It's difficult to sit when it's hot. So it's a little relief. I hope it stays a little cooler. Yesterday I talked about Seng Tsan's, Kan Chi So Tsan's Xin Xin Ming. believing in mind, his poem. There is an interesting case in the Blue Cliff Record, case number two. Zhou Xu, Master Zhou Xu, used to like to quote from the Xin Xin Ming, apparently. And this case revolves around Zhou Xu's quoting from the Xin Xin Ming.

[01:13]

There's an introductory word, of course, by Engo, and then an appreciatory word by such introductory word by Engo and in the main case by Setso. So in his introductory word, Engo gives us the following. He says, the universe is too contracted. The sun, the moon, the stars, the constellations shining simultaneously are all too dark. And even if the staff of correction comes down like drops of rain and the scolding voice comes like claps of thunder, by no means do these provide any point of coincidence with the main subject of study, which is the Absolute Truth. All that all the Buddhas of the three worlds could do was to understand it themselves.

[02:31]

Even all the patriarchs of the ages could not exhaust the explanation The one whole enormous store of the scriptures does not exhaust the explanation. Even clear-eyed robed monks have not fully understood the meaning of their own vision. Having reached this stage, what should be done to obtain more profit or more full knowledge? To mention the name Buddha is to drag yourself in the mud, to girdle yourself with water. To mention the word Zen is for the whole face to show shame. Advanced students do not wait to be told this, or advanced students shouldn't have to wait to be told this. Students following with their beginner's mind should immediately set forth to study. Here, Engo is giving us a very dark picture. He's like, this is called grasping way.

[03:35]

taking everything away, not giving us anything to hang on to. This is a kind of Zen device, granting way and grasping way. Granting way is a kind of optimistic way where you make the student feel like they really have something, really going somewhere. Very optimistic way. Grasping way is where you take everything away from the student. Nothing to hold on to. Just out in space.

[04:36]

Destitute. So this introduction is kind of grasping way, withholding, not optimistic. So he says, even though the whole universe is shining in its glory, it's not bright enough. Even if the rain, even if the blows of the Master come down like rain, it's still not enough. All the Buddhists of the three worlds, all they could do was barely understand it. So he says, but Joshu has a way of letting us know.

[05:45]

Joshu is maybe the most famous Zen master. Maybe. And he didn't have any special means for teaching. He didn't stand out in any special way. As a matter of fact, he's famous for always coming down into the pit with you. He says, OK, well, if it comes to spitting, you can spit on me if you want during our argument. That's OK. I don't mind. So, Joshu always comes face-to-face or level with your eyes and says, okay, let's do it here. And then he just uses normal speech to convey the meaning. No extraordinary words or phrases.

[06:48]

So, Setso introduces the main subject. He says, attention. He always says, attention. Give me your attention. This is what he means. Please give me your attention. Or he can mean, attention. Somewhere in there. But he says, please give me your attention. Joshu spoke to the assembly, and he said, the real way is not difficult, but it dislikes the relative. There are many ways of translating the shin-chin-ming. And there are many translations, and sometimes I, if I think of a translation, I usually mix them up. But here he says, the real way, and Joshu changes it around a little bit himself. He says, the real way is not difficult, but it dislikes the relative. If there is but little speech, it is about the relative or it is about the absolute. This old monk is not within the absolute.

[07:55]

Do you value this or not? At this point, there was a monk who said, if you are not within the absolute, how can you assess its value? Joshu said, I don't know that either. The monk said, your reverence, if you do not yet know, how is it that you say that you're not within the absolute? Joshu said, you are very effective in your questioning. Please finish your vows and retire. People see this as him kind of cutting off the monk. But actually, Xin Xin Ming goes something like this. The ultimate path is without difficulty. The real way is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. Just don't love or hate, and you will be lucid and clear. In other words,

[08:56]

path doesn't like discriminating. It likes clarity. So another word for, in this context, it might be better to say clarity rather than absolute. Because clarity is a quality of absolute. And it's this quality, actually, of clarity that is the subject here. So Zhou Xu spoke to the assembly and he said, the real way is not difficult, but it dislikes the relative. Or in other words, there's a kind of dichotomy here between relative and absolute in the Xin Xin Ming. If you want to find the real way, just avoid picking and choosing.

