Good evening. I've been doing a series of talks some of the time on cases, stories from the Book of Serenity collection of koans or teaching stories. Thanks to Dylan for suggesting that. Tonight I want to do case 21, one of my favorite Zen stories. It's one that I've talked about numbers of times. Some of you have heard me talk about it. First spoke about it when I was 29 years ago. It was my story I used for my Shuso ceremony. So I thought for my last talk before my sabbatical I would talk about this story again. And it features two brothers

[01:05]

Yun-Yan and Dao-Wu. Yun-Yan was the teacher of Dongshan, who was the founder of our lineage in China and who wrote the Song of the Jomar Samadhi we just chanted. So well I'll say more about Yun-Yan, but first the story itself. As Yun-Yan was sweeping the ground, Dao-Wu said, too busy. Yun-Yan said, you should know there's one who's not busy. Dao-Wu said, if so then there's a second moon. Yun-Yan held up the broom and said, which moon is this? So that's the whole story. It's a wonderful story. Yun-Yan was famous as a Zen failure, Chan failure. He studied with a few of the greatest teachers in all of China's history and still didn't get it. So this was well known and there's lots of stories about

[02:07]

that. There's a chapter on him in my book on Dongshan, just this is it, which I'll refer to. But this is a story, I don't know, while he was still a student, a monk, that reveals Yun-Yan's amazing awareness. Anyway, he was sweeping the ground, cleaning the temple, something we do every Sunday, something that's part of the regular daily schedule for monks in training monasteries. And Dao-Wu was his dharma brother but also his biological brother. There are many stories, many of the koans, about the two of them and dialogues between the two of them. But anyway, this time Yun-Yan was sweeping the ground and Dao-Wu said, too busy. Yun-Yan said, you should know there's one who's not busy. So that's an amazing statement and I'll say more about it. Dao-Wu said, hey, so if so then

[03:12]

there's a second moon? Yun-Yan held up the broom and said, which moon is this? So, well, I'll read the, there's a lot going on in the story and we'll get to a little bit of it today. The introduction by Wansong to the case chosen by Hongzhe, they were both important teachers and Soto teachers, Tsao-Tung teachers in China. Having shed illusion and enlightenment, having cut off holy and ordinary, although there are not so many things, setting up hosts and guests and distinguishing noble and mean is a special house. It's not that there is no giving jobs on assessment of ability, but how do you understand siblings with the same breath adjoining branches? So there's just the basic question of what does it mean that there's one who's not busy? How do we see this? I think the

[04:15]

story, you know, is especially relevant for us in our time and maybe for us as lay practitioners going out into our worlds of Chicago, in between coming here to do this meditation practice and hopefully doing it at home regularly, too. But all of us might at times feel like we're too busy. How many people ever feel like they're too busy? I didn't see anybody who didn't raise their hand. Maybe Ed. Oh, he raised his hand, okay. So Yun-Yun said you should know there's one who is not busy. This is part of what we learn by doing this practice of just sitting, being upright, allowing Buddha to be present on our seat. There's one who's

[05:21]

not busy. This is kind of wonderful and yet, you know, the one who's not busy, the one who's not caught by the conditioning of the world, by this, by the gain and loss and distinctions and dualisms of the world, the one who's not busy. Yun-Yun said that the one who was not busy was right there amidst his busy sweeping. Dao said if so, then there's a second moon. So this is an important challenge. Is the one who's not busy separate from when you think you're busy, when you're working or studying or doing whatever you're doing during the week, when you feel like you're too busy? Is the one who's not busy something that

[06:26]

only happens when you come and sit on your seat in Zazen or when you're not caught up in the affairs of the world? Is this a second moon? Is this a separate being? So this is an important question for our practice. Yun-Yun, amazingly, just held up his broom and said, which moon is this? He didn't take any sides. He asked a question, which questions are always in some ways more effective than explanations, certainly, or descriptions. So just a little bit from Wansong's commentary. These two old men feared that people would set up a reality body as apart from the physical body. So there's a story about a teacher

[07:27]

and Chan traveler from the South. And the teacher said, for us here, the Buddha nature is completely unborn and undying. Your Buddha nature in the South there is half-born, half-dying, half-unborn, and undying. And when asked what he meant, the teacher said, here we say body and mind are one suchness. There's nothing outside of mind. Therefore, it's completely unborn and undying, even in the middle of your busyness. You in the South say body is impermanent, while the spiritual nature is permanent. There it's half-born, half-dying, half-unborn, and undying. So this is a fundamental issue. Is there a impermanent, changing body, physical body subject to illness and old age and all of that, separate from a spiritual nature that's permanent? Are they separate? Is samsara separate from nirvana?

