This morning, I want to talk about case number 44, which is called Kason's Feeding the Drum. There's no introduction to this case. The main subject, it starts off with the main subject. Kason, the Chinese name for ocean, Kason said, learning by study is called hearing. No more learning is called nearness. Transcending these two is true passing.

[01:05]

The monk asked, what is true passing? Khastan said, beating the drum. The monk asked again, what is the true teaching of the Buddha? Khastan said, beating the drum. The monk asked once more, I would not ask you about this very mindless Buddha. But what is no mind, no Buddha?" Krasang said, beating the drum. The monk still continued to ask, when an enlightened one comes, how do you treat him? Krasang said, beating the drum. Pretty insistent. And then Setjo has a verse. dragging a stone, carrying earth, used the spiritual power of a thousand-ton bow.

[02:13]

Sokotsuroshi rolled out three wooden balls. How could they surpass Kasan's beating the drum? I will tell you, what is sweet is sweet, what is bitter, bitter. It's pretty simple. Everything that we do is pretty straightforward.

[03:18]

All we have to do is respond. Someone serves us meals. Someone rings the bell. If someone gets us up in the morning, or tells us when to get up, we have to get up. But, we have to respond to the bell. If someone rings the bell in the morning, all we have to do is respond to the bell. We have to be in the zen-do, sit-satsang, eat meals, serve meals. All we have to do is express ourselves. What is true expression?

[04:21]

What is true expression in ourself? This is what Kaosan is getting at. Well, how do we express ourself? Deeply and truly, moment after moment. Khasan said, learning by study is called hearing. Maybe think about teaching in a scholarly way. And learning no more is called nearness.

[05:23]

That is, one who engages in practice and comes to the point where there's no more learning. It's an interesting term. Sometimes we feel that there's a place where, in your study, where there's nothing more to learn. Actually, no more learning doesn't mean that there's nothing more to learn. It's a kind of term that means accomplished. Accomplished through practice. But no matter how accomplished we are through practice, there's still always something to learn. Our practice is the beginning of learning. We say, actually, that we start from enlightenment.

[06:24]

Our practice actually begins in enlightenment. But that's another koan for us. So he says, learning by study is called hearing. Learning no more is called nearness. And transcending these two is true passing, to transcend learning and beyond learning, to really go beyond them both. And the monk asks, well, what is the true passing? What is really beyond just learning and beyond learning? How do you go beyond that? How do you get to the place where whatever you do is a true expression?

[07:31]

And cross on to beating the drum. The monk asked again, well, what is the true teaching of Buddha? Prasang said, beating the drum. And the monk asked once more, I would not ask you about this very mind of Buddha, but what about no mind, no Buddha? Prasang said, beating the drum. famous koans attributed to Baso. One time a monk asked Baso, what is buddha? He said, my is buddha. And then another time a monk asked him, what is buddha?

[08:42]

He said, no mind, no buddha. And he said, well, in order to keep a child from crying, we say, mind is good. It's like offering a yellow leaf, something to make the child quiet and happy. Mind is good. And no mind, no Buddha is the next step. It's a compliment to the mind of Buddha.

[09:51]

No mind, no Buddha. This is in the realm of yes and no. Being in existence. One time, one of Vaso's disciples was enlightened when he said, mind is Buddha. So the disciple later went to the mountains and studied in this hermitage. And while he was there, Vaso said, mind is not Buddha. No mind, no Buddha. And he said, you know what? Now Baso is saying, no mind, no real. As far as I'm concerned, mind is real.

[10:54]

I have this kind of certainty. You don't have anything to worry about. This is called real confidence. It's not that one is right and the other is wrong. There are two aspects of right. So then the monk continued to ask and he said, When an enlightened one comes, how do you treat him? But now you must know. How do we

[11:58]

Being completely present, moment to moment to moment. When you're down there in the morning, just get up. Putting on your clothes, mindfully, beating the drum. Walking to the zendah, mindfully, step after step, beating the drum. Sitting on the cushion. When the server serves, knowing how to bow, bowing with real compassion, bowing with real response, beating the drum.

[13:31]

And when the server serves, not being heard and not being targeted, not trying to rush through and not trying to slow down, beating the drum. really responding to the people you're serving. Still, after 10, 15 years, some of us don't know how to respond. The practice is pretty simple. Being able to accept something in your goal and responding. That's all there is to it. Being asked to do something and saying, okay.

[14:36]

Asking someone to do something. compassion. Zen teaching. We don't teach much. People say, Where's the teaching? And for 10 years they say, I've been here 10 years, where's the teaching? You hear people say that. I hear it all the time. Truly, I've been here 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and I haven't learned anything. Where's the teaching? It's so elusive.

[15:43]

It's elusive because it's so simple. It's right in front of us. Merely responding. Knowing how to respond. And knowing how to give expression to our true Self, moment after moment. Not forgetting. Not forgetting who we are and what we're doing. First, in the end of practice, there's a freshness to it. It's all very new. Sitting Zazen is very new. Serving in the Zen Dojo is very new. And we have a kind of doing the same thing over and over again.

