I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Morning. Before I begin, I want to... There are two things that I didn't say last night that I wanted to say. One is that sometime somewhere in my thirties I think I can't remember exactly when but I had a dream one night and in this dream I dreamt that I was with my family and that we all had our arms around each other and it was like there was some heaven some heavenly place It was all a kind of golden light.

[01:01]

And we were all nodding to each other. And it was like everything had dropped, all this shit in the world had dropped away. And it was just nothing but pure love. And we were saying, of course, of course. And that dream had a very profound effect on me because after that I never had any problem with my family from my side. It completely resolved all conflicts. And then I could relate to my parents again. But I never mentioned it to anybody. But it really had a profound effect on me. It had a profound effect, I think, on the rest of my life. And sometimes when I see people in their stuff with each other, I think, why don't they just drop it?

[02:13]

We have to go through a lot of stuff to get to something. There's no easy way to reconcile things. But on the other hand, there's a very easy way. But we don't take it. It's hard to take that way of just dropping everything and starting over again. But actually this is our practice. The practice is to let go moment by moment. If we can do that, that's really what it's about. It's not hanging on to anything. hand-freeing ourselves moment by moment. The other thing is that I said that at some point in my life I was always getting high.

[03:15]

I'm easily given to religious ecstasy. And so I would There was a period in my life when I was really in that state, but I couldn't sustain it, and so I'd always fall down into depravity. You know, get way up into ecstasy, and then way down into depravity. And these two would alternate with each other a lot. And when I came to practice, It was so wonderful because it was a practice that was just like this. And all that energy could express itself through moment to moment, everyday life, without having these extremes.

[04:19]

And I think that's a great value of our practice, is to be able to put everything into washing the dishes, cutting the carrots, and bringing that to life. And Suzuki Roshi was very strict. This is not, you should be very careful of ecstasy. because it's very seductive. But Suzuki Roshi was always in a state of religious ecstasy, but it didn't show. It didn't show as religious ecstasy, it just showed as normal, everyday life. And everybody wondered what it was that they liked about him, because he didn't do anything special.

[05:25]

stood up and sat down and walked around and there it was. So I was very grateful to meet him. So this case Blanche, I mentioned this during Choson before I left. I can't remember why I said it. I said that every once in a while something comes up and I said, oh, yeah, the second case in the Blue Griff record. I say this often when something comes up. But I can't remember the reason why they said it in Choson. And so Blanche was kind enough to set me up. I'll be honest. So here goes.

[06:28]

Case number two is translated in various ways. The key points are translated in various ways. So I'm using Sakita's translation, but not sticking to it. Joshu, Jaujo, it's called Jaujo. The real way is not difficult. Master Engo introduces the subject, and he says, The universe is too narrow. The sun, moon, and stars are all at once darkened. Even if blows from the stick fall like raindrops and the cuts, shouts, sound like thunder, you are still far short of the truth of Buddhism. Even the Buddhas of the three worlds can only nod to themselves, and the patriarchs of all ages do not exhaustively demonstrate its profundity.

[07:43]

The whole treasury of sutras is inadequate to expound its deep meaning. Even the clearest-eyed monks fail to save themselves. At this point, how do you conduct yourself? Mentioning the name of the Buddha is like trudging through mud and water. To utter the words Zen is to cover your face with shame. Not only those who have long practiced Zen, but beginners too, should exert themselves to attain directly to the secret. And then here's the main subject. Joshu spoke to the assembly and said, the real way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment. With but a single word, There may arise choice and attachment on the one hand, and there may arise clarity on the other. This old monk does not have that clarity.

[08:47]

Do you appreciate the meaning of this or not? Then a monk asked, if you do not have that clarity, what do you appreciate? The joshu said, I don't know that either. The monk said, if you don't know, teacher, how can you say that you do not have that clarity? Joshi said, asking the question is good enough. Now you can make your vows and retire. And then Setso has a verse. He says, In his verse, the real way is not difficult. Direct word, direct speech. One with many, two with one. Far away in the heavens, the sun rises, the moon sets. Beyond the hills, the high mountains, the cold waters. The skull has no consciousness, no delight. The dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten.

[09:50]

Difficult, difficult. Attachment and clarity. Watch and penetrate the secret. So in the introduction, Ingo says, the universe is too narrow, the sun, the moon, and the stars are all at once darkened. The universe is too narrow, the sun, the moon, and the stars all at once darkened means something like, even with all the light from the universe, It's still not enough light to penetrate the reality. Even if the blows from the stick fall like raindrops and the cuts, shouts, sound like thunder, you are still far short of the truth of Buddhism. In other words, even if you are forced through all this kind of thing, you still can't express it, explain it.

