Good morning, everyone. Good morning. This is the third day of our three-day Seshin, and it's also the last day of our two-month spring practice period. And we've been talking about stories from the 9th century founder of this tradition, Dongshan, about practicing suchness. practicing justice, being present and connecting with the immediacy of our lives. So, I want to do a little review of the last couple of days before talking today about how that which goes beyond is right present in our everyday activity. So the story that I've been focusing on most of the practice period is about the nature of self and identity and all the descriptions and stories we have of ourselves and how this is related to, we sometimes call it suchness, the ultimate wholeness, the universal

[01:29]

emptiness, in a way. So this is a story that happened when Dongshan was leaving his teacher, Yunyan, and I'll just tell it again briefly, that Dongshan asked his teacher, later on, if I'm asked to describe your teaching, your reality, what should I say? How should I respond? And Yunyan paused, and then said, Just this is it." And Dogshan, you know, there was nothing to say after that. And Yanyan then said, Now you are in charge of this great matter. Please be most careful. And Dogshan left and was waiting across the stream and looked down and saw his reflection shimmering in the water. wrote just later, just don't seek from others or you'll be far estranged from self. So this is something that you can hear or read about, but actually it's about your own experience.

[02:38]

I now go on alone everywhere I meet it. It now is me. I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with suchness. So this it now is me, I now am not it. Not it is Saddlewood Slippery, and we've been talking about it a lot, but it has to do with... So the pronoun in this rendition is it, can be read in lots of ways, but in some sense it's about this suchness, this ultimate, unconditioned reality. It now is me. I now am not it. So the side of I am not it is that our usual ego self, all of the stories and descriptions and opinions and prejudices and patterns of greed, hate and delusion that is part of us, that's not it. And anything that we think of as me, I, is not it.

[03:43]

But... It now is me. So, the ultimate, the universal suchness includes everything, of course, by definition, including you, and me, and all of us. So, it now is you. Even though you're not it, it now is you. And so, suchness is not a thing. something we can figure out or get a hold of. In fact, suchness is, as one old teacher said, the way to study ungraspability, because we can't get a hold of it. So, suchness is that which is ultimate and ungraspable, and yet, that now is you. So, suchness Again, suchness isn't a thing, but it's a way of talking about reality.

[04:45]

And it's not static. The world is alive. You are alive. Everything is alive. When we think of I am not it, the I can become like a dead object, one more thing in the world. But the it now is me. Everything is included in this. ultimate reality, which we actually kind of get some tiny glimpse of as we're sitting here for a day or two or three or a period. It's just a sense of something beyond all of our grasping, beyond conditions, something ultimate. We all have some little sense of that, otherwise you wouldn't be here. And also, as we settle in for a day or two or three, there's a little bit more access.

[05:58]

And this is an organic, lifelong process of how we connect with this deep energy of the ultimate, this creative healing energy that goes beyond. So it's not static, and we have some responsibility. So Yong-Yan said to Dong-Shun, you are now in charge of this great matter. Please be most thorough going. We now chant, and we'll chant later today, those of us here for the day, the precious merit of samadhi that starts The Dharma of suchness is intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it. Preserve it well. So our practice is to settle into that, to dig into that, to uncover that, to deepen our sense of that, but also our expression of that, and how we take care of it in our everyday activity. That's kind of what I want to focus on today.

[07:01]

How do we take care of this? It is you, even though you're not it. So we all have our piece of wholeness. So that's the story I talked about a couple of days ago, and keep coming back to. Yesterday I talked about another aspect of the Damshan stories, which is about the path, how our usual sense of progress, our usual sense of accomplishing things, our usual sense of all of our activities about manipulating things to get something else, in subtle, sometimes subtle ways, sometimes in very wholesome ways. But there's this problem about, you know, thinking that we're doing something, as Dylan says, just to be nothing more than something we invested. How do we actually appreciate just this now. How do we settle into this suchness, justness?

