I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Sometimes a truth is so complex, it can only be expressed in a simple myth. And I'm facing this Bodhidharma all the time, wondering whether he's saying, I've got this sandal and you can't have it.

[01:16]

I left one in China and this one's for Mexico or Germany or America. You can decide for yourself what he's saying. I'll keep it for you, but you're not good enough yet. I think he's saying, I've been saving this for you. So maybe if what I'm thinking about, speaking about has a title, it would be Bodhidharma's Sandal in the Dharmakaya. Now Bodhidharma, he seems to have been, there are several people who had this name, but he seems to have been a likely historical person, though.

[02:19]

Hui Ko, his disciple, is more definitely historical. So, since he probably had a teacher, he was supposedly quite an enlightened person before he met Bodhidharma, but was criticized for not having a teacher. And When he met Bodhidharma, he recognized this was, the word used is the vehicle of the truth. Interesting rather to think of yourself as a vehicle. So, you know, I'll say what I can about Bodhidharma and the Dharmakaya.

[03:31]

In any case, one of the, of course, just some contextual stuff of the story is, of course, in the first koan, the second koan, I guess, of the Book of Serenity, the first of Luke Cliff Records, this meeting with Emperor Wu And Emperor Wu was a historical person who did support Buddhism in China and built temples and followed the precepts and the teachings carefully. And he is rather made fun of in this story, almost as if his supporting Buddhism in this way means nothing. But also at the time that Bodhidharma came to China, there was in Luoyang and various places there were quite glorious temples. They say the bells were so melodious that heaven was moved and so forth.

[04:41]

And the emphasis was on sutra reading. So part of this myth is that Buddhism had become Chinese culture. And there was the Mahayana with characteristics and the Mahayana without characteristics. And the Mahayana with characteristics was the Mahayana of the ten Bhumis, of the ten Bodhisattva stages. And Zen and the emphasis on Bodhidharma is Mahayana without characteristics. enlightenment or realization is not something elusively in only people of certain extraordinary attainments, but rather nirvana or enlightenment was seen on every human being, all human beings and each human being.

[05:48]

Which means it's everywhere available, Not rare, but hard to see. Rare to see, but not rare at all. So Bodhidharma comes in to China as a foreigner, and as Kaj Tanahashi Sensei said to Ulrika in Germany, the Christian convert, or the Christians in Japan, perform a very useful function in Japan. He was very interested in Christianity when he was young. And Mrs. Suzuki was a Christian. Tsukuyoshi's wife was a Christian. Though I think she's... Well, at least she told me after he died. I never told... What did she call him? Hojo. I never told Hojo that...

[06:51]

I'd become a Buddhist. Anyway, she was a Christian kindergarten teacher that the village arranged for sort of them to marry. It's one story. And the other story is that he came out and hung out all the time with her and she finally agreed to get married. And her first husband was a fighter pilot. I believe shot down by Americans. So Bodhidharma is more of a, we've been talking about a forest saint or a siddhi. And he represents the foreigner outside of Chinese culture who breaks the link with culture.

[07:54]

And the Dharmakaya in his preaching Samadhi, it seems that transmission, teaching, practice, continuation of the lineage by true transmission has had a very rocky road historically. And the sutra adepts of China did not like to have anyone talking about Samadhi and the Dharmakaya. And he was supposedly, according to the stories anyway, slandered and attacked and finally poisoned for teaching this Buddhism without characteristics, this original mind which didn't depend on sutras or the Chinese culture. And he did also to, supposedly to his disciples who weren't ready yet for realization, he gave them the Lankavatara Sutra saying this will be realization, enlightenment in the future.

[09:07]

And the Lankavatara Sutra emphasizes penetration of the teachings. Penetration of the teachings. by your own experience, through your own experience. And the lineage, the ancestral lineage is only continued by those who have penetrated through their own experience. So this penetration through your own experience is the emphasis of this myth and the Lankavatara Sutra and Bodhidharma's meeting with And that story, leaving out the snow in the arm, as he said to Bodhidharma, there's various stories he, I mean the myth is he just met him or hung out standing in the snow, but historically it seems that he studied with, practiced with Bodhidharma four or five or six years.

