Good morning. Well, it's always nice to give a talk after a bodhisattva ceremony. When we've had a chance to realize where we are and a vow, accept our ancient twisted karma and offer it up again. Rededicate our lives. It's nice to have that space. And in a certain way, that's what this talk is about. Of course, it's what every talk is about. This talk comes from a question that Greg asked a while back.

[01:01]

He said, the thing is, I feel separate. There's all this teaching about how we're one interdependent body, and I feel separate. I can't help it. So, that is the way we feel. That's our that seems to be our fundamental position. So I wanted to talk about a case in the Momonkan, the gateless gate, this collection of stories, of koans, and the name of it, case number 10, the name of it is Seizei is solitary and destitute.

[02:15]

A monk, Seizei, came to Sosan and said, I am Seizei. solitary, and destitute. Please give me alms. And So-san said, Venerable Seizei. Seizei said, Yes, sir. So-san said, You have already drunk three cups of the finest wine in China, and still you say you have not moistened your lips? And then Mo Man's comment is, Seizei is submissive in manner, but what is his real intention? So San has the eye that thoroughly discerns what Seizei means. Tell me, where and how has Seizei tasted the wine?

[03:18]

So, That is the story. That's where we are with our suffering and our delusive minds. We feel separate. And our suffering comes from our unwillingness to accept the three marks of existence. Somebody recently spoke about this in a talk. Sort of the three truths of our existence from a Buddhist point of view. That everything is impermanent, that life has a certain dissatisfactory, uneasy quality, and that there is no abiding self. So our delusion and our difficulty comes when we can't swallow these facts of existence.

[04:30]

And there are different levels of suffering, I think, that at least I have gone through. The first one is perhaps before practice, where you're just living your life as best you can. and there are ups and there are downs. But you don't quite, you're just living from moment to moment, and sometimes it's fine, and other times it's like this live crab dropped into hot water. All you can do is flail around. So when we begin to get some sense of the aimlessness, as well as the painfulness of existence. We want to do something about it and one of the things that can be done is to begin to practice. And then a second form of suffering is that we continue to suffer but as we practice

[05:45]

As we practice mindfulness and as we sit through a certain number of zazen periods, sit through a certain number of sessions, we begin to catch on to the patterns of our suffering. Now we also may have had some therapy and we also may have had some life experience, but it all goes into the pot. And as we begin to enter some kind of maturity, we're aware that each of us has a particular way that we suffer, or particular ways. There are patterns. And then the third form of suffering is that we see these patterns. And we also see how very attached to them we are.

[06:47]

We're very attached to our aversions and our dislikes and our habits. And we may tell ourselves that we ought to give this and that up, but we're only partly willing Because it's so comfortable. It's so comfortable to have something to slip back on. It's so comfortable to have some idea that I'm somebody. A friend of mine, there's a French saying, moin corien. A friend of mine kept saying, I'm just a moin corien. I'm just a less than nothing. Well, that's a small thing, but there's some triumph in it. And we'd rather be there than nowhere. When I was in my 20s, my husband, my ex-husband was a diplomat and we were posted to, we lived a very high life in a poor country in Warsaw for two years.

[08:12]

And it seemed, Extremely glamorous at first, but sort of a turning point came for me at the end of one very elegant dinner. I was seated off across the table from the, I think it was a Dutch ambassador's wife, and dessert was served and champagne was poured. And she took from her handbag a little blue velvet bag And out of the bag she took a golden whip, and she whipped up her champagne. And I thought to myself, I noticed, and I was very struck. And I thought, is that where my life is leading? But I think that that's what we do, you know.

[09:16]

We carry our little blue bags and our whips. And if the situation doesn't have quite enough drama for us to be somebody, we can make it so. So that's another stage of practice and another way that we live with our delusions. And then the final step is to really accept the hopelessness of one's situation. That this suffering is always going to be around. One is always One is built with a certain limits and holes and shaky constructions that one knows well and those are going to stay.

