Good morning everyone and welcome. We're two weeks into our two-month spring practice period. For this practice period we're looking at the teachings of 12th century Chinese Tsao-tung or Shoto master Hongzhe. So some of you are formally doing this practice period, some not, but for those who aren't he was a teacher in the lineage that we practice here in the 1100s and expressed this meditative awareness in a really evocative way incorporating kind of Chinese Taoist influenced meditative poetic expressions that capture some of

[01:04]

this what this meditative awareness is about. For the people in the practice period we recommended six passages from this book Cultivating the Empty Field which I translated 30 years ago and I keep going back to and each time there's I find more. So I've been going through in the first Dharma talks these six different sections and today I'm going to talk about this section titled All Beings Are Your Ancestors. So first I'm just going to read through it and then I'm going to go back and talk about this teaching and again this teaching is an expression of meditative awareness and kind of gives us a way of accessing aspects of this Tsao-tung practice we've just done. So Hongzhe says fully appreciate the emptiness of all dharmas, of all phenomena. Then all minds are free

[02:10]

and all dusts evaporate in the original brilliance shining everywhere. Transforming according to circumstances, meet all beings as your ancestors. Subtly illuminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality. Clear and desireless, the wind and the pines and the moon in the water are content in their elements. Without minds interacting, wind and pines or moon and water do not impede one another. Essentially you exist inside emptiness and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms. Amid all the noise spontaneously emerge transcendent. So that's this section, this practice instruction, these dharma words. I want to go back over them and talk about what

[03:16]

Hongzhe is saying and then we'll have some time for discussion. Fully appreciate the emptiness of all dharmas. So this word emptiness I've been talking about it doesn't mean nothingness. And actually I mentioned Koz Tanahashi, my old friend and great translator of Dogen, who was a century later and brought this tradition to Japan. Koz's translation of the Heart Sutra, which we sometimes chant which talks about form and emptiness, Koz translates this as boundlessness. So emptiness just means that all things are empty of separation, of separate essential existence. And I resisted that translation of boundlessness at first, but more and more I'm kind of feeling the appropriateness of that. Fully appreciate the openness, the boundlessness of all

[04:17]

things. When we say emptiness it means that there's nothing separate, there's nothing as fundamental to anything. Everything is totally interconnected with everything else. So these sections Hongzhe says to begin with, fully appreciate the emptiness of all dharmas. When you do that then all minds are free and all dusts evaporate in the original brilliance shining everywhere. So I look back at my notes from the Chinese characters that worked with 30 years ago. All minds are free and all dusts dissipate is another way of saying that. All dusts means all phenomena, all of the ways we get caught, all of the sense objects, all of the things we get hung up on, all of the objects we attach to. When we fully appreciate the

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emptiness, the openness, the boundlessness of all things, then all minds are free and all dusts, all attachments dissipate in the original or fundamental, we could say, brilliance shining everywhere. So this is the kind of the starting point that Hongzhe talks about in the very beginning of his practice instructions where he says the field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You can reside in the clear circle of brightness that this fundamental or original brilliance shines everywhere. Our practice is not to discover or create something new but to realize something that is here from the very beginning. And it's our attachments and our hang-ups, all of the

[06:24]

things that we get caught on that get in the way of that. When we fully appreciate the emptiness, the boundlessness, the openness of everything, then our minds can become free, all dust dissipate, and the fundamental brilliance shines everywhere. We get a taste of this in this sitting practice. It's not that there are lights shining everywhere and that we have some psychedelic experience in every moment of zazen, but we get some taste, some glimmer of some deeper energy, some deeper reality, some deeper possibility when we sit. And we don't always realize it, but it's what brought you to this practice and it's what brings you back to this practice. All minds are free and all dust dissipate

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and the fundamental brilliance shining everywhere. And then Hongzhe says transforming according to circumstances, meet all beings as your ancestors. So this idea of the ancestors is important in Zen. The character he uses here is Tsong or Shu in Japanese. It means the source. Meet all beings as your ancestors. So all beings right now. So it's not the ancestors necessarily from way back. It's the ancestors right now. When we fully appreciate the emptiness of all things, that means that everything in the world is creating this situation right now, dependent, co-arising. So creation is creating this

[08:31]

creation right now. Every person you've ever met, every being in the whole universe is creating what is on your seat right now. But beyond that, meet all beings as your ancestors. See that each person is in some way part of the lineage of your ancestors. So we, during our all-day sittings during this practice period, we're chanting formally the names of the ancestors going back to Shakyamuni and also the names of our women ancestors, the names of great women in India, China, Japan, and America. So we have this lineage of Zen or Buddhist ancestors that we appreciate, the people who kept alive this practice

