Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, [...] Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Hare, Hare Hare, Hare Hare, Hare Hare, [...] Hare Hare 30 people, 31. Tomorrow, about the same. And the next day, maybe 40. And the next three days, 50. So it keeps growing, which is good. But when we have so many additions, it's hard to...

[01:01]

have one text to use all the way through, because some people miss the first part. So for a satsang like this, I usually talk about something different every day, but there is a theme anyway, but not a and limited to what I can use. But today I want to set a tone for Sashin, which to me is the most important aspect of the essence of enlightenment. And for our awareness, I hesitate to say my favorite koan, but it's my favorite koan.

[02:24]

And it's Uman's koan. in the booklet for it, case number 86, and I've talked about it many times before, but you may not remember. It's translated in various ways. Aumans, everyone has their own light. and Dogen wrote a fascicle called Komyo, in which he expounds on this koan, or at least he mentions the koan, but I think that he was inspired by it. So Komyo means light, but it's not just a light.

[03:35]

Ko myo, in this case, means the essence of light or radiant light. Radiant is like something that comes from a source. So it's the light and its source. Sometimes it's translated as divine. which is okay, but the problem with divine is that it means, usually it's attributed to, in Christianity, to a deity. And Buddhism avoids using the D word. Avoids talking about the deity and uses terms like Buddha nature. Also, in Buddhism, Buddha is addressed as the holy one, right?

[04:46]

And so forth. So there is a kind of deity-like worship in Buddhism, but strictly speaking, Buddha is not regarded as a deity, but it's not like there's no sacredness or holiness, but there's no creator deity in Buddhism. So you can't say that Buddha created the world or the universe or that we have Vairojana. Vairojana is in esoteric Buddhism the center of the mandala.

[05:51]

And from that center of the mandala, radiant light issues forth. Nevertheless, Vairocana is not a deity, even though iconographers will call the Buddhist demigods deities. But it's all language, you know. for lack of better terms. So it's like within Buddhism there are deities but they're not the creators of the universe. They're kind of spiritual emanators, spiritual emanations or also emanations of

[06:58]

we don't discriminate between form and essence in Buddhism. Form is essence, essence is form. Yes? Is there another translation for the word divine? Oh, well, you know, I keep searching around. But divine can mean that from which light issues forth without naming it. You know in Judaism the ultimate word can't be pronounced. One should not pronounce that name. So they have a lot of different terms but they're not, it's against the law to pronounce that final name because nobody knows what it is.

[08:09]

Somebody knows, but... Linguistically, is might part of the root of the word divine? I'm not sure, but But still, there are all these attributes to that divine one. There are these various pseudonyms for the creator. And you know, in ancient Judaism, when they still had the temple, there was this one room, the Holy of Holies, in the temple. And it was, no one ever went in there.

[09:14]

Totally empty. And the high priest went in there once a year and did some ceremony. And that's why in both Judaism and Islam, they don't make pictures of a deity, because you're not supposed to depict something, because as soon as you describe it, you defiled it. So you have flowers and leaves and things pictorially, but not people, not figures so much. And in early Buddhism, Buddha was not depicted as a person. There was the empty seat.

[10:16]

If you look at the old stilas, Buddha was depicted as a chair and with attendants on both sides waving palm fronds to cool him off. And pictorial figures, statues didn't come into play until four centuries later. So it's interesting that most of the major religions avoided making representations of something that was limited. So to depict the unlimited in a limited way was sacrilegious, actually. So Buddhism is kind of like that, although Buddhism has a lot of pictorial, you know, especially the Tibetans, you know, have pictured everything, right?

[11:25]

But it's still not the deity. It still falls short. All the pictorial stuff in Buddhism is a pseudonym or descriptive of qualities but not descriptive of the thing itself. So anyway, Buddhism really is a holdout for even saying that there is such a thing as a creator deity and leaves the mind open from limitation. Even if you say a creator deity, that's a limitation.

[12:31]

So Buddhism refuses to stop at that limitation. So to say divine light, gives us some points to something, right, and there's an emanation from radiant or divine. I think radiant is good. Radiant is a descriptive term of the verb, I guess, what it does, and divine is like the source of where it comes from. So maybe radiant is pretty good because it avoids pointing to the source of where it comes from, but you know there's a source because it has to radiate from someplace.

