I'd like to introduce him. Actually, he has to be very tight-knit, so maybe he doesn't need to be introduced, but he's a triple check, he's a practice, and he's an immediate practice. He's also a real scholar and translator of Buddhism. He's come to talk about the union of yin and yang, and yin and yang is one of the characters in the two Buddhist koans which we've been talking about during practice period. I'm happy that he's come to talk about this, and in the afternoon he's going to have a workshop on his koans around the union. So, please pay attention to him, and if you can't come to the workshop, please find a place. Thank you. As I said, I'm going to be talking this afternoon about a series of koans about yin yang.

[01:17]

A Chinese Zen master who lived 782 to 841, and he's very important in our lineage. He was the teacher of the founder of Soto Zen in China way back 1,200 years ago. He's also dear to the heart of many of us because he's a famous Zen failure. He spent 20 years as the personal attendant of Bai Zhang, one of the great Zen masters of all time, and in 20 years he still didn't get it. Later on, of course, he became a teacher under another teacher, Yao Shang, and with his brother, Yun Yan's brother, Da Wu, both became noted teachers. I'm going to talk about many of the other koans about them, and about Yun Yan as a student and as a teacher of Dongshan this afternoon. But just to mention one, there was a time when Yun Yan was talking to his eventual teacher, Yao Shang, in private in the Dongshan room,

[02:26]

and Da Wu was listening outside, and he was so upset that his brother didn't get it that he bit his finger so hard that it bled. So anyway, Yun Yan took a long time. As Lao Tzu says, the greatest vessels take the longest time. Later on, Yun Yan's student, Dongshan, the founder of the Soto school in China that we are in the lineage of here, said that he honored Yun Yan as his teacher only because he never explained anything to me directly. So what I want to talk with you about this morning, though, is this famous story about Yun Yan. We'll be talking about it more this afternoon, but it's a story that's case 21 of the Book of Serenity, and I gather you've been talking about it, so hopefully I'll have something more to say, or maybe I'll just say everything that Michael's been saying about it. But anyway, the story goes, one day Yun Yan was sweeping the ground,

[03:29]

and his brother and brother-monk Da Wu came by and said, Too busy. Yun Yan said, You should know there's one who is not busy. Da Wu said, Then is there a second moon? Yun Yan held out his broom and said, Which moon is this? So this is an absolutely wonderful story. This is maybe my favorite zen koan, and I was recalling this week that I first lectured about it 14 years ago when I was head monk at Tassajara, and this morning I happened to pass Blanche on my way here and told her I was going to be talking about it again, and she said, You're awfully busy to be talking about that. So sometimes we find the one who's not busy right in the middle of busyness. This is a very important and good story for us here in American zen because we don't,

[04:37]

most of American zen is not up at Tassajara or out at Green Gulch, but kind of in the streets, kind of small groups, and in places like this where people come who are involved in the world. So right in the middle of whatever busyness you are involved with, with your job, your families, relationships, children, parents, trying to deal with the difficulties of this very difficult world, do you know there is one who is not busy? And I keep coming back to this story again and again, partly because I am so busy with my own teaching and writing commitments. One of my friends calls me the busiest unemployed person he knows. Anyway, the paradoxical, completely zen thing about this is that

[05:49]

sometimes we can only be so busy when we can return to the one who is not busy, when we have a sense of this one who is not busy. And in our tradition, fundamentally, initially, and again and again and again, we find this one who is not busy, we are reminded of this one who is not busy in this meditation we do called Zazen. So our meditation practice is just to sit upright in the middle of our busy life with attention, with awareness, willing to be upright in the middle of this body, this mind, these problems that this person has sitting on my cushion. And often people who start doing this zen meditation

[06:54]

learn that their mind is whirling around and around and around and around and lots of feelings come up and lots of thoughts come up and we may feel like we are very, very busy, even when we are stopping a while to sit quietly and attentively. But in the middle of being upright and just sitting, not trying to get anything out of our sitting, not trying to become some other person other than just this person here, we can get a taste, a glimpse, a smell of the one who is not busy. We can concentrate our energies and see how connected we are to so many beings. In Japanese Zen they say that one thought is 3,000 worlds.