[10:18]

So, accepting that, accepting all this ancient twisted karma and beginningless greed, hate and delusion, What does the teaching tell us to do? So we don't know what stage here Seizei, the monk coming to Sosan is. You don't know where he is. And usually we're at all of these stages anyway, so it doesn't matter. So he comes and he lays it on the teacher's doorstep. And then the teacher just cuts it. Say say. Yes sir. Just cuts right through. Just the name. If I say Anne, Dolly, Rhonda. When I say the name, something, something connects.

[11:26]

There's nothing extra, but there's something that is connected. You know, in the Bodhisattva ceremony, I always love the moment that we're all quiet, and you don't know who the kokyo, who the chanter is going to be, and we're all quiet. And then out of this quiet comes a single, very dedicated voice. And I always feel as if when the Kokyo chants that service, that I have learned something from their chanting about what their practice is. Could never be said, but the something just sings out. So we always have this, the freshness of the occasion. It's always there. One of the next koans is, Juyin calls master, the priest Juyin called master to himself every day.

[12:39]

And every day he answered, yes, master, yes. Then he would say, be aware, yes. Don't be deceived by other people, no. That was his practice. Just calling up this nothing extra, calling up this beginner's mind. calling up beginner's mind, the fresh response. Sometimes it's called unborn mind. Sometimes this is called it. Bankei was a 17th century Japanese teacher who's always talking about, kind of renegade, who's always talking about the unborn.

[13:40]

Well then, what does it mean? You're endowed with a Buddha mind. Each of you now present has decided to come here from your home with a desire to hear what I say. Now if a dog barked beyond the Zendo walls while you're listening to me, you'd hear it, and you'd know it was a dog barking. If a crow cawed, you'd hear it, and you'd know it was a crow. You'd hear an adult's voice as an adult's, and a child's as a child. You didn't come here in order to hear a dog bark, or a cold crawl, or any of the other sounds which might come from outside of the Zen Do during my talk. Yet, while you're here, you hear those sounds. Your eyes see and distinguish reds and whites and other colors, and your nose can tell good smells from bad. You could have had no way of knowing beforehand any of the sights, sounds, or smells you might encounter at this meeting. Yet you're able nevertheless to recognize these unforeseen sights and sounds as you encounter them without premeditation.

[14:51]

That is because you're seeing and hearing in the unborn. Though you do see and hear and smell this way, without giving rise to the thought that you will, is the proof that this inherent Buddha mind is unborn and possessed of a wonderful illuminative native wisdom. The unborn manifests itself in the thought, I want to see or I want to hear not being born. The extra being dropped off. When a dog howls, even if 10 million people said in a chorus that it was the sound of a crow crying, I doubt that you would be convinced. It's highly unlikely there would be any way that could delude you into believing what they said. That's owing to the marvelous awareness and unbornness of your Buddha mind. The reason I say it's unborn

[15:53]

that you see and hear in this way is because mind doesn't give birth to any thought or inclination to hear or see. Therefore, it's unborn. Being unborn, it's also undying. It's not possible for what is born to not born, to perish. This is the sense in which I say that all people have an unborn Buddha mind. Each and every Buddha and Bodhisattva in the universe and everyone in the world of humans as well has been endowed with it. But being ignorant of the fact that you have a Buddha mind, you live in illusion. Why is it you're deluded? Because you are partial to yourself. So we have this native understanding that we're continually forgetting.

[16:55]

So sometimes when I talk to people and there's a kind of this mess that we all get into is presenting, I ask, well now, why do you practice? What is the connection? What is this pure connection? Say, say, yes sir. What is your pure connection to the practice? How can you cut through the mess and the jumble? So last week, Peter Overton gave a very nice talk. And he talked about being given a question. So sometimes we are given a question, or we have a question. Who am I?