[10:59]

There's no way to really explain this, or to explain it. Even if the Buddhas of the three worlds can only nod to themselves and say, hmm, hmm. And the ancestors of all ages did not exhaustively demonstrate its profundity. The whole treasury of sutras is inadequate to expound its deep meaning. Even the clearest-eyed monks fail to save themselves. At this point, how do you conduct yourself? Or, what would you say? How would you handle it? Mentioning the name of the Buddha is like trudging through the muck. To utter the word Zen is to cover your face with shame. In other words, to use these well-known phrases, won't do.

[12:11]

Not only those who have long practiced Zen, but beginners too should exert themselves to attain directly to the secret. In other words, There's no way that you can explain what it is. Even the whole universe, the tremendous light from the universe isn't enough. And using the words Buddha and Zen is to... You should go wash your mouth out with soap. So even the clearest-eyed monks fail to save themselves. All they can do is do it, but they can't explain it. So one day, the main subject, Joshu spoke to the assembly and said, the real way is not difficult.

[13:26]

The way, of course, is the Tao. And this brings up It begs the question, what is the way? Sometimes people say, I don't have a question. I just never can think of a question. But we always have this question. This question is always there, no matter how much we know or don't know, or how advanced or beginning we are. The question is, what is the way? Every one of us has that question. Joshu spoke to his assembly and said, the real way is not difficult, but it just abhors choice and attachment, or picking and choosing. And, of course, we know that Joshu liked to quote from Soson's Shin-Chin-Ming, Faith in the Mind, not in the mind,

[14:42]

faith in, big mind. Which Shinpo-san read, I think. The supreme way is not difficult, if only you do not pick and choose. neither love nor hate and you will clearly understand. So Joshu liked to quote from this, although in his quote, he changed it a little bit to suit himself.

[15:47]

The real way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment. With but a single word, there may arise choice and attachment, and there may arise clarity. This old monk does not have that clarity or you could say this old monk does not abide within that clarity or this old monk does not stay within that clarity or stick to that clarity or is not attached to that clarity but it's okay to say this old monk does not have that clarity because It's a very humble way to say it. Sohvang doesn't have that clarity.

[16:52]

That's a pretty humble way to say it. And then he says, do you appreciate the meaning of this or not? He could also say, do you value this, the meaning of this or not? As Cleary translates it, he says, what do you preserve? Do you preserve anything or not? And it's really hard for me to relate to that word preserve. I think of jam and jelly. But I could see him saying, Do you hold to anything or not? Or, if this is the case, is there anything that you hold to? That makes a lot of sense.

[17:55]

If this is the case, where do you stand? If you're not in picking and choosing, and if you're not in clarity, where do you stand? Where do you stand? Or, what do you preserve? Or, do you appreciate the meaning of this or not? All of the above seem to fit into this whole, but this is where the koan turns. The koan turns on this question. So anyway, do you appreciate the meaning of this or not? Then the monk asked, if you do not have that clarity, what do you appreciate? Or, if you do not have that clarity, where do you stand? And Joshu said, I don't know that either. That's a good answer.

[19:02]

I don't know that either. This is like Bodhidharma answering the emperor. Bodhidharma says, well, who's standing before me? And Bodhisattva Dharma says, I don't know that either. same answer. They kind of echo each other, Bodhidharma and Joshu. So this not-knowing is the highest kind of knowledge, but it's not the same as the emperor's not-knowing. Is it the same as the emperor's not-knowing or different? You know the first case of the VUCA record. So Joshua says, I don't know that either.

[20:09]

Being very careful, But he's also opening himself up, because if you look at it logically, if you look at what Joshu is saying logically, you can see some error, or some gap. And this is what the introduction is talking about. In the introduction it says, no matter how carefully you express it, You can't really express it. No matter how carefully you express it, there's always a gap somewhere. That's why it's so difficult to express reality by trying to express it. But if you don't express it, if you don't try to express it, then you can't say anything.

[21:14]

So this is the kind of dilemma that we have. Suzuki Roshi used to say, when we give a lecture, we make a mistake on purpose. And so we have to make this mistake on purpose. And Joshu is making this mistake on purpose, knowing that he's opening himself to an attack. If someone's very logical, or someone brings up logic, then the logic, of course, can penetrate, and it takes a very... an adept to be able to turn in that situation. So he says, do you appreciate the meaning of this or not? And the monk asked, Teacher, if you do not have that clarity, what do you appreciate?