[08:28]

Yunyan quotes, well, Yunyan held up the broom and said, which moon is this? And Wansong says, this expression originally comes from the heroic March scripture, the Surangama Sutra, which says, like the second moon, who will say it is the moon? Who will deny it? For Manjushri, only one moon is real. In between, there is naturally nothing that is or is not the moon. So is there something that is, so the moon, you know, represents wholeness. When they talk about the moon, they're talking about the full moon, although there's a whole dialogue between Yunyan and Dawu. Maybe I'll get to that about the full moon and the half moon and the rotten new moon and, you know, different phases of the moon. But anyway, the moon represents wholeness. The moon represents awakening, fullness, totality. Which moon is this? So the commentary, the added saying for that is

[09:34]

Dawu said, if so, then there's a second moon. And Wansong's comment, only two? There's a hundreds, thousands, myriads. So this planet only has one moon. But what about the moons of Jupiter or Saturn or all the other moons in your mind? Which moon is this? Can we live in wholeness where there's one, where you remember there's one who's not busy? So I'll just read Hongzhe's verse out of respect, but I'm going to mostly talk about just some reflections on this basic story. But Hongzhe said, borrowing temporarily, Yunyan comprehends the gateway, realizing the function as is appropriate. Dawu then rests. So Dawu let it go when Yunyan said, which moon is this? The snake handler on elephant bone crag

[10:44]

refers to Yunmen. The doings of childhood seem shameful when you're old. So what about being too busy? How do we understand our busyness or how do we understand within our busyness? So, one part of the commentary I wanted to add. Oh, well, there's this story that Wansong throws in here about misunderstanding this oneness of the one who's not busy and busyness, which of course we all do.

[11:45]

But he tells a story about Xuefeng, who later became a great teacher when he was studying with Dongshan, the student of Yunyan who wrote the Jewel Marrow Samadhi. Dongshan, Xuefeng was working, Sepo is his name in Japanese, maybe he was one of the Marx brothers. But anyway, Dongshan came by while Xuefeng, who was a famous Tenzo, he worked as a Tenzo in many temples, and Dongshan came by when he was cleaning rice and said, are you cleaning the grit getting rid of the rice or cleaning the rice getting rid of the grit? Xuefeng said grit and rice are gone at once. Dongshan asked, said, what will the community eat? Xuefeng then turned over the bowl, dumping it all out on the ground. Dongshan said, you've got it all right, but you need to find someone else to teach you before you realize it. So, you know, if you think that the one who's not busy means getting rid of your

[12:51]

practical activities, that's not it. There's another passage in here I wanted to read. That's here somewhere. Well, I'll find it in here. So, the one who's not busy. What is this about the one who's not busy? So, just referring to some of my commentary and just this is it. In our modern age, many of us are preoccupied with multitasking. We can be inundated with information from all over the world thanks to the Internet and other

[13:53]

increasingly speedy technologies. Some contemporary occupations and activities require responding at a pace that is measured in nanoseconds. So, we can all easily feel too busy. Sweeping the ground, like Yun-Yang was doing, is not something that can be accomplished once and for all. New dust or falling leaves land on the path. It must be swept afresh. So, even though we do temple cleaning on Sundays here, we still have to do it again the next Sunday. It's not like we do it once and you're finished. The same with Zazen or like brushing your teeth. It's not something you do once and then you never have to do it again. There's no end to the dust, no end to sweeping. We may be unbothered by the dust and allow it to pile up for a while, but eventually spring cleaning will come around. We will need to pick through and brush away the detritus. Hopefully, there will be another spring. You know, in in our context, we might consider sweeping

