I vow to teach the truth and learn to tell the truth. This morning I'm going to use the words of Old Master Joshu to talk about what is the real way. What's the path? Where are we going? And how do we practice?

[01:02]

Um, this case number two in the Blue Cliff record, um, I've talked about before and, uh, I'm sure it will not be the last time. This is called, uh, uh, Joshu's, uh, The Real Way is Not Difficult or Easy. And in his introduction, he says, the universe is too narrow. The sun, the moon, and the stars are all at once darkened. Even if blows from the stick fall like raindrops, and the khat shouts sound like thunder,

[02:14]

you are still far short of the truth. Even the Buddhas of the three worlds can only nod to themselves, and the ancestors of all ages do 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? Mentioning the name of the Buddha is like trudging through the mire. To utter the word Zen is to cover your face with shame. Not only those who have long practiced But beginners, too, should exert themselves to attain directly to this matter. And in the main subject, the case is presented.

[03:29]

Joshu, Master Joshu, Zhaozhou, spoke to the assembly and he said, The real way is not difficult. It just abhors choice and attachment. With but a single word, there may arise choice and attachment, or there may arise clarity. This old monk does not abide in that clarity. Do you appreciate the meaning of this or not? Then a monk asked, Master, if you do not abide in that clarity, what is it that you appreciate? How do you know? And then Joshu said, I don't know that either. And the monk said, if you do not know, how can you say that you do not have that clarity?

[04:40]

And Joshu said, asking the question is good enough. Just make your vows and retire. And then Setso has a verse and he says, the real way is not difficult. Direct word and direct speech. One with many phases and two with one. Far away in the heavens, the sun rises and the moon sets. Beyond the hills, the high mountains, and the cold waters. The skull has no consciousness, no delight. Its dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten. Difficult, difficult. Attachment and clarity. Watch and penetrate the secret. So in the introduction, Master Engo says, the universe is too narrow.

[05:52]

The sun, the moon, the stars are all at once darkened. He's saying, even if you understand the workings of the universe, even though you may be able to see through a tube, a little tube, and get some grasp on how things work out there. It's still dark, so dark and dim that it's just like you don't see anything, which is pretty close to what we understand, to what we're beginning to understand. universe is too narrow. The sun, the moon, and the stars are all at once darkened, so we can't look there. And even if the blows from the stick fall like raindrops and the khatts' shouts sound like thunder, you're still short of the truth of the Dharma, Buddha Dharma.

[07:05]

Even though you may have a enlightened teacher who showers wonderful blows on you, shouts khats in your face, and tries to wake you up. It's still not enough. Even the Buddhas of the three worlds can only nod to themselves, and the ancestors of all the ages do not exhaustively demonstrate this profundity. So, Buddha, the Buddhas of all the past ages, they know. And no matter how much they try to tell us, it still doesn't help. The whole treasury of sutras is inadequate to express its deep meaning. No matter how much you read, you still don't get it. You still can't get it. Even the clearest-eyed monks fail to save themselves.

[08:08]

At this point, how do you conduct yourself? Pretty discouraging, isn't it? If you read the Mahayana literature, then the Sutras, you feel like a helpless ant in in the universe with this array of wondrous practices that nobody can accomplish. Mentioning the name of the Buddha is like trudging through the mire. That doesn't help. To utter the word Zen is to cover your face with shame. That doesn't help either. not only those who have long practiced Zen, but beginners, too, should exert themselves to attain directly to the secret.

[09:13]

In the face of all this, you should make some effort. So, then he gives us the main subject. This is how Master Zhaozhong does it. Master Zhaozhou spoke to his assembly. Master Zhaozhou, of course, was one of the most famous Zen teachers in China, who lived to be purportedly 120. And he started wandering when he was about 80. He said, if I meet someone who understands more than me, I'll listen to him. And if I meet someone who doesn't understand, I'll teach them something.

[10:13]

And if I meet a little girl, eight years old, and she understands, she can be my teacher. Well, we all know that eight-year-olds are our teachers. If we have good understanding, we'll realize that. So Joshu spoke to the assembly and he said, the real way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment. Joshu was fond of quoting the Xin Xin Ming, which is a long poem, maybe the earliest Zen poem that we have. from China. Supposedly it was written by the third ancestor, Tseng Tsang, but nobody knows for sure.

[11:19]

But we say this is Tseng Tsang's poem. And in Tseng Tsang's poem, the famous lines are, 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 spoke to the assembly and he said, the real way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment, choosing and attaching. And with but a single word, there may arise choice and attachment, or there may arise clarity. It could go either way. This old monk does not abide in that clarity. Clarity here means enlightenment, of course.

