This morning I'm going to speak about one of the stories in the Kōan collection from Ehei Dōgen, the 13th century founder of this tradition of Sōtō Zen, who brought it from China to Japan. This is a collection of 90 cases with his own first comments from his extensive record. The one I want to talk about this morning I'll read the case in the verse and then comment on each. An ancient said, the bright clear hundreds of grass tips are the bright clear mind of the ancestral teachers. So that's the whole case, that's the story. And then Dogen's first comment, although wanting it all tied up for tens of thousands of miles, nothing holds. staying within the gate. Do not wait for the brightness of others.

[01:06]

Without your caring, it is easy to lose the path of active practice. Even the hard of hearing feel moved by the sound of evening rain." So, I'll come back to the verse. I want to talk about the main case first. So Dogen writes here, an ancient said, and actually we know that this is a quote from the great layman Pan, an eighth century Zen adept, who remained a layman, he did not become ordained as a monk, did not become a formal teacher, but he's considered a great, great Zen adept and master. So he said, the bright clear hundreds of grass tips the bright, clear minds and hearts of the ancestral teachers. So this is about the ancestors, the ancestral teachers and the ancestors.

[02:09]

Actually, in this line, Shobhak Gauden might have translated it as the ancestral teacher, referring to Bodhidharma who's on our altar. The Indian master who came to China and is considered the founder of Chan or Zen. but really it refers to all the ancestral teachers. So all these Zen stories are stories about great masters in China and Japan, and we talk about Suzuki Roshi who came to America the same way, but these ancestral teachers are very important to us. We look back at these stories So the word koan, just my usual disclaimer, is confusing to some people. And in some branches of Zen, that's considered a kind of riddle to solve, or you have to pass through it and go through it all. There's hundreds of them. But the point is that these old teaching stories teach us something.

[03:12]

These are not historical artifacts from, in this case, the 700s. have something to do with our practice today, which is why we study them. So, this teaching story again says, in an age of Zen, referring to Laman Pang, and Dogen selected these cases and phrased them, the bright, clear hundreds of grass tips are the bright, clear minds of the ancestral teachers. So, a little bit more about Laman Pang. He was considered a great Zen master, and actually his daughter, Ling Zhao, and his wife and his son were also very adept at Zen, but there are many stories about Laman Pound. There's a whole collection of his recorded sayings, which has been translated into English. Maybe most famous is, he said, my magical powers are chopping wood and carrying water. So everyday activities. Back then, that was everyday activities.

[04:14]

They didn't have indoor plumbing, and they didn't have electric lights, so they chopped wood for their fuel, and they carried water from wherever the nearest well was, or stream. Anyway, he said, that's my magical power. So, traditionally, Buddhist meditation is sometimes taken up by people who want to get special powers. superpowers, you know. And of course, there's a kind of power that comes from just sitting, but that's not the point of our practice. Our practice is about just everyday things, and that's what this story is really about, the whole story. So, it's appropriate that Layman Pang talks about this, He actually was a student, he went back and forth, as has happened often in China, between two of the great, in this case, in his case, between two of the great masters of all times.

[05:21]

Shito, who's the author, or Sekito in Japanese, is the author of the Song of the Grass Hut and the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, which we chant regularly. He's, so Shito was the, teacher of, Yun-Yan's teacher. Yun-Yan was the teacher of Dong-Shan, who I've talked about a lot in terms of his stories. Anyway, so he's, so Shito is kind of the predecessor of, Dong-Shan was the founder of Sao Domo Shoto Zen, so that's our lineage. But, Reimen-Kan also studied with the great teacher, Mazu, who, three generations after him, was the great teacher, Linji, So the Rinzai side said, anyway, Lama Pong was a great adept in his time, and there are many, many stories about him, but one of his quotes that Dogen likes to refer to a number of times, but here it's listed as actually case nine in his 90 cases.

[06:27]

The bright, clear, hundreds of grass tips are the bright, clear mind of, and heart, it's the same word in Chinese and Japanese, of the ancestral teachers. So what's this bright, clear, hundreds of grass tips? This is a kind of standard phrase for the whole phenomenal world. Sometimes they talk about the 10,000 grasses. So all of the phenomenal, in the phenomenal world, in our everyday activity, in our everyday life, is the bright mind, clear mind and heart of the great ancestral teachers. So, Lehman Punk said this. And, you know, this is important for our practice. The ancestral teachers, you know, there's a whole series of, mostly from the 800s, but some from the 700s, great masters whose

[07:33]

who are the sources of most of the traditional koans or teaching stories. Of course, there are many before and after, but because this tradition has been handed down from the Buddha through India to Bodhidharma, the ancestral teacher, and there were six ancestors starting with Bodhidharma, so sometimes the ancestral teachers might refer to those six, but then Shuto and Masa were both a couple generations after the Sixth Ancestor. Anyway, we sometimes chant this lineage and study these teachers just because we appreciate that this practice is here and still available to us, even in Chicago in the 21st century. But what is Laman Pongsang here? all the phenomenal worlds, the hundreds of grass tips, is to break bright, clear minds of the ancestral teachers.

