Good evening and welcome. For new people, I'm Tighen Leighton, the teacher here at Ancient Dragons Zengate. And tonight I will continue the series of talks I started recently of cases from the Book of Serenity Koan collection. Oh, maybe I'll wait. So the Book of Serenity is one of the major collections of teaching stories from the old ancestors and usually they're stories from the great Zen masters of the 8th and 9th century. This story tonight, case four, goes back to the story about Shakyamuni Buddha who lived 2,500 years ago.

[01:06]

So these, the stories, the cases and verses in the Book of Serenity were selected by Hongzhe Zhongzhui, a great Shaodong or Soto Zen master in the century before Dogen brought the Soto lineage to Japan from China. So I've talked about how it's constructed. There's the case in the verse and then commentaries by a later Zhaodong master, Wansong, before and after. So the case itself is very simple. Not simple, but short. As the World Honored One was walking with the congregation, he pointed to the ground with his finger and said, This spot is good to build a sanctuary, to build a temple. Indra, emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground, and said, the temple is built.

[02:10]

The world-honored one smiled. So that's the whole story. So I don't know if this is historical. actual story. We don't have any videotapes of this, so it may not be. Indra is the Indian creator deity, and many of you know him from the image of Indra's net from the Flower Ornament Sutra, which describes the whole universe in all of reality as this intricate network in which Every mesh in the net has a jewel, and that reflects the jewels around it, and those reflect the jewels around them. So Indra's net is this really kind of wondrous image of a kind of holographic universe, in some ways congruent with some of modern physics.

[03:26]

But here, Indra is just one of the congregation. He's just one of the people seated in the congregation. And then they're doing kinhin. They're going out and walking in the neighborhood of where they were sitting. And maybe they didn't have a structure built yet, so the Buddha pointed to the ground and said, This spot is a good place to build a sanctuary, to build a temple. And walking around in the mountains, sometimes we can find spaces or we can see spaces that seem to be, to have spirit, to be juicy in some ways, to be a good place. And there's a whole science in East Asia and China and Japan of studying geomancy, it's called, studying the energy of the spaces physical spaces out in the woods or out in the mountains.

[04:35]

So anyway, the Buddha decided it was a good place to build a sanctuary. Indra was one of the people walking, just picked up a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground, and said, the temple's built. So that's the story. There's a lot of things that might be said about it. But I'll read first the verse commentary by Hongxue, which I'll come back to, but I'll just read it now first. Hi, Mary, come on in. So again, just to repeat the case, the story, the basic story, the World Honored One, the Buddha, was walking with his congregation. He pointed to the ground with his finger and said, this spot is good to build a temple. Indra, emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground and said, the temple's built. The World Honored One smiled. So Hongzhi's first comment goes, the boundless spring on the hundred plants, picking up what comes to hand, he uses it knowingly.

[05:45]

The 16 foot tall golden body, a collection of virtuous qualities, casually leads him by the hand into the red dusts. So Buddha is described as having a 16 foot tall body. These are standard images. He leads him by the hand into the red dust, and the dust refers to the dust of the world. You know, everything outside the sanctuary, maybe. Able to be master in the dust from outside creation, a guest shows up. Everywhere life is sufficient in its way, no matter if one is not as clever as others. So that's Hongzhe's verse comment, and I'll come back to that. But what's going on here? What's this blade of grass? Is this some special blade of grass that Indra found? That Indra, knowing how the world was, because he's the creator deity in that system, said, oh, yeah, and he put it in the ground.

[06:47]

Well, I don't think so. I think it's any blade of grass. So there are lots of stories, other stories about grass. We just chanted the song of the grass hut by Shuto. Shichuan, Sekito in Japanese, very important figure in our Cao Dong and Soto lineage. He did also the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, the Sando Kai, which we sometimes chant, which has basic image of sameness and difference, of wholeness and the universal and the particular, we could say. in the Song of the Grass Hut is about also building a sanctuary or building a temple. And Shuto actually had a built a little grass, a little thatched weed hermitage near his temple. He had a temple where he trained many, many students, but he also, I've seen a picture of the rock where it was built.

[07:51]

The rock is still there. The hut, of course, has vanished. One thing to say is that this grass hut, grass has a different meaning in East Asia. This refers to weeds, so we say, I've built a grass hut where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared. So the whole thing is weeds. They don't have very sculpted lawns, it's not something that happens in East Asia. Grasses are around, but they're kind of weeds on one level. On another level, there's a story about Manjushri, the great bodhisattva of wisdom whose image is below the Buddha on our altar. So in this story also involves the Buddha, Oh, no, actually, it's not about the Buddha.

