Sun-Faced Buddha, Moon-Faced Buddha

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Serial: 
BZ-02611
Description: 

 Shuso Talk

 

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thank you for joining me here
and
actually gonna put my glasses on now since i'm gonna read some things and i'll have to keep putting them on enough
so
one of the
privileges of being this she saw is that am
i get to work with a koran for the six weeks of the practice period and him
i want to say that i don't have a lot of history with co and am
ah i said in my way seeking main top on monday that
for ten years i studied with joko back and she did not encourage as to study the coins at all
she may have mentioned them in er talks sped to they didn't know them i didn't know they were cohen's and then when i came here i was interested in reading but
i am
you know it's blue inaccessible in the beginning and
the sojourn started teaching a class aa and that kind of gave me there
encouragement and to to start to read them but really when i first started and we were reading from the book of serenity
and that was third of compiled and published i think about the twelfth or thirteenth century and
you know i felt like when i read the current i just you know hit a wall it really i didn't understand anything and am it was daunting you know it was really like you know i don't know and and then i would go to class and sojourn would go through
to every line of it and down you know i would like kind of feel like this sort of excitement you know this kind of like m o you know maybe you know i can sort of
whereas
ross stretch you know to like kind of whole this you a very sort of contradictory
you know kind of thought process and in over time
i actually felt like i could do that a little bit on my own
ah
but
you know i still felt like when certain that i sort of chose this cohen that i'm gonna work on
that you know i had some idea that i had to do this right i had to get the right answer and i had some image of that you know that there was something to really you know prove maybe and
so surgeon gave me some commentary some books and then i went to the library and i took out like this many books and i wrote a little note to greg the librarian and they said i know i'm only supposed to take two books out
but i have to take all ten of these books out and then i staggered home you know if my twelve or thirteen books and you know put them on the table and then i sat down and i started reading them and
i got through about five you know i guess they had an image like i was gonna write a you know a term paper or something and that you know i was going to get all the information and then i was gonna you know organize it and but after about five i realized wait a minute these
case do not they were all guys i i i have to say i haven't found any by women but i i'm determined i'm still looking at these commentaries
you know that
you know they don't agree with each other you know they all have a different opinion about day and then
you know it was like really a kind of a liberating moment time was like oh you know if they all have a different opinion you know maybe i can have an opinion about this myself and it could be different from theirs and actually they didn't they overtly didn't agree you know they would say i don't agree with
yeah
eh
so i haven't gotten that far but we'll actually i have no i am there is somebody i don't agree with for i'm not interested in
i'm so once that happened you know i felt much more engaged in the process and m
iraq in many of you know that i am a choreographer and i used to make big dance pieces you know what had a lot of people and music and you know a visual component and during that time you know like everything would start to relate to it so
are you know birds fly any kind of movement in our children playing cars going over the overpass just anything that moves started feeling connected to what i was making and you know it felt very creative and exciting and actually this started being
wait to you know you do i just felt like kind of so much of my life in everything people said to me kind of you know was fermenting with my cohen and am
i'll give you an example
ah on monday when i gave my talk
we did a well being ceremony for mary beth lambs partner who had gotten some very serious medical news about and not good news and so we did the well-being ceremony and then i gave my talk and then at the end of my
i talk i read a little short poem that was kind of about you know how everything is one and we choose it that way we want that and then
then you know i finish my talk and i felt a row yeah you know and then i went outside and
i'm talking to people and then after wow mary beth came up to me and she said
but i don't want it
wanted this way and i was like oh right i wouldn't either
and that's my on you know that really was my on and then
so that's kind of the way my life and skin i will also say that mary best partner is in surgery as we speak and am so i'm thinking of her
am so
now i will tell you what my colon is
ah and it's one many of you are familiar with even i was familiar with it many years ago even though i don't read cohen's and didn't i knew this one a little bit
and it's son faced buddha moonphase buddha and again there's many translations so that even though it's very short and i picked the one that i liked the best and i liked it because i thought it was the sort of sweetest translation and so it goes like this
by so a chinese and master was sick in bed
the managing monk of his temple visited him and asked teacher how do you feel these days so answered son faced buddha moonphase buddha
ah so i will give you a kind of the back story
this cohen appears in the blue cliff record and also in the book of serenity and both of those are collections of constant were compiled in the eleventh and twelfth century so kind of contemporary contemporary
you can yes you know that that word yes and i'm actually the
teachers who put them together we're
they know each other and so they each have one hundred coins and about a third of them are in both
in both compilations am
and this one is
so or master bustle
yeah i'm actually lived this is he's historical figure lived in the eighth century and he was one of the most famous zen masters he was a very large man and very imposing and sort of i'm powerful and physically
powerful i think and
in another thing that almost every book says about him is that he had a very long tongue and that he could cover his nose with his tongue and i will just tell you that as a child i actually could touch my turn to my nose and i was sort of fame
amos in my neighborhood for this this was something my my siblings with kind of show on me off that i hadn't
so they've been too many ways that i relate to botha but that's
i know i could just barely touch it and i forgot about it and i tried it and i can even come close anymore is no i don't know
i'm so botha was one of the first teachers to to use this sort of zen dialogue that has am
