was a prince, his father was a king, he was born into privilege. So it seems like in Buddhism we have a lot of stories of people who are born into privilege and then give it up to pursue the dharma. And we also have stories of people who were born into lack or ignominy. come into their own. This is a story about someone who was a prince born to privilege and he was always from a very young age very intuitively turned towards the truth or the way and his teacher Prajnatara was an advisor to the king and the king had given Prajnatara the advisor a precious jewel and Prajnatara, the advisor, showed it to the three princes and said, is there anything in this world more valuable than this?

[01:02]

And two of the princes went on about how, no, this is the most wonderful jewel in the world. And Bodhidharma, the youngest, said, well, I don't think it is because I think truth or knowledge or consciousness is more precious because without truth or knowledge we couldn't understand the preciousness of this gem. And so Prajnatara recognized him at that point as someone who was going to do great things. So after his father died he became a monk and he studied with Prajnatara for many years and at some point either he, it seems like some stories say that he had this feeling for going to China and some stories it seems to say that the teacher said you are destined to go to China. But in any case, there was a consensus that he was supposed to go to China and so he traveled to China on a boat

[02:09]

and traveled around and ended up somewhere, I think, around maybe where Shanghai is now. I'm not totally sure. But his teacher had made some other predictions about what was going to happen. And he said, don't stay in the South. At that time, China was divided into two kingdoms. And he said, don't stay in the South because they're into merit-based Buddhism there. So people in China already had Buddhism. They had been studying Buddhism for a long time. They kind of knew Buddhism up, down, and sideways before Bodhidharma came. But at least in this story, in the myth, there's a sense that they were missing something or something like they studied a lot of Buddhism, but something like there's that empty thing at the center that you just can't understand no matter how hard you study. And so that's kind of what this story is about, Bodhidharma. You can't understand it, but somehow you can point to it and you can embody it.

[03:16]

And so that's what Bodhidharma did. But he didn't do that right away. He went to the South to meet the Emperor Wu, and the Emperor was, I mean, so this is not the time we're in in America now. This is like the Emperor was a Buddhist, and the Emperor was into like starting monasteries and temples, and he wanted, he asked Bodhidharma, what kind of merit am I gonna get for all of my good works? And Bodhidharma said, no merit. And, jeez, I'm blanking. Anyway, I think there was another exchange, and I guess he said, what's the highest meaning of the holy truth? And Bodhidharma said, empty, nothing holy. And Emperor Wu just couldn't get it. But there he was, pointing to that empty center.

[04:16]

didn't fly in the castle or the palace or whatever. And so, as he'd been told to do by his teacher, he went across the river into the north to a Shaolin temple. And basically, as the story goes, just sat for nine years, sat Zazen for nine years there. And presumably, I guess, people were watching or meeting him, talking to him sometimes. But the main thing he did was he sat. And in that way, he embodied and demonstrated the heart of Buddhist teaching. And a later Zen master, Tiantong Hongzhi, the Silent Illumination Master, wrote a poem about Bodhidharma and in it he said, part of it, willing to endure the autumn frost so that the deep savor of the teachings would last.

[05:19]

Willing to endure the autumn frost so that the deep savor of the teachings would last. This morning during satsang I thought, now a real Zen teacher would not be talking about the autumn frost on a day like today. But that's how we know. I'm not. I like this, willing to endure the autumn frost. I think this is sort of like what mothering is like, probably among many other things. I think that for me, mothering is one of my ways I find my way into a sense of non-self-centeredness. I'm trying to switch from selflessness to not. Sojin's word, I think, is better, non-self-centeredness.

[06:26]

So I think for me being a mother is, it's a funny thing because it's like I feel the most connected in a certain way, most connected to my children but also most connected to the world, to the universe. But in another way I feel the most alone. I think this is probably, I think this is kind of normal for mothers and fathers too probably. And I was thinking about why is that? I think it's because I feel connected because I feel love, I feel concern, I feel responsible, but mostly I just feel very like we're almost like one thing or we're connected or my children's well-being is my well-being and you can't separate them.

