It's wonderful for me to be able to introduce him because we know each other for 32 or 33 years from before the time when Zen was a real clear figure or clear element of our lives. We went to school, the same school, and I had a rock and roll band that practiced in his apartment on the Upper West Side in 1968 or 69. Good morning. And Alan, thank you for the introduction. Here we are again.

[01:47]

So I'm going to talk this morning about the teachings of Hongzhi Zhongshui that I translated in the book Alan referred to, Cultivating the Empty Field. And I know that Many of you are familiar with it and I know Sojan Roshi has lectured on it often so I'm going to try and say a few things about it. Partly this is the occasion of the new edition from Tuttle with a brand new cover and this is New Revised Expanded Edition. So Hongzhe is just so delightful. I started translating him after reading, there was a tiny bit in Tom Cleary's book, Timeless Spring, which is now long out of print, but I wanted more. And so I ended up doing it myself with the help of Yi Wu, who's a Chinese scholar. So Hengshuo was a 12th century Soto Zen master or Cao Dong master in China, a century before Dogen, and his writings present and I would say evoke the experience of meditative awareness.

[03:00]

His writings really eloquently get to the core of what it is we're doing here sitting in the Zen Do. So I wanted to talk about that. not in detail but he hints at how this is expressed in our daily life. So in the new edition I've added some new poems and revised some of the terminology and in the back I added to the appendixes for those of you who know the book from before the new translations of Sandokai, the Harmony of Difference and song of the Precious Mara Samadhi, because Hongxue comes out of this Chinese Tsao-tung or Soto tradition that has this very subtle philosophy and dialectic that those poems embody, and he refers to them quite often, about the interaction of our experience of wholeness or sameness and our recognizing differences and the karma of differences.

[04:09]

practice and of our life and of our expressing practice. As Seto says, Sekito says, in the Sandokai, the spiritual source shines clear in the light. The branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. According with sameness is still not enlightenment. So I feel like Hongzhi's writings in a certain way are focused at this according with sameness, but there's also very much the still-not-enlightenment. There's this turning in the active quality of our practice which he expresses. And so as Suzuki Roshi says, we're constantly finding our balance against a background of perfect balance. So our practice and this cultivation of the empty field which is always here is about this realignment, this constant balancing that we're always doing as we come back to our posture and our uprightness.

[05:20]

And just to mention, I'm working now on Dogen's extensive record and so I'm getting to translate a lot more of Hongxue because Dogen refers to Hongshu very, very much, quite often in the Heikou Roku, in his extensive records. So Hongshu was a great influence on Dogen and on our tradition. So I wanted to start, just in terms of picking up a few of the themes that I feel are important in Hongshu's writing, with talking about this teaching of Buddha nature. The way Hangzhou puts it, the field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Excuse me. Utter emptiness has no image. Upright independence does not rely on anything.

[06:28]

Just expand and illuminate the original truth unconcerned by external conditions. Accordingly, we are told to realize that not a single thing exists. So this is the famous utterance of the sixth patriarch. Not a single thing exists. In this field, birth and death do not appear. The deep source transparent down to the bottom can radiantly shine and can respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. The whole affair functions without leaving traces and mirrors without obscurations. Very naturally, mind and dharmas emerge and harmonize. So this passage at the very beginning of his practice instructions really catches a lot of the teaching that he's talking about. So he has this image of this field of boundless emptiness. This is something that's already here, that's always here, that we catch glimpses of or tastes of or find ways to settle into now and then in the middle of our wandering zazen mind.

[07:37]

In the middle of sitting upright we get a taste of that. and we soak in that. And it's there from the very beginning. But then he talks about this cultivation. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away. All of these tendencies that we fabricate into apparent habits, all of our karmic conditioning, gets in the way of our seeing the wholeness that's right here. And this section that I call practice instructions, the Chinese word is in Japanese pronounced hoko, it's just it's Dharma talks, but I followed the lead of a Japanese scholar who talked about this as practice instructions, and I really feel that they're embedded in these writings are very practical ways of connecting with us. So he talks about, in many places he talks about this idea of the subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. There's an instruction here about how to hold our awareness in the middle of our zazen.