[08:02]

One moment is 3,000 worlds. So just sitting, being willing to be not busy, in the middle of total busyness, this Zazen sitting meditation we do is kind of the ultimate playing. We are willing to allow whatever comes up to be there. This is difficult. Sometimes we see how busy we are. Sometimes we see how difficult this world is. Sometimes we see how difficult it is to be ourselves. We see our habits and problems and confusion and cravings and anger and frustration and it feels very busy. So that's actually the hardest part of doing this practice and sustaining this practice. Just getting into some funny position or some pain in your knees is minor compared to just being willing to be not busy in the middle of such busyness.

[09:04]

So this beginner's mind, this one who is willing to allow whatever is here to be here, with attention, with openness, just facing the wall or the floor or whatever is in front of us, is a kind of presence and attention, a kind of presence of being here, being now, not trying to escape from whatever is happening right now. Sometimes that's hard to do. Sometimes we are fearful. But courage is not about getting rid of those fears. It's about being willing to be here right in the middle of those fears. So being present, being fully present, is not about escaping from time.

[10:20]

Sometimes in Buddhism we talk about the three worlds or the three times, the past, present and future, but in Buddhism there is also the sense of being present. is teaching about the ten times, the past and the present and the future of the past, and the past and the present of the future of this present, and the past and the present and the future of some future. And then all nine of those together is a tenth time. So the one who's not busy isn't trying to get away from any of those times, but is totally willing to just be here without trying to fix anything, just watching kindly, patiently, with forgiveness for being a human being, for oneself and others. Totally willing to be in any of those ten times, because time is moving in many directions. Just to sit here, to be totally not busy.

[11:23]

So Suzuki Roshi once said that the point of our sitting practice is simply to be able to hear the birds sing, or sometimes to hear the planes flying overhead. So, sometimes some of us feel the need to go off to some monastery for three months or three years or whatever, or to go off for a week of silent sitting to reconnect with the one who's not busy. And for some of us we need that. But the point of that is also to come back into the world of busyness and remember, to

[12:28]

know, there is one who is not busy. So Dao asked Yunyan when he said you should know there's one who's not busy, his brother Dao said, do you mean there's a second moon? So this is why this story, or one of the parts of the story that's so important to us. This is a story about non-duality, about radical non-duality, about not splitting ourselves into two pieces or many pieces. This is an essential part of Zen philosophy and Zen life. But it's not so simple actually. In a way it's simple, but we can get caught in many subtle ways. So, Dao said, you mean there's a second moon? And Yunyan did this amazing thing.

[13:33]

He held out his broom and said, which moon is this? So, is there a duality between our just sitting and being present and not busy, and our working world, our busy world? Sometimes, many times we feel that. We feel we want to go off to some Zen center to find peace and calm. And we need to do that for a while, I suppose, but that's not the point. We need to remember to bring this play of the one who's not busy right into the middle of our work. So, is it two moons? Is it one moon? In the Surangama Samadhi Sutra, it says,

[14:34]

Like the second moon, who will say it is the moon? Who will deny it? For Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom and emptiness, whose image is down in the middle of the Zendo downstairs, for Manjushri, only one moon is real. In between, there is naturally nothing that is or is not the moon. So, part of our practice is to see oneness, is to see our connectedness, is to see that we're all the same. Eyes horizontal, nose vertical. All things are one. We all want to love or be loved. We all struggle with the hurts of the world. We all fear the troubles of the world that are so with us these days. And yet, Manjushri says, only one moon is real. But then, there's also an added saying in this case,

[15:38]

where when Yunyan holds out his broom and says, Which moon is this? And the commentator says, Only two? There's hundreds, thousands, many moons. Dogen, in one of his writings about the moon, says, Dogen is the great Japanese Zen master who brought this tradition from China to Japan. He said, the moon is not one moon or two moon. Two moons. It's not thousands of moons or myriads of moons. Even if the moon itself holds the view of one moon or two moon, that is merely the moon's view. So, part of this story is to learn about this shift, this change, this transformation,