[07:44]

And I think I feel alone because somehow they don't recognize what I'm doing in a certain way. They don't see, your kids don't see what you're doing. It's just, that's just the way it is. They can't You don't look like you're doing anything, really. You really don't. You don't look like you're doing anything. And I sort of think of Bodhidharma. I think that that was what it was like for him. On the one hand, he felt very connected. He sort of was part of this bigger story that he knew, he knew he had some feeling that he was meant to go there and that he was onto something and something very true, very real that couldn't really be talked about, but it could be expressed. So I think that he felt very connected to

[08:51]

to everything. So he had a feeling of connectedness, of non-self-centeredness but connectedness. But then he also had to endure the autumn frost. There's a lot of different things that they might mean by the autumn frost. But I kind of think it's that feeling that people don't see what you're doing. When people don't see what you're doing, when they don't recognize it, And there he was and he had no idea that any of this was going to come. He did not get any benefit from what came, the golden age of Zen that came to pass after him. He didn't know that was going to happen and he didn't know it did happen. He just sort of believed in his connectedness and he endured the autumn frost. So I think that we all, you don't have to be a mother or a parent to experience non-self-centeredness, obviously.

[10:09]

But I think that you have to have something you love. In the words of George Eliot, you have to have something that you love better than your own ease. And it's not even that you have to make up something, but what is it? What is it that you love better than your own ease? You've got to find that out. And sometimes you're going to feel, if I propose, I'm proposing, that sometimes that's going to feel like a tremendous connectedness. And sometimes it's going to feel bitter. It's going to feel like the autumn frost. I was reading the biography of Bob Dylan that came out recently. I actually couldn't get through the whole thing, but I found this one passage that was wonderful where he described way before he was famous, which, I mean, he had to be really young, right?

[11:11]

Because wasn't he quite young when he became famous? He must have been really young. He was playing in a mall or something, playing in some public place where you put your guitar case out and they throw the money in. And into the, or maybe it was a hotel lobby or something like that. Anybody read the book, remember what it was? And he in walked this guy, gorgeous George, who I guess was a wrestler. Is he a wrestler? And like a sort of really larger than life figure. He said it was like 20 men coming into the room when he came in, you know? Gorgeous George had this whole entourage and he waltzed into the hotel lobby or whatever it was and kind of made eye contact with Dylan and something passed there, you know, in that eye contact he passed something across, some moment of recognition that sustained Dylan for years, that moment.

[12:12]

And I wanted to read you what Dylan said because I think it makes me think of Bodhidharma. Sometimes that's all it takes, the kind of recognition that comes when you're doing the thing for the thing's sake and you're onto something. It's just that nobody recognizes it yet. So I think of Bodhidharma. What was he doing? He was onto something. Sitting in that cave. not having any idea, but doing it for us in a way in some very real way doing it for the thing itself, I mean he was doing it to do it but he was also doing it for us. And Bodhidharma went on to, he had some students one main one, but in one story he had four, one of whom was a nun

[13:17]

One, the main student, Hui Ke, was also someone who was very intuitive from an early age. When he was born, the room filled with light or something, and his name meant light. He was a sort of very... And he also studied Buddhism up, down, and sideways. And... He had that feeling that he wasn't getting at the heart. He wasn't getting at that, what is that? It's about, you can't get at it. And he heard about Bodhidharma. I think maybe there's a part to the story where he, someone also tells him, He gets this terrible headache, and afterward he's got these five bumps on his head, and some soothsayer or teacher or something tells him, oh, you need to go to the Shaolin Temple where Bodhidharma is. This is not the normal headache. This is not your normal headache. And so he goes to, and Bodhidharma is a very gruff, there's a picture of Bodhidharma right there, he's a very gruff.

[14:29]

gruff person, apparently, and is not open to Huayka at all and just says, you're too old and you'll never get it. It's too late. You don't have what it takes. Said a lot of mean things to him. he of course probably became more and more sure that this person had it, that thing that you can't get. And so he wanted to prove his sincerity, so he stood, he said, I'm just going to stand outside this cave where Bodhidharma is until he teaches me. So he stood there and snow, snow, it was snowing. Snow came up. Did it cover him up or did it just come partway up? I think it came partway up. In the morning he was standing there with like icicles and snow all over him and still Bodhidharma. I picture him like this. No, no, no, no.