you know been recorded in a number of these coins and he appears in a number of cohen's ah he had a large following of disciples and many of those like eighty of those became teachers who went on to teach on their own after he died
or maybe before he died
he was also known for am
somebody put this well a kaleidoscopic repertoire of
using the stick hitting pushing slapping tweaking people's noses though is kind of goes on he was physical and
you know that sort of is in this context now that we're living in sort of appalling but actually i can sort of relate to it i don't know why but there's something about
you know kind of waking up or she shouted a lot that was another thing you know you just you know kind of bringing people into the present moment that kind of in my state of you know being in my head a lot with this am is kind of attractive repeatedly i i am not repelled by it which do you think
i would be but i'm really not
so i will just give you an example of one of his pithy sayings
oh a monk as the bustle what is the essential meaning of buddhism so pretty heady question right by so answered what is the meaning of the present moment
ah
and another part of this story is that and this is a little hazy for me but apparently in truth in actuality really
ah there was a translation i assume from sanskrit detainees have a book that recorded the names of one thousand one hundred and ninety two buddha's from many realms and and them
i'm
you know i can't tell you a lot about this but it was called the boot zoom meal kill and
ah so in that long list of buddha's one was the son face buddha
in the sun faced buddha
was said to have lived eighteen hundred years
and then there was also the moonphase buddha who was said to have lived one day in one night
ah
and the last thing i'll say in terms of kind of the background is that
this little story eight this little cohen was supposed to have taken place the day before bustle died
so really it was the last teaching he gave
i'm
so in my when i first read this which was really many years ago in
suzuki roshi his book not always so
you know my mind just went to i want to live a long time i wanna be the sun's rays buddha and you know so i wanted to you know kind of not include the one day in one night and also you know i i had
a choice i wanted i wanted to choose the sunny side
and you know i sort of read the commentary and sort of understood that hum
there might be some benefit in keep using this word stretching myself to include you know the moon faced buddha but am
when i think back upon it i think how
i mean there's a couple of things one is
you know house libary these opposites are like long and short well you know what's wrong and what short ah
and you could say you know
well there's a there's a nice little home
quote from one of the commentaries that i think i'll redo oh yes i will and this is from neocons and xochi uses a drop of water from the old pond if you see it under a microscope will have hundreds of sentient beings moving around in it fighting pro
creating having birth and death
they're not living a particularly short life but fulfilling their own life of such this
so probably shorter may be shorter than a day and night and then it goes on to talk about in a light years and you know how light years are millions and millions and millions of miles and time and so on and i'm in also eighteen hundred years compared to a
light year is short
and these things are slippery you know all of them are slippery every you know opposite really is slippery like good and evil or light and dark
when i get up at five in the morning and i come to the zendo it's really dark but it's starting to get light now and i'm just like look how light it is you know it's like so late
the in the darkness fair
but you know we do divide things up
and when i think about this call on you know one of the things i think about
is that that's an effort to kind of talk about something that's
sort of infinite
and really all the collins are trying to talk about kind of the infinite
but when you talk about it you start to kind of
cut just a piece out of it and it's actually
ah frustrating you know it's very hard to know that you're gonna do that
and so i just wanted to say that i know i'm gonna do that me a teeny little slice and i hope that you will help me make it a little bigger with your comments and questions
but i felt like this one and maybe i just felt this because it's michael and maybe i felt it because you know this teacher was this was his last teaching but i feel like this one is a little bit bigger than some you know that it really is kind of wider
a and holds more ah
maybe because i've read a lot of commentary you know it just seems like it's sort of a big one
i'm
but back to cutting the world up
you know i feel like
we we all do that we'd do it all the time we have to do it you know if her
fire engine is coming down the street at as we don't wanna we want to distinguish it from a puppy dog you know we want to step out of the way we don't want to get confused about what things are we we need to know we need to discriminate
at him but again it's slippery you know young old
when i was thirty and i was an old dancer new now i'm really hold dance
and health and well health and sickness success and failure and it's a really big one what what's the edge of that what's real about that
oh
living and dying
which in poor
infinite and finite
you know there's people that don't want to hold those things together they want to stay in one infinite or just finite and it's hard to hold them together
and i think you know that's kind of what our practice is it's about cash and keep using this word stretching you know to hold a little bit more know
even the things that we really don't like
hum hey get migraine headaches have got them all my life i've had them and before i get them i know i'm gonna get them so i don't have the headache but i know i'm gonna get it and i'm just like i hate this
and then i get a headache and it's the headache that it is some of them are terrible some of them aren't but then afterwards
and this is physiological thing i feel better than i feel any other time in my life i just feel fabulous and am
you know i've practiced with that and i still hate them
am i you know i thought how you know you hear those stories about people else in people who go to the dentist and don't get nova came and stuff in own you know
i'm just like i hate migraines i just think and then
but you know it's like i'm stretching stretching a trader include the migraine you know actually when i am over it sometimes do not like i used medication so sometimes when i'm older i've run out of medication i think oh i should order some more
and then i think really i have this thought this is so crazy i've had these for my fifty years i think maybe i'm done maybe i'll never get another one know it's like complete quit that
you know i push it away
but i'm i'm working
oh and i'm actually pretty tolerant of how much i hate them you know i don't even try to push the hathaway anymore
ah