[16:41]

this sense of possibility of one moon or two moons, this possibility of being not busy, right in the middle of tremendous busyness, right in the middle of our busy world with cell phones and Internets and Palm Pilots and e-mail and so many things. How can we come back to the one who's not busy? So, one of the commentary statements says that in the Soto lineage, we esteem the shift of potential and revolution of state. So this is tricky to talk about. It's not that we need to change who we are, and yet something about this practice of being willing to just sit in the middle of our busyness, to just be present, completely present, is transformative.

[17:44]

It is. I know it for myself and I see it in many, many people who take on this practice. Who is busy and who is not busy? Can we shift between these? Maybe in the story it's Da Wu who's the busybody, bothering his brother Yun-Yan who's happily sweeping away, totally not busy. Whatever your busyness is, can you be there and just completely be there and enjoy being present in the middle of it without feeling anxious or hurried or pressured? Actually, even if you are very quote-unquote busy, multitasking, which is actually a practice I do myself, in each moment there's just one thing to do in front of you. How can we be with the one thing and then shift? So there's a kind of art to that,

[18:48]

and part of it has to do with being willing to know there is one who is not busy. So it really helps even more than going off to a Zen retreat for a day or seven days or three months or three years, just to have some space of just sitting in your day every day. Just even 10 minutes of sitting facing the wall. Maybe 20 or 30 or 40 minutes is better, but still, even some little space each day of just being there and whatever thoughts and laundry lists and all of the things you're trying to evaluate that happened yesterday and all of the things you have to get done and all of the worries and confusions and so forth that come up, just to be there in the middle of it without nothing to do about it, just there. Having that space in your life every day, it is transformative. We start to have a sense, even if we don't know which moon it is, we start to have a sense of this one who is not busy. So in our Zen practice we actually focus not only on meditation

[19:58]

but even more on what we do when we get up from our cushion. In Zen training, if you become a resident of a place like this or go off to some other training center, and even in the training of just coming occasionally and sitting in a group and working with a teacher, the focus of our practice is how we bring this not-busy mind into the world. How do we take care of the world? How do we take care of our ordinary activity? How does this dynamic Zazen awareness and presence that is willing to be present in all the times, how do we bring that in and express it in our ordinary daily activity? So the one who is not busy is not only sitting on a cushion up in the mountains in Tassajara or someplace like that. Often we find the one who is not busy right in the middle of the world,

[21:02]

right in the middle of busy activity. So Yun Yan was just sweeping the ground. That may seem like a fairly simple, unbusy kind of activity and yet his brother said, too busy. And his brother knew him pretty well. So I do things like sweeping or washing the dishes as a break from my other busyness. Maybe I'm too busy then. One of our great Zen pioneers in America, Gary Snyder, said that Zen practice comes down to two things, Zazen and sweeping the temple. And it's up to us to decide how big the temple is. So for some of us, just to clean our apartment is a formidable task.

[22:05]

Just to work in the temple, cleaning up, may take a while. For some of us, we also are out there in the world in various ways, trying to sweep up the mess. But also, our sweeping is just being not busy. It's not about fixing things. So this non-duality business is very tricky, as I said. In Zen, non-duality is not about non-duality as opposed to duality. It is not about oneness as opposed to meeting all of the different tasks and activities and challenges of our life. In Zen, non-duality is the non-duality between duality and non-duality.