[09:33]

going back to Shakyamuni Buddha 2,500 years ago in what's now Northeastern India, and before him, that allows us to do this practice. But also there are many lineages of ancestors. So there are cultural lineages of ancestors. There are ancestors we can look to who created music we appreciate or literature we appreciate. I walked yesterday with the Science March downtown. So there are great lineages of scientists who created our body of knowledge now that helps us understand what the world is. And there are great lineages of social activists

[10:36]

who helped keep alive the possibility of social change. People who marched in the street for abolition of slavery, who help us march on the street now for abolition of mass incarceration. Suffragettes who helped bring women the vote less than a hundred years ago. Now people are marching in the streets to help keep women's rights alive. So many lineages of ancestors, many different kinds of ancestors. There's genetic ancestors, not just human beings, all of the different creatures who share DNA with us, animals and plants even. So here Hongzhi just says, meet all beings as your ancestors. In Tibetan Buddhism, they

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talk about seeing each person as having been your mother in a past life. So to realize our connection with all beings, transforming according to circumstances. So in each situation we see new, we see this new possibility of meeting all beings as our ancestors. Then Hongzhi says, subtly illuminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality. So this subtly illuminate all conditions is interesting. Wisdom, the word we use for wisdom prashna, really means insight. It means to bring light to the situation in front of us. So wisdom in Buddhism is not exactly some body of knowledge. It's to see clearly. How do we

[12:44]

bring our awareness? How do we bring clear vision into the situation we're in? And as the situation changes, how do we see it clearly? Subtly illuminate all conditions. This is subtle because all conditions have all ancestors as their sources. So to recognize the complexity of any situation, when we want to address some problem in our life or in the world, how do we subtly illuminate it? How do we see the complexity of all? It's not necessarily possible. Maybe it's not ever possible to just fix some situation, but we can bring our attention to it, to subtly illuminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality. So our discriminating consciousness is usually thinking in terms of right and wrong and good

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and bad and making judgments about good people and bad people. We do that. That's how our consciousness works. But Hongshu is saying, subtly illuminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality. How do we see with a wider view? So right view in Buddhism is to listen to all views. It doesn't mean that there are not harmful views and helpful views, but how do we not get caught up in self-righteousness? Subtly illuminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality. Wide view, open view, fully appreciating the openness of all dharmas, meeting all beings as our ancestors. So then Hongshu says, clear and desireless. Well, we all, as human beings, as electromagnetic

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beings, we have attractions and aversions. But clear and desireless, Buddhism is about not being caught up in obsessive desire, desiring objects of attachment. Desireless, being content, not having too many desires. Or if we see our desires and our aversions, not causing harm based on them. So Hongshu talks often about nature metaphors for the way meditative awareness works. This comes from this Chinese, maybe we could say Taoist, but just this nature awareness. So clear and desireless, the wind and the pines and the moon and the water are content in their elements. Without minds interacting, wind and pines or moon and water do not impede one another. So the wind blowing through the pines isn't disturbed by the pines. The pines

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are not disturbed by the wind. It's just this natural function. The moon light flowing down, flowing on the water streams, doesn't bother the water. The water doesn't bother the moonlight. This is a model that Hongshu uses, this kind of natural interaction for how we can be in the world with all of the complex, difficult beings around us. This natural functioning. Easy to say, sometimes difficult. We all know the difficulties we have sometimes with the world and with the beings in the world. But still, clear and desireless, the wind and the pines and the moon and the water are content in their elements. So how do we find contentment? This doesn't mean

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just passively accepting things when we see harm in the world or when we see somebody causing harm to themselves or others. We can still respond and he's going to talk about that. But how do we see this functioning in a natural flowing way? So this is also a meditation instruction. During our zazen, when we're sitting, one of the things that Hongshu keeps coming back to is the way in which we respond to visual objects, sound objects. So there's several places in the practice instructions where he talks about this. Just for one example, and we'll talk about this more. But in the very first one, he says, the deep source transparent down to the bottom can radiantly shine

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and can respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. So as we sit and we are aware of the wall or the floor in front of us, we don't have to be caught up in the colors as objects or the sounds of people shifting in meditation hall or people walking upstairs. We don't have to be caught by them. We can be aware of sounds without being obstructed by them. So this is, he talks about this in different ways. There's also this saying by Chateau, one of the early ancestors in this lineage, he talks about the blue sky not being hindered by the white clouds wandering. So the

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clouds wander through the sky and the clouds don't mind the sky and the sky doesn't mind the clouds. So how do we be present, sit upright, keep breathing, not be caught up in worrying about the quality of our breath, just enjoy, inhale and exhale, not be caught up in some sensation of warmth or cool, just notice it. Hear the sounds around us without being caught up in the sounds. This is an instruction in how to actually be present and upright on our cushion. In one of the practice instructions, that's one of the six that's available to people, mentioned for the people in the practice period, graciously share yourself. It says it in another way, wide open and accessible, or it says with a hundred grass tips in the busy marketplace, graciously share yourself, wide open and accessible, walking along, casually mount

[20:29]

the sounds and straddle the colors while you transcend listening and surpass watching. So there's colors, there's sounds, we don't have to be caught up in doing anything with them. So how do we just be present? And as he says here, without minds interacting, wind and pines or moon and water do not impede one another, their content and their elements. So from there, from that, Hongshu says, essentially you exist inside emptiness, or we could say you exist inside openness or boundlessness, and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed. This is not about being passive. This is not about being numb. You have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms.

