Good morning. We've been talking this week about the Chinese ancestors, the founders of this tradition, from Bodhidharma to the sixth ancestor. We talked about yesterday. Today, we're going to talk about a story of the Sixth Ancestor and one of his disciples, Ching-Yuan Sun Tzu. So I'll start with, these are from Dogen's 9-D case, Koman collection with his first comments in his extensive record. Actually, the previous four were sequential, after which there's one about the Sixth Ancestor, have to talk about this other one instead, which is a little bit later in the collection.

[01:03]

So, Ching Ran asked the Sixth Ancestor, Huineng, what activity does not fall into classifications? The Sixth Ancestor said, what have you been doing? Ching Ran said, I do not carry out even the sacred truths. The Ancestor said, what class do you fall into? Chingyot said, I do not carry out even the sacred truths. What classification could there be? The six ancestors deeply appreciated him as a vessel of Dharma. Dogen's verse commentary, he raised and rotated the earth's axis and opened the gateway to heaven. Spring came to the cold valley. He plays in peach paradise. mountain bamboo stuck in deep snow breaks at the joints from the wind. He directly pervades the clear waves, leaving a trace on the water."

[02:05]

So, some background from what we've been talking about this week. We started with Bodhidharma And with all of the long stories and many stories about Bodhidharma, Dogen chose to simply say, the first ancestor faced the wall for nine years. So for, into our fifth day now, some of us, we've been facing the wall. Allowing the wall to face us. Just settling into what is it like How is it to be present? How does it feel to just face reality? And Dogen spoke of, in his comment of, from the perspective of Bodhidharma, raising his eyes with no companion, geese crying in the sky.

[03:10]

Mary Oliver's Wild Geese, wonderful poem. And Dogen says, do not laugh at him brushing away leaves to look up at the wind. And then there was an astonishing being that appeared. And so each of these stories is a story of a relationship between one teacher and one student, between one ancestor and the next. And we talked about, well, just to say, first of all, One of the startling things that's been pointed out about all of these guys, it happens to be guys, historically, there were great women ancestors. One of Bodhidharma's four main disciples was a woman, but Bodhidharma was a foreigner, barbarian from the point of view of the Chinese, from India.

[04:16]

He was a cherished barbarian. He was bringing the Dharma from its home, but talked about as a red-bearded, blue-eyed barbarian. He wasn't Chinese. The second ancestor was the original one-armed man. whether he lost it from a bandit or a wonderful cautionary story about him cutting off his arm to inhabit the Bodhidharma before Bodhidharma would even have anything to do with it. The third ancestor was a leper. And then the sixth ancestor in the story today was a southern barbarian, an illiterate woodcutter. impoverished layperson, you know, from the South where they don't understand anything. Except, of course, they do. Anyway, so, you know, we have our founding ancestors are, as we said, misfits or, in various ways, damaged or maimed or, you know, strange.

[05:25]

I'm glad we've been talking a lot about the third ancestor and leprosy. So again, this is just background to talking about Chinuan, but I pointed out from Rebecca Solnit's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful books, The Far Away Nearby, her discussion of Che Guevara's travels around South America and spending time in leper colonies and how leprosy is something that You know, when I didn't know this, that is a function of not feeling nerve endings at the extremities, you know, hands and feet, fingers and toes, nose. And that because they don't feel pain in those nerves, they get battered and burnt and don't do anything about it. So pain is important. Pain serves a purpose. And, yeah, that we all are now in a time, in a period where on some level numbness is encouraged or easily available, but leprosy is damaging precisely because of the numbness.

[06:54]

And our practice is about healing pain. whether it's in our knees or our shoulders or in our hearts. So our practice is about not being numb, about being present and paying attention to how we feel. So I've recommended at times the mantra, how does it feel? So, to actually pay attention to what's happening. And in the world today, it's difficult to do that with all of the, well, the third ancestor asked, the second ancestor, he said, body is bound up in illness, leprosy. Master, please help me repent for my sins."

[07:57]

And putting aside whether that's a bad translation, repenting for his sins or his misdeeds, he was beset by also the Asian Buddhist idea that all karma is personal. that he was somehow at fault, so sometimes you feel that, you think you're at fault, or inadequate, or, you know, it's your problem, whatever problems you have. And, you know, there is personal karma, and we do make mistakes, and we do cause harm, and part of our practice, a big part of our practice is facing that. facing our habits of self-doubt or self-deprecation, or, you know, on the other hand, sometimes, those people don't usually come to practice, but thinking that others are at fault. So that happens sometimes. We speak as a precept against speaking of the faults of others. How do we confront the whole situation?