[08:41]

And there's a whole set of stories about grasses that I'll refer to a little bit of in terms of talking about Dogen's verse, but... Well, first of all, this doesn't mean like mowed lawns. for golf courses. So grass is kind of the equivalent of weeds. There were wild grasses. She talks about mind weeds and how we should use the thoughts and feelings and the stuff, the weeds that come up as we sit. And probably you all noticed some thoughts or feelings arising. in between your breaths or right in the middle of your inhale and exhale as we were sitting. When we are willing to face all of that stuff, all of the weeds of our life, something happens. Actually, in terms of this story, we connect with the clear mind of the Buddha ancestors.

[09:49]

So sometimes people come to practice to escape from the phenomenal world, to escape from their lives. Sometimes we think this will be a refuge and sanctuary, and it is in a way. Zazen is a refuge, and it is a sanctuary. And we can trust it, or we can grow to trust it, each of us. But it's not about running away from and getting rid of all of the stuff in the world. It's right here with you. Everything you've ever done and everybody you've ever met or will meet is part of your Zazen here this morning. So the bright, clear hundreds of grass tips are here. In early Buddhism, there was this idea of the unconditioned or getting free from the conditions of our world. But Chan and Zen and Dogen and all of these ancestral teachers emphasize to us that it's not separate.

[10:54]

Nirvana is not somewhere else. The ultimate is not on some mountaintop in China or Japan or California. It's right here. in Chicago, in our everyday activity, how do we see that? How do we see that all of these situations of our life are actually the clear mind, the bright mind and heart of the great ancestors? We will say at the end of Dharma, gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. So we see that each situation is an opportunity. to enter into the truth, into reality, into the teaching of how to be. So this is an important statement, that the ancestral teacher's bright, clear mind is not separate from the bright, clear hundreds or thousands or ten thousands of grass tips of all the stuff of our everyday life during the week in the world.

[11:57]

That may be disappointing news to some of you. You may have wanted some great ultimate experience or escape or something. But it's not separate. So Suzuki Roshi said, my teacher's teacher said, the world is its own magic. Right in the middle of this situation that we're in. with all of the problems we each have, with all of the problems our society has, this is where we see the clear heart of the Buddha ancestors. So that's a little about my comment on this story. Dogen's verse is very interesting. He says, although wanting it all tied up for tens of thousands of miles, nothing holds. Staying within the gate, do not wait for the brightness of others. Without your carrier, it is easy to lose the path of active practice. Even the hard of hearing feel moved by the sound of evening rain."

[13:06]

So I want to talk about each of those lines. Although wanting it all tied up for tens of thousands of miles, nothing holds. Sometimes they talk about the 10,000 as a kind of number that's used traditionally in China and Japan for lots, many, many, many, it's not just 10,000, it's 100,000, whatever. But although wanting it all tied up for tens of thousands of miles, nothing holds. So, you know, we do have this, you know, feeling of wanting it all tied up. We want to understand. We want to know what to do and how to live and, you know, what's it all about. So, you know, we have to admit that some part of us, and maybe when we come to practice, we're hoping to get it all figured out. and to know what to do, and to get the answers, and to know how to live, and so forth.

[14:10]

We want it all tied up. But for tens of thousands of miles, Tolkien says, nothing holds. So one of the realities that we start to see, doing this practice of sitting upright and being present, regularly, several times a week or more, at home in your spare time, whenever. We start to realize many things, not just have some understanding, some discursive understanding, but we realize physically, this is a yogic practice, we sit upright and we realize that, well, that we're connected to all the different grass tips, to many different people, that we're all, you know, sort of in it together, that we're not practicing just for ourselves.