[18:02]

What is it? And the other side of that is that there is an answer. Say, say, yes sir. that we're always in a situation where there is a response, where we are being responded to, where we are responded. So we're in a question situation and we're also in a response situation. And that's our fundamental ground that we forget. I was visiting somebody in a hospital last week, a rather young man, and he'd just been put on a kidney dialysis machine, because his kidneys weren't working. And so, you know, a kidney dialysis machine takes the blood, the blood goes out, and it gets cleaned up, and then it comes back in several hours.

[19:08]

And he said that it had really been a very major adjustment, that he'd always thought of his blood as his spirit. And to lie in a bed and see his red blood spirit going out, took him a long time to settle with that, going out and coming in. that I'm just watching my spirit flow out. But after a while he realized, I'm right here. And he said he understood God in a new way. He understood that God was on his side in a new way. that the fact that he could just be there with his spirit going out and coming in, but he was there, he could watch TV, he could talk, he could do whatever he wanted, he was there, gave him this new understanding, this fresh understanding.

[20:32]

So we're fortunate our kidneys are inside of us and we are not so aware of the fragility of our condition. So, Sosan recalls Seizei. Seizei responds and then Sosan says, you have already drunk three cups of the finest wine in China and still you say you have not moistened your lips. Seizei has talked about himself as being poor. And To San is saying you have completely as much as you need. The finest wine in China. Everything you need is quite available.

[21:34]

Akin Roshi, in his commentary, notices that this finest wine in China is quite complicated. The ideograph of finest wine also means no color, no form. So you could also say that, Sozan said, you have drunk the wine of no form. And how can you say you have not moistened your lips? So in other words, we're, Tozan is reminding us of the middle way. The having eyes, the not having eyes. The beginner's mind way, the way that has any number of points of view.

[22:36]

where any number of positions are possible. So one of our positions may be is that I am alone and destitute. But that's just one of the many positions, one of the many points of view. How do we look at ourselves? In the YN teachings I've been reading through some and a sentence jumped out at me. Who am I? The reality body of the Buddha circulating in the five paths of existence is called sentient beings. The reality body of the Buddha circulating in the five paths of existence is called the sentient beings.

[23:42]

In other words, I lie in bed, I wake from sleep, I lie in bed, and the first mood, panic, ease, comes over me, comes over, and the body sits up, and the feet touch the floor, Is it me or is it the manifestation of the reality body of the Buddha just responding to these early morning conditions of waking up? So as we practice we are more able to keep these different points of view these multiple ways of seeing the world, seeing our existence available.

[24:44]

And we're not so embedded in the construction of who we think we are. And we have little samples of these multiple points of view. In a discussion group the other night, people were talking about peep shows. In our lives, we've had little peep shows that bring us some news. When I was a teenager in New York City, I much preferred on Sunday afternoon to go out with friends and have a hamburger and go to the movies than to stay at home and eat a very elaborate Sunday dinner. And I'd come back and my father would ask me what I'd eaten. And I'd say, oh, I had a hamburger and some fries. And he'd say, oh, you missed faux chasseur. And we'd look at each other.

[25:53]

And movies were wonderful. You know, any movie. Probably most of us at some point in our lives have had the taste for movies. One movie, two movies, three movies. And I'd come out. And if it was the right kind of movie, I'd come out of the theater and my heart would be entirely open. And I'd just have this feeling of closeness and love for everything. And I'd think, what is this? You know, a young person can have these experiences and be very innocent about them. But it's news. And so we get this news during our lives. And then this teaching gives us different ways of thinking about the news, which Itself is a little off the track.