when i leave time

so
current practice my practice is about
changing perspective a little bit as sue here she talked about that in one of her talks about just shifting enough to hold both sides
but our practice is also a little bit of a practice a little window into not discriminating
i'm
in zazen i feel like know we
practice whiff
a sound being just a sound
hum and it could be a sound
that we
want to go somewhere else with but we try to stay back from discriminating justin's as in
hmm and so we don't go to all that the dog barking and that that dog next door of and the yeah we don't go there we kind of backup from now and just hear it in the woodpecker and then we just try to
feel the sensations that we feel so it's this little window of
little touch of not discriminating
and then we go out the world and we're back you know dealing with time and objects and so on people
but we've had that moment we've have that tiny glimpse and i don't know why it makes a difference but for me it makes a big difference really does it just shifts that
it's this way and it's gonna be this way it just shifts that so i can
in i can
step back a little bit

so i want to the eight really there's a lot of things you could say about this
go on but i want to say a little bit this is just may be me more than other commentators but for me
it's made me kind of think about the way i think about the sun and moon
no and this is kind of i guess what you least i'm taking the liberty to do this
and am
you know for me the sun is light and am life-giving and warm
and i really attribute those qualities to it
and the moon is you know kind of darker and kind of more receptive and of energy it's associated a lot and spoken of lot in terms of enlightenment
so you know the sun can also be too hot
and you know the moon has a lot of darkness associated with it
i am
they're both also
cycles they change she know their the moon is big and then it's smaller than a smaller and then it's smaller and then it's bigger and then is covered with clouds and then it you can't see it and then you don't know where it is and you know then you forget about it so it it's not the same and the sun
same you know it's comes obviously little tiny bit of it and then it's like raging beautiful and then it's you know behind the clouds and then it's sunset you see a little bit of and then it's gone it's dark
it's missing
so you know for me this is kind of about that you know even these things that seemed fixed in our lines long short
actually are changing
and am
you know it's hard to hold that and it's also very liberating to hold it and they're just different sun and moon they're just different when it i don't feel one is better than the other
it's that you know it sort of the
you know it
we want them both
ah
so when he said fan buddha moonphase buddha he didn't say than facebook or moonphase buddha
he said some facebook with on trace buddha
just one
just one