[08:13]

And our monkey minds are always trying to get somewhere else. We're never happy to just be here, even if it's what you want, even if you've been of coming to a three-day session, and this is the fulfillment of all your aspirations, you might be thinking about, you know, what you're going to have for dinner tonight, or something you're going to do Tuesday, or, you know, anyway. We're always trying to get somewhere else. And, okay, that's just our human reality. But this sudden Waking up, the sudden attention is about, oh, here I am, right here. So another, one of the other stories, Dong Shan was talking to his, one of his successors, Yun Ju, from where many of his, comes from, and talking about walking in the mountains, and Dong Shan,

[09:18]

that says at one point, you must have found an entryway to get here. And Yonju said, no, there's no path. And Dongchun said, if there's no path, how could you be sitting in front of me? And Yonju says, if there were a path, there'd be a mountain between us. So as soon as you set up some idea of some process, some path to get somewhere else, you're not here. Now this is not to say that in the ordinary, phenomenal, relative world that we don't, you know, set up goals and try to accomplish things and, you know, we can even do that as a way of taking care of suchness. But this communion with suchness itself, Dongshan's harmonious communion, this presence with his teacher, our presence here together with each other and with our community is not about some technique to get somewhere else, even if that keeps coming up in our monkey mind.

[10:35]

Here we are. Just this is enough. So sitting here today is an opportunity to settle into just being For the next breath, with the ache in your shoulder, in your ear, the exhale, feeling your posture, feeling your presence. This is a physical practice. So what I want to talk about today is how this sense of that which goes beyond all of our limited conditionality, how that sense of suchness, of wholeness, of harmonious communion, how that is in our life, in our everyday world, in our everyday activity.

[11:38]

So a lot of our emphasis in Zen is, you know, we emphasize the posture and the practice in sitting meditation, but also then how does that express itself in our everyday activity? So another story about Dongshan. It's perfect for today because this is the last day of the practice period. And one time, Dongshan, after then, traditionally they have a three-month practice period in the summer. And Dongshan said to his students in the closing talk, and we're not quite finished now, we have the whole rest of the day, but, He said to his students, it's the beginning of autumn, at the end of summer, and all of you will go, some to the east, some west. So they used to gather for practice periods in monasteries in China, and they'd go off wandering around, or taking care of other work.

[12:43]

But he said, some of you will go north, some of you will go east, some of you will go west, But please, you have to go where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles." And then he said, but where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles, how can you go? So this is grass, but it's also kind of weeds, just overgrown grasses. find a place where there's no grass for 10,000 miles. And there's a famous saying by a great layman, Hong, that the 10,000 grass tips are the minds and bodies of the Buddhas and ancestors. So the 10,000 things is a kind of stock phrase in Chinese for all the phenomena. How will you go? Go to a place where there's no conditions, there's no karma,

[13:48]

There's no particulars beyond. So they'd had this settling in, this three months of study with Dongsho, I don't know what that was like, anyway. Settling into just being present in this suchness. But then he said, where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles, how can you go? And Xishuang, who was kind of the Dharma cousin, heard about this and said, going out the gate, immediately there's grass. As soon as you take a step, As soon as you step onto Irving Park Road, there's traffic, there's people coming by, there's all kinds of stuff, you know? Can't avoid it. Later on, Dai Yang, who's a later teacher in Arleneage, his name we also say in Arleneage Chan, he said, even not going out the gate, still the grass is boundless. So right inside, right inside, the monastery, right inside this settling into suchness.

[14:51]

10,000 things. Suki Roshi talked about mind weeds. So, even just hitting a period of zazen, you know that thoughts come up. Well, for most of you. Some of you may have had a period, the last period, had no thoughts at all. That's possible. That's not the point of this, but, you know, that happens sometimes. But mostly, you know, there were a couple of thoughts or more, some feelings, some stuff floating around there. So right on your cushion, there's weeds. And Suzuki Roshi said that these mind weeds are actually very helpful. the kind of good medicine there, that in our practice we see that composting those weeds is very fruitful. That when we are able to be present with all these things, all this stuff, that something is possible, something else can grow.

[16:05]

we can learn to be present and upright in the middle of the 10,000 things. So, there's grass everywhere. Right in the zendo, outside, under the improper fish stuff. And we go to a place where there's no grass for 10,000 miles. And sometimes Dong Shun was really emphatic about this. He said to one of his students, you have to go where there's no grass for 10,000 miles. He really encouraged his students to go beyond all of this conditioning, to see something deeper. So the various stories about grass, and once the story goes, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who sits in front of Buddha on our altar, asks Udana, the great coconut, the flower in the sutra, to bring him a stalk of medicinal herb.

