I vow to taste the truth of the Tadabata sport. Good morning. I'm perhaps as surprised as you are to find myself up here. Is that reverb-y? Okay. On Monday when I spoke, I made a reference to a story that I couldn't reference. I talked about the line, I referred to some monk not even having begun practicing the Four Noble Truths. And since I talked about that, I've learned more about the story and also that I interpreted it in my own interesting and unique way.

[01:08]

And I'm actually going to stick to my story about it, but I'm going to get back to it by going through the more traditional routes. So with the help of the Shuso and the Tonto and the Abbot, we have located the story. So I will read it. I'm going to read everything I found on it. It's the story between the sixth ancestor, Hui Nang, or Dai Kan Eno, and the seventh ancestor, Sagan Gyoshi. In Chinese, it's Qing Huan, Qing Huan, something like that. Not very versed in this, so help me out. OK. Qingyuan went to study with the Zen Master Huineng and asked, what work is to be done so as not to fall into stages? The Zen Master inquired, what have you done?

[02:12]

Qingyuan said, I do not even practice the holy truths. The Zen Master said, what stage do you fall into? Qingyuan said, if I do not even practice the holy truths, what stages are there? The Zen Master recognized his profound capacity. So that is the version from The Transmission of Light by Zen Master Keizan. I wanted to also mention in Tension, Reb Anderson's book, Lori found this right in the introduction. Reb was talking with Tara Tolkoo and Tara Tolkoo asked him, what's the object of your practice? What's the object of your meditation? And Reb had said, we practice objectless meditation.

[03:15]

And Tara remarked that it was a very advanced practice. So he asked, what stages are there in your training? And Reb said, well, in a way, we're mostly concerned with not falling into stages. It's part of our tradition. I told him the story of Sagan Gyoshi going to the sixth ancestor and asking, how can I avoid falling into steps and stages? And the ancestor said, what have you been practicing? Sagan said, I haven't even been practicing the Four Noble Truths. And in parentheses, that is, I haven't even started the beginning practice. That's the part I remember. And the ancestor said, well, what stage have you fallen into? And Sagan said, how could I have fallen into a stage if I haven't even practiced the Noble Truths? So that one feels a little different to me than the first one, only because it This has more of the idea that I haven't even started.

[04:21]

The other one, the first one, more had a feeling of I'm already beyond it. So, that's the original story so far as I know. There is an echo of that story in the record of Deng Xiang. So I'll just get everything out on the table here and then we can have at it. So this is in the record of Deng Xian. Deng Xian said to Yun Yan, I have some habits that are not yet eradicated. And Yun Yan said, what have you been doing? And Deng Xian replied, I have not concerned myself with the Four Noble Truths. And Yun Yan said, are you joyful yet? Dungshan said, it would be untrue to say that I am not joyful. It is as though I have grasped a bright pearl in a pile of shit.

[05:22]

So the way we found everything, because I looked in the Platform Sutra and didn't find this, is Alan had a talk of blanches, and this is Blanche's take on it. Dungshan visited Yunyun and his teacher, said, what have you been studying? I haven't even been studying. Well, what have you been practicing? I haven't even been practicing the Four Noble Truths. Are you joyful yet? Joy is one of the stages of a bodhisattva. It's also one of the factors of enlightenment. Dungshan said, it would not be right to say that I am not joyful. It's as if I found a pearl in a pile of shit, and blanched comments. And that's what it's like, you know, there's all this stuff that we drag around with us, but the pearl is right there. What we need to do is free the pearl and let it gleam. So where I had been going in that

[06:38]

I haven't even started practicing the Four Noble Truths. I'm thinking of a circle, and all the way around at the other side of the circle, right where I am, is being beyond practicing the Four Noble Truths. Not falling into steps and stages has to do with being completely free. But what's astounding about This version of Kezon's is, it wasn't that he said, I am beyond them. He said, I'm not even practicing them. I haven't even practiced them. So what I think of when I hear this is, well, I think of two things. One is I think of the sin sickness we fall into of just already being free of it before we've even touched it or gotten acquainted with it. We're so busy. I think, so interested in the non-duality teaching, in the teaching of emptiness, that we want to actualize it before we've sort of jumped in, so to speak.

[07:53]

I believe that there is that realization and that Sagan had it and that Huineng saw it and confirmed it. but I'm not saying that's what I'm doing. So for me, it's actually locating where I am in the practice. How do I sort of recognize my place without making an object of that place? In other words, how do I join the steps and stages that are a rightful and lawful way in our practice without attaching to it, without making it this thing. In the record of Dongshan, there's a note that I think is interesting that makes a distinction that I think is very important for us to be aware of.