and i think i'll end
by reading em
the end of suzuki roshi is really beautiful commentary on this coin and this was also written fairly shortly earth was a talk fairly shortly before he died
i had a friend who on
told me that the only way that she would ever believe a zen teacher was good as if they died well
anyway so this is the end of his talk face food and moonphase buddha does not mean to be indifferent
i don't care about whether it's the sun face buddha or the moon buddha i don't care that we think don't do that it means that whatever it is we just enjoy it
this is also beyond non-attachment because when our attachment reaches the point of non-attachment that is real attachment if you aren't attached to something be attached to something completely
sun face buddha moonphase buddha
i am here i am right here
this kind of confidence is important
i felt like that was married best confidence i don't like this
when you have this kind of confidence in yourself you in your being you can practice chooses and beyond perfect or imperfect good or bad
thank you very much for what he said
so i would like people to speak and i would encroach l and yeah just some of that i would encourage people you know i didn't expect to find myself here and i could have practiced a little bit
when i was there you know trying to articulate and i would encourage people to i mean some of the people who are new order to get going
ah yes alan

yes

ah

i'm i'm not sure i would put it like that but i would say that i have had the thought that i would not be a zen student were it not for my migraines

i'm not sure what was cultivated but there's something about ah
i'm
you know it's a little bit like botha hitting somebody i think it's like you know it's so you know people say you know it
it covers body and mind you know it just is all there is and am
right
no
yeah it's very real
so do

muslim
ah

ah

yeah

thank you

no

a
school
re

probably
the leaf
when who

thank you
oh that was
matcha good question i think it's the same person i think it's some
yeah i think so it's a yoga and since jackie and it's a book actually it's a kind of a spiral bamboo that sojourn gifts

russ

hmm
for now

definitely yes
i definitely want to pay off thank you
ah
yeah

whenever a good
floating cities often
in difficulty
and really say that part
eh
is it i o five minutes
like i should call on people
her go
thank you
today
like
land you did not lend it go
know
fair process
incident
i've never
ah
so the story was that
my mother had given me some wool blankets and co
was staying in our house and marrow young woman who was cold and he gave her one of our blankets and my mother's wool blanket and am so what has happened
you know i totally even then i totally saw your point of view on that
and i still had mine
hmm
oh you entered the book get well i didn't ever see that blanket again
hey
yes

ah well i don't have any experienced fence know i'm
you know i don't think there's ever a time when i'm on
you don't where i don't wish i didn't have it there that's always there
but it is a proof well i think ellen was really thinking that it is a profound experience it's really intense pain and am and it's not just pain you know it's like if it's the there's a lot of can have physical depression associated with it's a just feel bad
and you know it's it's what i said it's really like you know i'd like to sit like basso it like it takes over you know it really takes over to the point where ah
know that's it that's it just one thing so that's really what i can say
peter

this

choice

no
you know i don't really do that by intention you know as much as maybe i could or should but i do it by i'm you know i mean partly i have to say this
this opportunity of thing she so
is a good example of that because you know when i wake up at five or actually a for and don't go back to survive and then get up
you know i don't even think of it i mean i noticed that i don't want to but i don't even i mean any there is something very freeing about that you know that i don't you know i don't pay any i mean i just get up you know and put my clothes on him in on you know yeah there's
some little voice like i don't want to be doing this i don't want to get up but it's you know there's just something powerful powerful but we're liberating really about just getting up it's really it's refreshing actually you know it's like it's like gum
it's like piece of monster if there's something wonderful about it so i would and and i don't i don't do it me and now mostly mostly don't do it mostly i listened to all that chatter a lot
okay