[17:02]

It seems like the same thing over and over again. But even though we have that kind of buoyancy If we don't learn the lesson of beginning, then we miss the point. Everything is given to us right in the beginning. All that we need to know is actually presented to us right in the beginning. Someone who has been practicing for months actually has as much to work with and someone who's been practicing for 20 years. We can talk about advanced practices if we want to, but the most advanced practice is to know how to be right there at the beginning.

[18:10]

If you miss it in the beginning, it's hard to pick up at the end. Suzuki Roshi talked about it as a beginner's mind. He always had a beginner's mind. But we forget about this. Few people forget about the beginner's mind. After five years, you think, well, where is the advanced practice? But none of us are advanced. There is no advanced practice. And I'll just go home. Advanced practice is to just arrive at the beginning, and keep over and over doing it.

[19:14]

But that's just called fresh mind, fresh presence, being reborn moment by moment. Just being present moment by moment. When someone calls, you just respond. It's not a difficult practice. It's difficult to respond. It's difficult to be awake moment by moment. It's very difficult. All the odds are against our being awake. So in the world, in the realm of delusion, to keep waking up is hard because our environment wants to put us to sleep.

[20:26]

Somehow we think that this world is forever, but I remember when all the way up into my 30s, I thought, I'm going to live to be 120. And I really did. I've always thought that. And I felt healthy and not so energy. I'm going to live to be 120. I just never doubted it. Now, I'm not quite so sure. I still think pretty good, but I'm not quite so sure. I wouldn't say that they are 120. But I know that I spent a lot of my life dreaming. Lots of time dreaming. not presenting myself in this world, through this world, my true face.

[21:49]

Hence, it's not so easy to present your true face to this world. You might get hit. the realm of accomplishment. The world of delusion, in a sense, is called the realm of accomplishment, where we want to make a name for ourselves, become famous, or be well-liked, respected, for example.

[23:09]

That's natural. But who do we want to be respected by? Who do we want to respect us? Who do we want to like us? If we don't have a good sense of ourselves, of who we really are, then we like all kinds of different people who respect us and like us for various reasons. And then we try to make ourselves look good in the image of those people who we would like to like us. We're not being true to ourselves.

[24:17]

And even in a Buddhist way, even in this path, Buddhist path, we want people to like us. We want our peers to like us. So we have to be careful about teachers because a good teacher should like us for who we are, not for some other reason. So good teachers should help us to be ourselves. And good friends should help us to be ourselves. Give us some confidence, not through accomplishing for fame and gain, but accomplishing for a certain truth.

[25:23]

That's accomplishment. away. There's no goal. People think, well, you know what you're saying, there's no goal. But that's not true. The goal of Zen is to be yourself completely, and to express that. But it's not a materialistic goal or something that you can put your finger on and say, look, I've accomplished. But when you see someone who's accomplished, you can say, they've really accomplished. They don't have anything to show for it. The purpose of practice is just to be ourself, just to find ourself and be ourself, and express that self, true self, moment after moment.

[26:45]

And it's pretty hard because it's hard to wake up. And when you sit there in Zazen, you know this. So you better put it to sleep. Your mind is always drifting. And Zazen is called the practice of recollection. Coming back to it here. Yes. Just this. That's returning to the beginning. Moment after moment. Don't worry about that you're falling asleep or that your mind is wandering.

[27:50]

It's natural. So in order to wake up, we have to go beyond what's natural. We have to go beyond what's natural. And this going beyond what's natural is called beating the drum. Buddhism is not natural in the sense that we think it's natural. But it's also natural to go beyond just what comes to us. And when we can go beyond just what comes to us, then just what comes to us is also Dharma. But until we know how to go beyond just what comes to us, it's not Dharma.

[28:55]

It's just illusion. So Dharma and delusion go together, just like mind is Buddha, mind is not Buddha. No mind, no Buddha. They go together. It's not a thing. And from how it is not a thing comes within yourself. We are all buddhas.

[30:00]

We are all leaping out of the mirror. Leaping out of emptiness. Sleeping into emptiness. Emptiness leaping into form. Mitchell has a poem, he says, I'm dragging a stone, carrying earth. Use the spiritual power of a thousand ton boat. Zoko Tsunoshi rolled out three wooden balls. How could they surpass Kasan's beating drum? I will tell you what is sweet is sweet, what is bitter, bitter. Dragging a stone and carrying earth is also a form of beating drum.

[31:09]

I use the spiritual of a thousand-ton bow as the sense of, do the appropriate thing at the appropriate time. You wouldn't use a thousand-ton bow to kill a mouse. But sometimes there's a saying that when a tiger When a cat is waiting for a mouse, you should sit Zazen like a cat waiting for a mouse to come out of its hole. You just sit there, waiting. Not waiting. Waiting, but not waiting. Completely composed. But when the mouse comes out of the hole, intensity in common.