[22:17]

If you're not, if you're not, if you don't have clarity, how do you know about clarity? And Joshi said, I don't know that either. And the monk said, if you don't know, how can you say that you don't have it? And Joshi said, Your logic is really good. You're quite good at logic. Even though you haven't penetrated the real, you're very good at logic. I appreciate your logic, but it doesn't apply here. So, you should do more zazen. If you do more zazen, you'll come to some understanding. He's very gentle with him, actually. asking the question is good enough. So there are various ways that that's translated too.

[23:20]

So, Joshu brings up this whole question of discrimination and non-discrimination. Discrimination means to cut something that's whole into pieces to discriminate. So originally everything is one piece, but through discrimination it becomes many things. And discriminating mind is what creates our world. From our point of view, there's a world out there and we see it. you know, which is not untrue, but actually we create it through our discriminating consciousness. Discriminating consciousness through one of the senses picks out an object and discriminates it.

[24:42]

So there's the object and the sense and the discriminating consciousness, which says, oh, this is a microphone. But it's only a microphone to my discriminating consciousness. To an ant, it's not a microphone. I don't know what it is to an ant or to a bird. A bird would come and land on it and make me poof. We have a nice place to stand. So we create our world through discriminating consciousness and we create a world of objects. Oh, this is a microphone, of course. And then we exist in that world, which is not bad, but it's what happens. We take a world that's all one piece and make it into various things.

[25:49]

It's interesting, we take a piece of cloth that's one piece and we cut it into different pieces and then we make something out of it and we call it something. But it's really one whole cloth, one piece of cloth. This is the way clothes are made. In order to have a suit of clothes, we take a whole piece of material and we cut it up into little pieces and then we sew it all back together again. And we have a suit. So, in order to create our world, we take everything apart and then put it back together again. But it's really one piece. But we make various things out of this one piece, and each of these pieces is an expression of this one piece. So, when we talk about wholeness or oneness, on the one hand,

[27:09]

and discrimination on the other, it's easy to divide them. And our mind wants to make this division. When we're talking about form and emptiness, our mind wants to make this division. If we want to know the nature of emptiness, we have to find it through the various forms. If we want to know what is emptiness, we have to be one with form. That's why the practice is just do. It doesn't matter what it is that you're doing. It's not that it doesn't matter. There are two things that matter. One is that we have to get something done. We have to accomplish something, on the one hand. On the other, there's just pure activity. So discrimination, in this sense, one sense of discrimination is we want to get something, we want to accomplish something.

[28:21]

And non-discrimination is just doing something without any purpose other than the doing. So when we do something, do we abandon our purpose and just do something for the sake of doing? That's like saying, it doesn't matter what you do as long as it's the way you do it. Which is sort of half true. The whole truth, I would say, is it matters what you do and the way that you do it. So that you pay attention to accomplishing what has to be accomplished.

[29:29]

And at the same time, just doing something. But we tend to divide those. Pure activity from discriminated activity. And our practice is to bring those two together so that discriminated activity is pure activity and within pure activity is discriminated activity. So in his poem, Setso says, the real way is not difficult. We're in the poem again. Direct word, direct speech. One with many phases, two with one.

[30:37]

One with many phases means that within oneness, There's variety. And two with one means within duality, there's oneness. This is the Heart Sutra. It expresses the same thing. Joshu says, I don't know whether I'm in one or the other. I don't stay within clarity. which is wholeness or oneness. And I don't stick to picking and choosing. It doesn't matter. Picking and choosing, for me, picking and choosing is oneness. And oneness includes picking and choosing. They're not two different things. But for the student, he didn't get that.

[31:42]

The student is still back in his logic, which keeps them separated. So, this is not reached by logic, although we can logically assess it. Then he says, far away in the heavens the sun rises and the moon sets. beyond the hills, the high mountains, and the cold waters. This means that this is an example of how things are. If you want to know how things are, away in the heavens, the sun rises and the moon sets. It's like night and day are different. You have the moon on the one hand and the sun on the other.

[32:46]

But night and day are just two aspects of one place, of one thing. Right now we call this place daytime and later we'll call this same place night. Something changes But it remains the same. Beyond the hills, the high mountains and the cold waters, if we see the way things work, then we understand. But we don't always see the way things really work. The skull has no consciousness, no delight. The dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten. This comes from a saying of Sozon, who was Tozon's disciple.

[33:51]

And the skull has no consciousness is a way of saying, and no delight, is a way of expressing absolute side. The dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten. is a way of expressing the relative side. Even though the tree is dead, the wind whistling through it makes a sound. And this poem is a little longer than this. I should have brought the whole poem. But at the end, Sozang says, something like, The pure is only understood through the impure. In other words, there's no way you can separate.

[35:03]

If we want to find what's pure, we have to find it right in the midst of the impure. Even though we look at garbage as impure, it's actually dynamic life in its own right. And if we want to find clarity, we have to find it in our moment-to-moment picking and choosing. So he says, difficult, difficult attachment and clarity.

