I vow to chase the truth, and love to talk it out. This morning I wanted to talk about case number 44 in the Blue Cliff Record called Hoshan's Knowing How to Beat the Drum. In Japanese, hoshan is kasan. In this case, it doesn't have any introduction to it, as usually in the Blue Cliff Record, there's always usually an introduction.

[01:06]

But this case doesn't have an introduction. So we'll just go right into the case. Master Hoshan, Ho Shan lived between 891 and 960 in China during the Tang Dynasty. He was a well-known teacher in the Tang Dynasty in China. Ho Shan imparted some words to his students. He was talking to his students and he said, Cultivating study is called learning. Cutting off study is called nearness or getting close.

[02:15]

And going beyond these two is to be considered the real going beyond. And a monk, whose duty it was to beat the drum, came forward and he asked, what is the real going beyond? And Hoshan said, knowing how to beat the drum. But the monk wasn't satisfied with that. What is the real truth, teacher? And Sean said, knowing how to beat the drum. And again, he asked, mind is Buddha, but I'm not asking about that. What about not mind, not Buddha? Kassanj said, knowing how to beat the drum.

[03:24]

And then again he asked, when a real Zen student comes, how do you receive him? Gassan said, knowing how to beat the drum. This is called Gassan's Four Knowing How to Beat the Drums. In his verse, Setso, Master Setso says, one hauls rocks, and a second one moves earth. To shoot the arrow requires a 10-ton crossbow. The old master of elephant bone cliff, Shui Feng, rolled three balls. How could this equal Hoshan's knowing how to beat the drum?

[04:28]

Let me tell you, don't be careless. What is sweet is sweet, and what is bitter is bitter. So I'll go over the first part, the case. Master Hoshan imparted some words saying, cultivating study is called learning. When we begin to get interested in Zen or in Buddhism, usually we do it through studying something. We read a book. Someone tells us about it. Somehow we get curious and we start to study. And if we're a good student, once we become a student, we become very curious and start to study what Buddhism is about.

[05:34]

We study the sutras. We study the philosophy of Zen, of Buddhism and Zen. And all the doctrines and the libraries are full of books about something that you can't talk about. Nevertheless, there's some reason and some need to study. So at some point in our practice, we reached a point called going beyond study. But of course we never reach the point where we go beyond study. But it means leaving behind your crutch and finding your way without anything. It means going beyond learning. Going beyond what we know and just being out there, responding to circumstances.

[06:46]

And in each circumstance, each moment's activity, we have to find ourselves. We have to find ourselves in a true, real way. Who is the true you that's responding? This is going beyond learning. And so, Cultivating study is called learning, and cutting off study is called nearness or closeness, close to the source. And going beyond both of these is considered the real going beyond. In other words, it's easy to get stuck in study, and it's also easy to get stuck in going beyond study.

[07:50]

Some people say, study is not for Zen students. Even in China they have this feeling, many people. Zen is beyond study. It's the transmission outside the scriptures. But both of these are just one-sided views. It's important to get beyond study. And it's also important, when you get beyond study, to continue study. But going beyond study and nearness is the real going beyond. which can't be explained, but it can only be expressed.

[08:56]

It's in the realm of no attachment to study, no attachment to no study, no attachment to reliance, and no attachment to no reliance. What do you do? So then the monk, whose duty it was to beat the drum, came forward and asked, well, what is the real going beyond, teacher? That's a good question. What do you mean by that? Kha San said, knowing how to beat the drum. In a Zen monastery, is usually a drum, big drum, big round taiko-type drum.

[10:00]

And you have big heavy drumsticks. And we have one at Tassajara, we have one at Green Gulch, and we have one at Page Street. But the one at Tassajara is used the most. Every time we have a meal, somebody beats the And learning to beat the drum in the monastery is very difficult. It takes every bit of your body and mind to be able to beat that drum. And so it's a kind of test to see where you're at and also a way of understanding yourself. Beating the drum is a kind of koan.

[11:03]

How do you do it right? You know, music is very absorbing and takes a lot of concentration. And Japanese developed a kind of flute music called shakuhachi playing. where the music is not really exactly music. Shakuhachi playing, although there is musical shakuhachi playing, shakuhachi playing is not exactly music. It's blowing the pipe, actually. And the person who plays listens to the sound. There is some melody. There are simple melodies. And the melody is important, but it's how the pipe is played that's important.