[32:20]

And then he says, Zokotsu, who is seppu, Zokotsu Roshi rolled out three wooden bowls as an incident of seppu and ganto. A lot of stories about seppu and ganto were written by a famous teacher. Kind of like mutton jerk. They would set each other up, you know, in these stories. So that we could hear these stories. And one time, Sepo rolled out three wooden balls. This is considered an expression of great activity. Total, great activity.

[33:30]

This is what Khasan is trying to say about feeding the jahns. In every minute action is the total activity of the universe. in awareness. And then he said, such as if half a day surpassed Kasa was being done. It means that all these activities are And then he says, I will tell you what is sweet is sweet, what is bitter is bitter. If it were natural, we wouldn't have to come to practice.

[35:52]

I'm saying natural, I don't mean it's not natural. Even when I say, it's not natural, it's natural. It's just a way of saying something. If you take it too literally, and say, well it's not natural, literally, then you get into trouble. Buddhism is, Buddha Dharma is, of course, natural, but it's not usual. It goes against our tendencies. Most of it goes against our tendencies.

[36:57]

So whenever we start to practice, we always have trouble with it. I didn't know anybody He does not have trouble with it because it puts a barrier against all attendances. Yes. It does, but no more than having tea and cake. It's like lentils. And when Tozan was crossing the stream, one day, he saw his reflection in the mirror, in the water, the stream.

[38:16]

He said, he had this realization of seeing himself in the stream, of who he was. Everywhere I go now, I see myself. But if you think that looking at the reflection in the mirror was just the way we usually see the reflection in the mirror, that's not enough. When you look at the floor, in the floor as a mirror. It's like Vassa's tile. You polish a tile to make a mirror? Of course not.

[39:20]

But you should be able to see your face in the tile. But where is your face? into a bowl of cereal, into your oatmeal, you should be able to see your face. And we see a reflection of a face. But what we really see is the mirror.

[40:25]

Some image in the mirror. But that's not our face. That is our face. What we say is our face is not our face. But what we see is our face. Yeah, I'm responding. Responding to the second temple. Responding to... responding to the soul. This is also mind and spirit. Nothing is outside of spirit and mind. Well, that's what I say, it's not natural.

[41:38]

Somebody else asked me that too. How come we don't know about all this from the beginning? Right? But we do know about it from the beginning. We kind of know about it from the beginning, but then we unlearn it. But we don't know that we unlearn it. And you may say, well, why do we have to do that? Well, look at the salmon. Why don't they have just a pleasant life? Everything is working. All of nature is working. It's evolving. In fact, we have this because we have pleasure and displeasure.

[42:40]

without the displacement. Why can't we just have the easy without the hard? And that's, we're always feeling that. That's our big goal. Why can't we, you know, since we can do, have the easy, we know what the easy is like, and it's easy. So, why don't we just do away with all the things that are hard, and just have the easy going? And we keep trying to do that. And we say, well that's natural. That's when we think it's natural. But it's not natural. It's unnatural. What's natural is to deal with what's hard. Because that's our life. Question from the audience. Oh, you mean the monk?

[43:50]

Of course, sure. The monk's question is leading the drama, bringing something out of the future. Good question, leading the drama. When an enlightened one comes, how do you treat him? How do you respond to circumstances?

[44:59]

Natalie, how do you live your life in a mindful way? Maybe about being awake. I think everything is vibration. Even what I'm seeing still. secret of practice, a whole secret of practice, is that what you give is what you give.

[46:09]

If you really give completely, then you become alive completely. If you give half-heartedly, you become alive half-heartedly. You get half a heart. It's really that simple. That's why it's so hard. I don't see it. Yep. I think we did great. And we've kept the string going. And we've plucked one string. And in stringed instruments, there are sympathetic strings. And pluck one, and the rest vibrate. It causes everything around us to vibrate in some way.

[47:35]

And we expect our crowning goal. That's really his point. And as I said yesterday, it looks like somebody sets up sashimi for us and we just come and eat it. But actually, we create sashimi for each one of us. We create our phenomena. We create effectivity. If one person breathes, even though it may seem insignificant, it has an effect. The person who breathes has an effect. So when everyone is really putting out a great effort, The whole thing is over. So my hand is the sheen.

[48:42]

I don't feel the teaching is vital. That's the question. In fact, it has quite a huge effect. People say, what are you doing? No people. It's part of the truth, that's it. That's the truth of it. That's it. That's it. It's very hard to ever know, to ever understand what your mind is doing.

[50:28]

You keep moving yourself, so it's not necessary to understand. We do anyway. Well, if we have an ugly mind, we treat everything as ugly. Beautiful mind, we treat everything as beautiful. So we do anyway, treating everything as ourselves. That's natural. My feeling is that this is the best we can do. Everybody should do it for motivation. I'm feeling it.

[52:17]

I feel it very strongly. Thank you.

[52:33]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