[14:57]

the ground in some mountain monastery as a soothing, relaxing, even pastoral pastime. You know, sounds very picturesque and peaceful. We may all reflect on whether we are too busy to appreciate the natural organic rhythms of our life, of the world, and of reality itself. So, meditative attentiveness and settling offers us communion with something deeper, some deeper awareness of being not busy. The question is how to fully occupy and engage our lives during our busy worldly life. We might check whether we also remember that there's one who is not busy. So, the one who's not busy is not something we to discover or create, but it's already right here, right on your seat. There's one who's not busy. But do you know it? Do you remember it? Can you feel it? Even when you go out

[16:00]

and go to work or deal with people in your life. So, Dao was concerned that his brother-in-law was distracted by his work, from inquiry into the great matter of life and death, and from expression of fundamental reality. So, part of our work in our sitting, in our practice, in our life, is to open up this deeper reality. But Yun Yan was unhesitating and said you should know there's one who's not busy. Even in the middle of engaging our active responsibilities, one may be somehow connected with something that is not too busy and serves as an ever-present inner resource. So, in Wan Song's commentary, he says Yun Yan and Dao Wu were illuminating the active

[17:04]

conditions of the Dong Shan lineage. Dong Shan being Yun Yan's student. This fundamental reality of the one who's not busy. He also says, this is the part I was looking for in the text, as you eat, boil tea, sew, sweep, you should recognize the one not busy. Then you will realize the union of mundane reality and enlightened reality. In the Dong Shan lineage, this is called simultaneous inclusion. Naturally not wasting any time. So, on the Han out here, it says life and death is the great matter. Don't waste time. My teacher, Rob Anderson, in a Shosan ceremony was asked, what does it mean to not waste time? And he said we waste time whenever we do not know there is one who is not busy. But then how does the one who is not busy function in the world? It's not enough to just settle into the

[18:07]

one who's not busy. That would be the second moon. That would be something other than our lives. So, Gary Snyder, the great American Zen pioneer, said that Zen comes down to two activities. Zazen and cleaning the temple. That's it. But it's up to us, each of us, to decide how widely the temple boundaries stretch. Are you still at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate when you're in the middle of your day at work? Is the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate there? Is your Zazen seat there? Is the one who's not busy there? While not busy still, we may extend our aware helpful activity to respond to a range of situations in the world, even beyond our immediate surroundings. So, there's much more to say about all of this. Well, a

[19:15]

little bit more. So, Wansong again comments on Dao's line, if so then there's a second moon, with the added saying, only two there's hundreds, thousands, myriads. Once we enter awareness of the differences, of the different kinds of beings, the different kinds of situations, there may be innumerable activities and our lives become fragmented. Might there be one not busy on each of those different moons? So again, Wansong says this expression, the one not busy originally comes from the Surangama Samadhi Sutra, which says, like the second moon, who will say it is the moon, who will say, who will deny it? For Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who sits in front of the Buddha on her altar, only one moon is real. In between there is naturally nothing that

[20:20]

is or is not the moon. But we could also, you know, wonder if is there even one moon? Or are there hundreds of moons? Where is our reality? So, just a couple of comments from Dogen about this story. Dogen quoted the story and said, who sweeps the ground and also sees the moon? Holding up the moon, his sweeping is truly not in vain. Within tens of thousands of moons is placed this moon. Although called the second, how could there be a first? So what is the nature of the reality of all of the different activities and awarenesses that happen within a week of our awareness? Another

[21:21]

bit from Dogen commenting on this story. This is from an essay in his Shobo Genzo collection called The Moon. Dogen quoted a talk by Hongzhe, who wrote the cases and verses for the Book of Serenity, who said, the clear body and mind disperses appearances and embraces the moon at midnight. It is spiritually self-illuminated, vast and always empty. Dogen celebrates this as an incitement to sustain practice. He closes by saying, why has our ancestor, Yonyans, which moon is this, suddenly appeared as a round