[13:41]

But I like the word divine because, stripped of its connotations, because it has more of the feeling of something sacred. Something, the essence of life. That which empowers everything. So, Uman says, everyone has their own light. And then Ngo, in his introduction to the case, says, controlling the world, he allows not the least speck of dust to escape. He cuts off the diluted streams of thought, leaving not a drop behind. If you open your mouth, you are mistaken.

[14:50]

If you doubt for a moment, you have missed the way. Tell me, what is the eye that has pierced the barriers? And then he says, see the following. And then the main subject. U Mon spoke to his assembly, and he said, each one of you has your own light. But if you try to see it, everything is dark, dark. What is everybody's light, everyone's light? Later, answering for himself, he said, in the monastery, in the Buddha hall, in the administration building, and the main gate. There are various translations of what he said, but he said, storeroom and temple gate. I like that best.

[15:52]

And then again he said, in Suzuki Roshi's translation, it's better not to say anything, even if it's a good answer. And then Seicho in his comment says, in his verse says, it illuminates itself, absolutely bright. He gives a clue to the secret. Flowers have fallen. Trees give no shade. Who does not see if he looks? Seeing is non-seeing. Non-seeing is seeing. Facing backward on the ox, he rides into the Buddha hall. So coming back to Ngo's introduction, He says, controlling the world he allows not the least speck of dust to escape. Controlling the world is a term which can mean like holding fast, not taking hold and not letting anything escape.

[17:13]

he allows not the least speck of dust to escape. So what does he mean here by controlling the world and letting not the least speck of dust escape? we say, turn the light inward to illuminate the self. Dogen says this, and it's an old statement, ancient statement, turn the light inward to illuminate the self, which means don't let the light escape. This is the whole fast, don't let the light escape. If you Turn on the light bulb during the day, it doesn't make much difference. But if you go into the closet and light a match, the whole closet is illuminated.

[18:25]

So, in Zazen, we hold fast and we don't let any dust escape. Therefore, the light becomes very intense to sit seven days without moving, not letting anything escape, not letting the light escape through mindless babble, through gossip, through losing concentration and attention. We sit with good attention, good concentration, totally present. And the intensity of light becomes stronger and stronger because light is your nature. So, Sushin, we say gathering the mind, you know, means gathering the mind, but it also, you can say it means gathering the light.

[19:37]

I kind of like that. gathering the light, intensifying your own light. And you know, during sasheen, no matter what's going on, no matter how difficult or easy, everyone starts to glow. It's not like Not the rabbit. You know about the rabbit? You know about the rabbit? Someone gave, a scientist gave a rabbit some radiation. So the rabbit glows in the dark, and this is supposed to be a kind of scientific trick, which a lot of people complained about, but the scientists thought it was pretty funny.

[20:43]

But he gave this rabbit a kind of dose of radiation, and the rabbit glows green or something in the dark. So, controlling the world, he allows not the least speck of dust to escape. He cuts off the In other words, he doesn't let thoughts occupy or dominate the mind. Even though thoughts are there, even though thoughts are continually coming up, they don't dominate. If you open your mouth, you are mistaken.

[21:51]

If you open your mouth, you're mistaken. In other words, if you say something about it too much, you lose it. If you doubt for a moment, you have missed the way. I think this doubt is important. If you doubt for a moment, you're lost. If you apply this to Zazen, you can apply it to your daily life, but how can I say this? To be in your life, to really be inside of your life, so that you have faith in your life.

[22:58]

There is a point where you can doubt your life and one way of identifying this doubt is when you suddenly are at a loss of what to do and you're waiting for the time to go by. And you're simply waiting for time to pass before something else turns up. That's like stepping outside of your life, doubting your life. So our life is kind of like a complete bubble. even though it's an illusion, it's like a complete bubble. And to continue the steps, you know, continue each step knowing that in each moment you're not lost.

[24:13]

Because even though there's maybe nothing to do, they're still breathing. There's still awareness. They're still being settled in the moment. Not everyone has that understanding. So we have people who are very lost. If you're a Zen student, you should never, if you really have a practice, there's no moment when you're lost. Because you can always find yourself on each moment within your activity. James? Well, what happens when you are lost? Well, if you're really lost, sit down and do Zazen. I can't do that all the time. Are you lost all the time? Lately, I've been feeling that way. Well, you can. You can do it all the time. Why can't you do it all the time?