[17:43]

And Sudhana went out to buy something. So this practice in a lot of ways is about healing. How do we heal all of the pain and confusion and resistance and sadness and frustration and anger from all of our time dealing with the 10,000 things, dealing with all the weeds? How do we find something that goes beyond it? And how do we come back and work with it? So Manjushri asked Sudhana to go find him a stalk of medicinal herb. Sudhana was a very diligent student, so he went down. And after just a little while, he came back and said, that he could find nothing, no grasses in the road, that was not medicine.

[18:50]

He said, the whole great earth is medicine, which one should I pick and bring back to you? And Manjushri was insistent, please bring a stalk of medicine. So Sudhana bent down and pulled up a weight of grass and handed it to him. So everywhere there's medicine, everywhere there's healing. stuff of the world. We say, and we'll say at the end of this talk, Dharma gates are boundless. I've got to enter them. So all of the situations and problems and needs of our life can be used to help wake up, connect with suchness, take care of suchness, take care of each other. relieve the suffering of the world. Another story about grass. One time, Shakyamuni Buddha was out walking with people from the Sangha, and actually various beings from the Sangha.

[20:05]

He saw a spot, you know, in many traditions there's this idea that there are sacred places. So, you know, there are many of these around the world. But they were just out walking in the temple and the Buddha pointed to the ground and said, this spot is good to build a temple. And one of his students, who was the Indian creator deity, Indra, who happened to be there, reached down and picked a blade of grass and stuck it in the ground where Shakyamuni had pointed to and said, the temple is built. And Buddha smiled. So all of this, all of the mind-reads, all of the stuff of the world, part of the practice of connecting with suchness is to see how to use this, how to help, not to get to some other place, but to see the suchness that's right here, to see the healing that's right here.

[21:16]

When we're willing to stop and sit down or, you know, there are various other practices, but to actually pay attention, to not run away from yourself, to face all the stuff, all the sadness or anger or confusion or resistance or, you know, all the human stuff we've got, And it's possible, it really is, to just sit still in the middle and take another breath. And sometimes we don't see any particular benefit of that, but just being able to It's not about necessarily fixing problems, although sometimes if you can do that, great, but just to be able to be present and not run away from our own fears, our own anxieties, our own confusion, our anger or sadness.

[22:29]

Great healing. It doesn't mean we know what to do. Of course, we should do whatever we can. And skillful means is about trying things. And in this situation, how can I help myself or others or everyone? So this is about how we bring this suchness into our everyday activity. We'll close with another story about this. So, one time a monk came to Dongshan and asked him, which of the three bodies of Buddha does not fall into any category? And Dongshan said, I'm always close to this.

[23:39]

So that's the whole story. I'm going to say some stuff about it. So first of all, which of the three bodies of Buddha does not fall into any category is kind of, I don't want to say it's a dumb question, but it's at least a little ironic. He's making up categories and saying which one isn't a category. But this business of the three bodies of Buddha I'll just say a little bit about that. In early Buddhism, Buddha meant Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha who lived 2,500 years ago, more or less, in what's now northeastern India. But as Buddhist practice developed and the Bodhisattva tradition developed, including Zen, people started to recognize other aspects of Buddha. And the ultimate question is just, what is Buddha? And there are many forms of that. Why did the Bodhidharma, the first ancestor in China, come from the West, come from India?

