Good morning. This is the first full day of summer. That's amazing. And this is the fourth day of our Seshim. That's amazing. Some of us are deep into it. And some of you are coming in for the Saturday program. But you are in the middle of your lives. I just must say, the weather we've been having for Sishin is really ideal. You know, sometimes it's really hot in June, but it's not been hot, it's been cool and conducive to sitting. So in the course of the practice period, the theme was taken from two fascicles of Dogen Zenji, Shoji, which is birth and death, and Zenki, which is total dynamic working, which also really relates to the question of birth and death, or life and death.

[01:20]

And the Shuso, Carol's koan, Kyogen's Man Up a Tree, which he spoke wonderfully of yesterday and in a series of talks, is also about the urgent matter of living, dying, and actually expressing yourself. So on Wednesday, the first day of Shishunite, I gave a talk on a koan from the Mumonkan. We have these koan collections, which are very much collections of enlightenment stories and they're also enlightening stories. They're dialogues often usually between a teacher and a student or they've been recorded by a teacher that illuminate the moment of awakening and point us back inside ourselves to see

[02:44]

how we can be free and how we can move forward in the world. In Zenki, the first sentence of Zenki is something like, the great way of the Buddhas is emancipation and realization. With emancipation, to my mind, being freedom and realization, meaning the understanding and the encouragement to step forward, to go into your life, into your work. So the koan that I explored on Wednesday, Tototsu's Three Barriers asks three questions. The first question is, you could say, what is your true nature? Or who are you? Who am I? And the second barrier is,

[03:50]

about how is it, who am I as I die, as I pass from this world? And the third, which is really difficult, is what happens after I die? When the four elements separate, where will you go? So the case I'm going to explore today is related. It's case 55 from the Blue Cliff Record, which is known as Dawu's Condolence Call. And when I read it, as I was reading the Blue Cliff Record for the first time, Many years ago, it was clear to me that this was my koan.

[04:56]

I don't know why, but it was, and it really spoke to me. So I've been carrying it for 35 years. I haven't read it yet. So if I read it again, then I'll have to read it twice. No, you'll get all the information you need here. But I just want to say it echoes Carol's talk yesterday about Kyogen's Man Up a Tree, where it tells a story about Kyogen, who was very intellectual, very well studied. He had all these texts memorized, and his teacher asked him a question, Isan asked him a question, that were not in his books. And he couldn't answer it, and he went away discouraged.

[06:00]

And that's kind of what happens in this story. He went away discouraged, and then he woke up, but not right away. So let me read you the case again. who was the teacher, and his student, Qin Yuan, went to a house to make a condolence call. And Qin Yuan hit the coffin and asked his teacher, and this is like in the middle of You know, it's like everybody's there. All the relatives are there. And so he hits the coffin and asks this teacher, alive or dead? And Dawu says, I won't say alive and I won't say dead.

[07:04]

And Yuwan said, why won't you say? And Qin Yuan says, why won't you say? And Da Wu says, I won't say. They left it, they did their funeral, you know, they did their chanting and so on. And then they were returning to the temple. So Da Wu had taken Qin Yuan along to assist him. And some of us have had this experience. I have, you know, been asked by my teacher to assist him at a funeral or at a cremation ceremony. Really powerful. The first time, just like, oh, there's the body in an open coffin. And, okay, I'm assisting. And that was some of the really most powerful teaching that I've received from Sojourn is just assisting him in those circumstances.

[08:17]

But I didn't do what happened here. So halfway back as they were returning, Chinyuan said, tell me right away, teacher. And if you don't tell me, I'll hit you. Da Wu said, you can hit me, but I'm not going to say. And Chen Yuan hit him. This is, you know, it's a nice story, but if you actually think of what was going on there, that's pretty intense. It was an urgent question for Chen Yuan. So Da Wu then advised Qin Yuan that, you know, you should probably go away and leave this monastery. Because when the other monks find out that you hit me, they're going to beat the crap out of you.