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So how do we respond? This is key. The point of these meditation instructions and the point of this practice is not to become some virtuoso yogi meditator, but how does this help us respond? How does this help us be helpful in the world? Essentially you exist inside this field of emptiness and have the capacity to respond. Doing this practice helps us develop our capacity to be responsive. We have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed. We can see difficult situations even in the world and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed. We don't even have to get angry at all the terrible things our government is doing. We can just find ways to respond helpfully without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror transcending forms. And then he ends, amid all the noise, spontaneously emerge

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transcendent. Amid all the noise, amidst all of the fuss and difficulties of our life and of the world, spontaneously, right now, just come forth, emerge transcendent. And I translated this word as transcendent, and I looked again at the characters. And transcendent is okay, but this word transcendence, there's this idea in religious studies of transcendence and imminence. Transcendence being seeking something up there in space, holy, transcending, getting beyond the situation. That's not exactly what this means here. Literally it says, amid all the noise, spontaneously emerge from the single ground. So it's about, it's also being, this being grounded. Amid all the noise, spontaneously come forth, like the bodhisattvas coming from the earth, from this situation. So

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we can transcend, but it doesn't mean escaping from our situation. It means being grounded. So amid all the noise, spontaneously emerge transcendent, free from our attachments and our conditions, and yet responsive. So that's a close reading of this text. I want to go back and read it all again. And then questions and comments and your responses. So this material, you know, I've been, after having worked with it a long time ago, I keep dipping back into it, especially for sessions, and then now we're doing a practice period on it, and each time I find more. So, you know, like the koans and like Dogen, these texts, and like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, we can keep

[24:54]

going back and finding more to encourage our practice. And the point of this study is not to learn some body of knowledge again, but to encourage and support us in our practice. So let me read this one again, and then hear your comments or responses or your reflections on it and the ideas or responses that emerge for you. So fully appreciate the emptiness of all dharmas. Then all minds are free and all dusts dissipate in the fundamental brilliance shining everywhere. Transforming according to circumstances, meet all beings as your ancestors. Subtly illuminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality. Clear and desireless, the wind in the pines and the moon in the water are content in their elements. Without minds interacting, wind and pines or moon

[25:54]

and wind do not impede one another. Essentially, you exist inside emptiness and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms. Amid all the noise spontaneously emerge transcendent. So I'm interested in your comments, your responses. Part of this emerging transcendent is that you're not emerging somewhere else. It's not about getting being somewhere else. It's about actually being present here. So comments, responses, questions. Please feel free. Aisha? You said being annoyed the way I'm being annoyed. I think it said emerge without appearing annoyed.

[27:05]

No, it says respond outwardly without being annoyed. Now I respond outwardly without being annoyed. Would one not also still feel annoyed? Well, I don't know. What do you mean by annoyed? I don't know what Hongshou means. We have to talk about it now in terms of how we use this material. Yeah, well, okay. I really like not to be annoyed. And sometimes that's possible when I have more patience available to me. And I actually generally intend not to be annoyed. Always. But sometimes you're annoyed? Sometimes I'm not. Sometimes there's too many things to respond to. Yeah, dig it. So if we can manage to somehow within that respond outwardly without being annoyed, is it okay to still sort of feel annoyed?

[28:15]

I think we feel what we feel. We have to acknowledge what we actually feel. But I think what he's saying, well, this is just my interpretation, but we don't have to express annoyment. We can feel, oh, well, that's annoying. That's too bad that science is not being funded, for example. I'm annoyed at that. I feel like that's not just annoying. It's harmful and it's stupid. But okay, how do I express that I want to support science, for example? There's all kinds of things. How do I express that without something extra? And I think that's possible. Okay, yes. Yes, I think that is possible. That's just an example. Sometimes when somebody's hassling you personally, it's harder to not express some annoyment.

[29:25]

But you're responding appropriately to the situation, and sometimes the annoyance is a little extra. But you can respond appropriately to the situation. Sometimes it might be appropriate to allow the other person to hear that there's annoyance going on. That might actually be helpful for them to hear that you are annoyed by their way of expressing themselves. And that might help them to hear that, oh, I should, anyway, it depends on the situation. And sometimes we hit it right on, and sometimes we have to keep trying. But what he's saying here is, he's saying respond outwardly, without being annoyed. You don't have to be annoyed. You can just see the situation and, okay, what do I do? Maybe you don't even need to feel annoyed inside.