[22:22]

sitting cushion? So this question, which moon is this? Is your seat, is your posture, is your zazen practice? For Dogen, the realization of total non-duality and wholeness represented by the moon glows when expressed in upright sitting practice. But still, it's not just there. So Dogen closes his essay by expressing his wish to support Buddha and increase the radiance of the moon palace and illuminate the darkness of delusion. He says, because of Buddha's majestic power, the palace is bright. A thousand glorious rays appeared at once. Even if humans love the moon in mid-autumn, the brightness of the half moon is boundless in the heavens. So there are many moons, many phases of the moons. And you know, the story seems to be pointing to

[23:28]

the oneness of our activity and of wholeness and remembering the one who's not busy. So just to consider the one who's not busy, even amid your busy activity, your so-called busy activity, your too-busy activity, can some part of you, you know, you don't have to think about it, but just is there one who's not busy in the middle of that? This is the challenge of our practice. And to not make it something separate. However, the second founder of Soto Zen in Japan after Dogen was a few generations later named Keizan, a very important teacher, not so much discussed in America, but venerated very much in Japanese Soto Zen. And there's a story about Keizan. So I'll mention this and then we can have

[24:33]

some time for discussion about the one who's not busy in the second moon. So one time Keizan was out walking with his, one of his students, Gassan, Gassan Joseki, who we're descended from also. Keizan asked, do you know that there are two moons? Do you know there are two moons? Gassan said he didn't and Keizan told him, if you don't know there are two moons, you are not a seedling of the Soto succession. So here, much later than, you know, so Yun Yan was in the 700s. Here in the 1300s, Keizan is saying, do you know there's two moons? So, you know, we might say that the two moons represent the two truths in early Madhyamaka

[25:39]

Buddhist teaching, the truth of the ultimate and the truth of the conventional. And that's certainly relevant to the story. The story is talking about how do we recall and express and embody the one who's not busy right in the middle of all of our activities. But Keizan said, you should know there are two moons. So, well, maybe that's enough. You should know there's one who's not busy. And yet, is that one separate from anything else or all the other moons? So, lots more to say about the story, but I'll stop. Comments, questions, responses, reflections. Do you know there's one who's not busy? Michael, when you were sweeping the ground at Tassajara, did you know there

[26:41]

was one who's not busy? That's a good answer. That's almost as good as saying which moon is this? Other comments? So, this is the fundamental issue of our practice. Can we realize the one not busy and then how is it present when we're not? Anyway, yes. Yeah, so when Keizan said, you should know there are two moons, maybe he meant

[27:59]

you should know there's one who is busy. Or when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. Well, I don't know, as Michael said. Yeah, this is the question. Belinda. Yeah, it's a great story. What do you do? It sounds like you let all the thoughts come and go and just be aware of what's happening. And when you are on that moon, that moon, then there really is. Because

[29:02]

busyness, to me, is a concept of time. Good. But if you can stay on that moon, then where's the time? Where's the business? But each moment includes the whole of the past and the whole of the future and the whole of the present. Oh, good. Yes, yeah. So this reminds me of another talk I heard of the Buddha's patience. The teacher said, ultimately what patience is, there really is nothing happening. Nothing really is happening. And of course, many things are happening, but there's no place for them. Yeah, I've heard that song, heaven is a place where nothing really happens. So, yeah, it just reminds me of this. It links to our practice, it links to this concept.

[30:09]

And there's nothing, really nothing to turn off. All the thoughts can be there. But, but, but, but, do we then just wallow in the one who's not busy? How do we take care of the world? And still, there's one who's not busy. Yes, Chris. I was just going to say that I guess it feels to me that busyness is the idea in itself. That the processes of what is happening, whether it's considered busy or not, requires a sort of judgment called accumulance. I don't think that, I mean, quite a lot is happening for a tree, for example.