[27:00]

It's lost the freshness. But there we are. So back and forth. Back and forth. And I'd like to read a poem about going back and forth by Cheswap Milosz. It's called On Angels. Angels in Bodhisattvas know about going back and forth. On angels, all was taken away from you, white dresses, wings, even existence. Yet I believe you, messengers. There where the world is turned inside out, a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts, you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams. Short is your stay here, now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear, in a melody repeated by a bird, or in the smell of apples at the close of day, when the light makes the orchards magic,

[28:18]

They say somebody has invented you, but to me this does not sound convincing, for humans invented themselves as well. The voice, no doubt it is a valid proof, as it can belong only to radiant creatures, weightless and winged. After all, why not? Girdled with lightning, I have heard that voice many a time when asleep, and, what is strange, I understood more or less an order or an appeal of an unearthly tongue. Day draws near. Another one. You do what you can. So the question The turning question of this koan is, how did Seizei taste the wine?

[29:24]

What did the wine taste like? What is the wine in our lives? Do we chug-a-lug it? Do we just drink it down without noticing? Are we stingy with it? Do we let it sit on the table while we go about our lives sort of on pilot, while we go about our lives, the routine of our lives in sort of a dead way? Or do we make the connection? Do we drink the wine and do we taste the wine? Are we aware that there's something that's very precious and very special and very fresh in the cup. And can we remind ourselves enough that it's there.

[30:31]

Last week Peter also told a story about being shuso in a shuso ceremony, having people ask him questions. And somebody asked him a question that said, here you are, a little boy with a big teddy bear that has a thorn in its foot. And how can a little boy like you pull out the thorn in the teddy bear's foot? That is, here we are in our situation in life, and things are pretty OK, but there's a basic thorn in the foot. And what are you going to do with it? And Peter's response during the ceremony was, he said, I would pull it out with all my strength. Real strong intention. But that wasn't good enough. He was challenged again. And he understood that he didn't really know the answer.

[31:38]

And then as he gave the talk last week, somebody said, and if you were asked, How would the boy pull the thorn out of the teddy bear's foot? What would you say now? And he said, I'd pull it out with all my heart. So as we sit longer, the heart element, as well as the wisdom element, mature to some degree and we can be in the midst of our delusion and our suffering and yet the delusion and the suffering doesn't cover the whole ground. There's kind of a sweetness in it. So on the one hand we practice with, try to practice with a lot of vigor and responsiveness and mindfulness and on the other hand with a lot of compassion.

[33:06]

Last Monday, I think it was Monday before last, we had a discussion, a Monday morning discussion about compassion and Somebody said, compassion is accepting your suffering without undue bitterness. And today I noticed somebody's put, the residents have put on their community board notice, Chukyum Trungpa said, that compassion is continually making friends with yourself. So, our condition is that we are solitary and destitute. And we're willing to take that on. We're willing to accept the poverty of our situation and to accept our all-oneness.

[34:08]

and that there is some sweetness in that. But the taste of that is good. So I'm going to stop and ask for questions, reflections, and maybe some of you can tell us what the wine tastes like. I was so intent, I didn't hear it. My beginner's mind was...

[35:14]

Yes, the simultaneousness of that. Again, in these YN scriptures, there's always this teasing talk about form and emptiness, emptiness, form, but that revelation and concealment are always in the same grip as one holds all the numbers, but you don't see all the numbers in one. Yes? Well, that was my dog barking. Oh, good. And actually, I just have to say this, which is, it was interesting for me that that was my dog barking. I knew that I hadn't, unfortunately, it's not quite as poetic as we were thinking, but I knew that I had left the gate open. And I wanted to leave and go open the gate. me since i'm fairly new in the practice and my discussions with friends i get the underlying an underlying contradiction that maybe you can clarify a little bit um we are very concerned with the self it seems but by practice and coming to grips with the reality of life what we are doing is

[37:39]

I don't see that we are erasing this self. It seems like we are trying to understand it very well and come to peace with life. But I also hear that the self eventually goes away. I don't see this happening. No, I think you're right. I think we are committed to investigating the self. Because without the self, where would we be? We'd be nowhere. So it's a necessary factor. And the self is our gate. The self is the way we investigate the whole situation. You know, it's like in the net of Indra's mirror, where each mirror reflects every other mirror. Well, if there's no little mirror, there's no cosmic net. So, we have to have the self, and we have to keep asking what it is.