[12:09]

How you find yourself, how you demonstrate what's called the great function through the pipe. So shakuhachi playing is kind of boring if you listen to it and expect to hear music. You listen for a while, but where's the music? If you're used to listening to complex melodies and rhythms, where's the music? Beating the drum is a little bit like that. There is a pattern, which is very important. But the important thing is how how to express the great function through the drum. So, the monk wasn't satisfied with that answer.

[13:20]

In other words, Khassa just handed it over to him, but the monk couldn't see it. So he came forward again and he said, well, teacher, what is the real truth? So he was searching for all the, he's searching. He wants to know something. And the teacher keeps telling him what to do, but he didn't believe it. Just like all the Zen students. They don't believe it. It takes them a long time to believe it, really. So again, he asked, well, what is the real truth? And Sean said, knowing how to beat the drum. And then he still wasn't satisfied with that, so he said, mind is Buddha. I'm not asking about that. But it's not mind, not Buddha. In the Mumonkan, there are several koans.

[14:28]

about mind, and quite a good number of koans about what is mind. And one of the koans is, mind is Buddha. Buddha is mind. And he says, I'm not asking you about this simple koan. I'm asking you about the koan that says, not mind, not Buddha. No mind, no Buddha. No. In these koans, a student asked the teacher, what is Buddha? And the teacher said, mind is Buddha. And he said, well, what's the ultimate truth? And the teacher said, well, you know, when In order to keep children from crying, we give them yellow leaves to play with, to keep them occupied.

[15:37]

When you give them something pretty, they stop crying. So to say, mind is Buddha, is like giving the student something to keep them happy. After they understand, then we say, no mind, no Buddha. So, no mind, no Buddha seems like a more advanced kind of understanding. But, mind is Buddha, and mind is not Buddha. There is no mind, and there is no Buddha. So, these koans are quite wonderful basic understanding. So he says, I'm not asking you about mind is Buddha, but what about no mind, no Buddha? And Gassan said, learn how to beat the drum. Just learn how to beat the drum. So then again, he still didn't get it.

[16:42]

Again he said, when a real Zen student comes, how do you receive him? Hoshan said, just learn how to beat the drum. We think that our daily tasks are so mundane. One of my, well, I'll read you the verse. The verse, he says, one hauls rocks and one and another one moves earth. This is the commentary, in verse, of the compiler of the Bukha trigger. It's said that Matsu, Great Master Matsu, used to have his students haul rocks around the monastery in order to see how they did it.

[17:57]

And then he could tell where their understanding was. Another teacher used to have them haul dirt in big baskets. Of course, you know, it was work, monastery work. In the monastery, especially when you're just building a monastery, is the good part. Lots of work to do. Lots of heavy, dirty work to do. Hauling rocks and hauling dirt. And teacher, and you usually do it with the teacher often. And so the teacher working together with the students, the students can see how the teacher works and the teacher can see how the students work. When I was at Pasajara with my teacher in 1970 in the summer, we made rock walls. I made a tripod, a pulley, and we'd haul these huge rocks and then make rock walls.

[19:07]

And, you know, it's like turtle work. You do an awful lot of effort and move things very slowly. And sometimes it's an inch off or two inches off, and so you start all over again. So this kind of work, this was my most valuable work that I ever had with my teacher. The most and most pleasurable work that I ever had with my teacher was spending that summer hauling rocks and putting them in place. And he was only, he only was about five feet tall and weighed no more than a hundred pounds. And he would do marvelous things with those huge rocks. I was really, everybody was very impressed. He could move things around that nobody else knew how to move. So this is a kind of wonderful way to work with students.

[20:18]

But the teacher watches or is aware of how and gives him some insight into the student's character, and knows how to deal with the student through that way, and also the student has a real way to go. Sometimes students say, they always have me washing the toilets during Zixin, they don't realize what a wonderful job they have. Usually one who washes the toilet is someone who is very advanced in their practice. It's true. The head monk during practice period washes the toilets and turns the compost. That's their job.

