ever been to a Chinese restaurant. In China, this bodhisattva is called Guan Yin. Anyway, she's the bodhisattva of compassion, of kindness, of caring. And we have images of that bodhisattva on the sidewalls. There are many, many different forms, There he's riding on a leaf on the ocean, helping beings who are stuck in the ocean of suffering. This one you have to look at closely, but he's got 11 heads to see all the different beings and to see how to help them. So Master Juh said to the emperor, that was the Mahasattva, the great being, Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara, transmitting the Buddha mind seal. The emperor felt regretful and wanted to send an emissary to invite Bodhidharma to return.

[16:37]

Master Jaya told him, your majesty, don't say that you will and send someone to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him, he still wouldn't return. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't bring him back again. So this is the basic story that we'll be celebrating in part during our shiso ceremony coming up. And there's a lot to say about it. Is this really compassion, that Bodhidharma abandoned this Emperor Wu, this guy who was really trying to be a good Buddhist, trying to, and had arranged to ordain all these monks and build all these temples? How is this an act of compassion? is heading north. So Bodhidharma is a rather colorful, as I said, and fierce figure in the lore of Chan or Zen.

[17:40]

One part of what, so Chan is just the Chinese name for Zen, and one part of what Chan did in China historically There was already, before Bodhidharma came, or whoever it was, in the 400s or 500s, I guess 500s, already Buddhism was fairly well established in China. Already Buddhism had become Chinese, and it took a while for that to happen. Originally, they translated Buddhist texts in terms of Taoist ideas, which was the native Chinese spiritual teaching. And in some ways, that's very complementary with Buddhism. But after a few centuries, they developed these Chinese Buddhist schools, quite sophisticated, developed in terms of their philosophy and their doctrine and so forth. Chiantai was one of them. Huayen was another. So there were already these very, well, many, many monks and nuns and many, many temples and many good translations of these sutras from India.

[18:54]

So Buddhism was established in China. But the role of Chan, starting with Bodhidharma, was to go beyond the scholarly, approach to Buddhism, to the Buddha way, to bring this to life. So Chan means meditation. So they called it that because Bodhidharma and the people who followed him, the Chan teachers all did a lot of meditation as we do here. So in some sense, it's the meditation school as a nickname. But a big part of what this was about was bringing the teaching out of some kind of philosophical or abstract or theoretical understanding and bringing it to life. So Chan is like a postgraduate course in Buddhism. After all these monks had learned And even the emperors had learned all this Buddhist teaching to bring it into life.

[20:00]

And so there started to be all these stories of interactions between teachers and students that we sometimes call koans. Some of these stories are very colorful and seemingly enigmatic. I don't know what your textbooks say, but these stories are not nonsense riddles to solve. They're actually stories that point to important aspects of our practice still, which is why we still study them. And the story about Bodhidharma, just to finish that story, is he went north across the river and went into northern China and found a cave and sat in this cave. up in the hills of northern China. And I've actually been to the mountain where this happened, at Shaolin Monastery. And he sat up there in this cave.

[21:02]

And they say he sat so still that, well, there's all kinds of colorful stories about him. As I mentioned, the Daruma dolls. Daruma is the Japanese name for Bodhidharma, so you may have seen these little Japanese dolls that are kind of pear-shaped, and if you knock them over, they bounce back upright. This is about this meditation that we do, that we lose our balance, and our practice is about coming back to uprightness, both in our physical meditation posture, but also then how that's expressed in our everyday activity. So again, Chan was a movement in Chinese Buddhism to bring this awareness into our experience, into everyday activity. Colorful stories, but also the monks started working in the fields and supporting themselves. They were self-sufficient, or at least that's the, you know, didn't happen always literally historically, but their direction was toward to developing sustainable centers, monasteries, temples, communities that didn't just depend on the patronage of the kings like Emperor Wu.

[22:14]

Anyway, Bodhidharma sat up in his cave for nine years and gradually some of these other educated monks heard about him and finally one of them who became the second ancestor or patriarch of Chan in China, Huike, went to ask for the teaching from Bodhidharma. So he went up, climbed up to this cave and stood outside the cave where Bodhidharma was sitting. And the story goes, stood all night in the snow till he was up to his, I don't know, to his waist or, you know, any way above his knees. And he was just standing there in the snow and asked Bodhidharma to teach him, and Bodhidharma basically said, you know, go away, you're not serious. And so the story goes, and there's a famous painting of this, that Rika cut off his arm and handed it to Bodhidharma to prove his sincerity. So this is a kind of a strict warning to all later Zen students.

