I'm curious how many people are not familiar with the case, Ordinary Mind is the Way. Could you just raise your hand if you're not familiar with that? Okay, thank you. So, I'd like to talk about that case this morning. This is a case from the collection of koans, the Mumon Koan, by Ekkai Mumon. And I would like to discuss the case, but one aspect primarily of the case. I don't want to give a commentary on the entire case, but just point to one part of it. But I'll introduce the case to begin with, just to give you an outline of what it's about. Mu Man Khan's collection of koans was put together right around the year 1200 or so in China.

[01:08]

And the same time that, well a little bit later, about the same time that Dogen was visiting China, actually. And these are 48 different koans that are assembled. And there are numerous Koan collections, but the Mumon Koan is the simplest, or maybe the simplest, and most accessible, very straightforward, and easy to work with relative to some of the other ones that are more poetic, have more complex literary allusions and so forth. So the Mumon Koan is a good, simple text that is easy to work with. And Ekai Mumon, he had a nickname, they called him Tao Man Ekai. And his biographer described him, said, the master looked thin, but of clear spirit.

[02:14]

His words were artless, but profound. And his hair was dark, his beard long and rough. He wore a shabby and dirty robe. So Ordinary Mind is one of the koans in this collection and it's one of the koans that the Berkeley Zen Center and the San Francisco Zen Center would like the best because it emphasizes our everyday life. We probably talk about it more or as much as any other case. And, you know, these khans or cases, you can talk about them in different levels. That's what's interesting about them. There's many different levels going on in each one. And, fundamentally, they were designed to help people realize their basic, who they really are, who we really are, to break through our

[03:30]

dualistic way of thinking, usually. They came about because the monks were beginning to become rather academic and lose their inquiring spirit. So these khans developed as a way of helping people to break through their kind of habitual way of thinking to another level, or no level. But in terms of discussing a case like this, particularly in a lecture, you can also look at it partly from the point of view of folklore, that these cases also touch on various issues which are helpful to look at. And you can be a little looser, a little lighter about looking at a case from that perspective.

[04:38]

So I'll just begin and read the case to you. It's very short. It's about one paragraph long. Ordinary Mind is the Way. Joshu earnestly asked Nansen, What is the way? Nansen answered, the ordinary mind is the way. Joshu asked, should I direct myself toward it or not? Nansen said, if you try to turn toward it, you go against it. Joshu asked, If I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the way? Nansen answered, The way does not belong to knowing or not knowing.

[05:44]

Knowing is delusion, and not knowing is a blank consciousness. When you have really reached the true way beyond all doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong? At these words, Joshu was suddenly enlightened. Then there's a short commentary which I'll leave out and a final verse by Mumon which goes, the spring flowers, the moon in autumn, the cool breezes of summer, the winter's snow. If idle concerns do not cloud the mind, this is our happiest season." So incidentally, what's interesting about the Mumonkan is we have four different translations now in English.

[06:56]

Three of them are out of print. And the one by Eiken Roshi is the only one currently in print. But all four are in the library in the community room if you're ever interested. And it's interesting to read the different versions and the different commentaries. And what I'd like to look at in this case primarily is this whole issue of knowing and not knowing. The other issue is what is ordinary mind? But for now let's just talk about the knowing and not knowing part of it. So I'd like to go back over the case but do it in my own words. And by doing that I think you'll get some idea of how I hear this case by putting it into my own words.

[08:03]

And I also think it's just good practice to put these into our own words so that we're not bound to various phrases that sound good but don't really come from us. First of all, these two characters in this case, Joshu and Nansen, are really famous Zen teachers. Each of them has their particular characteristic. Joshu was known for, he lived to be very old, and he didn't begin teaching until he was in his 80s. He spent the whole first part of his life traveling around China, looking or studying with different teachers. And he had nothing. He was totally poor. I think he had a broken stool and a set of robes. That was it. But a very venerable teacher and shows up in many of the different cases.