[09:59]

Just don't fall into picking and choosing. And then it says, just don't love or hate. And Joshu says, if there is but little speech, it is about the relative or about the absolute. So he doesn't quite get that far. But he says, this old monk doesn't stick to clarity. This little mug is not so interested in clarity. What do you think about that? Is this valuable or not? Because when we think about this sentence, this poem, it looks like clarity is valued above picking a chisel. It's making a kind of distinction here. If you want clarity, just leave out picking and choosing. But he says, what he's actually saying is, he's making himself very vulnerable, because he's saying, I'm not sticking to clarity, and yet, I'm also not sticking to picking and choosing.

[11:25]

And then the monk comes in, and he sees this hole, like a football field, He sees this hole, and he comes in to tackle quarterback Joshu. But Joshu turns around. Joshu always has this nice way of turning things around. He says, you're very clever. You really know how to chop logic. You're very logical, really good at logic. And you caught me, logically. But actually, what you really need to do is go sit zazen some more in order to understand. And then Setso has an appreciatory poem. But it's not in the form of this poem, because it's so hard to make the poem from Chinese into a good poem.

[12:31]

So he says it's an appreciatory word translated The real way is not difficult, he says. Words accord, speech accords. Though it is one, it has many aspects. Even if it be two, it is not only a double aspect. On the far side of the sky, the sun rises, the moon sets. Outside the window, the mountains are distant, the water is cold. Even though the skull's consciousness has ended, why should joy have ceased? The decayed tree's dragon moan may have been stopped. but it is not yet dried up. Difficult. Difficult. The relative and the absolute. Do you yourselves ponder them?" So that's the case. Xinxin Mei says, the ultimate path is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. Just don't love or hate, and you will be lucid and clear. Don't love or hate, I think needs some clarification.

[13:35]

What is love and what is hate? Suzuki Roshi says, if you love, then you should also hate. Because love and hate go together. And so this is a big problem for everyone. Love and hate is a big problem. So love and hate are dualities. So it looks like he's saying, don't love. Because if you love, then you also have to hate. And one is just the flip side of the other. And in a sense, that's very true. On a certain level, love and hate are just the flip side of each other. When we like somebody, we tend to fall in love. And then as long as they fit our image of what we like or what we want in them, we love them.

[14:55]

But when they stop fitting our image of what we like in them, then we hate them. This is the problem of love and hate, is that love and hate are a kind of mental construct. Of course, they're an emotional construct, but first they're a mental construct, then they're an emotional construct. And love and hate are the epitome of grasping and rejection. it's very difficult to transcend love and hate and to actually have love. Love is, there's love and hate which are a duality and then there's love which transcends the duality or goes beyond the duality.

[16:08]

So Love which goes beyond the duality is what we call not conditioned. Love which is not subject to conditions. But usually love is subject to conditions. I'll love you as long as... But we don't say that. We say, I will love you forever. We say that. I will love you forever. But what we're really not knowing when we say that is, I will love you as long as the conditions are right. as long as you act according to the way I think you should. This is most of our love. Very rarely do we actually love unconditionally. We love parents unconditionally, mostly. And parents love children, usually unconditionally. Not always, but often. People often do love each other unconditionally, but what passes for love mostly is conditioned love.

[17:19]

So, you know, Joshu could say, I'm not so interested. You could paraphrase Joshu's statement. I'm not so attached to love. What do you think of this? Pretty good. In Buddhism, love is not necessarily personal. By not necessarily personal, I mean It's not necessarily attachment, which we call love. What we call love is usually attachment in a certain phase.