[08:59]

How do we face it? How do we face that wall? So, We are beset individually as well as collectively by the ancient, twisted karma of slavery and racism, of the most Native American cultures being wiped out on this planet. Maybe they should build walls against Europeans, I don't know. But we can't protect ourselves with walls of numbness from the First Noble Truth. So the story is about the Noble Truths. Ching Yuan says, I do not carry out even the sacred truths he's talking about, the Four Noble Truths. We have to be open to the first truth of dis-ease, discomfort, dissatisfactoriness, sometimes translated as suffering. Things are out of line. So we have these ancestors who were all damaged.

[10:02]

of our traditions. And we had these stories they left us, or that somebody left us about them. So there's a story that we told a couple of days ago about seeking the The fourth ancestor came to the third ancestor, who was a leper, and asked to be released from, asked to be given the dharma gate of release and liberation, and was asked, well, who bound you? And he said, nobody. And then why are you seeking for liberation? And there's this importance to the seeking. From the beginning, there's just Buddha nature. our wholeness is Buddha nature. This is available everywhere.

[11:07]

But there's also this process of teacher and student, or each of us expressing in the world, in our own way, something of this awareness that we get from sitting here period after period, the sense of our deep interconnectedness. So that yesterday we talked about the sixth ancestor, again, an illiterate southern barbarian, showing up at the Fifth Ancestor's big monastery. And the Fifth Ancestor asked him, as he was working in the back of the kitchen, in the rice pounding pot, is the rice refined or not? And he said, it's refined, but not yet sifted. And then something happened. So we are doing this practice of ongoingly, continuously refining and sifting our awareness, our bodies and minds, settling deeper, paying attention to our ancient, twisted karma.

[12:19]

Not trying to get rid of it, because we can't, but to see through it, to not be caught by it so much, to not cause harm. So all of that is a very, very brief review of the previous days. Today, we have the sixth ancestor, after he was sifted at midnight with the fifth ancestor and went to the south and became a teacher. And he had two main disciples. Actually, he had a number of disciples, but there are two disciples who were founders of major lineages. One of them is Nanyue Huairang. who was the founder of, amongst others, of the Five Houses of the Linji lineage, Rinzai. And there's a wonderful story I've told, and I'll resist temptation to tell the whole story again, but the nine of us showed up at the Six Ancestors, and the Six Ancestors asked him, what is this that thus comes?

[13:22]

So there's a story about Nanyue responding about suchness, and what is this? So we all might look at what is this Nanyue pushing a chair. But the other main disciple of Huaineng, amongst others, was Qingyuan Xingsu. He's the one whose name we say when we're going to recite the names of the lineage of ancestors for our midday service. Seigen Yoshi in Japanese, Chingyuan Xingzi. And the Cao Cao and Shota lineage and the young man lineage come from him. Anyway, Chingyuan asked the Sixth Ancestor, what activity does not fall into classifications? The Sixth Ancestor said, what have you been doing? Chingyuan said, I do not carry out even the sacred truths. So we heard the story about Bodhidharma telling the emperor.

[14:25]

The emperor asked him what was the merit of all the helpful things that he had done in the establishment of Buddhism. And Bodhidharma said, no merit. And then the emperor was startled and said, what is the highest meaning of the sacred truth? And Bodhidharma said, vast emptiness, nothing holy. Vast, vast, vast emptiness. No thing holy. But here we have these sacred truths again. So, Qigong said, I do not carry out even the sacred truths. So, this is referring to the Four Noble Truths. But also, you know, all the sacred truths that are vastly empty and not holy. So, he'd asked about not falling into classifications. And the sixth ancestor said, what class do you fall into? And Xing Yuan said, I do not carry out even the sacred truths.

[15:32]

What classification could there be? And the ancestor deeply saw that he was the vessel of darkness. So this is a funny story in a number of ways. I was just encouraging you to see the first noble truth that This is a difficult world that there is. Lots of problems. Massive gun shootings in our country. Not just every week, more than that. Hatred and violence, demonization. People who are, you know, paid by big weapons companies who are trying to create more war. It's on and on and on. So we do have to look at these four double truths.