[23:15]

How can we find the way in which our hands come together in the middle of activity and in the middle of Zazen? So it's one common Zen illness to be attached to some idea of non-duality, to think that everything is one, and if I can just not be caught by all of the busyness and all of the stuff of the world, then that would be it. That would be the one who's not busy. But the one who's not busy has to be willing to be busy. So you should also know there is one who is busy. Are they separate? When we feel they're separate, we should just know that we feel they're separate. We feel there's some problem. We want to run off to sit peacefully

[24:18]

or go to the movies and escape from some situation or do something else than this horrible business that I'm caught in right now. But actually, as we get to know the one who's not busy, we can remember. So there are kind of tricks to this. When you're out in the busy world, when you're at your job, when you're answering, when the phone is ringing again and again and again, when you're driving in the freeway and people are swerving around you or doing crazy things, in all of the busy situations in the world, you can take a breath. You can recall that you don't have to react. You don't have to rush. You can just do what you need to do right there. Answer the phone. I used to work at Parallax Press

[25:20]

where they had this practice of only answering the phone on the third ring, and when the phone rang the first time, everybody would put down everything they were doing and just stop and freeze and kind of take a breath. It felt a little artificial to me, but I find that I still do it sometimes. I wait for the third ring and kind of pause. So that pause button can be very helpful. So there's a story about this story that happened later in Japan. Dao asked, is there, then, two moons, and Yun-Yan said, which moon is this? And Yun-Yan was very clever, but later on there was a guy in Japan named Keizan, Keizan Jokin Daisho, we say. He was a few generations after Dogen, who I mentioned,

[26:21]

and he's considered the second founder of Soto Zen in Japan. And one day, or one night, I should say, Keizan was out walking with one of his disciples, one of his successors, whose name is Gassan Joseki, and they were looking at the moon, and this is something that Japanese people do and Asian people do still. They have parties when it's a full moon. They go out and look at the moon. They know when the next full moon is. It's a little more difficult in San Francisco to remember when it's the full moon. Sometimes I'll notice it, but I confess that I don't know which phase of the moon we're in right now. Somebody here knows. Half moon? Thank you. Good. Somebody here is watching the moon. Great. Oh, you saw it on the calendar? Yeah, we have to look on the calendar. We don't see the moon so much. Good. So anyway, Keizan was out looking at the moon,

[27:22]

which is the thing that Asian people do, and Keizan said to Gassan, By the way, you know there are two moons. And Gassan was perplexed. The story goes that Gassan said, No, I don't know that. And Keizan said, If you don't know there are two moons, you cannot be a seedling in the Soto lineage. You cannot help continue the Soto lineage. And Gassan was shocked. He was a senior disciple of Keizan, and yet he thought there was only one moon, apparently. And it says that when he heard this, Gassan increased his determination and sat cross-legged like an iron pole for years. One day Keizan was passing by Gassan in the meditation hall,

[28:25]

and Keizan said, Sometimes it's right to have him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes. Sometimes it's right not to have him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes. And Gassan got it and realized that there were two moons. So in Soto Zen, we have to know that there are two moons. This is the shift that happened from China to Japan, and I feel like there's a shift happening around this story from Japan to America, so I'll come back to that. But how many moons are there? Which planet is this? So of course there's one moon, right? How do we sweep away all of our confusion, all of our duality,

[29:26]

all of our fear of the other? How do we be willing to be just here ourself without trying to be some other moon? So going back to the original story, when Yun-Yan was sweeping the ground, maybe he thought he was taking care of something. Maybe he thought he was purifying the temple. Maybe he thought he was purifying his mind. And sometimes we have to do things like that. Some part of our practice is that we do see our conditioning, we do see our problems, we do see our habitual ways of seeing the world and seeing ourselves that cause us problems, that make us unhappy. So we think we have to kind of work at getting rid of them. And in some ways, sometimes just sitting does help that, or maybe sometimes it's good to go see a therapist.

[30:28]

We do have problems, each of us. The world has many problems. I think in this culture today, it would be really crazy if you were sane. So we live in a consumerist culture of greed and anger and fear and vengeance. So it's a little difficult to just be here. But our practice fundamentally is just to see this one who's not busy and to not get caught in some confusion about busy and not busy. To not think that we have to do some special practice. There's not some special thing we have to do to be not busy. Not busy isn't something that happens somewhere else. So there's another story about these two brothers, Yun-Yan and Dao-Wu.