[09:24]

And so he left. And this is a timeline for this. So this happened probably in the 18, in the 830s. And Dao Wu was in his, probably in his 20s. And rather, I'm sorry, I keep getting mixed up. Chen Yuan was in his 20s and Dao Wu was probably in his 60s. It was not long before he died. So Chen Yuan goes away. And he became a student. He went to a monastery that was run by a student, another student of Dao Wu's, Shi Shuang. He was Dao Wu's primary dormer heir. Dao Wu, by the way, was a student of Yao Shan, who we chant in our lineage, Yaku San Igen.

[10:29]

who had been a student of Sekhitos. So there's a lineage. This is in our family. So he went to Xishuang's monastery, and Dawu had died. And he told Xishuang this story. And he says, Qin Yuan says to Xishuang, what do you think about this? And Xishuang says, I won't say alive and I won't say dead. And Qin Yuan said, why won't you say? And Xishuang says, I won't say, I just won't say. And at that moment, Tianyuan had an insight, an awakening.

[11:35]

And all this could have been, some speculation is that this was 30 years after the original story. So he'd been carrying this question for 30 years till he was growing old himself. His original teacher had died. Xi Shuang was a little older than him. And there's a kind of coda to this story. After he has his insight, Qin Yuan stays at the temple. And, you know, he's doing temple work. just as Kyogen was raking, and Chinyuan took a hole, but he took it into the teaching hall. So he wasn't raking the garden, he was in the Dharma hall.

[12:43]

And he was crossing back and forth from east to west and from west to east. And the teacher, Xishuang, said, what are you doing? And Qin Yuan said, I'm looking for the relics of our late master. Uh-huh. So that where else would you look for them? You'd think it's like, they gotta be in the Dharma hall, in the Buddha hall. They have to be in this Zen Do. And Xi Shuang said, vast waves spread far and wide, foaming billows flood the sky, what relics of our late master are you looking for? And that's the case. It's a wonderful case, isn't it? Hakuin has some comments to this.

[13:54]

Among the comments are the following. Dawu said, alive, said, won't say alive, won't say dead. He presents a pearl that lights the night. If it were me, I'd say, are you alive or dead? He also, Hakuin also says, why won't you say? The fool, Chen Yuan, thought that the teacher was keeping a secret. He says, tell me at once. And Hakuin's comment was, what a bunch of hopeless cathedral pigeon shit. Jixuang says I won't say.

[15:01]

He's extremely kind. Gentlemen have the same manners everywhere. He presents pearls that light the night. When our Dharma sister, Maile Scott died, in Arcata, a couple of days after she died, we took somebody, one of the students there had actually built the coffin. And we transferred her body to the coffin and we put the coffin in, I think we put it in a truck, in a pickup truck. And when the coffin was on the truck, I struck the coffin and asked, alive or dead?

[16:11]

In retrospect, I think that was a kind of Zen play. and I don't feel too great about it. And the Buddhas had the last laugh on me because four days later, I got a very, very serious infection and almost died. So it's like, oh, you want to play around about person death? It's not a playing matter. But still, that's what came up for me around Meili's passing. And for some of us, you know, we wouldn't completely say that she's dead and that

[17:20]

The relics are not just in the billowing clouds or waves. The relics are in us. So long as we remember her. So long as we remember each person in our life who has left this so-called world, we carry them. And they are alive for us. There's all kinds of Zen answers. You know, one of the answers is, you know, in Zen we talk about the unborn and the undying, and yet People are born, babies are born, and there's no question about it.

[18:23]

And people pass away and there's no question about it. We have a different answer than other religions about what is the self. You know, in other religions, I think there's a feeling that when you take away the flesh and the bones, you wash all that stuff away, and what's left is the self. It's like panning for gold, you know? We don't think of it that way. It's like, When you take away consciousness, you take away the flesh, you take away the bones, there's nothing that we can identify as self. And yet there is something that we don't understand that continues.

[19:36]

that not just lives in us, but lives in everyone, lives in the world. So Daito Roshi, late Daito Roshi, who was pretty much a contemporary of Sojin Roshi, a student of Maezumi Roshi, He has a capping verse for this koan. Capping verse is just kind of a, what can I say? It creates a context for the koan. In the words of a contemporary teacher, he says, in arriving, not an atom is added. Thus, life is called the unborn. In departing, not a particle is lost.