[08:59]

It's about Manjushri and... Let me get to that story. Yeah, so Manjushri asked Sudhana, who was the great pilgrimage of the last chapter of the Great Pilgrim of the Flower Ornament Sutra, who wandered around to different teachers, different Bodhisattva teachers. Anyway, in this story, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, asked Sudhana to bring him one stalk of medicinal herb, one stalk of grass, one stalk of grass that was medicinal. And after some time, this pilgrim Sudhana came back and said that he couldn't find a single blade of grass that was not medicinal. So all the grasses are weeds and all the grasses are also medicine.

[10:00]

all the grasses are opportunities for healing. And this grass that Indra pulled out of the ground and stuck in the ground to build a sanctuary for the Buddha certainly had healing properties. The Buddha smiled. So we could also note that all medicines are also poisons if you take too much of them. So there's a lot going on, actually, in this story. But part of it is just, as Hongxia says in his first comment, He uses, he picks up what comes to hand. He uses what comes to hand. So we chant the four bodhisattva vows, which include dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. How is each situation, each blade of grass, an opportunity?

[11:02]

A place where we can find our bodhimandala, our place of sitting, our place of awakening. Another reference is Laman Pong, the great Tang dynasty Chan adept, who said, the thousand grass tips are the minds of the Buddhas and ancestors. So this is about the phenomenal world and the ultimate reality that happens right in the phenomenal world. How do we build our How do we build a temple? How do we build a sanctuary for the Buddha in our world, in our life? And Indra just took a plate of grass and stuck it in the ground. I'll read Wansong's introduction.

[12:08]

As soon as a single mote of dust arises, the whole earth is contained therein. So this is like the, Indra's net, the holographic image of each atom containing the whole world. This is what Wansung said in effect. As soon as a single mote of dust arises, the whole earth is contained therein. Who is this person who can be master in any place and meet the source in everything? How do we find In each situation, in each difficulty, in our everyday life, in the red dust of the world, how do we find our place to build a sanctuary, to build a place to find our seat, to find a way for us to just be present and upright and pay attention to what's going on on our seat?

[13:12]

apart from our ideas of who we are and what the world is. What is it like when we sit zazen as we just have? What is it like to be present, to just sit, to be as we are here tonight? So our zazen is not about reaching some special experience or reaching some particular understanding, but actually right in the middle of the red dust, right in the middle of all of the stuff of our life, all of the stuff you've been going through today or this week or this lifetime, where is the blade of grass to build a sanctuary, to build a temple, to find a place where we can let go of hundreds of years avow all of our ancient twisted karma and relax completely. So I don't think people usually think that Zazen practice is about relaxing completely.

[14:20]

You know, there's some discomfort in our knee or our back or some problem in our heart this week or some situation with the people we deal with through the week or some situation with what's happening in our country or the world that makes it hard to relax completely. And yet, when we can relax completely, we actually can step into the world. Hongzhi's first comment, again, the boundless spring on the hundred plants, spring arising with hundreds of plants. Picking up what comes to hand, he uses it knowingly. The 16 foot tall golden body, that is the Buddha, is a collection of virtuous qualities and casually leads him, in this case, Indra, by the hand into the red dust.

[15:23]

So our Zazen practice is not an escape from the dusts of the world and the 10,000 grass tips and all the phenomena. It's how do we do something there? How do we transform something there? And the Hongshou's verse goes on. Able to be master in the dusts from outside creation, a guest shows up. So I love this line. In Soto Zen, and in Zen, we talk about master and guest, or host and guest. So in some sense, in this story, Buddha's the master, and Indra's a guest. Except Hongxue says, from outside creation, a guest shows up. from outside creation, beyond conditioning, beyond our usual ideas of the world.

[16:27]

So this happens in Zazen sometimes from outside creation, from outside all of the world that we have created in our heart-mind, that we inhabit. Sometimes from outside creation a guest shows up. It's worth noticing when such a guest shows up. Everywhere life is sufficient in its way, no matter if one is not as clever as others. It's not about some particular capacity. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, each plate of grass, life is sufficient in its way. Of course, it's hard to see that. And in some ways, when we see the difficulties around us, just to think that life is sufficient, well, Is this enough? But when we see this wholeness and the way in which it is sufficient in its way, maybe that includes our responses, our even interventions in harm that's happening in the world.

[17:44]

This is the aspect of precepts. So this is not separate from trying to be helpful in the world, but from outside creation a guest shows up. What kind of guest is that? How will you greet her when she shows up? In Wansong's commentary about this verse, he says, Chiantong, another name for Hongxia, Chiantong's verse emerges from the merging of subject and object. This is the harmonizing of sameness and difference. It's talking about something similar. It is not just the ancient sages, but you too can be host within the dust right now and also come as a guest from outside creation.

[18:47]

So we switch back and forth. Sometimes we are just the master, the host. And then sometimes a guest shows up, and sometimes we can be that guest showing up from outside creation. How do we work with this situation to build the temple? In this little storefront temple we have, we will be celebrating in January its 10th anniversary. Looking forward to that. It's a little ways away, but I'm thinking about it already. What will we do to celebrate? It was just red dust when we found it. It was a gut rehab and we were able to design this space. I want to also read Dogen's commentary to this story from his extensive record.