[09:06]

And Nansen is famous for the Cutting the Cat column. where these two groups of monks in a monastery are fighting over who gets possession of their pet cat. And a non-Semitic teacher comes in and sees them fighting and grabs the cat and holds it up with a knife and says, who can save this cat? Who can say the word that will save this cat? The monks are speechless, they don't know what to say, so the story goes. He slices the cat in half. And then interestingly later, Joshu, the same person in this case, comes in and Nansen tells him what happened and Joshu says, well, if I, so when Joshu hears that, he puts a sandal on top of his head, takes off his sandal, puts it on top of his head, turns it around and walks out. And Nansen says, if you had just been here,

[10:16]

earlier, you could have saved the cat. So, these two guys are interesting, and Venerable teachers show up a lot in the different cases. So, Joshu asks, what is the way? And what he says is, what is the Tao? And Tao's Chinese word originally had the meaning of a passageway, a very practical kind of word, and then gradually began to take on a more universal meaning of the nature or the harmony in our life, in the life of the universe.

[11:17]

So you could also say, he could be saying, what's the meaning of life, really? He's asking, it's a more sophisticated version, but what's the meaning of life? He asks his teacher, what's the meaning of life? And then his teacher, Nansen, says, things just as they are. Ordinary mind is the way. Things just as they are is the meaning of life. So then Joshu says, well, is there a certain approach to realizing things just as they are? Because obviously if we just already saw things just as they are, we wouldn't be here having this discussion. So Joshu says, is there a certain approach that I should take? And Natsen's answer is based on knowing that Joshu has been practicing diligently as a fairly advanced student.

[12:38]

And his answer is, if you try to turn toward it, you go against it. Which is saying, in effect, if you make an it out of it, if things as they are, if you can make that into an objective object, something that's a thought or something that you're thinking about or a thing, then it's no longer things as they are. I mean, ultimately everything is as it is, but it's a kind of manipulation that you're using with your mind, which is the dilemma of spiritual practice. How can we be aware of what we're doing and on the right track without conceptualizing it or without pigeonholing it somehow? sort of creating it in our own image.

[13:42]

So then Joshu asks the logical question, well if I don't turn toward it or if I don't work on it, if I can't recognize it, how do I know I'm on the right track? And then Nantzen's answer is, knowing is delusion and not knowing is just blankness So this is the key part that I'd like to talk about. Knowing is delusion. Knowing, the whole sense that we know something, is a delusion. And not knowing is just a blank mind. So, we'll come back to that in a minute. So then, Nonsense continues, if you see vast emptiness, or if you see, you could call it the void, but if you see that there's no fundamental reference point, that there's no sort of original thing

[15:06]

that you can point to as being independent or established, but that everything is a composite. If you can see that, then knowing and not knowing, in the ultimate sense, just are irrelevant. They're just baggage. It doesn't really matter. Knowing and not knowing have to do with picking out something that you know something about.

[16:08]

But if there's no place to stand, if there's no original point that you can stand on, how do you do that? From a fundamental point of view, how do you do that? So this is a kind of a deep deep version of knowing and not knowing. Because of course, in an everyday way, we have to know things and not know things. But he's talking on the deepest level here. What does it really mean to know something? And do you really know it? And what's going on when you know something? And what's going on when you think you don't know something? So he's asking Joshu really to go to the deepest level here. And then after he says that, Joshu understands what he's saying and has an enlightenment experience, a realization.

[17:22]

And then this poem, this very nice poem at the end, which is so simple and yet so refreshing, we could put it in our own, you could put your own words to it. My version would be, our new lush lawn in spring, the dry brown hills of Tilden in summer, the brisk clear and blue Berkeley days of autumn, turning inward in winter. If you don't attach to your vexations, any day is a good day. So let's go back to the knowing part. In the dictionary, in the Webster's Collegian Dictionary, it's interesting, they have five or six different meanings for the word knowledge.

[18:35]

But the first meaning, which is the primary meaning, according to Webster's, is familiarity with direct experience. And then the second meaning is, of familiarity with facts. So it's kind of interesting, you know, this is in Zen, you know, we have a first principle and a second principle that Mel talks about. First principle is just the fundamental isness of things, the beingness of things as they are. And the second principle is more Dharma, or how how you practice with that, how you understand that, how you integrate your thinking process with that. So actually it's the same thing as what Webster is saying. And really that's what Nonsen is telling Joshu.