[10:20]

And he said to Bodhidharma, my mind is not yet at peace. Will you pacify it for me? And Bodhidharma said, bring me your mind and I will pacify it for you. And Bodhidharma said, I mean, Waco said, I've looked everywhere for it and it is unobtainable. So Bodhidharma said, I have pacified it for you then. Now this could be looked at as just sort of clever sophistry, because at the level of kind of enactment in language it's rather clever. But if you imagine that Hueco, Hueco actually had searched for his mind everywhere, and had entered a state of unfindability, then you see he might have the aroused consciousness, aroused awareness, in which he might, I hope, was enlightened.

[11:39]

Now we can't actually know what transpired, what occurred, what happened in this relationship, and that's part of the myth that you can't know. It's not in words. The teachings that arise, the thoughts that arise from studying sutras actually hinder realization. So how to study in the Zen and Bodhidharma tradition is rather subtle. As I've said, it's first of all like wandering in a city and only getting the map much later. And then you know whether the map is right or wrong. And you know the many things that won't fit on any map, which is where the path actually occurs.

[12:49]

So it's said, you know, you should have in this more siddhi tradition in Zen, you should have a, even in the villages, you should have a forest cave mind. To try to practice your ordinary life and adept practice at the same time is said to be like trying to sew the needle pointed at both ends. or trying to put fire and water in the same bucket. Doesn't mean you can't, in the Bodhisattva tradition, it's a lay tradition primarily, but you need to also have this forest cave mind even in the cities, in the villages. So we practice what's called, you face the wall, wall gazing or wall contemplation, which means, I mean, physically you face the wall, but it means you are facing the undifferentiated dharmakaya, undifferentiated samadhi.

[14:23]

So we don't know what happens. We don't know what a meeting is. And we hardly know... You know, when I was a kid, a teenager, I used to... You know, I really... did not want to participate in the schools and institutions of our society. I have learned to do it, but I had a kind of, you know, real feeling of, of, of, um, something obtuse or wrong-headed or wrong-directioned about our institution. So I used to have various, most often clearing, sometimes other places, but I would, wherever I was, I would find a clearing in the woods or I would find, sometimes the clearing would be, you know, a freeway clover leaf where

[15:54]

the road captures some trees in this area where nobody ever goes, because there's cars rushing in. And there'd be little island, four islands of trees. I used to go there, if I was in the city, find one that I liked. And when I went to those places, I would find my mind, they made, somehow made my mind think clearly. So I learned some kind of way to use the phenomenal world to think clearly or to develop certain concentrations which allowed me then to take the next step or the next steps. And again, I often mention Suzuki Roshi saying, Usually when you look at a tree, you see a tree, but sometimes when you look at a tree, you see a poem. What's the difference?

[16:56]

And when you look at a mountain or a leaf or a tree or the space of this valley or something and you see a poem, are you seeing the valley or are you seeing your mind? Is it only an experience occurring to you or does it actually have something to do with the tree? Now you can get a little new agey and say that the tree's talking to you, etc. But I think that when you say things like that, it's too much making the tree speak our language. There's some anointment or some... penetration of the teachings and all in the phenomenal world is the teachings that we can't say, we can't describe. I think what we should do is emphasize everything as ordinary experience. In other words, meditation is ordinary experience.

[18:02]

Like eating in a restaurant is ordinary experience, eating orioke meals is ordinary experience. But if you took the food we eat in our Oyoki meals into a restaurant, you'd demand your money back. Perhaps you'd say, I'm not eating this mush. I wanted a pork chop or whatever you wanted, something. But if you took sort of fancy or restaurant food into our three bowls, it would be terrible. So our Aoyoki meals, the way we eat them, I find the food, and Dan Welch mentioned it, who almost always, very often eats very rich food or hot food or very good restaurants. He said, oh, I forget how wonderful it is to eat this simple food in this Aoyoki way. So somehow...