[36:10]

Watch and penetrate the secret. And then Sekhita has a little comment on that and he says, of course there is enlightenment. However, when it is outgrown, attachment itself is enlightenment. So, attachment and non-attachment, purity and absolute seeking, you know.

[37:34]

What is the way? What is the real way? The real way dislikes the absolute. and dislikes the relative, but that's a little misleading. You have to read the whole poem. It also doesn't get hung up in the absolute. The sixth patriarch in the Platform Sutra says, There are some people who create the form of purity and stick to that, but that's a kind of disease, to always try to make everything pure. Purity means non-duality, actually.

[38:44]

But non-duality also has to include duality. So the question is, how do we pick and choose? If we say, no discrimination, how do we discriminate? Because we're always discriminating. Moment by moment, we're discriminating. Moment by moment, we're making a choice. How do we make our choice? That's the question. How do we make choice? If practice is the practice of non-discrimination, then how do we make a choice? On what basis do we make our choice?

[39:48]

On what basis do we pick and choose? So picking and choosing has to have non-discrimination as a base because in order to be in accord with reality Picking and choosing has to be done on the basis of non-discrimination. So it's the discrimination of non-discrimination. The picking and choosing of non-picking and non-choosing. So how do you pick and choose on the basis of non-picking and non-choosing? It's a big koan. It's what we're all involved in all the time. It's very much like, what do you think in Zazen?

[40:55]

Think not thinking. Well, how do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. Or beyond thinking, you're non-thinking. You're not thinking. We have to pick and choose beyond picking and choosing and not picking and choosing. It means don't be selfish. It's pretty simple. As long as we're not being self-centered, then picking and choosing, no problem. As long as there's no self, picking and choosing, no problem. Then there are more inevitable choices.

[42:04]

We make a choice based on the situation rather than based on desire or I want. What gets us into trouble is I want my way. So the other day, Leslie was talking about just how we practice, just with faith, stepping off of our place, stepping off of our I want place, and just stepping into the stream of the practice, and letting the practice shape us.

[43:14]

You know, it's like 30 people moving in the stream, rubbing up against each other and shaping each other in some way. Rubbing off the rough edges, kind of polishing stones and allowing that to happen. just putting ourself into the current and letting go of I want, picking and choosing. And within that letting go of picking and choosing, there arises choice and there arises clarity. But you can't separate them. They can't be defined.

[44:21]

So within choice there's clarity, and within clarity there's choice. And when there's ego, there's problem. Ego produces, I think, problems like throwing a stone into your shoe. and you feel it right away. So attachment and clarity, difficult, difficult. You have a question? I was talking last night about the various stories that she had.

[45:41]

It seems to me that gifts And what I was wondering about is that how do you, how do you, how do you understand what you're doing for us? Because, like the way you're speaking today, what's coming from, I want to know the way you're speaking today comes from Make some difference? Yes. Well, you know, practice didn't start

[46:43]

when I came to Zen Center. And your practice didn't start when you came to Zen Center. Our practice is, we've always been practicing. But this, when we came to Zen Center, it clarified something for us. So, or maybe confused us. But our experience is our experience. And it seems like that's the main thing I'd like to mention now. Some people work at that for years and years to be able to open their family and their home, whereas you can't tell that there is anything. And it seems like that's the way you fit it.

[47:47]

Not to come to a certain, you know, just profit, You know, if somebody has an experience of that kind of sense, it is intuitive, you know, felt sense like that, then there is that kind of openness because there's some neutrality to know something. So I think that I was. Ginjo Koan is pretty nice, you know.

[49:04]

But Ginjo Koan is the koan of everyday life as it comes up on the banyan. People say when Soto Zen there's no koan, you don't work on koan, but that's not true. Dogen's koan is Ginjo Koan. That's what we're studying all the time. We can read Dogen's Ginjo Koan, which is very nice, but we have our own Ginjo Koan. But a real way of practicing the Koan is just to do what we do.

[50:06]

On the one hand, we have something to accomplish in our activity. On the other hand, whatever we do is just pure activity. We just appreciate everything. It's pure activity. matter what happens to it, we can really appreciate it. That's the non-duality of our life. Within the duality of our life, we can appreciate the essence, because it's always right there. If we look for the essence, we'll never find it until we look at what we're doing right here. And in a sense, that's what this poem is about.

[51:20]

What's beyond form and emptiness? What's beyond picking and choosing and clarity? So in this narrow practice, we have the opportunity to just appreciate our life as it appears moment by moment, no matter what's happening. That's the great benefit of it. Loneliness.

[52:21]

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