[19:39]

He's saying, don't try to know based on facts. know based on your direct experience. So if you just looked at a dictionary you wouldn't have had to go through all that. So it's also interesting just to look at how we relate to knowing emotionally and psychologically. We really like to feel like we know something. It makes us feel like we're competent or that we're in control, that we're a worthwhile kind of person. And generally, maybe as we get older, we realize that we can't know everything.

[20:40]

So we pick an area that we're good at or that we're interested in, and then we know something a lot about that area. We're very good at that particular area, we become a kind of an expert. It may be a very low-key version of that, but nevertheless, we feel that we know something fairly well. And often that's our work. And people come to us looking for somebody who's good at something. You know, if you're good at repairing shoes, You know how to repair shoes, people recognize you for that, and they relate to you in that way, and you're acknowledged as a knowledgeable person about shoe repair. And every aspect of life can be like that, and also the religious life. When we practice for years and years, we start wanting to often, speaking personally, we'd like to feel that we know a lot,

[21:42]

about Buddhism. We're humble. We know that we don't know as much as we could know, but we know pretty much. And it's like we're afraid of being nobody. If we know something, we know we're a somebody. We have a meaning. an identity. We're somebody who knows this or that. We're good at this or that. And there's nothing wrong with being good at something or appreciating knowledge, but I think what we need to look at is how we're attached to that. That's the problem, is when we hold on to that. And in that sense, Like every attachment, it blinds us.

[22:46]

It shuts down our vision so that we can't see so freely. Because we're convinced that we are good or we are an expert. It's like, you know, the title of Suzuki Roshi's book was Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And his phrase was, In an expert's mind, there are a few possibilities. In a beginner's mind, there are many. It's interesting, Kaizen is an important teacher in this lineage. worked on this case for a long time, or heard this case in a lecture, a tay show, and had a realization experience and went to his teacher and said, I think I got it.

[23:53]

And the teacher said, well, say something. That's the case and said, a jet black ball speeds through the night, speeds through the dark night. Or a jet black iron ball speeds through the dark night. So that's an interesting image. How would you know, how would you know that a black iron ball is speeding through the night. How could you know that unless you stood in front of it, if you got in front of it? But how would you know that that was happening? You couldn't see it. Probably couldn't hear it. You can't really visualize it. You can kind of imagine it, but it's kind of a fantasy. But it's interesting that he came up with an image, a visual image, which is as hard to visualize as you can make it, which is a good answer.

[25:11]

And then the teacher said, well, that's not enough. And then he said, say something more, and so Keizan said, I eat when I'm hungry and I drink when I'm thirsty. So that was, that's the other side of it, which is that just the daily working, our ordinary life, which seems very ordinary and practical. I also, what actually gave me the idea to talk about this, or what reawakened my interest in this whole case, was I was watching television a couple of weeks ago. And it was, the movie on television was The Rain Man. Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic man. He does it very well.

[26:16]

He's very well acted. And I just watched a small part of it. And in this scene, Dustin Hoffman is traveling with his brother, they're crossing America, and they stop at kind of a cheap motel, and they're out in the parking lot, and he's a little disoriented, and they're kind of on the move. And he's, as an autistic person, his mind is, I don't know so much about what it means to be autistic, but it's a different kind of mind. And he has certain things that he can be brilliant at and other things that he's just totally spaced out about. And autistic people can oftentimes be brilliant about numbers. They can understand numerical relationships in a way that, or music for instance, that other people just can't come close to. Somehow their mind just works a little differently. So Dustin Hoffman is an autistic man and he's standing in his parking lot.

[27:22]

He starts going over the routine from Abbott and Costello. Who's on first? I don't know if you know that routine. I can't do it justice. Does anybody know that routine? It's hard to repeat it. But it's something like, you have to imagine these two guys, Abbott and Costello, you know their personalities, how they play off against each other. But it goes something like, this repartee going back and forth real quickly between each one of them, and he says something like, who's on first? Talking about baseball. Who's on first? What's on second? I don't know who's on third, but who's on first? Well, they went to second. Well, then who's on second? Well, whoever they are, they're going to third. Oh, well, so who's pitching? Well, today or tomorrow? Today. Well, today is pitching.