[31:40]

They're part of a larger story, another commentary about the moon. So they commented on this other story set in China. Two other monks, their names were Yang-Shan and Shan-Dao, were gazing at the moon, and Yang-Shan asked, When the moon is a crescent, where does the round shade go? When it's full, where does the crescent shade go? So sometimes we feel like the moon is full, full, perfect, round, complete. We may see that. We may feel that it's okay to be this person, this here, even in these crazy times, that there is an opportunity, there is a way for me to express my Zazen mind in my life.

[32:45]

Sometimes the moon is a crescent, and we see only a little part of it. So when the moon is a crescent, where does the round shape go? When it's full, where does the crescent shape go? When we see the one who's not busy, where does the busy one go? When we feel very busy, where is that one who knows that they are not busy? This is, in a way, the central problem of our life, actually. How can we be willing to be ourselves, complete and full, even when we recognize that sometimes we feel like a crescent moon? Sometimes we feel like just a piece, a portion, a shadow of being all we can be. So Shandong answered, when it's a crescent, the round shape is concealed.

[33:55]

Maybe so. When it's full, the crescent shape remains. So he was very attentive to this one who was busy, to this crescent shape. We might say he was a pessimist. Yunyan, the one who was sweeping, said, when it's a crescent, the round shape remains. When it's full, the crescent shape does not exist. So he's the teacher of the founder of our school, and he's always seeing the one who's not busy. He said, when it's a crescent, the round shape remains. When it's full, the crescent shape does not exist. Right in the middle of busyness, there's one who's not busy. When there's one who's not busy, we don't have to worry about busyness. That's what Yunyan said. His brother Dawu said, when it's a crescent, yet it's not a crescent.

[34:58]

When it's full, it's still not round. So this is very important. He's kind of our dharma uncle. When it's a crescent, it's not a crescent. When it's full, it's still not round. Can we see the different dimensions? Can we see that it's not a matter of round or full? Another poet said, since it can be round as a mirror, why should it be bent like a hook? Which moon is this? So part of our practice is not settling on any side of that question.

[36:00]

Just returning our attention to just this. And there's another story about Yunyan I'll talk about this afternoon where he talked about just this is it. This raw attention, this basic awareness, this presence that allows us to see the one who's not busy. How can we be beyond busyness, or not busyness, right in the middle of busyness? How can we take care of our life and recall this possibility of the birds singing, the sunset? So even for those of us who have gone off to the mountains, and sat like a pole for three years, or like I did, or, well, I wasn't like a pole the whole time. But anyway, even if you go off and do a practice period

[37:02]

at city center or some other place, still, our life calls us. We come back. And the true Zen is Zen in action. So this is this third turning of the story. Well, there was the first story in China. Then there was Khe San saying, you should know there are two moons. And I think in America we have to go beyond even Khe San. My favorite American Dharma poet, Bob Dylan, says, he not busy being born is busy dying. How can we jump right into the pool of the one who is busy? How can we see the moon reflected there and not get caught by the busyness by any of the ten times? So Zen and our sitting and our recognition of the one who is not busy allows us many possibilities.

[38:03]

We're not stuck in duality or non-duality. So our human consciousness is binary. We think in terms of right and left and good and bad and right and wrong and man and woman and old and young. It's kind of biological. We think in terms of twos, so we might think there should only be two moons. But as this practice takes root in America, I think we have to go beyond that, not be caught in just two. Just this includes many things. Can we be willing to not see just A or B but actually consider many possibilities? So there's this superstition that I think

[39:07]

is prevalent in our culture that I see many times. I don't know where it came from, maybe from some form of Christianity, I don't know. But we think there's one right thing we have to do. And if we have some problem, we think we have to figure it out. We think that if only I could decide what to do. When we have a decision, we think it's either A or B and I have to make the right decision. Should I go to a lecture at Zen Center this morning or should I go for a walk? Anyway, many decisions. And our habitual consciousness gets us caught in A or B. But actually there are many possibilities. Which moon is this? Which moon is this? Which moon is this? And there's not one right and one wrong. One of the corollaries of that superstition is that there's somebody up there wearing a white robe with a big white beard who knows the answer. And if he'd only tell us or if we could only figure it out,