[24:46]

Anyway, there are many, or what is this that thus comes? Really, what is Buddha? And so there were various ways of talking about different Buddhas. And in some of the traditions, there are many, many, many Buddhas. And there are world systems, galaxies, different dimensions all over. And each of them has its own Buddha. And there's Maitreya, who's the next future Buddha that Shakyamuni predicted. And there were seven Buddhas before Shakyamuni Buddha. Actually, many more than seven. But we had names of seven. Anyway, there are Buddhas all over, and in some sutras, like the Flower Ornament Sutra, it says that there are innumerable Buddhas on the tip of the staff, or on the tip of a blade of grass, or in every atom. So what's that about? What is Buddha? Well, they started to try and

[25:48]

talk about categories of Buddha, types of Buddha, different bodies of Buddha. And one major way of talking about this was the three bodies of Buddha. And I'm not saying it's three minds of Buddha, it's three bodies of Buddha. So this is a physical practice. Our practice sitting here for three days, or for a two-month practice period, or for a period of zazen, Sunday morning or Monday night or Thursday evening or whenever, is how are we maybe creating, maybe expressing, how are we developing, growing Buddha's body on your seat right now? How do we express and enact and embody Buddha? So many different kinds of bodies in this room. Each one can be a body of Buddha.

[26:52]

It's a physical practice. And, you know, sitting all day after a while, it's going to feel a little uncomfortable. It's going to hurt in your knees or your shoulders or your back or somewhere. It's like giving birth to it. a baby Buddha. I understand, I never had the opportunity myself, but I understand that giving birth to a child, there's a lot of pain involved. Some of you can testify to that. Anyway, the three bodies of Buddha, One is the incarnated Buddha, Nirmanakaya is the Sanskrit name, you don't have to remember that, there's no test subjects. But the Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha, people in the world who are Buddhas, and some of the great ancestors, Zhao Zhou, many people, who was a contemporary of Dongshan, people say, oh, Buddha Zhao Zhou.

[28:04]

And there are people around like that, maybe. So that's one kind, that's one of the buddhas, is the incarnated historical body of Buddha, human Buddha. There may be nirmanakayas who are dolphins or polar bears or, I don't know. dharmakaya, which is the whole universe as the body of Buddha. So dharma means a lot of things. It means reality, the truth, it means the teaching. But it also just means, we talk about the dharmadhatu, the field of dharma, of reality. So it's the whole phenomenal world as the body of Buddha. And we, in East Asia, they even built names for that. We used to, we chanted Roshana Buddha in our meal chant at midday.

[29:09]

This is the name for the star Makaya. And there are images in Japan, Dehaswatha Daigutsu at Todaiji by Raman Nara. There are sculptural expressions of the Buddha who is the whole universe. So that one is huge. His ears are like eight feet long, but a beautiful statue. There are other statues of that, just with the planets and stars all over the body. Anyway, but this is Buddha as all of reality. Not just the solar system in this dimension, but, you know, whatever, however many dimensions there are in string theory these days, 11 or 13 or whatever. Everywhere, everything, as Buddha. So that means not just everything as greed, hate, and delusion, but everything informed with the caring and compassion and wisdom of Buddha. So that's the Dharmakaya. The third one is a little more difficult to explain.

[30:15]

Sambhogakaya, it's the reward body of Buddha, the result of practice. And these Buddhas exist kind of like spirits in some meditative heaven, but in Asia, and now in America too, people venerate these Buddhas, like the Medicine Buddha, or Tibetan Buddhism, there's many, many, many of them. Anyway, Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Pure Land Buddhism, is that kind of Buddha. So, the point is that there are three kinds of bodies of Buddha according to this particular idea. And again, it's important that there are bodies of Buddha. So, the monk asked Dongshan, which of the three bodies of Buddha does not fall into any category? So which of them goes beyond our usual mind?

[31:15]

Most of what we do and everything we think about and all of our accomplishments are about discriminating this from that and making up categories and working with that. And it's not that that's bad or wrong. It's just that there's also this other deeper suchness. But this monk wanted to know, which of these bodies does not fall into any category? Which truly goes beyond? It's a strange question, really. But I love Dongshan's response. He said, I'm always close to this. We could hear that as, I'm always intimate with this. And what does that mean? One way to read it, I'm always close to this question. Or maybe he's saying, I'm always close to this body of Buddha that doesn't go all into categories. Because he's pretty slippery. It's pretty hard to pin him down into any category.

[32:18]

All these stories of Dongshan show that. So in the book of Sravani, a case about this. Also, it's about not getting caught up in stages of progress to somewhere else, or not falling into classifications. So, in the Book of Serenity poem collection, that features Dongshan in many of these stories, well, there's a lot of good material in there. What does it mean to actually be close? To actually be intimate with some question? How do we stay close and remain present right in the middle of our uncertainty and our discomfort and our vulnerability? How do we find the patience and capacity to just keep sitting upright and still and pay attention?