[19:58]

And then we'll have some time for comments, discussions, questions. In some ways, it's a very simple story. But I want to come back to the aspect of walking meditation. This is something that one finds these grasses, when one goes out, when one gets up and does kin-hin. So Dogen quotes the story, basically the same story that, so just to say as a footnote, Dogen knew the cases and the verses that Hongzhe, a century before him, had selected, he did not know the Book of Serenity as we know it, because Wansong was contemporary of Dogen. Slightly later, he was up in Beijing when Dogen was practicing at Mount Tiantong. They didn't know about each other at all. So the Book of Serenity that we have has these commentaries by Wansong, who was also an important teacher in our lineage.

[21:01]

Dogen, who brought it to Japan, comments just on these cases that Hongzhe selected, sometimes on the verses anyway. In the book of, in Dogen's extensive record, he says, he quotes the story and then he said, the bright hundreds of grasses encounter spring again. So grass, so the weeds keep coming, you know. And we can appreciate the weeds, some of them are beautiful, some of them have flowers. He takes one blade and lets it function intimately, The 16-foot golden body erects a sanctuary. The lotus shrine has never been tainted by the mud in the water, Dogen says. So the lotus image in Buddhism is a lotus flower growing out of a muddy, watery place. And so this practice grows out of the mud of our lives. There's a line in the Blue Cliff Record, the more mud, the greater the Buddha.

[22:07]

So we may feel like there's lots of muddy waters, but anyway, and we also have Aretha Franklin showing respect. The Lotus Shrine has never been tainted, Dogen says. In this hall, he is the original host, and there he receives guests, peacefully following the Buddha in walking meditation in this place. So Dogen mentions walking meditation, Kinhen specifically. People of the Buddha way are not like those of the conditioned triple world. So there's this, in this story, there's this tension between the Buddha and the sanctuary and the dusts and grasses of the world. How do we bring them together? How do we respond? After settling into this place where we can, where there's nothing extra, where everything is sufficient and we can relax completely,

[23:14]

And then we go out and do walking meditation in Chicago. How do we take care of that? As one song says, who is this person who can be master in any place and meet the source in everything? So this is our challenge. So I can keep talking about grass stories in the sutras and in the koans, but maybe I'll just stop there. Does anyone have questions, comments, responses, reflections about any of this, about how to build a temple, about how to find a space that's suitable? about how to use all of the weeds. Zuki Roshi also talked about mind weeds, all of the weeds growing in our mind.

[24:16]

How do we use this? So, questions, reflections, comments, please feel free. Chant. From outside creation. Yes. Yeah, David McReynolds passed away.

[25:38]

He's on our shigaki list. Great, great pacifist leader of the last century. Yeah, it's a strange line that Wang Tsung throws in there. Or no, that Hongxia throws in there. From outside creation. From outside creation. Hongxia had that line in his verse. From outside creation, a guest shows up. Maybe all guests are outside creation, but of course, all of creation includes hosts and guests. It includes this meeting that we have with ourselves and each other. How could there be something outside creation? Is this an extraterrestrial? Ed? I'm curious if it's the first category of things that would be outside creation. Things that are recognitions. And recognition is a secret event, insofar as the process of creation.

[26:43]

I didn't hear you. It's a secret event, did you say? A sacred event. Sacred, yes, good. So, just as a blade of grass can be a temple that can serve America, chaos in the United States. A temple can be nothing more than a blade of grass that has been in a good place for some time. Right. Or, you know, wandering around, you might meet a tree that you like and that feels like your sacred place. Trees are much bigger than just blades of grass, but still. And on another level, as we're sitting, from outside creation, in a sense we, as I was saying before, we all have the world we've created, our idea of ourself, our idea of how the world is, the world we inhabit, our family and residence and job and all the things that we think we know that is creation.

[27:54]

And then something happens. from outside creation, from outside our creation, from outside what we think is creation. Something new. There's a koan about, can you tell me something that's never been thought of? Or a word that's never been said. What is this coming from outside creation? So we should pay attention when such guests arrive. Hey, Shin. Or maybe just that creation is expanding.

[28:59]

So in Buddhism, the creator deity, like the Abrahamic God, is a minor figure. And we don't think about God in that way. But I like the word creation for everything because in some ways everything is being created together right now with each inhale, with each exhale. Yes? And then there's like all of you, and you're all kind of minor figures in my little drama set. Everybody else is a guest, right? If we let it be, everyone is a major figure. Good. Yes, Belinda. Thank you for the talk.

[30:09]

What you shared and everyone shared made me think of actually we are all Well, good. Thank you all very much. Maybe we'll I close now with the Four Bodhisattva Vows, which are next to the last page of your chant book. We chant three times.

[30:48]

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