[28:25]

Well, has the batter gone to first yet? Well, sure, but who's on first? It just keeps going around like that, circular, and it doesn't get anywhere. It's absurd, but that's the humor in it. But Dustin Hoffman has a tape recording of this and to him it's a question and he's trying to figure it out. And he repeats it in this kind of autistic kind of rocking motion. Who's on first? Who's on second? The man on second went to third. Who's on first? Who's on second? Who's on first? He's trying to figure it out and it drives his brother crazy. Because his brother knows that there's nothing to figure out. But Dustin Hoffman doesn't know that. And he's just trying to understand who's on first. And if he just keeps working on it, he'll get it, he thinks. He has this feeling that he wants to understand it, but he can't get it. And that just seemed to me a perfect symbol of what we're like, you know, that we want to know

[29:31]

somehow that we want to know an ultimate understanding of what our life is about. That's why we're here this morning. You could be doing your errands, but you chose to come here instead. But we're like Tessa Hoffman. We're trying to figure it out in this way, and there's a certain absurdity in the way that we're trying to figure it out. So it's as if Joshu was asking Nansen, who's on first? And Nansen said, it's how you play the game that counts.

[30:34]

It doesn't matter who's on first. And then the other problem is, well, what about not knowing? You know, he says, well, not knowing is just a blank mind. And that's even harder to deal with, because in Zen circles, you know, we're taught that it's good not to know. San Sanim, the Korean Zen teacher, says his mantra, his main thing that he says is, clear mind, clear mind, just don't know. And it's very helpful. I mean, people really practice with that. Clear mind, clear mind. just don't know. And in the case in the Blue Cliff Records, between Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma that we'll be discussing during the practice period coming up in a month, Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, well, who's standing in front of me?

[31:51]

And Bodhidharma says, no knowing, or I don't know. So the best that I can understand that is something like, there's a difference between awareness and knowing. And to be aware, to be aware is to be in touch. And that may be the kind of not knowing that Nantza is talking about.

[32:53]

To not be aware is just to be blank. But to have a sense of knowledge of, I know this thing, which is separate somehow, this separate thing, that's a kind of knowledge-knowing that's So in our experience with meditation and zazen, we run into this problem ourselves. We run into this problem all the time anyway, but particularly in sitting practice, it's very difficult because when you sit down and you face the wall,

[33:59]

after the novelty wears off, after you've kind of become used to doing it, and it becomes somewhat routine, still we have this desire to want to know something. And the longer you sit, the more difficult it is to feel like you really know something. And yet, we have this urge to know. We really, we really would like to know something. You know, and it's actually, it's an occupation. It's stimulating for one thing. It's to know something that's very stimulating. It's interesting. And you can constantly know different facets of different ways of looking at things and different situations and so forth. So, knowing is a very dynamic activity. And when we sit,

[35:01]

We somehow have to let go of that. We don't have to let go of awareness, but ultimately, if we're really going to just sit, we have to let go of this desire to know something. And that's very difficult. It's easy to talk about, but it's not so ... you know, our nervous systems just like to know something. We're so habituated to that, to sit still without pursuing some object of knowledge or of any kind is very difficult. And there's no real answer to it. I mean, there's no answer to solve that difficulty except to, I mean, each of us has to find how to deal with that.

[36:03]

Actually just coming back to our breathing or our body is our way of dealing with that. So finally I just would like to read a little poem that's connected. This poem comes from some other place in Zen literature, but it relates to this case. I like it a lot. What our eyes see is ordinary. It does not frighten people. But it always remains like the moonlight on a chilled window. Even at midnight, It shines on thatched cottages. I'll read it once more. What our eyes see is ordinary.