[15:33]

And so he takes an axe and chops off his arm to prove his sincerity. So finally when he chopped off his arm, Bodhidharma said, okay, okay, I admit it. You have the dedication and sincerity to receive this teaching. And he taught him about zazen. how to do zazen, how to really do zazen in a way where you embody the empty thing at the center of everything. The emptiness at the center of everything. So what he said was, outwardly cease all involvements, inwardly Inwardly, no coughing or sighing in the mind.

[16:44]

So cease all involvements. And all of them. Not just some of them. Not just most of them. All of them. Just stop seeing anything out there as having any bearing on it. Just cease. And inwardly, no coughing or sighing. What does that mean? I don't know what it means, but what it means to me, what it makes me think of, I think of coughing as like subtle scoffing and sighing as subtle whining. So it's kind of like scoffing is when you're like a little bit too far back from your life or the world or the universe. You've just taken a little space there and you're scoffing at it. It's out there and you're scoffing. And I think sighing or whining is like when you're getting a little too into it there and you're taking it a little bit too seriously and you're getting a little bit too involved in it as something real and outside yourself.

[17:52]

So he says, inwardly, no coughing or sighing in the mind. With your mind like a wall, you enter the way. So when we're sitting, we're not leaning back from our experience and we're not leaning into it. We're just right in the middle. Now, this is for Zazen. I think some scoffing and whining is okay. Normally, I was thinking this morning about this. I have a very good friend, one of my favorite people in the world, and he does a lot of scoffing, and it's okay. It's like that's who he is. That's what he does. He scoffs, and he's expressing something true. But at least when we're in the zendo, in relation to our own life and our own experience, Let's not get away from it, let's not fall into it.

[19:03]

Through mind like a wall we enter the way. It's probably a lot of time left, but I'm ready for discussion. Or maybe there isn't. Malcolm and then Charlie. I was wondering, historically, why do we have seemingly sort of real names of all the ancestors after Bodhidharma?

[20:14]

I mean, Bodhidharma doesn't seem like a sort of authentic name. I mean, is it just we have poor historical records, starting with the Anglo-Romans? It's because There's a good reason for that, and that is because it's the people later who made up the whole story of the ancestors. And they, partly to authenticate what they were doing, so in other words, for mixed reasons, kept kind of pointing back and that's who they ended up, that was just sort of the spot that they ended up pointing back to. So the Indian people, they weren't into this. They weren't into this tracking how it was passed from person to person. Actually, it's sort of a trap to think about the lineage the way we think about it. It can be. It's got some problems. It's really just a skeleton.

[21:15]

Bodhidharma actually had these four disciples, and we can presume they went on to teach a lot of people. and create the matrix that everything happened in. And so we have this little skeleton of Bodhidharma to Hoika to the end of the Sixth Ancestor and then it kind of branches out. But even the branching, I mean, there's a lot of people that are not mentioned there that were completely part of the matrix in which the whole thing couldn't have happened without. And so it's almost like they had to get back to somewhere that they could stop, you know, making up the story they had to get back to someone They weren't going to get all the way. I mean, they actually do get all the way back to Shakyamuni, but those are really kind of made up, I think. But do you think Bodhidharma was a real person? Apparently, there's a sense that there was somebody. Some part of it is true. I mean, he's part of the greater Chinese kind of folklore. It was around 500 AD, so it's hard to get back. that far, but it seems like there was somebody, we don't know if he had, I mean, the details are not there, but there was somebody who's also gotten, gets credit if you look in the, like I was Googling this morning, because somehow I was nervous and I had this feeling like if I could see a map of China and see where it was, that was going to like make me calm down or something, I don't know why, but I couldn't find that, but there's, in the martial arts tradition, they point back to Bodhidharma also.

[22:43]

and say he was also the father of Zen, you know. So he went to this temple, Shaolin Temple, and that was sort of the birthplace of Chinese martial arts that's still practiced today. So they go back to him. And there's also a story that he, to stay awake at night, he cut off his eyelids so his eyes wouldn't close so he could stay awake. And they fell to the ground and they turned into tea plants. And that's where tea was. You know, it could be a conglomeration of a few people, or it could be one person. It could be one person, but then some stories got attached to it. It's hard to know when it's back too far. But I'll just make a comment.