[09:07]

When we practice Zen, I know I'm completely guilty of this. It's very easy to avoid studying Buddhism. It's easy to avoid knowing basic Buddhism and the basic truths that the Buddha taught and, you know, just rush to the koans and like that. So, in the note to the, when Dengshan and Yunyan are talking about the bright pearl, there's this note that was very interesting to me. Dung Shan is in the lineage of Hui Nung, and by having this exchange with Yun Yan, what the commentator is saying, he's sort of securing his place in the lineage. He's sort of like, you know, if I quote Suzuki Roshi, maybe in a hundred years, they'll put me in Suzuki Roshi's lineage, you know. The Four Noble Truths, part of the earliest of Buddhist teaching, assert that there is suffering, cause, cessation, and a path.

[10:10]

Implicit in this teaching, according to this commentator, is a belief in the existence of defilements or habits to be eradicated, and of a gradual process or stages by which this eradication is achieved. So one way to look at that for me is to see that as a very linear, very material way of looking at our suffering. Here's the suffering, and apparently there's a formula that goes along with it. There's the suffering, and there's a cause, and there's the truth of the freedom, and then there's a way to practice that freedom and attain that freedom. So I think there's a notion in Zen that if we're practicing emptiness, we can sort of bypass the sort of linear reality, if you will, that the Buddha taught, which was the Buddha's realization.

[11:15]

And in contrast to that is that whole school that is attributed to Waynong of, you know, the sudden enlightenment, you know, just do your practice and you will wake up spontaneously and you know, until you do, you're already okay. So you don't have to work on yourself. You just kind of, you accept that you're okay the way you are, which is actually true, but, and, you know, so it's sort of like when Rev was talking to Tarotoku, After he told them this story, Tara said, well, yes, but I've noticed that many of the students don't know much about the Mahayana. Oh, so it became clear that people didn't understand that practicing the precepts was a part of the Bodhisattva path and doing ceremonies. They just wanted to sit like Buddha and have this great awakening. the whole thing that's coming out for me right now has to do with the fact that I am in touch with this, and they use the word lust quite purposefully, this lust for the awakening that means I don't have to do anything else.

[12:33]

That just arrives me in the place where I apparently already am, but I don't realize it. So I want the realization that sort of secures my place. Well, Enlightenment doesn't secure my place. My practice secures my place. I mean, that's why after enlightenment, we go on practicing forever. In Bozeman, Porna, the teacher I live with, likes to quote everybody. And I think by the time he actually quotes, he might be getting names wrong. He attributes this to Richard Baker Roshi, but I don't know where it comes from. Enlightenment is an accident. And practice makes you accident-prone. So, we can't control what it is that arises for us, and even if we are so lucky... That's the bird flying over the clear lake.

[13:38]

If we're so lucky to... have some experience that opens our minds and hearts to the way things really are, that the practice of it makes it more likely that that will awaken again and again. So in these practices and ceremonies, what I think of is really committing to not making an object out of people and things and the self. And I don't always know what that means. When I'm talking to you and you're over there, I don't know how you're not an object, but our practice gives us a way in. And we're lucky in Zen practice because we have these marvelous forms in which to sort of just devote our body and mind.

[14:43]

devote our body and mind to putting our hands in Gassho and, you know, picking up the orioke bowl, not because it's over there and I'm over here, but because the whole event is one thing happening. And I may not realize it, but over and over Sashin brings us to the opportunity to make it so, to actualize what's already so. I'm a little hesitant because I don't know this very well, but there's some interesting parts of this that I will put out for us to consider. Huy Nhung wanted Sagan to achieve realization quickly.

[15:47]

And so he asked him about his practice. And Sagan manifested himself by saying that he did not even practice the holy truth. And what Huineng saw was someone who was free, not someone who hadn't even begun. But that's why we rely on Zen masters. to be able to discern the difference. So that if we go into dokusan and try this out, we'll get back exactly what we are. This was interesting to me. Even if contrivance ends, there is still some preservation of the self. If you are like this, you make the mistake of falling into the deep pit of liberation. I like that. That's where I've been swimming around, the deep pit of liberation, the jail of liberation. So this state has always been called religious attachment.