[25:15]

Well, as soon as it hurts, you know where you are. Yeah, but what's the most important thing? Better sit Zazen. Good. So, if you doubt for a moment, you've missed the way. Tell me, what is it, what is the I that has pierced the barrier? Which I is that? I beg your pardon? Is it I or I? Oh, the I. Yeah, what is the, seeing eye that has pierced the barrier.

[26:19]

See the following main subject. Uman spoke to his assembly and said, each one of you has your own light, but if you try to see it, everything is in darkness. You know, this light is the essence of everything. It's just another name for buddha nature. Dogen says each one of us is buddha nature, right? Not has buddha nature, but is buddha nature. Uman could have said each one of you is your own light. in the same way that Dogen said each one of you is buddha nature, an expression of buddha nature. So this Dogen in his Komyo says don't think of this light as like the light of a firefly or being red or yellow or blue or glowing in the dark or something like that.

[27:34]

It's not like that. you don't see this light as some idea. Those little lights that we identify are not the light that he's talking about. The light that he's talking about has no special characteristics and it's expressed It's expressed as trees and rocks and water and fire, air. Everything is expressed as an expression of Komyo. So no matter where you are or what you're doing, you can't get lost. Because even if you get lost, that's also an expression of Komyo.

[28:45]

That's also an expression of Buddha nature. All the good things and all the bad things. But if you try to see it, everything is darkness. try to see it is like self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is how we lose our connection. As soon as we become self-conscious, so if you try to see the light, you try to see it you become self-conscious and you lose it. You can be it, but you can't see it. In other words, as long as you're really moving from inside and being connected with the life around you,

[30:02]

That's being it. But as soon as you try to analyze it, or intellectualize it, or take it apart, or find out what it is, it becomes darkness. So what he's talking about is intuition. Intuition means directly knowing. without the intermediary of thought or ideas about it. So he's expressing something by pointing at it, not trying to explain it like me. But in Zazen, we just do Zazen. without trying to analyze it, just totally be Zazen.

[31:05]

And then there's no gap. So we don't try to analyze it or think and break that gap. So the main thing is not to make a gap between Yourself as a subject and what is over against you as an object. The subject and the object, no gap. This is Mu. Speak up a little bit.

[32:16]

Is it that this light is something that originates in us or is it our connection to something beyond us? Is there something beyond us? This is the whole point. It's not like there's you and a deity. You are what it is. It is what you are. There's no gap. That's the point. No gap. Usually we think of a deity and then there's me. And then we supplicate the deity. But in Buddhism, Buddhist understanding, there's no gap. So, we don't turn the light outward, we turn the light inward.

[33:24]

So inside and outside are simply relative terms. Up there and down here are simply relative terms. What's up there is here and what's here is there. It's one long rail of iron all the way through. So, all the little pieces are really all little pieces of one thing. But there's still one thing. If you want to find the whole thing, you can find it in any little piece. This is why Dogen says, the whole universe is reflected in a drop of water on the grass.

[34:32]

The whole sky and the whole heavens are reflected, the whole earth and the whole sky are reflected on a drop of dew on the grass. If you want to know the essence of the universe, just look inside yourself. If you know one teeny thing thoroughly, you'll know everything. That's why our practice is to just study this one thing. Just do this one thing thoroughly. We don't do a lot of things in our practice. We don't have a lot of variety in our practice. We just do this one thing thoroughly. Problem is, if you don't do it thoroughly, you say, well, what's next?

[35:36]

What else is there? That's because you're not doing it thoroughly. Then that's when that question comes up. But if you put your whole body, mind, spirit into just doing this one thing, investigating, may not be the right word, but again, the translation, just investigate this one thing thoroughly. So then he says, well, what is everybody's light? He asks his students, what is everybody's light? And then he said, the temple gate and the storehouse. If you want to know something very deep and profound, just look at the most ordinary thing.

[36:46]

like what's in front of you. Don't look someplace else. Just look right in front of you. Problem is that it's very hard to see what's right in front of us. And because it's so hard to see what's in front of us, we think it's somewhere else. This is the hard part. It's right here. There's no need to go anyplace else. although we do go here and there, you know, before we settle down to just being here. The hardest place to be is just here. Difficult. James. But why shouldn't it be that way?

[38:06]

If you look at the universe, it's going nuts. Why should we be any different? It's amazing that there is such a thing as harmony. That's amazing. It's not amazing that there should be discord. That's so-called discord. Discord is simply another form of harmony. But from our point of view, we don't like it, so we call it discord. But it's amazing, actually, that we do have ideas of peace and harmony and so forth. But if we want that, you have to make it. Don't look to somebody else to make it. Don't look out there for someone else to make it happen.