[23:47]

I was in a Christian church the other day and they had a picture, untitled picture, but presumably a very handsome man, three-quarter profile, Like, how did that particular image come to represent Jesus of Nazareth? Somebody, somewhere threw that picture. I mean, photography wasn't around. Right. And it's become generally accepted in, I guess, many churches that when you see that image, that means Christ. Yeah, why does he have western features?

[24:48]

I mean, he wasn't western. Excuse me. Tangent. Uh-huh. How did that come to be? You mean? Oh, you just... Right. Ross. of being a parent and wanting your children to recognize the effort that you're making for them, providing for them, them not really being aware of it, and yet you do it anyway, selflessly, as a teaching tool, as the wiring of being a woman, and all that sort of stuff that comes in. mom for years.

[25:57]

You know, it's, yeah, it's even, I don't know if this is getting at what you're saying, but what I thought of was, it's even simpler, like, a lot of the practice positions around here are in some way, they're similar, you know? Like, I was thinking about the head server. So the head server is kind of trying to make sure the whole thing goes okay, and until you're in that spot, you can't, it doesn't look like they're doing anything. And when you're in it, it's like, whoa! It's really intense. And I think that there's even a flavor. I mean, I haven't actually been head server. It's so much easier to make up a story about something you haven't done. Or at least I haven't in a long time. But there is a little bit of autumn frost in there, right? There's like, you just want it to go smoothly. And the smoother it goes, the less it looks like you're doing. The less likely anybody is to notice it, that means you're doing a good job. And it's lonely.

[27:03]

It's lonely. And then, I mean, the thing that you, your goal there is to make, you know, have it go well for everybody, have it be a matrix of awakening for everybody in that meal and the servers, right? So the servers are a little bit, they have a little bit of it because they're trying to make serving happen and the people who are eating are just kind of receiving. But ideally, you want to find one of those servers who's going to be a head server, right? And be able to do that and step into that spot. And I think with your kids too, I mean, the goal is not that they would ever recognize it, I think. I mean, I'm still in the thick of it, but I have a feeling that until they find something that's like that for themselves, that's when they recognize either their own kids or something else that they can have an outpouring towards. So it's always pointed away from you. If it's healthy, I mean, it's never going to come back to me, hardly, probably.

[28:09]

Yes, Kate? More about this parenting stuff, especially for those of us who don't actually have children. I think you'd agree, and I'd love to hear a little more about it. the business of parenting either an animal or an art. Right, I think so. It's really getting back to more something that you love better than your own ease, something that brings you out of yourself, that takes you out of yourself, that you want to do for the sake of the thing itself. And yeah, you want to be recognized, but part of it is that you're never, you know, it's like sometimes you get recognized, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get recognized for a short time, but for a lot of time you don't, you know, or it's like, So I think we can all, we all have that and we all can have that. I don't think, you know, I'm not, I don't think everybody has to have kids, but what, for someone like me, I think I was very self-centered and still am a lot, but it's kind of like jump-starting, having kids kind of jump-starts it a little bit, so you, oh, I see, oh, now I see what it feels like to actually think about another person.

[29:23]

Yes, Tamar? When you were talking about your experience of parenting, I was thinking of an Alanis quote. I don't remember, but from the Gendokan, a fish swims in the water and there's no limit to the water, and a bird flies in the air and there's no limit to the air. So the thing that is in fact most important and most sustaining is sort of invisible because, you know, your children have never known anything else. Yeah. I love that quote, too. Part of what that's saying is that they shouldn't, they don't need to try to know anything else, right? Isn't that what it's saying? Back there, is that a hand back there? Mark?

[30:28]

I always remember this story, I thought it was associated with Bodhi Dhamma and his disciple, where the disciple also, or before he cuts his arm off or after, I'm not sure, says, my mind is... Yes, uh-huh. Please pass it on. That's them, that's them. I'll pacify you. Show me your mind. And then the guy says, I looked everywhere and I couldn't find my mind. And he says, I've pacified your mind. I've calmed your mind. Or see, or there. That's the way I hear it. See, I've calmed your mind. He doesn't say I. I've calmed your mind. Oh, no? Oh, he says, see, your mind is calm. Are we done? Are we early? Three?

[31:32]

Oh, well it's not too early. Guess we're done.

[31:36]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