[20:40]

Thus, death is called the unextinguished. So in this large absolute sense, you have the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy, which is great. you know, that's a way of looking at it. And yet, our friend is gone, our child is gone, our parent is gone. And what we have is our memory of them. So in both of these koans, the one that I'm speaking of and the one that Carol spoke of yesterday, what you have when there's a, you know, you have people who have a, you have these, these teachers who have a burning question.

[21:55]

In Kyogen's case, the question he was presented with was, show me your original face before your parents were born. In Chen Yuan's case, it's the burning question, alive or dead, you know, that really gnawed at him. What is the answer to these questions? I feel like in these koans, as in our life, it's not that you really figure out the answer or you get to somehow you have projected on the big screen, oh, there's my original face before my mother and father were born. Oh, that's what it looks like.

[22:58]

It's kind of interesting. you know, or alive or dead, you know, it's like, I know I keep thinking about zombies, but nevermind. What? Say that again. a flat EEG. Okay. Uh, I get it. I didn't know what a flat EEG, you know what, what does that mean? Yeah. But it means you have no, you have no neural activity, right? Uh, but what happens for these teachers and what happens in the context of this awakening is that everything, when Dogen speaks of his awakening as dropping body and mind.

[24:07]

So this is, this side is what Carol was talking about also yesterday, is the side of emancipation. The side of, it's not that you let things go. When Qishuang presented the same response that Dawu did, or when Kyogen hears the piece of bamboo going against the rake, what happens is that everything falls away. You're free from the driven nature of your thought. You're free from the anxiety of this burning question. And that's the nature of our practice.

[25:13]

In the course of, sometimes we don't notice, but in the course of sitting here for four or five days in session, I would venture a guess that everyone in the room has moments of this dropping away. You know, even when your knees are really killing you or when even when you're You know, you're just like dying alive or dead. You're dead. You know, you want to be dead, actually. You know, it's either you want the bell to ring or you want to be dead, you know, one or the other. Either one will do. But even in those with those moments, If we pay attention, we can see there are these moments of dropping away.

[26:19]

We don't live there because we actually have to act. You know, we may drop away, but then actually we're a server and we have to serve. But in the moment of presenting the pot to the person in front of you, at the bottom of your bowel, everything drops away for that instant. But you don't stop there, right? Because then nobody will get to eat. You have to straighten up and carefully spoon the gruel into the bowl. And yet, in that action, in that complete action, serving, like, there's no fear. They really, for the most part, there isn't anxiety.

[27:24]

I mean, maybe there is for some of you, but but really, we do it over and over again. And we just it's like it's just meeting the moment. It's really the pure activity of meeting the moment, you know, and. Not being obsessed by ourself, not being obsessed by the task, just knowing what the task is, knowing how to do it, and meeting it. It's quite wonderful. In that moment, the question of life or death is quite irrelevant. When we think about forgetting the self, we talked about this yesterday, I think in one of the questions, Carol was referencing me talking about Buddha's safety net. And then Ross asked the question about Buddha's safety net.

[28:25]

What I was saying was often, You were given this admonition by Dogen, it says, to study the self is to forget the self. But when we forget the self, when we're in the process of forgetting the self, or we're feeling the self kind of letting go of its hold on us, there can be fear. And in a sense, that's what Chinyuan was asking about when he knocked on the coffin. You know, it was to some degree his, to some degree his anxiety about death in a, in a real physical form. And also in a, in a Zen context, anxiety about

[29:31]

the process of forgetting the self, because we think we have it. We think the self is something we have. We think the self is us. And when we forget, if we're forgetting it, we're afraid we will no longer be ourselves, which is scary. So What happens when they awaken is the self drops away and what they experience is a moment of wow, joy, release. And they see, it's like you don't live there, but that actually infuses your life with a kind of freedom. That is what we're doing here.