[18:25]

A certain phase of attachment is usually what we call, what we term love. And we all go through these phases of attachment, or fascination, or infatuation. Fascination and infatuation often are the basis of what we call love. And then when the fascination or the infatuation is no longer there, then we call that disillusionment, because we have this illusion. So in Buddhism, we have the four kinds of love. One is loving kindness, which means that you have You're interested in the person's well-being. You're not interested in the person for your own self-interest, but you're interested in being's welfare. So you have no special personal interest in

[19:36]

out of interest for others' well-being. And then there's compassion, which is empathy. Passion means suffering. Compassion means suffering with, and to feel the suffering of others. but there's no self-interest in it. And then there's sympathetic joy, which is to be happy over the success of others. Usually we have envy and jealousy over the success of others, if they're very close to us, or if they're competing with us. But to feel happy over the success of others even if we're competing with them, is love without self-interest.

[20:54]

And then the fourth one, of course, is equanimity, which means no partiality. So true love actually has no partiality. It just means to see everything, to love everything indiscriminately. or not to weigh in the balance, not to love one thing and hate something else. But love and hate do arise, and they arise in all of us, and it's very natural. But we should know that this kind of love and hate that arises is love which is based on self-interest. and usually based on infatuation, curiosity, illusion.

[22:05]

And it's deep in the realm of duality because it's based on conditions only. love and hate. So when we're not immersed in love and hate, then we can have some serenity. We're not caught, you know, either grasping or rejecting. So in Buddhism, love is very deep. And If we do have love through infatuation, we should at least try to understand it. So before we grasp, before we kind of fall in, so to speak, fall in the love hole, we should be circumspect.

[23:11]

What is this? What's going on here? What do I see here? What do I really feel here? Anyway, I don't want to give you a sermon on how to fall in love. So old Joshu says, he spoke to the assembly and says, the real way is not difficult, but it dislikes the relative. If there is but little speech This old monk does not like to fall into picking and choosing or to clarity. I'm not attached to this clarity. What do you think of that? Is this valuable or not?

[24:13]

And then at this point there was a monk who said, if you are not within the absolute, how can you assess its value? Joshu said, neither do I know that. Joshu's not knowing is a question. What does Joshu mean by, I don't know that either? So maybe Joshu's answer is not exactly on the same level. The words are on the same level. As one commentator says, their wagons are on the same road, but they're not in the same bodhidharmas, I don't know.

[25:28]

Not knowing, don't know, covers, goes beyond knowing and not knowing. So, Joshu says, I don't know that either. And then the monk said, well if you don't know yet, so the monk's jumping into duality in his either-or mind and attacking Joshu How is it that you say you're not within the Absolute?" So she said, your questioning is really effective, very logical, wonderful, but please go sit some more zazen and then come back and talk to me in ten years. And then Setso in his poem says, the real way is not difficult.

[26:39]

Words accord, speech accords. Though it is one, it has many aspects. Words accord and speech Joshu's words are actually one with clarity and one with discrimination. He doesn't care whether, actually, whether it's clarity or discrimination. For Joshu, Clarity and discrimination is all the same. This is the main point. The monk is worried about, he's still fighting the battle of clarity and discrimination.

[27:45]

He's still fighting the battle of the absolute and the relative. But for Joshua, he's no longer concerned with it. Whatever he does, confusion, clarity, doesn't matter. When we sit in zazen, we have this problem of clarity and confusion. We have this problem of picking and choosing and clarity. That's what we're sitting with. Our ideal is to have clarity. That's our ideal. I will sit for five days and hopefully have some clarity.

[28:47]

But unfortunately, we spend five days in confusion. We spend five days with the mind running like an open faucet. When will this be over? Even though I started it, I want it to be over. This kind of problem keeps arising time after time. Confusion and clarity. One moment, everything's clear. The next minute, it's all confusion. Joshu doesn't care. He doesn't expect it to be some special way. Whatever comes, okay. Suzuki Roshi used to talk about the frog sitting on a rock.

[29:57]

The frog sits on the rock, you know, and he just sits there. Real still. No movement. Maybe his eyes blink. once every a.m. And then the fly goes by, and its tongue goes... And if he likes the fly, if he doesn't... Though it is one, it has many aspects. Clarity has many aspects. If we sit in zazen, wishing for all our thoughts to stop, then we have confusion.