[08:47]

So without grabbing on to sounds, without grabbing on to whatever is in front of us and on the wall before us without grabbing onto thoughts which are also just colors and sounds. We are aware of what is going on. We can hear each other breathing. We can hear the rain dripping outside. It's always right here. There's this kind of clear awareness which our busy minds gets in the way of. So the point is that This awareness, this empty field, this Buddha nature is not somewhere else. It's not about going somewhere else or becoming a new person or studying a lot of books or learning something we didn't know before. It's something that is always right in front of us. But it's hard to see, like trying to see our own eyeballs.

[09:53]

It's subtle and escapes us. But it's right in the middle of causes and conditions. So Hongshu says, amid living beings is the original place of nirvana. It's not about going to some wonderful Buddha world or some mountaintop. Right amid the world of living beings is the original place of nirvana. How amazing it is that all people have this but cannot polish it into bright clarity. In darkness unawakened they make foolishness cover their wisdom and overflow. One remembrance of illumination can break through and leap out of the dust of Kalpas." So there's kind of a, it's funny, there's kind of a joke here, you know, we are told that we have to polish and clear away and brush off all these habits, but then right in the middle of that he says, one remembrance of illumination. So when we settle we do get glimpses, we remind ourselves of something that has always been here.

[10:59]

and we can leap clear, we can break through, we can be present with ourselves and all beings. This is fundamental teaching. So the cultivation we need to do and in a way we can't do. This fundamental Buddha nature is right there in the middle of our busy lives. It's always right there. But the practice we do, this sitting meditation, or as Dogen calls it, as Hongjo calls it, silent illumination or serene illumination, is necessary to realize it. So our practice is turning the light within, this kind of yogic study of the self. What is it like to be here right now with this inhale, with this exhale? and this is really the difficult part of practice not getting into some funny position and the pain in our knees and all of that that can be difficult too but how do we really allow ourselves to experience ourselves including the world of living beings that we are the confusion and greed and anger and how can we stay upright and acknowledge our obstructions acknowledge our own confusion and

[12:25]

desires and rage and frustration and all of that stuff, which is part of being a living being. How can we settle into that? So this is this balancing place, this yogic study of self. And what Hongshu teaches us is that this is, it's not so hard. It's very simple. It's very natural. So again and again in his writings, Hongxue uses metaphors from nature to describe the experience of this kind of awareness. So I'll just read two or three of them. They're all throughout the practice instructions, these metaphors. journey through the world responding to conditions, carefree and without restraint. Like the clouds finally raining, like moonlight following the current, like orchids growing in shade, like spring arising in everything, they act without mind, they respond with certainty.

[13:37]

This is how perfected people behave. Then they must resume their travels and follow the ancestors, walking ahead with steadiness and letting go of themselves with innocence." So it's just like the clouds raining. It's like the moonlight in the flowing river. It's like spring when it comes and we see it everywhere in ourselves and in the buds. It's very natural. Another expression of that from Hongzhi. Just resting is like the great ocean accepting hundreds of streams, all absorbed into one flavor. Freely going ahead is like the great surging tides riding on the wind, all coming onto this shore together. How could they not reach into the genuine source? How could they not realize the great function that appears before us? A patchwork monk follows movement and responds to changes in total harmony."

[14:40]

So he has many other examples where he talks about this awareness in terms of the nature around him and he lived on a mountaintop and didn't leave for 30 years. and had people come and study with him, but I think even in the middle of a city, we can feel the nature, we can hear it, we can see it. There's a problem with this because we think that, there's a semantic problem, we think that natural means kind of automatic, it'll happen naturally, and it's a little bit of a problem, and it's actually the same problem in Japanese and in English, this word that's used for the natural world, also can mean something happening naturally automatically on its own. And that's not exactly the practice. It happens naturally, but we have to be there. We have to take it on. It's not passive. So this is a big problem in Zen practice.