[16:51]

Yunmin referred to it as the two kinds of sickness in the spiritual body. So what I was thinking of was how Our self-clinging is really the problem all along, beginning, middle, and end, no matter what. If we get lost, as I do when I try to talk about text or when I'm sort of investigating an idea but wanting it to be actualized within me, I can always return to my self-clinging, my particular self-clinging. So even though the teaching here is not to fall into steps and stages, I'm kind of at the not ignoring steps and stages. And I want to say something like I want to invite you there too, but if you're beyond it already, I want to encourage your beyondment.

[17:57]

But in not ignoring steps and stages, we have a real opportunity to locate the experience that's arising right when it does and to not make something out of it, but to actually join with it in a way that is the practice of non-self clinging. The image of this clear lake has been haunting me for the, I guess it's only been 24 hours, right? It feels like weeks somehow, but, um, And it's lovely to me because the image I have is of this clear lake and this big sky and this lone heron flying through it. Of course, when I'm sitting, this is not my experience. I mean, it is in the moment if I'm actually paying attention. It's one heron flying across the lake. But for many of us, what we come out of is like,

[18:59]

flocks and flocks of crows and airplanes and balloons and people falling and, you know, just, it's a mess up there, you know? How can you even know that the lake is still there, much less that all of this is arising in the sky and we're supposed to go, okay, it's all mine, it's all mine. How do I actually realize that? Well, This is where I present the gap in my understanding, or maybe most of you have seen the gap in it already. But for myself, it's like to just tell myself it's all mind is a good reminding factor, but it may not actually be my experience. My experience is possibly getting caught by this or that as it flies through the sky. or waking up after just, you know, chapters of this story has gone by and going, oh, this is a story. But I'm interested in getting very intimate in particular with the story, not like inviting it in for tea and obsessing, but not

[20:12]

missing any part of the experience. So when that bird flies through the sky and is reflected in the clear lake, the clear lake doesn't miss any part of the bird. It doesn't name the bird. It doesn't have a conception of the bird, but it doesn't miss any of it. Well, what is that? This apparently is our birthright. This is what we are. fundamentally this activity. The reflection is clear and pure. That we name it or describe it or have a concept of it is not necessarily a hindrance. It's not necessarily a hindrance, but it is just that. It's the next bird. There's the bird and there's the naming of bird, which is the next bird.

[21:13]

I mean, there's just endless phenomena arising. And our opportunity in Sashin is to sit down and sort of enjoy the movie, knowing it as a movie, forgetting that it's a movie and remembering it's a movie and watching our particular way of forgetting and remembering the movie, enjoying our particular movie, knowing that everybody has a movie. Everybody's projecting it onto the same blank screen. When we, When we want to apply ourself to the matter at hand, and being aware of our self-clinging may just cause more self-clinging, or we get into some kind of spiral where it's getting heavier, we can apply antidotes.

[22:33]

And the antidotes are known as the Buddhist teaching We've been studying the four foundations of mindfulness as we studied the seven factors of enlightenment. For instance, to be aware of the body in the body is a way to practice so that we don't get caught in our thinking mind because we have a body practice to return to when our mind is feeling like it's assaulting, like it's just going on and on. We can return to this admonition to be aware of the body, in the body, being one with the body, experiencing what arises without making an object of it so that we are just this experience and we don't add anything extra to it. I am not in pain.

[23:35]

Pain. or not even pain, sensation, point in the knee, discomfort in the belly, just really entering in without adding on. So a lot of the practices are designed to subtract what it is we add on and allow us to enter just what's ever there, and there doesn't have to be anything in particular there. There's not a particular state or feeling you have to get so that you're saying, oh, well, this is meditation now, or this is oneness now. There's nothing that arises that we can't join with and be present with and not make an object out of, nothing. So, it's almost like, great, just sit me down, send it on in, send it in, whatever's gonna come, let it come.

[24:45]

And my job is to not do anything about it. Wholeheartedly, with everything in my body and mind, to not add on to what's already occurring. This takes a tremendous effort, and I guess this is what they mean by, They, us, what we mean by effortless effort is we cannot strive, but we can't fall down either. We can't just, oh, whatever. You know, the teaching says whatever arises is okay. So, you know, whatever. Our job, you know, is our vigilance in not missing what is going on. So, I guess this brings me back to where what I was trying to get at on Monday about I haven't even started the practice of the Four Holy Truths is that given that this bright pearl, this jewel is already

[26:07]

within us that this clear lake that can reflect anything that arises is not something to find, but rather to uncover, to remember, to enter. I don't need more awakening. I say that, you know, meaning. I don't need any more good news than that to sit down and start practicing what the Buddha taught. So in a way, I know I'm green now, and I feel really green in a way. And I don't mean this in a false, modest way. I really feel like starting over, beginning again.