[16:38]

But Shingon says, what classification could there be? And the Sixth Ancestor agreed. So, some of you might recognize this story as being echoed later on by what was considered the founder of our lineage, Dongshan, Tosan Ryokai, who was, let's see, after Qingyuan, Shichuan, Yaoshan, so four generations after Qingyuan. There's the story that I've talked about, that I've talked about in my book about Dongshan and the practice of Sushumna, where a monk asked Dongshan, which body of Buddha does not fall into classifications? This here, Shingon had asked, what activity does not fall into classifications? Which body of Buddha does not fall into classifications? And Dongshan simply responded, I'm always close to this.

[17:43]

I'm always intimate with this. Maybe it's the body that doesn't fall into classifications. Maybe it's, he was referring to the question himself. He just said, I'm always close to this. And therefore, so this issue of falling into classifications, falling into categories, is important in our tradition. And, you know, I wonder about Chinon here. So I, you know, I need to sit with this story some more, because if he knows he doesn't even carry out the sacred truths, why is he asking about classifications? Well, something's going on. What activity does not fall into classifications? Dogshama is always close to this Buddha body that does not fall into classifications. But part of, it's not just a function of Western discursive linear modes of thinking, part of our basic human consciousness is that we're always classifying, we're always judging, we're always distinguishing this from that, this is how our minds work.

[19:08]

as a subject-verbing object. So in some languages, there are just activities being associated with various things. So Eric was telling me some of the South American native languages are like that. In some ways, Japanese is like that. But we get caught up in judging and making assessments, and to some extent we need to. We need to discern. The precepts are about discerning how to be helpful instead of harmful in various realms of our daily activity. What activities do not fall into classifications? I would say one answer is zazen. except that of course our mind keeps judging and making distinctions and discriminations as our thoughts rattle around. But, you know, when we settle, after a few periods or a few days or whatever, we have some spaces where maybe there's not this classifying and discriminating and deliberating and distinguishing and judging.

[20:25]

So we can judge stuff out there, and there's also self-judging. And so, some of you do that sometimes. Some of us do that sometimes. What activity does not fall into classifications? Which body of Buddha does not fall into categories, classifications? Our practice is always close to this. So one of the commentaries to the story about Dongshan and his being always close, the commentator talks about how this closeness is heart-rending. If you search outside, why does ultimate familiarity seem like enmity? When you get really close to this question, it can be painful. can generate the suffering of the First Noble Truth.

[21:27]

Maybe just from trying to avoid classification. So, you know, some of you have very acute analytical mental apparatuses, and it's not that you shouldn't use them. But how do you use them? What do you use them for? How do we engage the world without falling into classifications and categories, and good and bad, and this and that, and all the distinctions and demonizing we make over, you know, I'm good and they're bad, or, you know, sometimes I'm, oh, I'm the bad one, whatever. What activity does not fall into classifications? So the sixth ancestor asked him, well, what activity have you been up to? And Cheng Yuan said, I did not carry out even the sacred truths.

[22:32]

So, you know, maybe he was just a lazy monk, I don't know. To not carry out even the sacred truths. What would that be to not, you know, to actually not engage in any of the sacred truths? This is somebody who's been sitting exhausted a while. So all of these teachings that we have, these stories of these teachings, maybe this is a cautionary tale, don't get caught up in classifying based on that either. Past emptiness, nothing holy. Bodhidharma later was attributed to have said that this is about just mind meeting mind, beyond words and letters. We have these libraries full of words and letters based on that, but not to get caught by those sacred things, not to be caught by these stories.

[23:46]

Don't be used by these stories, use them. We still study them because they have something to say to us, to our practice body. So you don't have to worry about having some proper correct understanding, correct as opposed to incorrect. Just not falling into classifications. How is that? So when he said, I do not engage in even the sacred truths, The ancestor said, well, what category do you fall into? I do not carry out even the sacred truths. What classification could there be, he said. And the ancestor deeply appreciated him. So Chinyuan, one of Chinyuan's disciples, actually, as a young person, his name is the Shuto Shuchon, at least his name we know him by, or Sekito Kisen, and we know him Well, two of his teaching poems we chant regularly, The Harmony of Difference and Sameness in the Song of the Grass Hut.