[15:44]

We think if we just sit and kind of go to sleep that everything will work out eventually. And we actually have to be part of nature. So it's not automatic. The emphasis of Zen is our personal experience. It's not enough to have some understanding of the teaching. That may be helpful and some of us may need to study it that way too, but this is about our own experience. How do we take on our own life in this natural way in harmony with the nature of things? So I feel like in his practice instructions, Hongzhu gives us kinds of clues and a lot of the passages can be used as actual meditation practices, as something to sit with on your cushion.

[16:55]

So I want to give a couple of examples of that. One of them has to do with time. I'm still used to the old edition and it takes me a little while to find these. Okay, wandering around, accept how it goes. Accepting how it goes, wander around. Do not be bounded by or settle into any place. Then the plow will break open the ground in the field of the empty kappa, the empty age. Proceeding in this manner, each event will be unobscured, each realm will appear complete. One contemplation of the 10,000 years is beginning not to dwell in appearances. Thus it is said that the mind ground contains every seed and the universal rain makes them all sprout." So this line about one contemplation of the 10,000 years is beginning not to dwell on appearances.

[18:02]

We do get caught in appearances, we do get caught in how things look to us, but if we can see our practice and our life in the context of the 10,000 years we have a different perspective. So this has to do with the Bodhisattva vow and the Bodhisattva ideal that we're not just practicing to for ourselves, for this small self to feel better. I mean that may be part of our practice, you know if we have a little less stress or if we feel a little more integrated or settled in our life that's wonderful, but also our practice whether or not we realize it is about the rain and the seeds growing and of course everybody else sitting here together today. this wider time span of our practice, it gives us a little more space around the things that feel so urgent to us right now.

[19:06]

If we can see our life in the context of the centuries of Bodhisattva practice. So here we're reading something that was written 800 or so years ago, 900 years ago. and still his writings can have some meaning for us. So there is this tradition, and there is the tradition of working in the world to try and help benefit the world. But if we can see this, maybe we don't have to think in 10,000 years, although my friend Kastanahashi is working on a 10,000 year plan, I think. But we can see a little beyond the urgent matters of today and this month and of course we need to attend to those and they are urgent, but how do we also see this wider space that allows us to give ourselves to what we need to do in a kind of more spacious open way?

[20:12]

So this contemplation of the 10,000 years is worth considering. It's actually a practice that you can do. Another one has to do with space. I'll read the whole passage first. The matter of oneness cannot be learned at all. The essence is to empty and open out body and mind as expansive as the great emptiness of space. Naturally, in the entire territory, all is satisfied. This strong spirit cannot be deterred. In event after event it cannot be confused. The moon accompanies the flowing water, the rain pursues the drifting clouds. Settled without a grasping mind, such intensity may be accomplished. Only do not let yourself interfere with things and certainly nothing will interfere with you. So I feel like there's a meditation instruction in this passage. There's a meditation on space. It's a very traditional Buddhist meditation. But the way Hongzhi puts it, the essence is to empty and open out body and mind as expansive as the great emptiness of space.

[21:23]

So I'd like to do a little exercise with you. So just sit comfortably and if you want to close your eyes, we don't usually recommend that, but you can for this exercise, if you like. And I want to empty out body and mind into space. So first, just feel the space of your cushion, the place where you're sitting. And then allow your awareness to spread to fill this whole wonderful zendo room and enjoy the space and its contours and feel present in this whole space

[22:25]

from the altar to the back windows. And let's see if we can go a little further. To my left, not so far away, is Ashby Avenue. Feel that space between here and Ashby Avenue. And on the other sides as well. There's Martin Luther King Avenue and there's What's the one back here? Anyway, feel this space of this Berkeley Zen Center for blocks around it. And the buildings and the people and the flowers and plants and trees. So you might try sometime taking a long time with this meditation and you can, you know, in front of me if you go far enough there's the bay and back of me if you go far enough is Tilden Park and there's University Avenue and Alcatraz Avenue.