[23:20]

But even early on, they said, well, actually, the second ancestor had had his arm cut by bandits, not because of that story, but it represents something about the sternness and toughness of Bodhidharma. He did not take students easily. And so Bodhidharma represents the standard of awareness and of a kind of, well, maybe you could say integrity and commitment to the teachings that he represented. So there's all these stories about Bodhidharma and that cypress wood image of Bodhidharma I got in China at Kongshan Temple, which is where he taught after he left Shaolin. Shaolin is famous also as the center of martial arts. in China because later on martial arts was developed there and kung fu and qigong and many other martial arts forms and actually if you go there today

[24:28]

The temple and the mountain where Bodhidharma sat are back a ways, but before that there are these big modern buildings with all these kids doing martial arts and all these wonderful acrobatic exhibits and there's a big statue of Bodhidharma at the entrance and he's like big and buff like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, so to represent that tradition. Anyway, there are many, many stories about Bodhidharma. But this one is the, kind of the first story of Chan, the first story of Zen. Emperor Wu asks, what is the merit that I've gained from all of these good works? He says, no merit. Then what is the highest meaning of the holy truth? Vast emptiness, nothing holy. Who are you facing? Bodhidharma said, I don't know. And then he split. But yet this Minister of the Emperor said, this was the Bodhisattva of Avalokitesvara we just chanted about.

[25:35]

I'll read you the introduction to the case in the Blue Cliff Record. And the way these Koan cases are arranged, there's a basic case that I read you. There's a verse commentary. from the person who collected the stories and arranged them. And then there's lots and lots of commentary by a later teacher who put these together. And that later teacher, for the Bukla Frege, a later monk named Yuan Wu, a great teacher, said, when you see smoke on the other side of a mountain, you already know there's a fire. When you see horns on the other side of a fence, right away, you know there's an ox there. to understand free when one is raised, to judge precisely at a glance. This is the everyday food and drink of a patchwork monk. Getting to where he cuts off the myriad streams, he is free to arise in the East and sink in the West, to go against or to go with in any and all directions, free to give or to take away.

[26:48]

But say, at just such a time, whose actions are these? So again, this idea of the ultimate and the conventional truths is very important. Bodhidharma represents turning away from the world, going off to the mountains, facing the wall. So he sat in the cave facing the wall, and his practice has been called wall gazing, and that's what we were just doing. Although it doesn't mean necessarily just looking at, facing a wall, it also means facing or gazing like a wall. Just being present. Not reacting to thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and so forth. Just being present and aware. So our practice and the style of meditation practice we do in our tradition here is a little more relaxed. It's attention.

[27:51]

So part of the point is to pay attention. But it's upright sitting, just being aware of inhale and exhale and posture and thoughts and feelings as they come and go, not holding on to anything, not trying to figure out anything either, but still present and paying attention. So who are you facing me? Good. I believe you. So... Yeah, this is our practice, to see how it is that we don't know. There are many ways of knowing, but ultimately, the ultimate truth is we don't know. Practice this in this difficult world where everything is changing, where our very survival, your very survival, and the survival of our habitat and our species even, as we're in this mass extinction of many species now, as the climate is, you know, with the climate damage and so forth.

[29:13]

We're living in a difficult time. How do we find our way of being present and upright? sturdy enough and flexible enough to respond, to be helpful in this world. And then there's this image of Bodhidharma, just sitting in this cave. Eventually, he did have other disciples, and after him there were, there's five There were various other teachers, but there were five great ancestors or patriarchs, and then it's split into five houses of Chan in China, and many, many more. So we are inheritors of this tradition from Bodhidharma. But it starts with this vast emptiness, nothing sacred. So I can keep talking about Bodhidharma, but I'll pause now and ask for your questions, comments, responses, any of you, new students who are here for the first time and people who've been here a while, comments on this story.

[30:30]

Yes. When you respond that nothing is holy, Does he mean that, or do you think he means that the definition of holy does not exist, or that any definition does not exist? Well, what does it mean for something to be holy or sacred? So part of the point of these stories is that, and these stories, there's a hundred of them in the Blue Cliff Record, these are all stories that have been studied for a thousand years or more. And so in each of these stories, some of the stories are very short. very abrupt. Some of them, like this one, are a little bit longer. And the point of the story is to bring up questions to help you to investigate what is your practice life, what is your practice body. So, you raised a very good question, a wonderful question. What does it mean, what does he mean by nothing holy?