[31:04]

But if we sit in zazen and not worry about whether our thoughts are stopping or going, then we have clarity. And clarity has many aspects called thoughts, random thoughts. But if we worry about it, it's a problem. Zazen has pain in the legs. sit with pain in the legs, no problem. But if we worry about it, confusion. Even if B2, it is not a double aspect.

[32:07]

So even though there are many things to pick and choose over, Our discrimination is not outside oneness. So how do we pick and choose? It says picking and choosing is where all the trouble starts. But we're always picking and choosing. We're always discriminating. We're always choosing one thing over another. Or at least we're choosing. Are we choosing one thing over another, or are we choosing? When we sit in zazen, we make one choice, and that choice is to sit. We say, I'm going to sit for 40 minutes without moving. That's our choice. And it's interesting to see what that choice is based on.

[33:12]

Is it based on pride? What is it based on? We just say it. I'm just going to do it. If we just say, I'm just going to do it, then it's not based on anything but our choice. If we have some reason for doing it, then we have to be a little careful. But we just sit without any reason for doing it. This is not picking and choosing, non-discrimination. Picking and choosing, but it's non-discrimination. Because it's not self-centered. And then, many things come up. Do we pick and choose them? Well, we're always choosing. When something comes up, we have to make a choice. And how do we choose? How do we make that choice?

[34:13]

What is our choice based on? Well, I just said I wouldn't move, so I'm just keeping my promise. That's all. But many other reasons for doing something come up, and we choose them. So making a decision, deciding to do something, and just staying with our decision is really making a choice, but it's not picking and choosing. Once we made the choice, there's no picking and choosing. We just have to find out how to continue, how to keep our intention.

[35:16]

And we have to make choices. The choice is usually to open our mouth bigger, wider, to become bigger and bigger in order to accept whatever it needs to be accepted to make that happen. So it's a matter of really of just following our intention. But it's hard to follow your intention It's really hard to follow your attention all the way through to the end. But that's how... That's the basic thing. The basic thing is to follow our attention all the way to the end. When you follow your basic intention all the way to the end, good things will happen to you and bad things will happen to you.

[36:26]

Many good things, many bad things, maybe mostly bad things, I don't know. But it will be difficult and it will be easy. But difficult and easy is all the same. Here we have picking and choosing. We usually choose what's easy over what's difficult. And we don't know how difficult that is until we do sashim. How difficult it is to stay with our intention, even when it's difficult. But that's the most important thing. That's why all we do is sit still. don't do anything, because we just fulfill our intention. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's difficult.

[37:30]

It's a big test. Sometimes we fail, but even though we fail, we continue. That's fulfilling our intention. All of us are failures, so it's very good for us to be failures, because if we weren't failures, we couldn't understand our human nature. our intention. Very plain and simple. It's almost too simple. But first we should know what our intention is.

[38:37]

When we do something, we should know, what is my intention? We may not know, but that's okay. We find out. So he says, on the far side of the sky, the sun rises and the moon sets. The moon and the sun are on different sides of the sky, but they really belong to the same, they're really the same. And yet they're different. Everything has its polarity. Sun and the Moon are interacting with each other, and yet they belong to the same thing. Outside the window, the mountains are distanced and the water is cold. Even though the skull's consciousness has ended, why should joyous have ceased?

[39:44]

The decayed tree's dragon moan may have been stopped, but it is not yet dried up. The skull's consciousness has ended means everything taken away. Even with everything taken away, why should joy have ceased? The decayed tree's dragon moon may have been stopped, but it is not yet dried up. Even though you hear the wind, even though the tree looks dead, the wind blowing through the tree makes kind of music. Or everything is constantly flowing and moving.

[40:53]

This is the meaning here. Everything is constantly flowing and moving. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is fixed. How do we find it on each moment, even though what's past is gone and what hasn't arisen is not yet here on this moment? Difficult, difficult. The relative and the absolute.

[41:31]

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