[12:24]

It also, you know, Choice and attachment allude to the world of samsara, the world of delusion and discrimination, where we all live our lives. But we also live our lives in a world of clarity or non-discrimination and non-attachment and enlightenment. So he says there may arise attachment and confusion, or there may arise clarity. I don't abide in that clarity, which is what everybody wants. Then he says, do you appreciate the meaning of this? Or do you find some value in this?

[13:29]

And then a monk rose up and he said, if you don't abide in that clarity, what is it that you appreciate? What is it that you value? And Joshu said, I don't know that either. Joshu is not allowing himself to get caught here. So the monk kind of has him. The monk is really zeroing in on Joshu's a tender spot. Because it sounds like Joshu is going so far as to say, I'm not even attached to non-attachment. So the monk is pressing him and he says, If you don't know, how can you say that you don't have that clarity?

[14:37]

It's very illogical. If you say you don't know, then how do you know that you don't have it? And Joshu says, asking the question is good enough. Now, please bow and leave. Go sit down. The monk is very smart, very good monk actually, logically. He's a great logician. So, Joshu spoke to the assembly and he said, the real way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment. And in the poem, the poem says, if only you do not pick and choose, neither love nor hate, you will clearly understand. Not pick and choose, not love and hate.

[15:38]

But our lives are very much determined by how we love and how we hate. We're very emotional beings. So, Sang Tsang in his poem is saying, we have to get beyond the emotional realm in order to realize non-duality. And it's very hard, you know, to do that. When people come to a Zen center, it looks like the students are kind of cool. And they are kind of cool, you know. Especially the younger students. Because they're making some effort not to see everything through the glasses of emotionalism.

[16:43]

Not to always give vent to emotional views, which can be very distorted. And in the poem he says, don't be attached to love or hate. But he doesn't say, don't love or don't hate. He says, don't be attached to love or hate. So when we sit Zazen, we enter this realm of non-discrimination. We don't, although various things come up, feelings come up, emotions come up, bodily feelings come up, we find a center which is not moved by thought and emotion.

[17:53]

And so one cools down. Even though a lot of emotion, thought, is raging somewhere in the mind and the heart, still there's a centering which contains the thought and the emotion and refines it. So, after sitting Zazen, Zen students are fairly cool. You know, we say, keep a cool head and warm feet. Feet should be warm and head should be cool in order to not fall into discriminating mind. So, Joshu is talking to his monks about discrimination and non-discrimination.

[19:04]

Through a non-discriminating mind, we see things more clearly as it is. And emotion, thought, tends to particularize and to divide. And so we see things through thought and emotion in a partial way. So, enlightenment is the sign of non-discriminating, whole understanding, without partiality. To see things completely as it is, without entering into, I like, or I don't like, or I wish, or it should be.

[20:13]

But just seeing things clearly as it is, complete and whole. and undivided. The Akan's razor, which is not afraid to cut to the truth, even if it hurts But the other side of our life is picking and choosing, and making a choice, and discriminating, and making a decision. How do we make decisions unless we choose? You say, well, I'd rather have this salad than that one. That's a choice.

[21:17]

Instead of going this way, I'm going to go this way. We do this continuously, making choices. But this is the realm of delusion, the realm of division, the realm of picking and choosing, love and hate, right and wrong, good and bad. So when a word comes up, as he says, there's either picking and choosing and attachment, we get attached to things through picking and choosing, or there's clarity, enlightenment. And the problem we have is how do we stop picking and choosing while still picking and choosing? How do we get free of attachment while still being attached?

[22:29]

Because you can't have one side without the other. You can't have enlightenment without delusion. It's possible to have delusion without enlightenment. But delusion and enlightenment go together. When you have enlightenment, you realize what delusion is. But delusion and enlightenment are not two things. But we are always trying to separate them. Clarity and confusion. And we have this problem in Zazen. The problem comes up all the time in Zazen. I'm trying to keep my mind clear, yet all this stuff comes pouring in, or pouring out, actually.

[23:38]

And I'm a failure. This is deluded mind speaking. I'm a failure because I can't do the ideal thing that I think I'm supposed to be doing. So if you try to push away all the delusion, in order to have clarity, it's like making a hole in the sand. You can try and make this hole, but the sand just keeps pouring in. The more you try to keep clarity, hold on to clarity, the more divisiveness you create. You can do it. I mean, you can really hold a blank mind. You know, make a big effort to hold a blank mind for a while. But before long, you realize that you've been thinking for a while.

[24:46]

But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make the effort not to keep a blank mind, but to be clear about the mind. has some clarity about the delusion. Delusion is not bad. See, we tend to want to divide clarity and delusion into this is the good side and this is the bad side. And that's where we keep having our problem. Where we keep having our problem is that we're always discriminating without allowing the clarity to arise. So we keep picking and choosing, saying, I like this and I don't like that. I like it when my mind is clear and I see everything fresh and wonderful, beautiful.