[24:54]

So he was a student of Chinua. And actually, originally he was a student of the sixth ancestor when he was young. So we had a couple of stories about the fourth ancestor meeting his teacher when he was 14, and the fifth ancestor when he was seven. But anyway, when When Shita was young, he met the sixth ancestor, but it was towards the end of the sixth ancestor's life. So anyway, he ended up studying with Chinyuan. And then he did a number of things, including writing the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, which talks about the integration of categories and no categories, differences and oneness. I can also tell you the song of the grass hut, which talks about how to build a practice place where one can let go of hundreds of years and relax completely.

[25:56]

There's another story that I liked a lot about Suta, a monk came to him and said, what's the essential meaning of Buddha Dharma? And Suta said, not to attain Not to know. That is so incredibly radical in terms of our world. Our world is built on, you know, getting stuff, acquiring stuff, obtaining stuff, becoming, you know, whatever. And not to know. So, not classifying things and figuring things out, and some of you are very good at that, the essential meaning of the Buddha dharma, not to attain, not to know. And then the student who was very good said, well, is there anything else beyond that? And Sutta said, the vast sky does not hinder the white clouds drifting.

[27:01]

So that's a good line to memorize. You can use that as an example. The vast sky does not hinder the white clouds drifting. And of course traditionally Zen practitioners have been referred to as clouds of water. So the vast sky does not hinder your drifting. If their mind is caught up in lots of thoughts, which happens sometimes, at least some of the time. Probably a few of you had some thoughts this morning. And felt like you were drifting. I've had people come to me this week and say, I'm drifting. Anyway, but that doesn't bother the vastness of the sky. It doesn't bother the vast emptiness that Bodhidharma talked about.

[28:05]

The vast sky does not hinder the white clouds drifting and vice versa. The white clouds don't bother the vast sky. In fact, it's vast emptiness. The spaciousness that is also available in the settling and deepening and calming of our practice, you know, enjoys the white clouds drifting by. It's okay. Thoughts come, feelings come, they go. We don't need to try and classify them. We don't need to fix them. We don't need to do anything about them. Just sit and enjoy the vapor of the next inhale. And exhale. Going back to what we were talking about, the third ancestor thinking that it was his fault that he was a leper. That's really what it comes down to, he said.

[29:08]

How do I get rid of, how do I repent for my sins? This thing about not carrying out the sacred truths reminds me of Ambedkar. So Buddhism was wiped out in India, in Shakyamuni's homeland, around 1100 or so by Turkish Islamic And basically there wasn't Buddhism, there must have been some bits of it, but it wasn't there until the last century. And then two things happened. One was that the Chinese invaded Tibet and Dalai Lama and many other fine Tibetan Lamas took refuge in India, so the Tibetan style of Buddhism. took root and is still a part of India now. was talking about these ancestors of ours and how these founders of our tradition in China who, and really the tradition in India, we don't know so much about.

[30:19]

I mean, we know some of the great teachers, but the lineage we chant, as I've said, from the Indian teachers isn't literal. We don't know exactly who it was in each generation. Anyway, we have this one-armed guy, we have this barbarian from the south, he's a sixth ancestor. say that Bodhidharma cut off his eyelids so he could stay awake. This is not a recommended practice, but anyway, all these weird guys, including this leper. In the middle of, so in India they have this rigid caste system still. less, but there's a group of people who are outcasts, and I guess that's traditionally because they're people who work with leather and maybe were butchers, anyway, but it's hereditary and they're just, anyway, they are not just low class, they're outside the pale.

[31:19]

Of course, Shakyamuni invited some of them, and some of them were major disciples of Shakyamuni, because he broke through that. Gandhi also. But Ambedkar was the leader of this group in the middle of the 20th century, and he managed to become very well educated. He went to a university in New York, in London, and came back and he decided he was going Hinduism or all the different things that are included in what we sometimes call Hinduism, the Indian caste religion, didn't work for his people, his outcasts. So instead he decided to study and investigate and really look rigorously at all the world religions and see what religion would be helpful for the outcasts. And he decided on Buddhism. So in, I think it was 1956, there was a mass conversion of I don't know, 500,000 people in India at this manor called Dalits.