[19:08]

The experience of eating our Oryoki food is different than eating in a restaurant, and eating in a restaurant is different than etc., but both are ordinary experience. If you compare one to the other, it's something diminishing. So, our meditation experience is ordinary experience. When you say, I had an extraordinary meditation experience, you're actually diminishing your experience, because you're comparing it to ordinary experience. It's extraordinary only compared to ordinary, you know, everyday experience. So, I want you to free your experience so that everyday experience is ordinary or extraordinary. It's not comparable. And your meditation experience, I think you'll find yourself more at ease when it isn't extraordinary, it's just ordinary meditation experience. Now, the word dharmakaya comes up, of course, all the time in our practice and

[20:29]

So reluctantly I say something. You know, it's a kind of experiment to say something. But, you know, I want you to have the confidence that it's not, it's something far removed in some cloud-like boomy breaking the enlightenment barrier, but rather ordinary experience ordinary meditation experience, when you have some feeling, as I've been emphasizing yesterday and last evening, letting the mind, the thoughts, sink into the mind, disappear into the mind, and the mind into the body, and the body into the phenomenal world, and then letting things reappear as they might, as they do. And if you have some feeling like this of no boundaries, and you can hold this as a developed awareness, in other words, I don't know what word to use, an instated, like you instate, you establish something or install something.

[22:02]

I can't use the word install because it's not stalled. Instate, state of mind, instated. Established, it sounds too much like a building. but an instated awareness. Now sameness is one of the gates of the motionless, I'm talking about the Dharmakaya now, the motionless, the fundamental motionlessness of the six senses. Or sameness. And sameness is a, you know, you first know sameness as a kind of softness all the time. Everything seems, is soft and familiar. And that softness dissolves the gulf, the object, subject-object gulf. The gulf war of subject and object.

[23:03]

and begins to develop a continuity of mindfulness, which is the basis, becomes the basis for what I'm calling a developed awareness or instated awareness. So if you sit and you practice enough and you find that relaxation, that you're not struggling so much. I mean, it's not that all struggle with karma is over, and personality and habits, but you just move out of that sometimes. and you feel deeply at ease.

[24:19]

Now, if you have some experience like that and you can hold it, in other words, you're now seeing the field of mind, or knowing without interfering with the field of mind in which objects may or may not appear. We can say this is not yet developed, but a taste of knowledge of entry into the dharmakaya. To make it something not so elusive, but practical. Bodhidharma's sandal. Now this is called your true body, sometimes. And when you are so instated, your physical body, your usual physical body, seems like an expression of this dharmakaya.

[25:32]

Now, sometimes you can say, oh, my usual body that I feel is my true body, and this is just an experience, an extraordinary experience. So then you've got a comparison going, and one then has to be more real than the other. So if this is my true body and this experience of the Dharmakaya is an experience, then you're always tying that experience down. It has no life of its own. It's a mere experience based on this body. Or if you go the other way and say, this body is a mere expression of this Dharmakaya body, then you have the same problem. So it's better not to say either. Each one is ordinary experience.

[26:45]

Now, if I hit my body, something's there. Now this is just playing around again. So if I hit my leg, something's there. But what have I actually experienced? One, I've experienced a sensation on my leg. Now there's a certain clarity with no extrapolation required in this kind of Buddhist thinking. I hit my leg and what do I feel? I feel something in my hand and I feel something in my leg or a leg. I guess it's mine. And there's some movement of my mind. There's some thought. That's all I know. a sensation in my hand, a sensation in something called my hand, another sensation in something called my leg, and a thought in something I call me, I guess.