[25:52]

I don't like it when my mind is clouded and confused and I'm partial. suffer, but both sides go together. You can't have one without the other. So we love the one and we hate the other. That's our problem. Not that we have both of these, but that we like one better than the other. So, in his poem, Esther Saint-Saëns says, just don't love and hate. Don't be attached to love and hate. Means, don't be attached to what you like and what you don't like. Don't be attached to what's good and what's bad.

[26:53]

I know that's very difficult. There's a lot of bad stuff. And immediately people will say, but what about all the terrible things that are going on in the world? It doesn't mean that you shouldn't make some effort. Definitely we have to make effort. But not to divide the world, but to bring the world into one. Dogen's very famous koan about cutting the canon too. Nansen. was holding the two wings of the monastery. The monks of the two wings of the monastery were arguing over who owned the cat. Whose cat was this? And so they couldn't decide, so they asked Nansen, Master Nansen.

[28:00]

And Master Nansen said, well, if you can't tell me, He said to them, if you can't tell me whose cat this is, I'll cut it in two. And neither side could answer, so he cut it in two. This is the story. Dogen says, if I had been there, I would have said, why don't you cut it in one? But you got the cat in one. So the story is not about cats. So he says, with but a single word there may arise choice and attachment, or there may arise clarity.

[29:03]

This old monk doesn't abide in that clarity. And then he said, do you appreciate this? Do you value this? Do you get it, what I'm talking about? And the monk said, if you don't have that clarity, what is it that you value? What do you appreciate? And Joshu said, I don't know that either. Joshu's I don't know is not the ordinary I don't know. But he said, Joshu's, this is like a turning word. This is how Joshu gets himself free from the monk's question. He says, I don't know that either. I don't know doesn't mean I don't know in the usual sense. But it means it's a way of not saying something about something.

[30:05]

It's a way of showing how he steps out of being caught by discrimination. He's not afraid to say, I don't know, for one thing. And it also means I don't have to be caught by anything. I don't know whether I'm in clarity, or in confusion, or in picking and choosing and attachment. It doesn't matter. They're not two different things. For Joshu, they're not two different things. The absolute state of things is not different than the relative state of things. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form, as the Heart Sutra says.

[31:07]

Emptiness is form, and form is emptiness. It's not that there is something called emptiness and something called form, which are two different things. But we think there is. Because we speak about it in that way. Our mind, in order to explain the universe to ourselves, we divide it up into little pieces. But it's really one piece. So in all of our activity, there's nothing but Buddha nature. You can look at the assembly and you can see a whole bunch of people. Or you can look at the assembly and you can see Buddha nature. When you look at people, do you see people or do you see Buddha nature? This is a very important point.

[32:11]

Do we see people or do we see buddha nature? Well, what does buddha nature look like? Buddha nature has no special shape, form, or color, or characteristic. Yet, When you look at people and things, you see Buddha nature. And what is that? I don't know. But I don't know means although I am one with it, I don't know. It's possible to say, I know, because within Zhao Zhou's not knowing, he knows.

[33:23]

If he says, I know, he probably doesn't know. If someone asks you, are you enlightened? You may say, I know, yes. But you could also say, I don't know. But you can't copy Joshu. It has to be your own not knowing. It has to be your own blindness. So, then in his verse, Zhao Jun says, Se Cho says, the real way is not difficult.

[34:33]

He's quoting the Xin Xin Ming a little bit. Just the first line. The real way is not difficult. Direct word and direct speech. All it has to be is direct word and direct speech, which means not chopping logic, not trying to think about it, but actually being it. Chow Choo says, I don't know. This is his direct word, his direct speech. It's not an idea. Probably the most profound thing anyone can say is that connects you to reality is, I don't know. And then he says, one with many phases and two with one.

[35:38]

So here he's saying, even though it's one, it has many, expressions, even though all of us are different, unique, and independent. We're one person with many different expressions. And two with one means even though we're many different expressions, And you can't land on one side or the other. But you can see from various points of view. But we can't be attached to any special point of view. The problem that we have is that we become attached to a certain point of view.

[36:40]

Wherever we are, we look and we see things. is. But that's the way it is from that point of view. From over here, it's completely different. From over here, it's completely different. This is why it's wonderful to have art and science and religion and various points of view. No need to fight. No need to argue. It's just from here, yeah, that's right. And from over here, that's right. But it doesn't look like it from over here. Enlightened mind is not to have any special point of view. And that's a little bit scary. Because our point, we become attached and hang on to life from our standpoint.

[37:45]

And then we dig our heels in and become dogmatic. Well, this is God created the universe. This is the way things are in the Bible says. According to Buddhism, it's like this. It's wonderful to have all these points of view, but you cannot stick to anything. None of them are correct. None of them are incorrect. but none of them are correct. Far away in the heavens, the sun rises. You can see how things worked out there. Beyond the hills, the high mountains, and the cold water. These are just examples of how Life works.