[15:13]

Of course, people come to practice wanting to find some calm and peace of mind and clarity, and that's fine, and part of our practice is a kind of settling where we do feel some deeper calm, we connect with our inhale and exhale, and that's available. But also we start to realize what's sometimes called ungraspability, that we can't get a hold of anything. Nothing holds. There's nothing ultimate that we can rely on, except maybe zazen, which is nothing at all. So, although wanting it all tied up for tens of thousands of miles, nothing holds. There's nothing for us to hold. There's nothing to hold. Nothing can hold us. This is, when we start to realize it, kind of a shocking reality.

[16:20]

Our whole world and our economic system is all based on things that we can rely on. But here, Dogen is saying, although we want it all tied up, for myriad miles, all around, throughout space, and he might add time, nothing halts. We can't get a hold of anything. So this has to do with the practice of patience, too. I like to say the Sanskrit word, anapadika dharmakshanti. This is considered the equivalent to enlightenment, the patience of knowing that we can't hold anything, that nothing is static.

[17:25]

And that's because everything changes. So how do we appreciate change? How do we manage with change? Change can be positive or it can bring sadness. So there is also the reality of change and the reality of old age, sickness and death and loss. And we've all experienced that in one way or another. Loss of relationships, loss of loved ones, loss of jobs. Anyway, nothing holds. So we might hear that and hear this as disastrous news, but it's actually the first noble truth of Buddhism, that there is suffering, that there is dissatisfaction. And it's a noble truth because we can actually sit still and be present and be upright and appreciate our lives and be grateful for all there is to be grateful for, and also accept that we can't totally get a hold of anything.

[18:34]

You know, we can for a while, maybe. And there are very powerful people, tycoons and, you know, people like Donald Trump who can arrange many things and control things. And, you know, so there are some people who don't realize that nothing holds. But that's not our problem. We're here, sitting upright, and we start to feel how this is true. So, Dogen says, although wanting it all tied up for tens of thousands of miles, nothing holds. Staying within the gate, do not wait for the brightness of others. So this is a very traditional Zen admonition. Do not wait for the brightness, the clarity, the understanding of others. Just from reading books or hearing dharma talks, you're not going to realize it for yourself. Staying within the game. So we say, one basic practice instruction in our tradition is, turn the dharma light, turn the light within.

[19:40]

Take the backward step and turn the light within to realize yourself. So we focus on ourself, first of all. We sit and we breathe and we face the wall and we see our own stuff come up and we learn to forgive ourselves for being human beings and to be patient with ourselves. And, you know, by becoming familiar with our own patterns and habits and grasping and anger and frustration and so forth, we start to not need to react to it. We can respond from a deeper place. We can settle and not cause ourselves or others harm. So staying within the gate, do not wait for the brightness of others. Nobody can tell you how you are Buddha, how you can be Buddha. So it's up to each one of us. Staying within the gate. This also refers to a story that I talked about earlier this year from Dong Shan, the founder in China of this tradition, where he said,

[20:44]

Well, at the end of a practice period, a three-month practice period, he said to his monks as they were leaving, getting ready to go out into the world, well, this is a basic rhythm in our Zen practice. Even when we come here just for Sunday morning, we turn within. But then we go back out into Chicago. Or if we come to a practice period, or an all-day sitting, or a five-day sitting in December, There's this sort of turning within, but then we step out. And this is part of this basic story or saying from Raymond Pong. The bright hundreds of grass tips, all the stuff out there is the heart and mind of the ancestral teachers. It's not only when we settle more deeply, we open up. find our inner calm and dignity and spaciousness when we do the sitting practice, but then we take it out into all of the stuff of the phenomenal world.

[21:50]

So, when Dongshan was finished with the three-month practice period, he said to his students, it's the beginning of autumn, the end of summer, you will all go out, some east, some west, please go where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles. So this story, this verse, the story and the verse were, well, Dongshan was after Lianpan, but this verse kind of refers to that. When you, another teacher said, going out the gate, hearing about Dongshan saying this, well, Dongshan said, please go where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles. to someplace where it's peaceful and calm and beyond the conditions of the hundreds of grass tips. But then he said, but where there's not an inch of grass for 10,000 miles, how can you go? How can you proceed? How can you practice? And later, Shishuang and other teachers said, going out the gate, immediately there's grass.

[22:53]

So as soon as you step out onto Irving Park Road, there's the phenomenal world. There may not be much grass, but there's concrete and there's cars and all that stuff. And later, Furong, Dayang said, no, it's not Furong, it's Dayang, Toyo Kyogen in Japanese, another teacher in our lineage said, I would say even not going out the gate, still the grass is boundless. So you know this from just sitting zazen, there's the grass tips growing, even as we sit quietly. calmly facing the wall, enjoying our inhale and exhale. So staying within the gate also, we're here because of our karma, because of conditions, and we're here in accord with the seasons. It's this wonderful time in Chicago where it's autumn and it's starting to get chilly.