[31:10]

It's hard to say for a tree, it seems to be somewhat busy. There's a lot going on over the course of a year for a tree, yeah. And I wonder if humans are uniquely busy-fied in a way that we, how we give birth to an idea of what it means to be busy. To pass judgment on ourselves that we are therefore busy. And maybe it's just a sort of, kind of like the statement of, I heavily paraphrase it because I can't remember, but the statement of humans are being and are already awakened. We just haven't realized it. We're diluted out of knowing it. Perhaps we are unbusy, we just happen to have this idea that we are. Yes, yes, and so we have some idea or judgment or feeling of, there's so many, all the thoughts going on,

[32:17]

as Belinda was saying in Zazen, or all the stuff that's happening in the middle of whatever activities we're doing. And yet, you should know there's one who is busy. So it's not enough to just, I mean it's tempting to just sit for 12 hours a day and just enjoy the one who's not busy, but that's not the point. The point is how do we bring that into activity? So forget the judgment not busy. Is there one who is, or in the middle of all of the activity required by a tree to take care of itself over the year, or by a human being to take care of itself over a week and take care of all the other people we're interrelated with? Is there one who's not busy in the middle of all that activity?

[33:20]

How do we take care of that activity and still know that other side of the unconditioned? This is a real challenge. This is practical matter. So yes, there's the side of it that is our judgment, as you were saying. Jamie, hi. Yeah, I'm so interested in this story because it kind of, the image of the moon upsets a lot of like the kind of easy platitudes of our practice, which is like, let's be in this moment or something. And I know that's maybe a bad thing to say, but I think like in the recognition of the two moons, there's something like a conflict of simultaneity versus temporality, in that the moon is phasal, like you said, so that there is a new moon. You never stand on the same moon twice or something like that.

[34:24]

And the misrecognition of the person who asked the question is, it says that there must be two moons. It's not that there's like a moon here and there. It's collapsing these things. It's just the phasal sense of a sense of time that the moon does not rush. In some ways, the archetypal one is not busy, even as it transforms constantly. Yeah. But are the two moons separate?

[35:36]

I mean, I think that at this point, it becomes the linguistic play. Well, okay. Like in the structure of the moon, it's... I have to tell the rest of the story then, or this other related story, because you're hitting on that. So this is another story about Yun Yan and his brother Dao Wu. And let me see if I can find it. This is actually another case that we'll get to in the Book of Serenity. This is a commentary into another case. And they're talking about aspects of the moon. And so the verse commentary to this case by Hongzhi says, One call and he turns his head. Do you know the self or not? Vaguely like the moon through ivy, a crescent at that.

[36:38]

The child of riches, as soon as he falls on the boundless roads of destitution, has such sorrow. That's a reference to the Lotus Sutra. But the point... Let me skip to the part that I wanted to talk about. There's a question in the middle of that commentary about whether... So there's the full moon and there's the half moon, say. And so Yan Shan was once gazing at the moon with his student Shan Dao. And the teacher asked, When the moon is a crescent, where does the round moon go? When it's full, where does the crescent moon go? Now, of course, as you were saying, this has to do with time.

[37:42]

But actually, the moon is just the moon. This is how, going back to what Chris was saying, this is just our perception. And what phase the moon is in is based on where the earth is. And, you know, it's one moon. Or is it? Anyway, when the moon is full, where does the crescent moon go? When the moon is a crescent, where does the round shape go? This is really a question about enlightenment and delusion. When we're only partially not busy, where does the one who's not busy go? When the one who's not busy is here, where does the one who's too busy go? That's the implication. And there's a dialogue about this. So Shandao said, When it's a crescent, the round shape is concealed. When it's full, the crescent shape remains. So he was kind of emphasizing the unful moon.

[38:48]

Like, that's the reality. But then Dao and Yunyan have things to say. Dao commented, When it's a crescent, yet it is not a crescent. When it's full, it's still not round. So you can't stand anywhere. Did we ever really land on the moon? So Yunyan, though, Dongshan's teacher said, When it's a crescent, the round shape remains. When it's full, the crescent does not exist. So when it's a crescent, actually, you can sort of see the fullness of the moon, right? It's in shadow. So that's kind of true on that level. But Yunyan, our ancestor in our lineage, says, When it's crescent, when it's too busy, the round shape remains. The one who's not busy is still there. When it's full, the crescent does not exist.

[39:51]

So anyway, that's another way of looking at it. So all of these old stories are just ways of talking about our practice. How do we deal with all of the busyness of our life? So thank you all for remembering there's one who's not busy, at least some of the time. Let's close with the four bodhisattva vows.

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