[32:24]

Unfortunately, Ambedkar died soon thereafter, but they still are there. I think when I first started studying Buddhism, they pretended they weren't, but they're still there. My friend, Dawal Sanak, who's been here, goes there every year and teaches them, and they're very active, engaged Buddhists. But anyway, the reason I'm telling the story is that Ambedkar, when he decided to convert to Buddhism, took on all of Buddhism except for the Four Noble Truths. And the reason for that is exactly what we were talking about, about the Third Ancestor, that the, I would say, misunderstanding of karma that has been prevalent in Asian cultures that we need to go beyond in American Buddhism is that it's your fault. It's about you and whatever misfortunes you have, whatever unfortunate birth you've been born into, whatever happens to you is because of bad stuff you did in the past.

[33:32]

And that's just nonsense. Anyway, Ambedkar just said, okay, let's get rid of the Four Devil Truths, otherwise I'll take all of Buddhism. Because the Dalai people were blamed like the third ancestor. was a leper for, you know, you're born into that group because you must have done something terrible before. Anyway, yeah, so of course the reality of causes and conditions is not about self. Buddhism teaches non-self. And so many things that are happening terribly in the world today, all the turmoil in the shootings, and politicians sponsored by weapons companies who want more war, or who want to make sure that everybody, even if they're on no-fly lists, can get assault rifles, and so forth and so on.

[34:38]

All this, you know, this is really what's happening. It's ridiculous. And yet, this is not personal karma. This is the trajectory of our It's not about us. We're all part of that. If we think we're white, we have privilege in this society. For men, we're privileged and get paid more for the same job as women. There are various levels of things that affect us that aren't about your personal karma. So anyway, that's a little aside, but it comes up when we talk about Ching-Yuan saying that he doesn't carry out even the sacred truths. But I want to get to this interesting, Dogen's verses in all of these cases have turned the situation some, even somersault.

[35:42]

he said, he raised and rotated the earth's axis and opened the gateway to heaven. So maybe the whole earth was doing this episode. Of course, the earth is spinning, but to rotate the earth's axis. I've heard that actually, well, in the north and south polar regions, they find fossils of tropical debris. So, you know, it's thought that actually the north and south pole, that the earth shifted at some point geologically. Radical things happen. Anyway, change is here, constantly. He raised and rotated the earth's axis and opened the gateway to heaven. Spring comes to the cold valley, he plays in peach paradises. This is an old Taoist story, this is based on, about someone who found this wonderful land full of peaches and all kinds of wonderful things.

[36:58]

He was walking It was full of peaches and also many other wonderful things. Then he went back to tell people when he went to find it again, it was gone. So, some of you do that in Zazen. You find some wonderful period of Zazen with many peaches of all kinds. In this case, Dogon says, he raised and rotated the earth's axis and opened the gateway to heaven. So is he talking about the sixth ancestor? I think he's talking about Shenyuan. He turned everything. He said, I don't even carry out and engage the sacred truths. Spring come to the cold valley place in future paradise. So when we don't have to get caught up in classifying things, maybe we can feel the joy and wonder in it all.

[38:13]

Then this next line, which I've been puzzling over, well, mountain bamboo stuck in deep snow breaks at the joints from the wind. He directly pervades the clear waves, leaving a trace on the water. So often, you know, this is part of the co-op tradition, going back to China, these British commoners praise, sometimes they praise by critiquing, ironically, but they praise the person in the story, in this case, Tsinghua, sort of the hero of the story, who was confirmed by the sixth ancestor. Mountain bamboo stuck in deep snow breaks at the joints from the wind. So, you know, bamboo, bends of the wind. Bamboo is an image of flexibility, of uprightness, and also flexibility and resilience, and yet breaks at the joints from the wind, I think.

[39:13]

So, when we get stiff, we get brittle. But this image of bamboo in the mountain, deep snow, and the wind comes, You know, bamboos have these junctures, these nodes, and Tolkien here says, it breaks at the joints with what came in. And, you know, it occurs to me maybe he's talking about these various classifications and different opinions and different judgments that break open. So maybe this is an image of release from But also, you know, Dongka talks about the sign of Japanese jisetsu, which is based on... He talks about this in terms of talking about time, that there are certain junctures. Something happens.

[40:14]

And the world is different thereafter. Something happens in your life. And... Everything is different after that. So we all have had these experiences. We've lost somebody, or some changes happened, or relocated, or got a new job, or lost a job, or a new relationship, or lost a relationship. There are these joints, these junctures, these G-sets, these nodes of time. So when I first read this, I was thinking of the bamboo breaking as negative, but here, I don't know, it's... Maybe it's not about good or bad, it's just this is the way it is. How do we meet those junctures in our life, in our practice, in the world?