[37:09]

It does not frighten people, but it always remains. Like moonlight on the chilled window, even at midnight, it shines on thatched cottages. So would you like to say something? How do you know when you're aware? Or do you just give up that notion too? While you're breath? You know when you're aware. Well, you could be aware that you're aware, but if you know that you're aware, then it's kind of a second hand.

[38:40]

So what does it mean if you're aware that you're aware? Maybe your body knows. Or maybe you can go back and forth between the second hand and the first hand. Well, I can only speak from my experience.

[39:44]

I think one could have a deeper experience than I've had, so I can only go as far as I've gone. I think that there's a kind of, in terms of the knowing that you're talking about, there's a kind of, like what I said to Greg, a kind of oscillation between just being present in this moment and then reflecting back on that moment. And this constantly, it happens very quickly. And that's the way it works. It's not just like you're hanging out in a certain spot. It's kind of an oscillation. And how do you know if you're meditating? See, I think of meditation as including everything that happens, including all of your thinking and all of the distraction and everything else.

[40:49]

So that's pretty easy to know. But an interesting question might be in samadhi, which is like, you know, pure concentration. Do you know that you're in samadhi during samadhi? Well, as one who's not been in samadhi, I don't know. Well, you do know when you sit. If you are just present, moment by [...] moment, you know that. And that's why I do like that jet ball going through the night. You can't say much about it, but it's very close and it's very intimate and you know it. And your body knows it. And what does your body know? So I wanted to put in a plug for the desire to know and how important that is.

[41:53]

To sit with some kind of real question, of real wanting to know, please. That when I don't have that, I just sit and they're not meaning very much desire, things get kind of sluggish. But the wanting to know is very powerful. But also as you go on, as you practice, that desire, I would imagine it becomes, it refines, right? It changes. The quality of that desire and your way of working with it changes. Can one feel the wanting to know in one's body as one sits? Yeah.

[43:02]

Going back to the who's on first and Justin Hoffman, I was reminded of Beckett. and his absurd waiting for Godot endgame in which two characters are posed against each other asking similar kinds of questions and not getting anywhere or getting somewhere. And I don't know if this is probably implied in what you said, I had the feeling that it wasn't only the trying to know by asking the question and realizing, one brother realizing that you couldn't, I mean, they were doing the same thing. the brothers were doing the same thing as the Huzon first and Abinak Haspel, they were both polar. But also what you just said about the oscillation going back and forth between first principle and second principle or knowing, that feels to me like the whole thing, the going back and forth, and that creates the state that we're in.

[44:04]

So I don't know whether you know that, It doesn't always matter to me, because what I get when I ask, who's on first? I feel like a pendulum, and that is the feeling, oh, but if I can tolerate the comfort of that, then I feel like I'm, quote, in the right place. So Dustin Hoffman is kind of, quote, right in that, because he's asking the question and creating the reality that he's looking for. And the other brother is saying, oh, there's no reality, you know. And so he's dismissing him, but it is actually so. And that's what I get when I watch him. I'm like, oh, yes, oh, yes. You know, it kind of brings me right into it. So it's comforting for a minute. So between Dustin Hoffman and his, quote, sane brother, you create one whole person. That's right.

[45:06]

The mudra. Right. And so the two, the two, the process. Yeah. I was just thinking of a number of things when Greg asked the question, how do you know when you're aware? And I think it's not possible to know when you're aware because knowing is sort of a function of the mind. And when you're aware, you're not, in a way, you're not in mind. And so the only way you can do it is to try to Also the who's on first thing. You know, the thing that, I can't remember which one, was the one that was saying who was on first and the one that was asking who was on first, but the answer is who is on first. And that's the part that the person asking the question did not get.

[46:07]

There is, you know, the who is a who. It's like, when you experience yourself as a human being, and you begin to identify with that, then you forget about the who. And you start asking a question about who this is, when this is not a who. Or this is a who, but it's not the person. You're not the person, in other words. And so you keep trying to see yourself as the person, identifying yourself as the person, when the reality is there is no person. And so that's what that whole thing is about. Well, I tried to get the tape from the library, but somebody had stolen it. But I can find it. I'll find it and check it out. We're not brutes.

[47:21]

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