[33:26]

How do we sustain that kind of attention? So Dongshan says, I'm always close to this. In the introduction to this story, Wansong, a later teacher who put the Book of Serenity collection together from earlier cases and verses from another teacher named Hongzhe, he says at the end of his introduction, where is the technique to help people? So you might think, oh, so this is sort of this abstract story about different bodies of Buddha and being close or whatever, but where is the healing? So, in all these bodies of Buddha, this suchness is there, and there are various kinds of healers in the room. One way of talking about the reality of the Ten Thousand Things is in terms of energy.

[34:30]

that there is an energy in the physicality of the world that we can connect with. So that's part of what happens, sitting in session, sitting in zazen, is that we can be present with our energy and see it, and see how it moves. So if you're sleepy, you can bring your energy up into your chest or into your head. If your mind is racing around, you can lower your gaze and bring your energy down. But in Asian practice, in Taoism quite a bit, but also in Buddhism, there's this possibility of seeing this energy, which in some ways is an expression of suchness, and working with it to heal. So this stalk of grass that heals. How do we work with that energy? How do we remain intimate with this question of what is helpful?

[35:35]

So, again, this is all about studying the self. What's going on in this body, on your cushion or chair? How do we stay close? So there's a poem that's in the commentary that says, this closeness is heart-rending if you search outside. Why does the ultimate familiarity seem like enmity? So when we're really close with some other person, parent or child, romantic partner, a teacher or student, sometimes it feels like and hostility, it's difficult to hang in there. It's difficult to really be intimate with some other, or with yourself.

[36:38]

I mean, I think this works within our own body, too. When we are willing to sit still and be present in this body for a day or two or three, it may seem like your body's going to scream back at you, no, you've got to move, no, your knee's hurting, no. So, you know, your knee might be screaming at you, or your shoulders, or whatever, anyway. How do we just stay close? This is what Dongchun said, I'm always close to this. How do we stay friendly with those we're intimate with, or with all of the beings on your Krishna chair right now, who you of course are intimate with. How does that feel? How does that feel?

[37:39]

Can you be present and intimate with your shoulders? Or with your chin? Or with your elbows? Of course they're not other than you. But we think that way. Oh no, if only my knee would stop hurting. It's your knee's fault. So how do we find this intimacy, this closeness, this friendliness? I'm not trying to get anything from him. It's just all I really want to do is maybe be friends with you. How do we find that? So I'll just... I want to say something about this wonderful poem by Hong Zheng, his first comment on this story about being always close. He says, not entering the world, not following conditions, in the emptiness of the pot of ages there's a family tradition.

[38:41]

White duckweeds breeze gentle, evening on an autumn river. An ancient embankment, the boat returns, a single stretch of haze. So there's this ancient embankment, there's this, you know, the other shore. It's so close, I'm always close to this. And you see it when you're sitting. The boat returns a single stretch of haze, and I imagine this ferryman hauling people across to the other shore. And he's stunning. So again, not entering the world, not following conditions. There's not a blade of grass anywhere. How do we see that? How is that helpful? And Humphrey says, in the emptiness of the pot of ages, there's a family tradition.

[39:44]

Really strange line. An empty pot? How is that helpful? No food? Maybe he's talking about fasting as a practice. We will have lunch, certainly. What is this pot of ages, this container, that is a family tradition? This gets complicated. The word empty, the emptiness of pot of ages, is the same empty, same character that's in the Heart Sutra. A form is exactly emptiness, emptiness is exactly a form. But it also means sky or space. So in certain contexts, this line uses it also. He talks about the pot of ages in the sky or in space.

[40:47]

But really, it's talking about this family tradition. So we've been studying Dong Shan's stories for a couple of months. And we've done it before, too. And all these old stories, they may seem weird and obscure. These koans are not about figuring something out. They're not nonsense riddles that you have to solve. They're just a kind of family tradition, family jewels. And we play with them, and we turn them, and we see different facets. So how do they help promote the healing energy in your body? Well, we sit with them, and if a particular story doesn't appeal to you, fine, forget about it. And we discuss these stories and elaborate on them. But we have these stories going back so that the point isn't some historical artifact about some guy who lived in the 800s. We don't even know if he actually really said this. It was only an oral tradition for hundreds of years before somebody wrote it down.