[39:09]

You have to make it happen. That's your job. Why aren't you doing that? You have to make peace within the pain of your life. You can't wait for all the pain to go away. So when we sit zazen, we have to make peace within the pain of this activity. We have to find harmonious settledness within the difficulty that we're having. Otherwise, there's no such thing. You can't just keep smoothing out the covers, you know. You smooth out the covers and then somebody climbs in the bed

[40:13]

You put on your nice clean clothes and you walk under a tree in the dark and the bird drops the shits on your head, you know. In Buddhism that's called an embarrassing situation. That's true. That was Ingo. Ingo, thank you. And James was talking about feeling lost and not knowing what to do. There's skeptical doubt, and then there's doubt as a dynamic tension in contrast to faith. So where is the distinction, or how can we sort of maintain a healthy doubt when we start feeling that sort of lost or maybe

[41:22]

Well, doubt in practice means that you don't take anything for granted. That's the healthy doubt. It means that you don't just accept things because so-and-so says they're like this. you investigate everything for yourself. That's the doubt. Skeptical doubt is when you don't believe, you're not sure that you believe something, you know, or you're not sure of the validity, and so you step out, you're always criticizing. Skeptical doubt is the critic, the one who's always, ah, well, you know, I don't think, you know. So doubt is fine because it provides a counter to your faith and a balance to your faith, but when it becomes skeptical then you're no longer able to move.

[42:33]

Faith and doubt go together within practice. Skepticism takes you outside and makes you an observer. As soon as you become the observer, that's the gap. That's where you get lost. So the observer, if you try to see it, that's the observer. you, it becomes dim and dark. So you have to be in it. Even, no matter, you can have lots of doubt within it, you know, but you practice with your doubt, you know, and you use it rather than having it use you. Well, Right, so doubt has a function and we should be able to appreciate it and use it as an investigative tool.

[44:34]

So, and then he had an afterword. another word, later again he said, it's better not to say anything even if it's a good remark. In other words, you know, Uman is presenting this, then he asks the question, what is everyone's light? And then he said, the gate, the temple gate and the storeroom. And then he said, it may be better not to say anything, even if it's a good remark. So, you know, what can you say, right? You say what you can say and you make some expression. And everything is a finger pointing to the moon.

[45:44]

So then Setso says, it illuminates itself. This Komyo illuminates itself. It doesn't need anything else. It's self-illuminating. Big Mind is self-illuminating. Absolutely bright. Self-illuminating also can mean that practice originates with you. One way to recognize when a student is a student passing a certain stage is when the practice originates from the student. You don't have to say, you should do this.

[46:48]

The student takes on or authors their own practice. They don't need anybody else to tell them what to do. This is, although there may be some doubt, it's the place that goes beyond the doubt. So a strong self-motivation is the characteristic of a convinced Zen student. I'm just going to say that faith without the doubt turns into smugness and self-righteousness. There's a way that it goes too far if there isn't the not knowing. Well, that can be, yeah.

[47:54]

Faith needs doubt, but more characteristically, faith is naivety. in that it's the impulse to believe and the impulse to believe can be caught by anything. So we all have the impulse to believe and so we believe in various things before we reach the ultimate thing to believe in. And doubt helps to say, oh no, don't believe in that, don't believe in this, don't believe in that, go this way, go that way. I'm not so sure about that one. So the doubt is necessary to keep faith, because faith is just out there and it's the wonderful goodness and impulse, but it easily becomes corrupted. Don't be caught by it.

[49:01]

By it? By the light, by the dark, by the faith, by the doubt. There's a balance. There's balance. All things should be balanced. Absolutely. Because I know, I just have to be clear, I think it has faith in doubt. Faith in doubt? Yeah. Yeah, that's called skepticism. So that's right, everything should be balanced. This is like the controlling factors that I talked about a little while ago, agility of mind and flexibility and so forth. All these factors need to be balanced out. Faith is an important factor but it has to be balanced because you see how it dominates certain religious factions and makes them fanatics. So yes, faith is wonderful, but it has to really be controlled.