[41:17]

He directly pervades the clear waves, leaving a trace on the water. It's also interesting. Dongshan talks about the bird's path, no trace in the sky. Although somehow the birds know, follow it. They migrate the same way for centuries and centuries. But here he says, he drew it, right? We could say it about either the Sixth Ancestor or Chinyuan, but I think he's really talking about Chinyuan. He directly pervades the clear waves, leaving a trace on the water. So, it's shimmering and ephemeral, and yet, you know, here we're talking about this. He said something that, you know, left a trace that we're talking about. These guys were in the late 600s, early 700s. It's a long time ago.

[42:24]

It's a pretty important trace. Mountain bamboo stuck in deep snow breaks in the joints from the wind. So where is it that we get stiff in our practice? Maybe when we're caught up in all the snow of sadness and suffering and not willing to face it, a wind might come and suddenly snap and we drop body and mind. So this story feels a little different from the others we've talked about. Yeah, there's just stories in some way of facing the wall, of meeting someone and being confirmed, and that's happening here too.

[43:39]

But there's also something a little more... I don't know what to say. More active? Something else happening here. This encouragement to go beyond classifying. And just like practicing patience involves studying our own impatience, maybe the practice of this is to see the ways in which we continuously are classifying things. That was a good period. That was a bad period. Yesterday's soup was better than today's, or whatever. We do that. Our thinking faculty does that. It just happens. How do we study that? How do we study the self? To forget the self. And to be awakened by everything. To be open to everything. And yet we have to come back and see how the self is caught up in classifying before we can just let go.

[44:46]

Okay, I'm going to let go of talking about this. Today, we do not have a discussion period over tea in the afternoon, and we have guests with us who are not sitting all day. So I want to open this a little now. A whole bunch of stories here, stories about stories, stories related to other stories. Anybody, if you have responses or questions, please feel free. Right. I know almost nothing about Chinese, but I have heard that the word what doesn't always necessarily sentence from Chinyuan is necessarily a question or could he be saying that activity that does not fall into justification?

[45:57]

Yes, good. What activity? The activity of what? The activity of wanting, of whatness, of what? What? What? Yeah, that's in there. No classifications, just sheer question. Yes, Aisha. I was thinking about the bamboo and the snow. And no matter how much we practice, we will always have some fixed ideas about some things. I don't think you can ever... Because you can't live without some fixed ideas. But when people under the weight of the fixed idea snap, it's not necessarily good and it's not necessarily bad. Sometimes it can be a good thing, sometimes it can lead to destruction. And I wonder if that also, that's one way of sort of leaping clear of classification.

[46:58]

Yeah, good, good, yeah. Something happens. Something happens, right. Yeah, that line, there's a lot there. There's a lot to consider. Mountain, bamboo, stuck in deep snow, breaks at the joints from the wind. Yeah, about these fixed ideas. Of course, we all have stories, presuppositions. I don't know that it's impossible to get rid of all the fixed ideas. We can make the fixed ideas a little more malleable. It's possible. But we have stories. But they still have to be there. You have to do things to take care of yourself and your life. That would be ignoring cause and effect if we thought we got rid of all of our fixed ideas.

[47:59]

Okay, I guess I'm only wanting to play with the phrase fixed ideas. I agree with you basically, but another way to say it is that we all have stories about who we are, about what the world is. We have these notions. And part of our practice is to see them, to study that. And then the more we get to know that, We don't need to react and cause harm based on it, and we can tell new stories. So we can unfix the ideas and play with them. And that's what Duggan's always doing with these stories, with these koans, is turning and playing with them, seeing them from different angles. So to take the idea out of its fixedness, or take the story out of its fixedness, other options. It's not, you're right, we always have some way, something we are responding to. Well, that's the resilient part.

[49:01]

Yeah, good. And so when resiliency stops working, you know, maybe you do snap into, whoa, a whole new dimension, or maybe you snap into, you know, something kind of destructive. Yes, there's a lot of snapping going on. Eric? You mentioned leprosy and how it's important because without pain you damage your body. When you were talking about the skull and the bamboo, the part that snaps is not the part that's free and open, it's the part that's surrounded by the cold, hard skull. Yeah, the bamboo is numb to its own flexibility because of the snow. That's, you know, one riff on it.