[27:56]

And then in addition, there's the sense of my body, but now that is an extrapolation. You know, there's the image of The guy, the blind person, grabbing an elephant's leg, and he doesn't know what it is. Then he grabs another leg, and he thinks it's four warm palm trees. What are four warm palm trees doing here? Then the elephant pisses on him. He says, my God. But anyway, this story is used both ways to show, you know, we don't know what's going on, but also that's all we know. This sensation of hand and leg and thought. Now if you've, I suppose some of you may have had your leg go to sleep during Zazen. You have, Daisy?

[29:04]

Yeah, me too. I wanted to get them removed at one time. I used to laugh about this Tibetan I heard who had sat cross-legged for so long he couldn't open up his legs anymore and they'd pick him up. I used to wish somebody would come and just pick me up. But sometimes the I don't know. I was told it was in the early part of this century. But what could happen, you know? You get old. It's better than a wheelchair. And sometimes the best thing to do with your legs is forget they're there. Goodbye. In any case, when your legs go quite asleep and you have to get up soon, it's kin-hin time and Someone's hit the bell and Randy's already on the run. You wish your legs would wake up.

[30:08]

So you're sitting there and you say, where are my legs? Shucks. And you have some experience of moving your toes, so you kind of look for that. You know, you can't find it down there, so up here is somewhere you look for, where's my toe up here? If I can find out where to move it up here. Oh yeah, and then after a while, you get a toe to move. But as soon as you get a toe to move, what do you do? You discover your whole leg. Which means you've discovered an image of your leg, not your leg, because your leg is still asleep. So it means actually what you have as an image of your body is the main experience of your body. Do you understand what I mean? So as soon as you find your toe, you can find your whole leg, even though it's still not sensible, still not awake.

[31:13]

So what this practice is trying to do of the Dharmakaya is free you from the image of your body. So the motionlessness of the six senses means the six senses perceive each thing, each sound, but doesn't connect them into an image of the world or the body. Which that image is taught to us by our parents, our mirrors, our friends. And there's a certain way we understand our bodies, somewhat different in different cultures. But this practice, outside or which has dissolved the subject-object gulf, also needs to dissolve the image of the body. And the Dharmakaya is the dissolution of the image of the body.

[32:19]

And this is ordinary experience. And this is the shoe, the sandal that Bodhidharma wants you to wear. So when you come to the point that you can be relaxed enough and established in your practice and your awareness instated or developed enough, that you can rest easily in the sense that the Dharmakaya at that moment is the true body, and your physical body and thoughts are just occasional manifestations or expressions of this wider body, which we also, without any interference, share with the phenomenal world and with others. So the Sangha, in the deepest sense, the Sangha is being able to look around the lovely or annoying personality of others and see the Dharmakaya of each of us.

[33:37]

And that anointment, again, or flow, is the condition of lineage, of the transmission of the teaching. So Bodhidharma represents not only the first person who came to China and brought this Mahayana without characteristics, this beginning of the Zen lineage in China, as a foreigner breaking the connection with Chinese culture, which could have co-opted Buddhism. But it also represents the transmission of the teaching through your own experience. And just the word experience is so valuable because it means three things.

[34:43]

It means to learn by trying. It means peril, danger, trial. And I forget the third thing. But it means experiencing it yourself. And it becomes your experience. So this practice is to thrust you into the danger of your own experience. The peril, perilousness of finding that even your body image is a cultural accumulation.

[35:51]

And that we aren't just our body image. So what Bodhidharma taught with his slipper and with his emphasis on the Dharmakaya, on Mahayana without characteristics, is this body image of the lineage and nirvana or enlightenment on each being and thing. And that this can be realized and most societies and other people find it dangerous because there's nothing inside a culture or a civilization or a

[36:58]

kind of normal behavior in this meeting. It's determined by and through the meeting itself, through the experience itself. But bodhidham is keeping this shoe for you. As Dung Shan says, alone I proceed through myself meeting you everywhere. Alone I proceed through myself meeting you everywhere. As I said last night, everywhere it's submerged.

[38:13]

In the 10,000 things, everywhere submerged, everywhere apparent. Okay, thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[38:38]

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