[27:11]

So to accept the first holy truth of the suffering of life is, I guess, the place that I've located where my self-clinging is really operating. What would it mean if we were to really accept this, that life is unsatisfying or unsatisfactory? We have satisfying moments and unsatisfying moments, but basically, what we're reaching for, even if we get, we lose. The reaching is painful, the getting is painful, the losing is painful. Why won't I get this? Why won't I get this? Every moment, even in my talking to you now, there's what am I clinging to that won't just relax? So in all of our waking moments, in our activities, in our meetings with other people, what is it that we're doing that is denying the first holy truth?

[28:24]

That it's not gonna be good like we want it to be. Or even if it is, it'll stop being good. I don't even say what's the point. If it's good, well, it's good, great. Enjoy that. But what does that really mean? So I want to practice this first holy truth without sticking to it as a fixed thing. Like life is suffering, okay, now I got it. It's not that either. But somehow, as I flow from moment to moment, or as moment to moment flows, and I arise within that, How do I, how do I, how do I see the attachment to this self and release it with some compassion? Avoiding the first truth is how I cling to myself and clinging to myself avoids the first truth.

[29:36]

So I've come up with a nice little circular prison there, and I would like to pierce it. So I think that's what I have to say. I'd really like us to bring it forth together. So whatever you have to say. Mary. I've been thinking about separating. And More in the sense of, like we see, we make a distinction sometimes between pain and suffering. Suffering is what we add on to it, so we end up talking about pain. Right. Is that necessary deliberation? In the sense that the benefit of making distinctions creates clarity, yes. I'm not talking about the distinctions, I'm talking about that kind of Oh, being in that pain, is the pain itself necessary?

[30:39]

I think it's unavoidable. My experience is it's unavoidable. I don't know whether it's necessary. What's necessary is to see, but seeing is not enough. We have to practice. If pain never arises, maybe one might never be moved to seek the teaching. I haven't met that person. Have you? Meryl? Well, I've thought a lot about pain and suffering, and sometimes I think that making that distinction, although I do it, is not correct, or not really what the Buddha was saying. I think the Buddha was saying, Well, I appreciate that.

[32:03]

I think you might be, it might be correct that the Buddha would not have made that distinction. And that when I consider dukkha as being this kind of flavor to life is that it's always has this dissatisfaction. I found that interpretation to be helpful. To me, what's interesting in what you're saying is the awareness part. We can be aware of pain. We can be aware of many, many things. There's probably no end to mental objects, pain or otherwise. But I think the awareness is the thing we want. Yeah. Greg. When you were responding to Mary, you made a distinction Well, I think of the phrase practice realization.

[33:12]

They go together. And I've been thinking of realization practice. I've been sort of putting it in that order. I think, I'm thinking of my friend Robin in the city who continues to lament her particular situation and has great clarity about the patterns and habits, her particular karma that keeps her in this kind of story. And she just doesn't know what to do about it. And the thing that comes up for me when I hear her kvetch like this is practice. That's what I want to say to her. It's like, you've seen it, but it's not doing you any good if you don't practice it. So it's... I think of all the ways we think of, like we think of doctors and lawyers as having a practice. It's kind of like you can graduate from law school, but if you don't practice it like you saw it, but you didn't practice it. So it brings it, it makes it real.

[34:14]

I hesitate to use that language, but I, that's what it feels like to me. It brings it forth. It's like no good if you just see it and you're just sitting there seeing it. So you weren't using seeing as, When you first started talking, sometimes it sounds like we talk about practice as this thing that's separate. You know, we come here, we sit Shasheen, and that's practice, or we sit Zazen, and that's practice. And you know, people talk about going down to the Ta Sahara and moving down there so they can practice.

[35:17]

But you know about 1130 last night somebody there's a wall outside my house and someone crashed into it So I'm startled out of the sleep. They take off down the street I jump in my car with my keys and my pajamas and my house and I chase them up the hill Got my phone. I call the police and I'm just getting all bent out of shape and I thought well I can't go to sashimi tomorrow because I'm gonna be really tired because I won't have gotten enough sleep and my clock was already set and I woke up and I thought oh you know I should you know you know should just I'm too tired I shouldn't go and it was a big night and what dawned on me was I just got out of bed and said but Dean this is that life is the practice the practice isn't going and sitting sashim that's what helps get me to life and I think that sometimes it feels like that We're like, well, yeah, so what do we do when walking down the street and someone, you know, throws a piece of paper down in front of us?