[31:34]

First, I'd ask you to think about, oh, what is sacred? What is sacred to you? What does it mean for something to be holy or sacred? So one of my first teachers, Bob Dylan, said, clear without looking too far, not much is really sacred. They're talking about our own society. But what would it be to, what is sacred? What is important to you? What do you think is sacred? Or holy? Honestly, I'm somewhat of an aversion to defining things as sacred or holy because religion was forced upon me. So I didn't want to think about that. So I don't have an answer for you. Good. Good that you know that you don't have an answer. And again, the point isn't answers. Answers arise sometimes, but then they bring up other questions. That's part of the point of this Goan work. So how do we sit in the middle of question, the question of our life, the question of our world?

[32:40]

How do we find our steadiness and our breath and our uprightness and our flexibility in the midst of this question that our world is and that our lives are? And yeah, I think it's healthy. and etymologically maybe healthy and holy or related, but I think it's healthy to question that which our society or our world or conventional truth says is sacred. So maybe that's why Bodhidharma said vast emptiness, nothing holy. And yet, I think it's worth thinking about, not in terms of what some religion says, including Buddhism, but for you, what do you think is sacred? What do you think is holy? It's a worthwhile question. Good.

[34:13]

Yeah. And one of the questions that Sean or Zen poses is, how do we know anything? Part of sitting, so in a couple weekends, some of us are going to be sitting for three days. But even if you sit for 30 minutes or 40 minutes, as we did tonight, we start to see that there are different ways of knowing. We know things. In our body, we know warmth and cold. We know pressure on our knees or our butt or in our shoulders. We know things. If you reach into your pocket, your fingers know the difference between the different objects in your pocket without your thinking about it and figuring them out. There's lots of ways of knowing. And yet, what does it mean to really know from the point of view of ultimate truth? Morty Dahmer's answer, I would say, is pretty good. But I don't know.

[35:16]

So we're about at the end of our usual time, but with new people. Jan, question, comment. When you say what is sacred, I have a problem with things that other people think For example, and it has partly to do with outrage, but when I think about what happened to the people who called the Athabasca River their home, and it was their sacred river. Yes. And when it was just completely defiled. And then I feel that... So tell us, please, about that river and how it was defiled briefly. and the river, that everything was dumped into the Athabasca River.

[36:22]

And the Athabasca, the Native Americans, we called them Athabascans, and their children would get sick and they had to leave their territory. And one time I went to the Bluffs in South Dakota and We just went there as tourists to look around and go for a hike. And this is sacred territory to the Native Americans that lived there. And in fact, everything, there is no such thing as a place on Earth that is not sacred to them. There's one of the koans in here that's about that exactly. And that's... So that's an answer that I would agree with. And it's the answer, one answer, that actually all indigenous peoples, Native Americans and others, give about what is sacred and holy.

[37:28]

There are places that have energy, that have power. And actually, one of the stories, as I was referring to in the Blue Cliff Record, the Shakyamuni Buddha asks Manjushri, go bring me some plant that is healing, that is medicine. And he goes and looks around and says, everything, all the plants are healing. And then he just picks up a plate of grass and gives it to the Buddha. Well, I'm just thinking, you know, this Bodhidharma's answer, vast emptiness, nothing holy, you know, seems like part of the way that answer works is that if you refuse to make that kind of distinction, you refuse to say, okay, well, this is holy, therefore, this is something else, then you can get other answers. And I've still haven't located the source, but there's a story that Bodhidharma was going around complaining there's no place to spit.

[38:34]

Why? Because everything's holy. If there's no special holy, then everything needs to be treated in the way Kansayana treats it, with respect and care and tenderness, all those things. Good, yeah. So nothing holy means that everything is holy. There's nothing that's wholly as opposed to the other things. Yes. Good. Yes. Yes, exactly. Yes, good. So Bodhidharma's, you know, the story of Bodhidharma becomes the criteria for meaning in Chan. So a lot of the later stories begin with either a monk or a teacher asking, what was the point of Bodhidharma coming from the West? Why did Bodhidharma come from the West? Why did he come from India to China? And there are all kinds of answers.

[39:36]

Some of them very colorful, some of them kind of vulgar. The great master Jayaja, when asked, what was the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West, pointed out to the garden and said, the cypress tree. The great master Yunmen, when asked, what was the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West, said, a piece of dried shit. So there's all kinds of, there have been all kinds of responses to that meaning, and then some of the teachers have said, oh, he came and he made all this trouble. So anyway, we're the result of that trouble. So, thank you all for being here. We'll close with the four bodhisattva vows, which are in the next last page of your chant book. If you want, you can use the card that's coming around. Beings are numberless.

[40:41]

I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize this. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Illusions are indestructible. I vow to end them. Narma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[41:44]

I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Ambuddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it.

[42:21]

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