[23:48]

Just take a minute to feel, as widely as you want, to feel this space, the openness of this space with your awareness. and then come back to this space of this senda and again feel this room and all of us in here together and the sounds of the rain outside. So again this is one kind of practice that you can do to, it's a very traditional Buddhist meditation practice to feel something of this empty field and of course

[24:56]

The empty field is just a metaphor but maybe the space from Tilden Park to the bay is also a metaphor for something that we always are here with. So this meditation that we do in the Soto school is sometimes called objectless meditation. There's no particular object or no particular technique that we suggest that everybody do as you're sitting upright on your cushion. Of course, there are many techniques. There's counting breaths or just following your breaths, and meditating on space and time might be others. There are many, many, many libraries of techniques of Buddhist meditation. But in this silent illumination that Hongzhi is talking about, basically we just sit and appreciate the arising of everything, including ourself. Again, it's not passive. We are part of the natural world. are involved in creating this empty field.

[25:59]

So this object is called objectless meditation in terms of not having a particular samadhi object, an object of concentration. It's also objectless in the sense that there's no specific objective to the meditation. So Suzuki Rishi talks very often about non-gaining attitude. It's not some specific thing, some particular power or some particular effect that we're looking for when we meditate. and yet there is a purpose. It's not exactly a goal, but there is a meaning and a purpose to this meditation, and this goes back to the roots of Mahayana Buddhism, and this has to do with this idea of universal awakening. How do we support and inspire each other to direct ourselves towards this empty field, and to express that in our life? As the Lotus Sutra says, this is the cause for Buddhas appearing in the world, that we do want to encourage ourselves and encourage each other to settle into a space where we can have some experience of our own empty field.

[27:10]

But then the other half is, how do we express that? So again, silent illumination is not escaping from the world. Right here in the middle of samsara is the place of nirvana. as Hongxue says, right here in this confused world. So the criticism that actually in his own lifetime Hongxue's meditation faced was that people tended to be, let's say, quietistic or to kind of get settled into some blissful state, to feel like they could just peacefully walk around as Zen zombies. So this has happened sometimes even in modern times. This is a danger that we face in this meditation. So this is why the other half of our meditation is what we call precepts. So how do we express this awareness in our life, in our actual life? This is also part of this sound illumination practice. How we function in the world.

[28:15]

So one way Hongzhe talks about this is, when you have thoroughly investigated your roots back to their ultimate source, a thousand or ten thousand sages are no more than footprints on the trail. In wonder, return to the journey, avail yourself of the path and walk ahead. In light there is darkness. Where it operates, no traces remain. With the hundred grass tips in the busy marketplace, graciously share yourself. Wide open and accessible, walking along, casually mount the sounds and straddle the colors while you transcend listening and surpass watching." So again, this being present with all things as they arise without trying to grab onto them, you know. Graciously share yourself. So this is our practice. We turn within in meditation and then we get up and leave the zendo and are back there in the struggles of our lives, in our everyday activity, whatever we're doing.

[29:30]

And right there is the place where our practice comes alive and we graciously share ourselves and whatever we've experienced of the empty field naturally it is expressed. Do we take it on? Do we actually be willing to engage this empty field in our everyday activity. This is the koan of our lives. There's another poem in the appendix, by Sekito Kisen, who also wrote the Sandokai, in the Song of the Grass-Roof Hari. It kind of sums this up in one line. And so he says, turn around the light to shine within, then just return. So we turn within and then we come back out into our activity in the world. And they're actually not separate. But maybe we need these different practices to really experience and really enrich and deepen our awareness of this and the way we can express it.