[50:03]

It's the thing that actually protects it. Okay, that too. Yeah, so all of the threats to us also can be protections. How can we see the challenges? This is what humans need to do in the world. It's what each of us need to do is to see each problem, each difficulty as some opportunity to change, to shift, to unfix the ideas and so forth. Dharma gates are boundless, we've got to enter them. And each problem Naomi Klein's talked about, if we can actually face climate change and change what we're doing, it's going to change a lot of things, not just the environment, it's going to change how we live together. pretty challenging, it doesn't look, you know, it's not, we have to work from the possibility, not from what it says about it in the newspapers and so forth.

[51:09]

Yes, Keesler. Well, let's start by, a question that's coming up for me is, when we did, when we 0.2 or 0.2... Yeah, people take refuge in all kinds of things.

[52:20]

People take refuge in, you know, quotes from scripture, or deities in the sky, or all kinds of things, or websites, you know, there's all kinds of things we can get caught up in as In our tradition of vast emptiness and nothing holy, we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And taking refuge in Buddha is not to just bow down to a wooden image, but to see that Buddha is always going beyond Buddha, and that it's alive, and that the Dharma is alive. We don't have to memorize chants or sutras. you know, the point of the teachings, the point of the Dharma is to help us to be resilient, Buddhists going beyond Buddhists, and then we take refuge in the Sangha, which is this strange, permeable,

[53:27]

event where people come and go and then they come back and we all sit together and support each other. So all of those Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are not stuck. If we think of them as stuck, then it's not Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. It's this open, flexible, shifting reality. So how do we occupy, Doli talks about our dharma without occupying the dharma position. How do we occupy this point personally and globally and so forth in terms of the situation we're in and the causes and conditions and respond to it from that place where we trust reality, we trust community, we trust awakening. So that's one response. Does anybody have one more comment, or question, or response?

[54:36]

I'll take a shot. Go. So I think that the verse is really, as you say, about Ching-Yuan. And I think that what Ching-Yuan is talking about is that Buddha is beyond the fixed classifications of this and that. that the, what does he call them, the sacred truths are sacred truths in the Kido, they are also the sacred truth that is Buddha truth, other truth, in the very Chinese fashion, it's all part of the greater truth, or what's real. And having the fixed classifications is really what freezes reality and diminishes the vitality of the greater truth. And I think that's a lot of it.

[55:38]

There's imagery in other cases, too, but I think that a lot of the imagery in the first is talking about Dharma with the activity of Buddha. Yeah, the witches. And the bamboo is cracking because it's fixed. It's a fixed truth. Even if it's the holy truth, it's a fixed truth. It's not truly alive. And we have the spring coming to the Cold Valley, it plays in Peach Paradise. It's, you know, you have the frozen world, the fixed world that's coming to life with the truth of the Dharma wind coming through. And there's an image like that in the Mumu Gantu where Wumen talks about Buddha, Buddha is a spring that isn't dependent on yin and yang. So it's a greater life coming into play to Buddha rather than this and that.

[56:39]

And I think that's what's going on. I think that also in the verse, while it's he, I think there's a little play, a Chinese play, could be it. And I think it's, as well as he and qingyuan, talking about qingyuan, I think it's talking about it, and it's dharma activity, and dharma. Reality itself. Yeah, and there are traces, his activity is All of our activity is traces and ripples made on the water of the world that then disappear. It's all in the greater perspective. In love with the same sorts of things of our good and bad activities and our karma filling the sky, but not Thank you, very good, yes.

[57:46]

So the fixedness, the stuckness, that's what plagues us in terms of fundamentalism in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of traditions, political as well as religious, and stuck on some particular idea. And yeah, so the wind is really important. And, you know, so you reminded me of the first story about Bodhidharma and what Doge says there, that Bodhidharma is sitting in his cave for nine years, but raising his eyes with no companions, he's crying in the sky. He says, don't laugh at him. He's brushing away weeds to look up at the wind. The Dharma is blowing in the wind, you know, the possibility of meeting the life in the world. However, I would caution us not to make the bamboo an image of what is bad in the future.

[59:01]

Oh no, not that. Yeah, no, as soon as we start talking about this, then we can say, oh, bamboo bad and wind good. No, no, it's all, you know, that's, thank you, that's a demonstration of how we get stuck in this stuff. And so we have to study that tendency to see through it and to allow the breath to pervade the dharma body.

[59:31]

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