[30:34]

We're not, we're more than seeking it, actually what we're doing in the course of Five Days of Sushumna is enacting it. We are enacting that freedom. as we sit, as we do the schedule, as we meet ourselves, as we serve and eat and cook and work. All of these are just everyday activities in which we have the object lesson of forgetting the self. Not actively, but just letting it go away, letting it drop away. And what we find is that's the Buddha's safety net. After we do this, you know, first couple of days are really hard, you know, day three, four, five, to some degree where a lot of us are just really in the zone, in the pocket of just cruising along, which doesn't mean it's easy, but

[31:44]

We know what we're doing and we know how to do it. And so we're not so obsessed. Our self-obsession is loosened a bit. And we have a taste of that freedom. The question alive or dead will occur to us again. It's a recurring question throughout our lives. It may be a question that we face at the very end. But now we're alive. I really love Xi Shuang's Just Qi Shuang's, the last, the coda of this story.

[32:54]

I love the image of Qin Yuan devotedly, devotedly raking the Dharma hall. It wasn't foolishness. You know, it was just like, this is where the teaching was. And so I'm going to, I'm going to go back and forth, looking for relics of our late master, when he knew very well where the relics were. But it was the occasion for a dialogue with Xishuang who had become his teacher. And it gives Xishuang the chance to say, vast waves spread far and wide and foaming billows flood the sky. What relics of our late master are you looking for? I think I'm going to stop there and leave time for questions or comments.

[34:01]

Alex. So I was thinking about how doubt is operating in this koan. Yeah, they're allowing it to cook. And also, because as Keoghan says in, uh, in the story that's kind of the preface to Carol's Koan, if they were to give an answer, it wouldn't be Chinyuan's answer. It wouldn't be useful. It's got to cook out of his own doubt and intensity. Yeah. Well, that's the interesting point.

[35:10]

I think that what we're doing is sort of cooking up a soup of great doubt and great faith together. This Carol was talking about faith yesterday. But it's true. Even if the doubt is resolved. The thing is, this is the problem where, it's a problem of Zen. It's a problem of the, we have a meditational technology. And, you know, in certain kinds of meditational technology that are based on very intense concentration, if you do very intense concentration, then you will have a big experience.

[36:17]

That big experience may feel like the resolution of your doubt, and that may be premature, but it's only premature because you haven't yet put in the effort to integrate it. And this is what, in the coda of the story, this is what Chinyuan, his own way of doing it, is doing. He's taking a hole in the Dharma hall. He's plowing. He thinks he's looking for the relics, but actually he's plowing them back into the soil. And that is the next necessary step. The necessary step for the resolution of doubt is to use it to fertilize the ground of one's being. Ben. And I think something persists beyond memory, perhaps.

[37:41]

Maybe. And I think in the Coda that you re-read for us, maybe that's what Daomu is pointing to. The memories of the Dharmal teachings, maybe there's something even deeper and inconceivable that persisted before it was even lost. Yeah. And I just, it called to mind these experiments where this plant will send out roots towards water, even if they create interference, so the plant shouldn't be able to sense the water that's in there. And it just makes me think, you know, not to idealize that or engage too much with imagination.

[38:50]

There's something deep and mysterious way beyond our conception. Yeah. There's something beyond our understanding. I accept that. I also accept that I was shaped in the context of what you might call Buddhist modernism. and Buddhist modernism has a somewhat scientific bent, somewhat rationalistic bent, and some skepticism about the mystical. dimensions or the mysterious, inexplicable dimensions of, say, karma and rebirth and so forth. And I am, the older I am, the more I'm coming to terms with the fact that that's, those questions are in me too.

[40:00]

And they're, you know, they're not to be dismissed or set aside. So, yeah, there's, there's more things than we understand. And, you know, that's quite wonderful. Meryl? Thank you for the story about Mayling's casket. I hadn't heard that. I can really see that. How are we to regard mistakes? So we have this practice, rigorous practice. And it has a number of performances in it. And people are constantly evaluating themselves in relation to those performances. And, um, what are we supposed to think about these things? Laugh at them. Especially if they're yours. But I agree with that, that, uh, you know, uh, first of all, laughter, genuine laughter can't be forced.