[30:27]

You can feel, you know, one of the basic aspects of our precepts is to be helpful rather than harmful. When we see harm, okay, we can just see. These are the conditions. We can be annoyed or not, but we can still respond. Other comments on that or anything else? Yes, Sid. I think it's helpful to not to, at least in my experience, not to get annoyed without being annoyed. Something I appreciate very much in the repentance and in other things we cover is this frustration between anger and hatred. And for me, anger is anger, and I don't think that's going anywhere, at least in my life. But when I get angry about someone making me angry and I want to destroy that person, that's something really problematic.

[31:34]

And that's what's called hatred. And so I'm grateful for this practice of not getting angry at my own anger. Yeah, we say in our precepts to not harbor ill will. So anger arises, we feel irritated or more, but then we don't turn it into ill will or hatred. We can just say, okay, that's my anger. Beau, you had something? Yeah, I mean, I was not at all able to notice annoyance. I'm not annoyed by it at all. It feels like such a contemporary word to have. All this other stuff, I really love that. Well, there was a contemporary translator involved. Yeah, for me, I mean, it just conjures annoyance. It's like impatience, you know, an expectation of how a thing is going to go, and then another thing is introduced to it, and I get annoyed.

[32:37]

But now it's not going the way I expected it to. And so it's prompting me to think, like, slow down. If you can, just kind of take a moment and be in it a little bit more. Because so often for me, being annoyed, I feel bad about being annoyed, and afterwards I have to apologize for being annoyed eventually. Yeah, so those are sort of the thoughts that's conjuring for me. I appreciate the translation. Well, yeah, slow down is part of all of this, yeah. Thank you. Other comments, anyone? Yes, Ted. So I like your concept, or your explanation, of emptiness as being without separation. Emptiness in Buddhism has always been a little bit of a difficult thing for me to grasp. Because you start reading, you know the mind is emptiness, darkness has emptiness, everything sort of has emptiness. And I come away wondering, well, if I don't have a counter-example, it's hard for me to understand, right?

[33:40]

There was at least one thing somewhere that didn't have emptiness. We only get it a little bit better than everything else. But this is, I think, a little more accessible, the concept that you expressed. To simply say that what this means is that there aren't firm fixed boundaries between emptiness and emptiness. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Caroline. So I do think that the contrast is our idea about self, or our idea about ego, is what happens. That isn't emptiness. It's interesting. I just think the contrast is so intense, you know, between that emptiness and realizing that there is no... Or try, you know, contemplating that idea of emptiness and then annoyance.

[34:46]

And it's so, like, if you really saw emptiness, all those things that we get annoyed about would be nothing. Yeah. I think that's not what it's about. And yet, you know, and yet there's that wonderful compassion. Like, I was talking with a sister principal that I really got off on the wrong foot with when I first started at that school. And then I was able to understand why I reacted as I did and we had good conversations. So, yes, the last time I was there, I had to ask them for somewhere to do my work, which is what I'm talking about. And, you know, she told me to go into the old moguls and I'm like, well, is there a table in there? And she's like, no, I think there's tables and desks and stuff. And I'm like, tables and desks are different.

[35:49]

You know, because I don't use a table, I don't use a desk. And she's like, yes, I know, Caroline. And you've just had that really nice way of saying, yes, I know tables and desks are different. And I'm like, oh, that's right, I'm getting my crappy place again. And it's like, it's so nice when somebody knows you and they know you have a crappy place. And they just give you that smile that says, don't go there. And you're like, all right, you know, this is friend, not foe, you know. So I'll just go over there and see if that is what I need and not get monogamous with them about it. So anyway, I don't know if all that makes sense, but it's like, it was nice for me not to be mad at myself about being crappy, but to feel like she was just giving me that little reminder. So we can hear about emptiness, but still that idea of the self, it comes up and it does stuff.

[36:50]

So we have to be patient with ourselves. Other? Yes, Kathy. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, good. Maybe if there's one more comment. Jerry, did you have something? Yeah.

[38:01]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's the way you said that. It was interesting because we had this meditation instruction to take the backward step that turns the light inwardly and illuminates the self. So to step back and say, oh, I'm crappy now, or I'm annoyed, or, you know, to acknowledge. That's what you were saying, Sid, to acknowledge our stuff to ourselves and maybe sometimes even to others. And then, yeah, changes the situation. Yeah, please. Oh, dear. So I just ignored it and moved on. Hooray. Well, thank you all very much. And we'll continue working with these practice instructions.

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