[38:41]

But if we do that, and we do it for a number of years, presumably, because it takes a long time to understand these things, can we also be concerned with people around us and our friends, relatives, neighbors, society? Are we very enclosed in ourselves? Well, that's one possible outcome of practice. But if self is this reflective mirror, then the other is not different from self. That your welfare can't be separated from the world's welfare. That if we have suddenly an earthquake, there you are, So, but it's possible, it's certainly possible to forget that and to have a greedy aspect, a greedy and rather enclosed attitude about practice.

[39:44]

And that's a very traditional danger. And often many of us, and it's hard not to have it. You know, sometimes we're in situations where we can't sit at the Zen, or we do sit in the Zen, though, and somebody's bumbling around, or we sit at home, and a loved one is making a lot of noise. And it's pretty irritating. And what are they doing to my practice? Aren't they respecting my practice? Yeah. It seems to me that looking into the self One realizes, as you just said, that the interdependence, not just in an earthquake, but all the time, that's what the self is. The self is a point through which a connection with everything else can be reached. The self is not something wholly separate.

[40:48]

And the balance of the bodhisattva life is that you live for the benefit of all beings. And that's, if one is practicing on all three legs of the stool, then that's where that balance comes. And there is a way in which practice can reinforce a sense of small self, but it also leads away from that and towards the connection. So that there is no, I mean, to me that's the only way out of the sense of separation. And it's getting hooked on the, all the stuff in the head that reinforces the separation. And going through it gets out. Thank you, that's a very clear statement. Yeah.

[41:49]

Yes? the passion of life, obviously, you know, and the dispassion of life to another kind of depth. And I've been thinking about boundaries, like, because I study math a lot, and there's these mathematical formulas that are very boring over here, very predictable, very boring over here, but on the chaotic boundaries where all the light is. And in a forest, in a meadow, I was talking to a friend, all the biodiversity is on that border between the forest. There's not very much biodiversity in the middle of the forest, or in the middle of the meadow, but it's kind of on that chaotic border. And I'm not sure, but maybe that's connected with Buddha's middle way. I always used to think of it as being, oh, the boring way. But maybe it's that chaotic boundary.

[42:51]

It's unpredictable, a chaotic boundary. We don't want to be a self or a no-self. We want to kind of walk on that chaotic boundary of where life is. You've got it. You've got it. Right. Orderly chaos, Trigyam Trungpa calls it. Yeah, yeah. That's the wine. Yes. Right. Right.

[43:54]

And yet, yeah, I think there is an and yet. And yet, in a certain way, whether we think we are or not, you know, we're always practicing. And as he moves into Alzheimer's and moves towards the end of his life, the practice situation is always there. No. What's your experience? There was no one left to practice. And what was the effect on people around him? Very. Because our practice is never solitary. But the illusion is that there's something extra to those elements, that there's an entity that we call self, other than just thinking it's body, form, heart, perception.

[46:25]

Well, that was your, yeah, right. That was where you were with it. Yeah. Well, those are very riveting examples. One more question. Sue? Well, going back to Greg's question that you started the lecture with about the experience. We have all this teaching about how we're not separate, but really experience this. I still am left with that. I mean, even after all this conversation, I'm not kidding. That sometimes it's just a matter of, it's like the emperor's new clothes, and everybody's sitting around saying that the separate self is an illusion, and there are these five skandhas, and blah, blah, blah, but actually, I mean, even in an earthquake, a beam could fall on the person next to me and kill them, that I am separate and that I have a separate body and that my consciousness, by some mysterious reason that I don't understand, is housed in this body and that I can't quite get out of it.

[48:45]

And it does cause me a lot of pain, but it stays like that. It does. It does. And there's no response except a compassionate one, hopefully. Every day, as Meemaw said, we do what we can. Dolly definitely thinks it's time to end.

[49:02]

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