[41:04]

No, no. I'm not saying force it. Okay, so, does this laughter come as a result of effort, or Where, how does one attain that laughter? I mean, you have gotten older. Now you can laugh at it. I don't imagine you were laughing at it a week later. A week later? After you did this thing, made this cast. Well, I wasn't laughing at it then. Right. So when, what enabled you to not only laugh at it, but actually tell us about it, which is kind of embarrassing. It doesn't seem to you embarrassing now. No. But people are embarrassed about their mistakes. Yes, some people are embarrassed. People are embarrassed about their mistakes. I think, you know, as a musician, I make a lot of mistakes.

[42:06]

And, you know, I have to flow on from that mistake. You know, you don't stop and berate myself about it, but, I keep thinking about, there's a moment in the, what was, who did Ronald Reagan run for president against? Jimmy Carter. I forget, but there was a moment in one of the debates where he said, there you go again, right? And that's the line that comes, and I make a mistake. The line that comes up to me is, there I go again. You're quoting Reagan? That's right. Yeah. So no, but that's, that's literally the line. There I go again. I can hear his voice saying it. Um, we should really, we need to evaluate our mistakes.

[43:13]

I mean, sometimes your mistakes in the world means people die. I don't know how you are injured. That's difficult. Then you really have to wrestle with how to respond. But most of the mistakes that happen here are not so consequential. And the Sojins, I would say the most pointed teaching he ever gave me was you should let things fall apart. And I have, I am continuously trying to put that to life. And then I have to reckon, when do I let things fall apart? And when actually do I need, should I say something? You know, and that's a great conundrum.

[44:17]

I'm not going to say con, but it's like you've got to work that out for yourself. We have only a couple more minutes. Vince. So you'd be like, okay, you're a tensor, you fuck that. Yeah, that's not our way, right?

[45:20]

I just want to make sure you all understand that. Yeah, but it works. There's a cultural context, I suppose, for that. But, you know, that doesn't call to me too much. Well, Helen. didn't take it as anything to beat herself up about. But for her, what I recall her saying was just two words, personal responsibility. Yes, yes, I will repeat. She was saying Karen Dakotas was in the talk she gave here was talking about making mistakes and the two words appeared to her when she's done that, which is personal responsibility.

[46:23]

Or, you know, you could say eat the blame. In a way. I like eat the blame because it's more graphic. Yeah. Yes, Andrea. Linda Eby, who practiced here for many years, but has been around so much, just very recently presented a beautiful envelope to me, and it was a typed out letter from May Lee to the practice committee, outlining in beautifully warm language, paragraph by paragraph, involved in the work. It included the start of the men's shelter dinner, it included the ways to do mind talks, it included some changes in practice today, on and on and on. When I think about breaking the relics, a section of that poem that's always really touched me, it's really about

[47:27]

Yes, it's true. And it's also, it's true of quite a number of people, the things that we do that we take as building blocks of our practice. People, there are people who started them, who set the ball rolling. Yeah, right. Yeah. going to put this practice through the lens of my profession, which is 20 years of doing geriatrics and hospice and tailored care. And something that I've found is that for people who are facing really serious illness, if they can touch in with who they really are at their core, I don't mean all the things that they feel bad about in life, but what they're really about, they have a great may not mean that their death is an easy death.

[48:48]

But emotionally and existentially, it's not nearly so hard. So that fear seems to drop away, but it's at that core of knowing that they will die just exactly how Yeah, I think that that's true for those who are fortunate to still have those powers of reflection. I saw that with my oldest friend, John, who died a little over a year ago, who was a Zen student. And I know that his Zen practice enabled him to have that perspective on his life, he would not have had it before. So he had this, he didn't want to die. It was not easy. It was painful. It was sorrowful, but he was willing to put all of his energy into it.

[49:51]

And that set other people at ease around him. And that's, you know, so I just say, final thought. Alive or dead, what am I giving life to? even as I may be leaving the world, what am I doing with my life? What am I giving? So that in recognition that not just that all things die, but actually that all things live. So thank you very much.

[50:34]

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