[23:59]

And we see this change. And we live in these changes and these conditions. And so, staying, so Dogen says, staying within the gate. Even within the gate, there are the hundreds of grass tips. There are the phenomenal worlds. There are the thoughts and feelings and conditions and reflections on all the stuff that's happened in the past week that come up in our city. Do not wait for the brightness of others. Pay attention to all this stuff. You don't have to figure it out. You don't have to think about it. Just allow it to be there with your breathing, with your uprightness. So it's up to each one of us. Do not wait for the brightness of others. Then this third line, to me, is the heart of what Dogen's saying. Wonderful line. Without your caring, it is easy to lose the path of active practice.

[25:01]

So he says, do not wait for the brightness of others. Then he said, without your caring, it is easy to lose the path of active practice. This is one of those lines that you might memorize and use as a mantra or something. Without your caring. So, when I was shuzo at Tassajara in the ceremony at the Ansem, a visiting teacher, a senior teacher, asked me, what's the use? And I said, because we care a lot. And I don't know where that comes from when you're doing those ceremonies. It just comes from somewhere. But yeah, we do. Each one of you is here because you care. You care about the quality of your life. Even a couple people here had meditation instruction for the first time this morning. Even when you first show up, it's because there's something you care about.

[26:07]

You care about the quality of your life. You care about what's going on in the world in one way or another. And the more we practice, maybe, the more our caring can be expressed and deepened and widened. But without your caring, it is easy to lose the path of active practice. So pay attention to what you care about. Appreciate your caring. It's what brought you here. It's what allows you to find Buddha in your body and mind. And Suzuki Roshi used to say, what is the most important thing? Well, I would just say, what are the things that you care about? What's important to you? To pay attention to that, to know that. And it changes. Maybe you cared about some things last year that you don't care about so much this year. But pay attention.

[27:09]

Pay attention to your intention, to your caring. It's important. It's wonderful. It's a treasure. So how do we hold our caring? We might care about something so much that we ignore lots of other things. That's not so helpful sometimes. How do we hold our caring gently? Steadily. Allowing it to inform us. Allowing it to shift and change. Anyway, without your caring it's easy to lose the path of active practice. So Dogen talks a lot about active practice. How do we express ourselves? How do we express our bright, clear hundreds of grass tips? So this practice is about settling, and it looks, you know, Zazen looks like we're all being very stoic and quiet and like Zen zombies or something, but actually this is about our active practice.

[28:17]

How does this settling and sitting inform all of your creative activities in your everyday life, in your week? And vice versa. How does your active practice inform yourself? So Dogen emphasizes quite a lot this expression. How do we act, how do we express our practice in the world? How do we respond to the problems and situations of the hundred grass tips in our own lives and in the society around us? And practice is not about just becoming some perfect meditator where you have some kind of athletic prowess that's sitting still. The point of this practice It is easy to lose the path of active practice. Our Zazen supports all of the stuff we do during our week, and it supports it in this interesting way, where we're informed by this sense of interconnectedness, we're informed by this sense that we start to get that we can't really get a hold of anything.

[29:38]

Still, we can sit down, we can be present, we can appreciate all the grass tips in our lives. So without your caring, it is easy to lose the path of active practice. We have to, Dogen also says elsewhere, just fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. This is the path of active practice, of active Buddhas. Going beyond Buddha. It's not about reaching some This practice is not about reaching some dramatic experience or some perfect understanding. It's an ongoing path of active practice, with each thing changing, with each thing that we can't quite get a hold of. Still, how do we meet it? How do we be helpful in the world? How do we respond? From our carer. So without your caring, it is easy to lose the path of active practice.

[30:44]

Take care of your caring. Then he ends by saying, even the hard of hearing feel moved by the sound of evening rain. So we all have limitations to our perceptual faculties. This is part of, this is an important part of Zen. We recognize limitations of our seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting. touching, thinking. And sometimes we lose some of our hearing or some of our seeing or whatever. But still, the sound of evening rain, even if we can't hear well, when we hear the rain outside, there's something that can happen. So compassion in this tradition is defined by the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Kanzeon, whose image of her on that wall and on that wall.