[21:21]

That's the job of the head monk. So, we say the way to practice is daily life. Nothing is too smelly or mundane for us to be engaged in. No activity is beneath us. If you think that some activity is beneath you, then you can't really practice very well. And you have to get beyond your barrier. So, life is difficult. You go out there in the world, and life is difficult. You work with these people you don't want to work with, necessarily.

[22:30]

conditions that you don't like, particularly. You get tired, get irritable, get angry. All these are wonderful, wonderful tools for practice. But we say, gee, as soon as I get out of the zendo, when I go to the zendo, I feel so nice and calm. And then when I walk out the door, all hell breaks loose. But hell is just another place to practice. We don't like it very much, but it's just another place to practice. I don't say we shouldn't change things, but there's a certain level of acceptance, and entering into these circumstances, that always presents an opportunity, moment by moment.

[23:33]

We keep seeking for the real thing, and questioning, like this monk. Every time a hoshan told him what to do, he didn't believe it. It just beat the drum. Just do Shikantaza. Shikantaza is our practice. It means just doing. When you're beating the drum, just beat the drum. When you're serving the food, just serve the food. When you're eating, just eat. When you're thinking, just think. When you're driving, just drive. But we keep adding up, you know, connecting one moment with the next, which is okay. It's important to connect one moment with the next, otherwise we don't know what we're doing.

[24:40]

Nevertheless, each moment is its own whole life. We live our life in increments of moment by moment. But we don't always see it that way, because we live in our dream. In our dream, we see a smooth transition from one event to the next. And the transition has purpose. So we have all these purposes in our life. But we don't always realize that there's this another purpose, which is just to live our life moment by moment. The dream obscures the fact that we're living our life moment by moment and that each moment is a whole life, a whole lifetime.

[25:45]

It's a very small, complete lifetime. And so at some point we wonder why we're missing our life. even though we have a wonderful dream that's unrolling in front of us. It's okay. We need to have the dream in order to make some order in our life. on each moment's activity, we have to be settled on that moment's activity completely. This is called shikantaza, just doing, without any other, with no purpose. What we're doing has a purpose in the scheme of the dream, but actually it has no purpose.

[26:59]

No purpose and no particular reason. It's just what we're doing. Just completely doing. So both of these aspects go together. This is not falling into emptiness and not falling into form. And you can substitute learning and going beyond learning or form and emptiness. Going beyond reasonable activity into no form is to just find your way moment by moment without any learning.

[28:04]

Means when something comes up, just deal with it directly. But how do you go beyond both of those? How do you go beyond holding on to the dream and going beyond the dream? That's what Kassan was talking about in the beginning. Learning is one way of explaining, of expressing it. in a deeper sense. How do you go beyond the dream? Going beyond the dream is facing reality directly. So how do you go beyond dream and reality? That's the real going beyond. Yasen says, just learn how to beat the drum.

[29:25]

So then, in the verse, Setso says, to shoot an arrow requires a 10-ton crossbow. test an arrow requires, to test a really strong arrow takes a 10-ton crossbow. This is like the concentrated activity of a Zen student. Means if you really want to completely then you should be completely involved in what you're doing. You cannot be outside, standing outside of what you're doing. You and the doing, the doer and the doing, have to be completely one.

[30:34]

The arrow, the bow, the one who shoots and the target, all in peace. And then he says, the old master of Elephant Bone Cliff, Shui Feng, who was also an old, well-known Zen master, rolled three balls. Well, one day, one of his well-known students came to him, came up to him, and he happened to have these three balls in his hand, and he went... And the student was enlightened. So rolling a ball is rolling a ball. He's giving this as an example of someone else's way of demonstrating. There is a famous story about Master Joshu.

[31:45]

The monk came up to Joshu And he asked him, does a baby, a small newborn baby, have the sixth consciousness? Sixth consciousness is discriminating consciousness, mind consciousness, whose function is to discriminate. And Joshu said, It's like throwing a ball in a swiftly flowing current. And then the monk went to another teacher and he said, told him what Joshu had said. And he said, what do you say, teacher? How do you understand it? And the teacher said, moment by moment, nonstop flow. So he said the old master of Elephant Bone Cliff, Shui Feng, rolled a ball, actually three balls, to demonstrate something.