[30:40]

So I wanted some time for some discussion, but I wanted to read a couple of the new verses. So the new verses that are added to the new edition are Angsha's verses about different Bodhisattvas from the Complete Enlightenment Sutra. So some of them are more familiar, like Manjushri and Samantabhadra and Maitreya, but there's some others that aren't so familiar. I'll just read a couple of these. This is the poem to Universal Enlightenment Bodhisattva. Medicine and sickness oppose each other, a pair difficult to separate. The mind flower opens and radiates its own house of Zen. Naturally real and lustrous, without practice or enlightenment, its daily use is magnificent, granting transmission. Stepping high from red earth to the clouds, its knowledge can be fathomed. Stopping cries of children with golden leaves provisionally produces faith. When the bottom is filled with rubbish, just walk through the sludge.

[31:44]

Do not laugh at the snail meandering in its own slime." So this is our practice, just to meander in our own slime while we enjoy this empty field. This one's the poem to complete enlightenment, Bodhisattva. Return to the seated hand and hold the guiding orb. Throughout long ages, enter the earth spirit's flow. After awakening, continuity is the function of self-dropped away. Enlightenment comes in private and many difficulties gather. The ten directions satisfy grasses on snowy mountains. The single color totally fulfills oxen in dewy fields. Winds sweep over the waters of heaven and worldly dusts disperse. Reed flowers gleam together in the bright autumn moon. So again, even his prose is very poetic, but he expresses his own taste, his own sense of this empty field, and I find it very encouraging, and apparently many other people do as well.

[32:49]

So part of this is to enjoy our practice, to celebrate our practice, to celebrate our expression of our connection with the empty field. I'll just close with one more passage about this. In clarity the wonder exists with spiritual energy shining on its own. It cannot be grasped and so cannot be called being. It cannot be rubbed away and so cannot be called non-being. Beyond the mind of deliberation and discussion depart from the remains of shadowy images. Emptying one's sense of self-existence is wondrous. This wonder is enacted with a spirit that can be invoked. The moon mind with its cloud body is revealed straightforwardly in every direction without resorting to signs or symbols, radiating light everywhere. It responds appropriately to beings and enters the sense dust without confusion.

[33:51]

Overcoming every obstruction, it shines through every empty dharma. Leaving discriminating consciousness and conditioning, enter clean, clear wisdom and romp and play in samadhi. What could be wrong? So our practice is to romp and play in samadhi and then graciously share ourselves. So I wanted to leave a little time for discussion or questions or comments. So I know many of you have been studying text and I would love to hear your responses. Alan. It's not an easy business and maybe there's a time to be grim and there's a time to play, but we kind of have this stern demeanor and the Japanese are really good at this to go, I can't even do what they scowl.

[35:22]

But I think it's very important to enjoy your zazen. So one of my teachers once talked about being wild on the cushion. You know, when you're sitting upright, not moving, settling into your posture, anything can be going on, you know, and it's okay and enjoy it. So the other side is that there is the grimness is that we do have to find out how to express this in our lives and it's difficult in the society because this society is has been very skillfully dedicated to promoting materialistic greed and hatred and confusion and intoxication. So we get up from our cushion and go outside and it's difficult. So we bring that back into the Zendo and so we may feel pretty grim. But allow yourself to enjoy yourself and enjoy your life and enjoy, even if you're looking grim and not smiling,

[36:29]

allow the play of the raindrops and the thoughts wandering by and the feelings and it's all, you know, it's all horrible and confused and here we are. And just to be able to sit upright in the middle of it is wonderful, you know. We can face our lives, we can, with all the difficulties. Yes? I think I understood from your talk that Hamji says something about that we have bad habits that we cling to and it gets in the way of our recognizing now. And I wondered if you are aware of bad habits that you've let go of? I'm especially aware of bad habits that I haven't let go of. but sometimes there's some space between them.