[31:55]

And her name means that she hears the sounds of the world. And we could say that we hear the suffering of the world. Sometimes that's said that way. She hears the cries of the world. So we can feel moved by Sound. Listening to sound is one of the meditation objects that is recommended. So when you're sitting and your mind is distracted, just pay attention to ambient sound. Maybe the shiftings of people in the meditation hall, maybe occasionally we hear traffic going on outside or the heater or the air conditioner turning on or off, whatever. Or the sound of evening rain. And when you sit at home, too, you have the opportunity to feel moved by the sound of evening rain. So our caring is about that we are open to hearing the suffering of the world, that we're open to the first-level truth.

[33:04]

This supports your caring, this supports your active practice. And how do we hear without becoming overwhelmed? How are we moved by knowing about the problems of our world and climate change and inequality and injustice and racism and all of the horrible things going on in our world? We can be moved, and we can be moved to active practice. And so part of our practice is just sitting and listening and being open. So we sit, you know, people, for Zazen instruction this morning, you probably heard that you're supposed to sit here with your eyes open. And some meditation traditions, they sit with their eyes closed. And actually, some of the time here, people have their eyes closed, and it's okay. But basically, we try and sit with our eyes slightly open. Not to look at anything particular, but just that we're open to the world around us.

[34:10]

The same way our ears are open. We're turning the light within. We're paying attention to... So we're staying within the gate. We're not expecting somebody else to be Buddha for us. And yet... We don't shut down. our awareness of the situation in the world, and even the situations in the world on your own cushion or chair. So you have to also listen to your own body and mind, and hear the evening rain there, and take care of it. Your caring is very important, so take care of yourselves, take care of the world, take care of your friends and family. So, this is Dogen's comment on Leman Pong saying, the bright, clear hundreds of grass tips are the bright, clear mind of the ancestral teachers.

[35:18]

And again, Dogen says, although wanting it all tied up for tens of thousands of miles, nothing holds. Staying within the gate, Do not wait for the brightness of others. Without your caring, it is easy to lose the path of active practice. Even the hard of hearing feel moved by the sound of evening rain. So the last thing I'll say about these stories is that I've talked about each line of this, and yet we never finish with the story. This is just to open up this teaching. These stories have been studied for, well, Dogen has studied them going back to the 800s and he was in the 1200s and now we're still studying them because there's something there about our lives, about what we care about. At this point, does anyone have any comments or questions or responses or reflections?

[36:23]

Please feel free. Alex. Overlooking the city of Chicago, Ray, what am I to make of the fact that all of the grass is in specified areas called parks and the rest of the living space you have is all concrete? You know, even amidst the concrete, sometimes there's grasses that come up through the cracks. The fertility of the world is very tenacious, very persistent. Human beings are trying, some of us, some of human beings and our energy systems and our economic systems are trying very hard to suppress the life of the world and to damage the climate of the world. But it's alive. The world is alive. We're alive. So, you know, there's a, you know,

[37:26]

Yes, the concrete seems to dampen that down, but even amidst the concrete, something can be alive. And we should appreciate that life. And there's a lot of vitality in a city. And it may not always look like grass tips, but there's, you know, There's the vitality of culture, there's the vitality of music, there's the vitality of art, there's the vitality of friendships, there's the vitality of good restaurants, you know, whatever. How do we appreciate? So, you know, nature is not something that happens only outside the cities. Nyoza knows because he works on an urban garden. And there are more and more urban gardens. The world is alive, even in Chicago. Thank you for your question. Other comments, responses? Marion, hi. The story reminded me of a prayer of one of the southwestern Indian tribes, which I once had to learn.

[38:38]

And it says, O our father, the son, O our mother, the birth, we are your children born of your love. Mother Earth and Father Sun. It's interesting because I've been talking about Pope Francis, who took his name from Francis of Assisi, who talked about that too. So in many traditions there is this understanding, you know, that we're alive and the world is alive and, you know, that bodhisattvas arise out of the Earth, that the Earth is our mother. our father's son, to put it that way, you know, actually we could, we don't, we're using fossil fuels here, but we don't need to.

[39:50]

There's the technology now available to, you know, we just need the will to convert and to change our energy systems, but there is a technology from solar and other renewable sources. So, you know, we can, we actually, it's possible physically, for us to all live in peace, all human beings and other beings who make me extinct, to live in peace on this world and have everything that everybody needs for it. Nobody to be hungry. It's possible, physically. We just need to change our way of thinking and various other conversions that are necessary. But yeah, we can appreciate that for tens of thousands of miles, there's nothing to hold on to, and yet, there is this path of active practice, and there is the sound of evening rain.

[40:48]

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