[33:03]

And then he says, but how could this equal Ho Shan's knowing how to beat the drum? This can't stand up to Ho Shan's knowing how to beat the drum. even though it's a great demonstration. What he's saying is not that Hoshan's knowing how to beat the drum is better. It's just a way of expressing himself. He's saying you should understand all of these ways of demonstrating reality. And then he says, let me tell you, don't be careless. Literally, it's like, don't be like a floating weed in a wasteland. Someone else says, be aware of breathing in and breathing out.

[34:12]

Don't let yourself get distracted. Don't get off. If you get off, get back on. People ask me often, how do I get lost in my daily life? I don't know. I come to the Zendo the morning that I go off to work, and pretty soon I'm just completely lost. And I say, well, just pay attention to your breathing. It's very simple. It's just like this mug. Who wants an answer? Up here. Zen is practice through the body and the mind. Body, mind practice. But you're better off paying attention to the body. Don't try to figure it out. We want to be able to figure everything out.

[35:15]

But you can't reach the source that way. Just practice through the body. The monk kept asking these questions. And Hosan kept saying, just beat the drum. Never mind about all these things. Just beat the drum. If you beat the drum, you'll understand. If you really know how to beat the drum, you'll understand. If you really know how to pick the weeds, you'll understand. If you really know how to cut the carrots, you'll understand. When people ask me, I say, just pay attention to your breath during the day.

[36:21]

You know, when you sit in Zazen, you're just paying attention to your posture and your breath. People want to know what to do with the mind. Just put it into the posture and the breath. And during the day, you know, you do the same thing that you do in Zazen. And if I ask somebody, where is your breath? They say, I don't know. That's not a reasonable answer. Don't give me that answer. Where is your breath? Right here, all the time. Sometimes it's up here. When it's up here, I know it's up here. And then I get it down. I'm always getting it down so that I'm always aware of breath and body. And when my breath goes down, I'm more relaxed and more at ease and more settled.

[37:26]

When my breath is up here, I'm top heavy and I'm hurting in some way. I'm anguished or I'm tense. So when you're tense, Your breath is up here. Often when you're tense, you don't know where your breath is. When you're not tense, you can be aware of your breath all the time. Right here. No matter what you're doing. And then you begin to move from this place as the center of your body. And that makes a great deal of difference in how you do things. How you relate to people. How do you relate to your surroundings? Because you're always centered. You're always finding the center. You know, the Darumadol, Bodhidharmadol, is round on the bottom, or used to be. And you push it over, and it comes back up. Always comes back up.

[38:27]

Because it's round on the bottom. And it's pretty heavy, you know, pretty heavyweight. always finding itself moment by moment. And it's just like grass, which is rooted in the ground. And the wind comes and blows, and it just lies on the ground. And when the wind's gone, it just comes back up. Whereas the big trees, they're very stiff all over. So, please, take care of your breathing. It's the simplest practice you can do to always be aware of your breath. And when it's up here, get it down and enjoy it.

[39:29]

It's so enjoyable to just let yourself breathe. You don't have to think or do anything. Just let yourself breathe. Just be with it. It's not serving any purpose. It's not going anywhere. And you're not even doing it. It's doing you. You just allow yourself to let the universe breathe you. It's great. It's a great function. Fully function. Full function. Allowing the universe to breathe us. and express itself. And we can just enjoy it. And you have less fear and less anxiety.

[40:31]

It's like being in your mother's palm. So then he says, don't be careless. And then he says, what is sweet is sweet, and what is bitter is bitter. Means you should know if this is sweet, it's sweet. OK, this is bitter. OK, this is bitter. Whatever it is, this is what it is. I know it's sweet. I know that lemons are sour. I know they can be sweet. I don't get mixed up. beat the drum, you know.

[41:59]

This kind of talking is called flavorless words, flavorless speech. The monk is asking for something really tasty, and Hoshanz is giving some flavorless words. That's why some teachers really hand out goodies to attract students. If you practice like this for five years, you'll get enlightened. Hoshon apparently entered Seppo's monastery when he was seven years old.

[43:02]

So he spent his whole life practicing. In Jesus' name, amen.

[43:48]

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