[36:33]

Isn't that where we're supposed to... Isn't that the stuff? I mean, the... Well, it strikes me that an answer to your question is right in the question. The way you just asked the question, how would you answer it? Which question? When we're walking down the street and someone throws a piece of paper in front of us, aren't we supposed to practice then? But, right, but it's not like thinking, oh, what would Dogen do, or what would Sosa do? That's the book we don't have yet that we need. What would Dogen do? But it's sort of like, coming and sitting here, it just automatically, what you do is you pick it up. Right. You know, and that's the thing. And in that, that's where that happens out there. If I'm never out there, then I'm never going to see I feel very fortunate in this life that I have this opportunity to practice and I don't fear that I am on the brink of having too much formal practice.

[37:39]

And what I mean by that is we're training ourselves. We're training ourselves to express what it is we already are. And so Because we live in a relative world, things are relative. There's sashin and there's everyday life. And that's okay. The fact that they're distinct doesn't mean they're separate. So we can come here and practice. and really enjoy it and really train and go deep and penetrate and get stuck and do all this wonderful stuff and then go out there and see where all the gaps are. But if we fall into this, I'm beyond steps and stages before we've even taken a step or been in a stage, then that's a kind of sickness where we think we're too good to sort of, I think for me, it's like I'm too good to bother with that, but that's not what was so for the seventh ancestor. He actually realized.

[38:41]

I brought that out both to sort of confess my ignorance of the story and also to bring forth the beauty of that teaching, but also to say, It's okay to be in a certain stage, both sort of in general in your life, sort of know the particular place you are in your practice, and in the very particular, like in this moment, what's arising. It's beneficial to be aware of that. But ultimately, yes, it's all one, and we need to be able to bring it out. But if we get caught by that and don't train ourselves, then it won't be pure what we do. But isn't it just as easy for people to get caught in the training? Yes. Linda. These are two little scraps. I don't know if they're connected. First, it's just that you used a phrase. You quoted a phrase that had the word You want me to read it?

[39:47]

Yeah. Even if contrivance ends, there is still some preservation of the self. Well, I just grabbed that because contrivance is a big kind of focus of the way I'm trying to deal with my self. I don't have any idea whether You talked about the unsatisfied nature of life, period. You didn't say period. And then you also quote the story that you said, are you joyful? And when you're joyful like that, life is not unsatisfying, right? Right. It's, yeah, go on.

[40:50]

No, I don't want to go on. Okay. You look like you do. I think what you're pointing to is like, not the deep pit of liberation, but the actual liberation of not being, not being concerned whether... Not being tried. Well, not being attached to whether things are good or bad, whether they're going your way or not, whether it's painful or not. when not only when we're free of that, but when it truly doesn't move us, how could we not be joyful? What I think of with contrivance, I just want to say, is I thought of it, I don't know, what other people would say about this, but when contrivance ends, what I thought was when formations end, when sort of the conceptions and the building and the making things ends, we still have self-clinging.

[41:56]

Like, even to drop all the objects, there still may be self-clinging. To be watchful of that, I don't know. Ross? Well, the thing that's occurring to me doesn't actually directly address it, but it's going to be my way in.

[42:59]

I've been thinking of something Sojin said a long time ago, or I remember, if you want to know what your karma is, just look at your life. Like, you don't have to go very far to find out what's going on, you know, and where I'm caught in a particular way or what my story and clinging is. So this is something that's true for each and every one of us. It's particular, and that's what's beautiful in a way about individuals, is that it's particular. And when we share it with each other, the recognition we have is more of the way it's all the same. but we want to know the particulars of each other because it's only through the particular way that I suffer and cling and grasp and try that you can see the one that doesn't do any of that.

[44:08]

I can't show you it in general. I can only show you through my particular way. So, Maybe dukkha isn't the underlying thing. Maybe it's underlying in the sense that it comes through each one of us in particular. And maybe the underlying thing is the freedom from that. Does that, I don't think it at all addressed your question. Okay. I don't know what the time is and where we are. I know where we are. We're right here. And it's 11 o'clock. Is that the time we end? What could be better? Okay, back to work. Beings are numberless.

[45:13]

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