[50:05]

We use control in different ways. One way to think about control is this, right? Another way to think about control is let everything just balance itself out, then things will be controlled. If there's complete balance, then there's no need to control anything. One form of that control, because the idea of controlling everything is, to me, at first hearing, ridiculous, but it is, what do I get out of that? What am I getting out of this? Control? Out of what? Out of anything, a particular viewpoint, a particular faith, a particular... When I feel caught, Sometimes I have to say, what am I getting out of this? That's good. Right. So as soon as you think, what am I getting out of this? You know that you're caught. So best to say, I don't want to get anything out of this.

[51:09]

And then you let go of your gaining mind and enter beginner's mind. You just do one thing and you do it thoroughly. What is the one thing that you do? Oh. Well, let go of everything. And then you'll have infinite variety without trying. What's my dharma name? Infinite Variety? No, let go. That would be a good dharma name.

[52:14]

This is my dharma name. I know, but I mean the combination, let go, infinite variety. Let go and embrace moon is the same difference. Yeah. You know, we look at a tide pool and it looks like nothing's happening, but when you look closely all kinds of things are happening in this world. And the more closely we look, the more we see that more and more things are happening in this world. And there's infinite variety. There's infinite variety in each breath, actually. There's infinite variety in each moment of your posture. Letting go of wanting to do anything else than what we're doing. Then the next moment will present itself in its infinite variety. But, you know, there's a space where there are millions of things going on, and so many things it's confusing.

[53:36]

Or there's the space where there's only one thing going on, but it's huge. There's Paisley, and then there's something that's one color. And you know, zazen mind is described as an empty sheet of paper and then a bird flies across, or an empty sky, and then a bird flies across the empty sky. And when the bird flies across the empty sky, you know it's the sky. And what's the antidote to boredom? Spaciousness. Patience. But patience doesn't mean waiting for something.

[54:39]

It means the ability to be there without moving. To be in the moment. Even if it's boring, just be bored. Well, boring simply means not connected. You know, we need something interesting to bind the mind. But what do we call interesting? That's because you didn't come back to now. You just thought you came back to now. You just left what you were doing, but you didn't settle on now.

[55:42]

So you were left up in limbo. Not now. It might be, but then boring might not be boring. Boring might be interesting. Could be. Investigate boring. bore into it. Anyway, we're getting late. So, Uman gives a clue to the secret, flowers have fallen, trees give no shade, means like there's nothing standing out there with nothing, totally naked.

[56:52]

Seeing is not non-seeing, non-seeing is it eludes you, and if you don't try to see it, it's there. In other words, if you don't get self-conscious, boredom is self-consciousness. You're suddenly aware of yourself with nothing to connect with. That's self-consciousness. That's trying to see. Facing backwards on the ox, he rides into the Buddha hall. Facing backwards means wherever you ride the ox backwards into the Buddha hole, any direction is okay. He has total freedom, he's not bound by anything and wherever he is, he's not bored. This boredom is a really interesting subject.

[58:03]

It's not boring at all, because that's that moment where you lose connection with your life, that gap, the moment where you lose connection with your life. So when you're sitting Zazen, you know, the mind is looking for something to grasp because that's the nature of it. And then there's nothing to grasp. So there's boredom. And that's the place where you've lost connection. So how do you reconnect? You reconnect by settling on where you are. You have to do it, it's a matter of life and death. Because as soon as you're bored, you've lost your life. You've lost your vital connection.

[59:11]

You're wanting something else besides what's here. That's the dream life. So in the dream life, we create our scenario And as soon as the scenario is pulled out from under us, we're lost. That's called the life of delusion. So where are your real steps? In the Sagara Mudra Samadhi, Dogen says, to walk on the bottom of the ocean with your feet while you're swimming in the waves with your arms. So this is our practice, is to walk on the bottom of the ocean with your feet so that the rug can never be pulled out from under you.

[60:16]

And I think for me, boredom is more aversion. Maybe just a different word, it's a kind of aversion. I want to do something else. I want to not, it's like, it's frustrating. So I've disconnected because I don't like this pain, I guess. It's just kind of frustrating. And I was trying, you know, just to accept the pain or let go in some sense. So I would no longer have that. boredom. I couldn't find a way to do it. Well, I don't know if I would call it boredom. It might be boredom. But it's losing the connection because then you just get into your breath. There's always a place to go into the breath. So where do you go when you can't go anyplace? When there's no place to go, where will you go? That's the point where you have to get to. Otherwise, you're missing out.

[61:41]

It's like, where do I go when there's no place to go? That's the koan of zazen. I can't get up, and I can't stay here. And I can't move.

[61:58]

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