[41:55]

But it doesn't matter. We have this material. We have this empty pot. So how do we... preserve it well? How do we take care of these stories that point us to aspects of our practice body? These stories, each one is like an acupuncture needle pointing at some juicy place in our practice body, in our Buddha body, activating our Buddha body. So the point isn't to figure it out or solve it or be finished with it. We never finish with these stories. Sometimes we put them aside and look at another story, but these stories are there to keep coming back to. So, welcome to the family tradition. We've been sitting with this and now, at the end of today, over the end of the practice period,

[43:04]

So please go where the grass is thick and wild. Please go into Chicago and pay attention and be helpful. And also go into your own practice body, your own Buddha body, and take care of that, nurture that. It's Sunday morning, and some friends have joined us in the session. Welcome. And so usually, in the session, we don't have discussion right after. But since it's Sunday morning, I want to, we will have, for people who are here all day, a question ceremony later this afternoon, a choson ceremony, where each one, everybody will come and ask a question. And there will be a response, you see. But for now, if anybody has any comments or questions or responses, we can take a little bit of time.

[44:09]

that a lot of his responses to these stories are very slippery. I was going to take you to elaborate on that at all in terms of, I guess, how that would, what I can take away from that, from our practice. Yeah, well, good, thank you, yes. It's not that he's trying to be devious or something like that. Part of the issue is there seems to be something about suchness itself that calls us to share it. Now you have it, presume it will. Take care of it. And so there's a whole set of the stories that have to do with, in some ways, all of the stories have to do with how this is being conveyed and how it's being received. And in that first story where he says, don't search outside, each person has to in some sense, find your own Buddha body, your own way of seeing this.

[45:50]

There's a story about the story of Dongshan leaving Yunnan that gets to this, I think it responds to your question, that later on Dongshan was doing a memorial service for Yunnan's teacher and and talking about the story about Yun-Yan saying, just this is it. And one of his students said to Dongshan, when he said that, did Yun-Yan know just this or not? He's kind of challenging his teacher's teaching. And Dongshan said, if he didn't know just this, if he didn't know it is, how could he have said it? If he did know it is, how could he be willing to say it? So it's, you know, how to try and... Dongshan also said that he only valued Yongyan because he didn't explain everything to him. So this slipperiness is not, you know, just being dodgy or something.

[47:00]

It's part of, you know, how to convey this ungraspable reality to help you get it. So there were other teachers in Dabushan's time who challenged their students by yelling at them or hitting them with sticks or things like that. Dabushan's a little subtler, but he's also challenging. For you. Another comment or question? Yes. And the later part of that, too, I think that we've been focusing on just this, but there's the part that could even be referred to by just this. Yes. And there's his further enlightenment afterwards that seems to

[48:05]

Yes, sure. And the realization is that it's his. He's told it's his. He's been given it. It's yours now, too. Yes. Yes, that pause. The pause that refreshes. So one last comment or response this morning. Yes, Brian. I'm wondering about this term, the unconditioned and beyond conditioning. I don't know what to say. It seems like everything is conditioned. Yes, that's right. In the early Indian Abhidharma teachings, psychological teachings, they divide everything into, one school says, 75 different elements of reality.

[49:23]

And a few of them are beyond conditions. Nirvana is one. But there's also certain mental states where there's no conditions. So, of course, our, you know, that's, it's not, and the point of our practice isn't to get to something like that. That which is not caught up in trying to push around cause and effect, there's something there that goes beyond. And we can't talk about it, going back to Alex's question. And yet, there's something happening and you don't know what it is. It's part of the Buddha body. It's there. That which goes beyond, that which is ungraspable. And anything else, anything I say about it is not it. But this is actually considered an element of, one of the elements of reality in early Buddhist epistemology.

[50:31]

It's that which is not caught by all of the reading, delusion and so on. I don't know, but anyway, how do we express something that is intimate with that, right in the middle of all the weeds?

[50:56]

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