[38:48]

Are the hills, are the high mountains high because the water is cold? Or is the water cold because the mountains are high? The skull has no consciousness, no delight. The dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten. This comes from a conversation, an old conversation in the Tang Dynasty, which I don't want to go into, which I've talked about before. But the skull has no consciousness. No delight means when everything is taken away, There's still, within, this is called death, right? But within this death is life. Within nothing is something.

[39:55]

And the dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten, is within life, there is death. So, life and death are just two ways of seeing something, two standpoints. but they're very dear to us. And we tend to think in terms of black and white. Even though the tree is dead, when the wind blows through the tree, through the dead tree, you hear it. Life is life in all forms. Life and death go together, step by step. Within life there is death, and within death there is life.

[41:00]

They're just two sides of a coin. The death of one thing brings out the life of something else. And life is always renewing itself through death. And death is always renewing itself through life. And every step is a step of death and life at the same time. Two things, yet they're just one thing. Is it two things, or is it one thing? This is a big go on. Is it two things or is it one thing? Difficult.

[42:04]

Difficult. Attachment and clarity. Watch and penetrate the secret. And the author of this book says, when it is outgrown, attachment itself is enlightenment. Delusion itself, within delusion itself, is enlightenment. So, this is why we put so much emphasis on daily life. We say, God, daily life is so confusing and so difficult. How will I ever get enlightened? Enlightenment is not something that we get or have.

[43:05]

It's just how we accept our situation and deal with our situation in a non-discriminating way. Of course we love and we hate and we like and we dislike, but within attachment is where we have to find our freedom. Within some confinement is where we have to find our freedom. Freedom exists within confinement. Everything exists within its opposite. Love comes out of hate. Hate is the other side of love. And we always want to solve our problems, but It's not necessary to solve our problems. I was talking to somebody about the Middle East, and this person is from the Middle East, Iran, actually, but a very open person.

[44:16]

I said, well, what do you think of the Middle East shaking hands? The Arabs and the Jews shaking hands. Oh, I don't think it'll work. It's not going to work. I said, why? He said, because they haven't gotten to the heart of the matter. They haven't gotten to solve the real problem. Of course they haven't gotten to solve the real problem. But shaking hands actually solves the problem. But the problem is insanity. Of course they're not going to solve that problem. If you wait to solve that problem, it just goes on and on. All you can do is make an agreement. You make an agreement to live together with the problem, instead of trying to solve the problem by eliminating each other.

[45:22]

It's exactly the same thing. The delusion, the insanity is thinking that if I get rid of you, everything will be alright. So, good thing. Old enemies at least can agree to disagree, agree to include each other, which will not be easy. but life is not easy or hard. It's just what it is. Sometimes we say, oh, it's easy, or sometimes we say it's hard, but we shouldn't get attached to hard and easy. I think there's time for one more.

[46:44]

You wanted to get it all over with, huh? They asked Trungpa once if he was ever in the hell realm. He said, yeah. They said, what do you do when you're there? And he said, well, I try and stay there. And I was wondering if there was some attitude that had taken him. In the Zen realm, we say that hell is just another place to practice. If you have that attitude, you won't have big problems. But, you know, we do go in cycles. We get very confused, and we really make an effort to deal with our confusion. And at some point we have a breakthrough, and then we have clarity. This is different than the clarity of enlightenment, okay? and delusion, but we have clarity on one side and confusion.

[48:50]

And then we reach a plateau and we coast along and pretty soon it starts to waver, you know, and then we doubt and get confused again and then we go into another confusion. And we deal with that and come out the other side. And this is the cycle. We go through this cycle of clarity and confusion, and clarity and confusion. And if we only have confusion, never have clarity, then we get really depressed. But if we have big confusion, and work very hard with it, then it's possible we have a big clarity. So our confusion is good to remember, which is hard to do at the time, that confusion is not bad, but it's the other side, you know, it's that side that inspires us to work hard.

[50:10]

And that it will help us to get, we need that. It's important to have that. It's not something we should want to get rid of. But it's the place where we have to work. Not a bad place. And the more, the older you get, the more you realize this is how things are going in your life. And you appreciate it. rather than, because it's like when you do something difficult, you always appreciate it when you come out the other side, right? You say, boy, I was climbing up that hill, it was so hard, and yet it's great up here. So I think it's important to look at what we're doing not as something bad, but as it's going somewhere. You may not see where it's going, and it seems so hard. You have to make difficult choices. You penetrate through.

[51:17]

So it takes good effort. Effort is the most important aspect. Quality. Good effort dealing with a difficult situation. Kings are numberless.

[51:48]

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