[37:34]

And part of the grimness is that when we're sitting here we become aware of our bad habits and that's actually the practice is if we know our bad habits you know it's not exactly sometimes they go away. I stopped smoking cigarettes a month or so after I started sitting because I came out of Zendo where I was sitting in New York and I hadn't smoked a cigarette in three hours because I'd been there for a couple of hours and you know a couple of periods and that was a long time to not smoke a cigarette for me then and I'd been following my breath and enjoying it and I said I'm not going to smoke a cigarette. I'm not going to smoke anymore. And the next evening when I went to dinner and after dinner all my in-laws lit up cigarettes and I didn't. Then I knew I wouldn't smoke again. So that's one example of a very kind of gross habit that I let go of. I sympathize with people who are still smoking by the way. But the subtlety of our conditioning, of our

[38:37]

patterns of reacting to the world of the conditioning from family dynamics and we're all wounded, we're all damaged in some way or other and yet we can face that and when we become very familiar with those habits we don't have to act on them. So we can go out from the Zendo and do our lives and we know when that stuff comes up. We're very familiar with it and so it allows us to even if we're not free of the habit to not create more karma from it. So, yeah. I don't know so much about self-hypnosis. I've been hypnotized a couple of times in my life and I liked it. chart of Gohonzon and create self-hypnosis.

[39:42]

Yeah, well I don't know about self-hypnosis but there is this what Hongshu calls Samadhi, you know, there's this concentration that's part of our practice and when we're chanting, you know, there is an energy, there is an intensity which helps us align with something much deeper. So I don't know. There are many ways in which we can connect with this empty field, not just in Zazen. So I think maybe sometimes hypnosis can help athletes experience these peak moments, musicians, writers, painters. In any concentrated activity there's a possibility to experience something deeper, to connect with something wider. So maybe that's what happens in hypnosis too. What's wonderful about Zazen is that we don't need to be particularly skilled or, you know, we don't need a lot of, we just need a pillow to sit on in our bodies.

[40:44]

touching the what I call the whole sphere which is the all then on the other hand how to bring that back to daily life and it seems like what puncture is talking about is much more in monastic way of life and we lead a very different And that transition, what is that transition? What is the feeling of that transition between, aha, I'm practicing monastically and here I am applying it in daily life. So what's your experience of that transition from one to the other?

[42:00]

Yeah, well this is an important question. I lead lay sitting groups, very informal, much more informal than this usually, even, where people come and sit once a week, maybe. But I think the basic pattern, the basic rhythm is the same. So Hongzhu was on the mountaintop teaching monks but also there were lots of lay people who came and came to his talks and actually these talks were recorded by some of those lay people, some of them. whether you're going to a sesshin for seven days or whether you're going to a practice period at Tassajara for three months or three years or whether you're just coming to sit for one day or whether you're coming to just sit for one period, it's still turn the light within and then just return. If you have the situation of everyday life in the 21st century, whatever this is, I think it's important to have that rhythm, if you're sitting one period a day, to actually have that as part of your everyday activity.

[43:06]

So I really recommend sitting at least a little bit every day, even 10 or 15 minutes. If you want to take the Sabbath off or something like that, it's okay. Well, right in the middle of being frustrated by something taking too long to download or somebody on the freeway cutting in front of you, when you see your anger or whatever arise, you know, when I see myself cursing somebody who's just cut in front of me, oh, you know, what's that? So actually, the most difficult and actually the most advanced monastic practice is being a practitioner in the sitting. being right in the middle of the world. This is something very difficult that we're trying to do and yet by seeing the arising of your awareness and your responses to the difficulties of all of this busyness, it's very strong practice.

[44:15]

So let that come back with you onto your cushion. You don't have to try and think about it, but it's there. And when you're out there ready to get upset about something, see that happening and enjoy your breathing. So this is actually a very rich situation to practice. So I think it's time to... Thank you, Sacha. I did some of the books for sale in the community room. So thank you all very much for your questions and comments. It's wonderful to be here.

[45:09]

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