[40:10]

then we would be able to do the right thing. But reality is much more tricky and actually much more fun than that. Reality is beyond all of the possibilities we imagine. And when we start to get a feeling for that, when we start to actually play with the one who's not busy, we can see there may be other possibilities. There may be other ways to be me right now. And again the practice of that is everyday just coming back, taking a little time to pay attention to just this. This person on this cushion right now. So Dogen had a verse commenting on this story

[41:11]

about Yun-Yan sweeping the ground and which moon is this. And this is from a long writing by Dogen that I've, in the final, final processes of being very busy translating for several years, so I thought I'd share it with you. Dogen's comment on this story. He says, Who sweeps the ground and also sees the moon? Holding up the moon, his sweeping is truly not in vain. Within tens of thousands of moons is placed this moon. Although called the second, how could there be a first? So all we can see of the moon is the light reflected from the sun on its surface. Who sweeps the ground and also sees the moon? Holding up the moon, his sweeping is truly not in vain. Within tens of thousands of moons is placed this moon.

[42:13]

Although called the second, how could there be a first? So when we're willing to just gaze at the moon and not even know if it's a moon or not, many things can be possible. So our job, our practice here in this difficult world, in this difficult culture, in this difficult time that tries our souls, is just to come back to the stuff of our worlds, our many worlds, and bring this one not busy. And maybe we have to spend a lot of time coming, and maybe I would say every day, coming back to just paying attention to this. But I feel like here at Beginner's Mind Temple particularly, this is very present and very poignant

[43:16]

and actually the most advanced practice, to just be in the world, to just be taking care of everyday stuff and still feel this connection to the one who's not busy. So I thought I'd read another new translation of Dogen from his first Dharma words or letters, and this is from early in his teaching career, before he went off to the mountains to train his monks, while he was still living in the capital. And he says this interesting thing that I think is helpful for us here in this country. So first he says, In this floating life, this ordinary rat-race life of fame and profit, fame and profit exist only for a moment. Why should we wait long calpus for the causes and conditions for nirvana? Therefore, sages who have attained the way and verified the result of practice quickly abandon fame for the mountains and wild lands. Wise ones who have reached the other shore and entered the ultimate rank rapidly take themselves to forests and streams.

[44:18]

Doesn't this seem better for fully grasping the matter of mind and objects, this business of our separation from the world, this duality of seeing the world as separate from us? So here he's posing the traditional Buddhist view that we need to get away from the things of the world in order to see how we are caught by our sense of duality, our sense of the other, our sense of needing to decide this way or that way. And eventually he did that himself with his students. But here he says, However, I do not yearn for mountains and forests and do not depart from the neighborhoods of people. Lotus flowers blossom within the red furnace. Above the blue sky there is a white elm. There are actually no clouds in the sky and no mist in the mountains, so the moon advancing towards suchness is high and clear. There may be bamboo fences and flowery hedges,

[45:23]

but the wind that follows conditions does not obstruct the echoes of the teaching. It is better to play within the streets and marketplace and go beyond the threshold of names and forms. Who would cherish this stinking skin bag and consider it precious? Who would consider it desirable to reject these trivial, complicated dwellings? So right in the middle of the difficulties and confusion and frustrations and suffering in this world is where we actually find the one who's not busy. And because you're here this morning in this room, even if this is your first time ever visiting Zen Center, you have some relationship to the one who's not busy. Now you've heard about it. Please take care of her. So our task in transforming this Dharma is to find a way to...

[46:24]

...time that is not busy, that remembers there's one who's not busy, right in the middle of the suffering of our world. So please take care of your practice. Enjoy yourself as you sit, as you deal with all of the confusion. And... I hope you will not be too busy to go vote Tuesday. So thank you all very much for sitting so patiently and listening to me talk about this old story. Your attention...

[47:04]

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