Good morning. We're about halfway through the spring practice period. We've been talking about the practice instructions of Hongzhi Zhongshui from Cultivating the Empty Field. There were six that were offered to the practice commitment period participants to look at, and I've been talking about those. I'm going to talk today about the one that's called Drop Off Your Skin, Accept Your Function. So I'll just read through it first. In daytime the sun, at night the moon, each in turn does not blind the other. This is how a Patra monk or a Zen practitioner steadily practices. naturally without edges or seams. To gain such steadiness, you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas.

[01:08]

If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil, you must just sit through it and let go of everything. Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly, light and shadow altogether forgotten. Drop off your own skin and the sense dusts will be fully purified, the eye readily discerning the brightness. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied. In the entire place, you are not restricted. The whole time, you still mutually respond. Right in light, there is darkness. Right in darkness, there is light. A solitary boat carries the moon. At night, it lodges amid the reed flowers, gently swaying in total brilliance. So I want to go over this again and actually highlight three points. But in this, this is a very rich paragraph.

[02:13]

It includes several primary points and Soto or Cao Dong teachings, meditation teachings. So, I'll just go through it. In daytime the sun, at night the moon, each in turn does not blind the other. So, this also evokes time. Sun and moon are day and night as a way of talking about time. And in this passing of time and in the shining of the sun and the glowing of the moon, there's this kind of mutual glowing or light. They do not blind each other. This mutuality is part of what's talked about in this passage.

[03:13]

This is how a Zen practitioner steadily practices naturally without edges or seams. So part of what's emphasized here is this steady practice, this ongoing practice. So relevant to a practice period, the point of practicing steadily, of ongoing practice, of constant practice, not just trying to find one particular experience of practice, but actually this sense of steady practice, of sustaining the practice, of sustaining awareness and attention. He says, to gain such steadiness you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas. ingrained ideas is literally your root intentions, your fundamental intentions.

[04:18]

So this is, you know, we've talked about this and Ben Connolly was here last Monday talking about the Abhidharma or Yogacara way of analyzing this in terms of the the aspects of mind, analyzing the mind in terms of various emotional afflictions and emotional qualities, wholesome and unwholesome. But this is kind of more fundamental practice. One can do that kind of practice. But here he says, if you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil, you must just sit through it and let go of everything. Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly, light and shadow, again this light and dark, altogether forgotten. Drop off your own skin and the sense dust will be fully purified. So this letting go is very important.

[05:21]

completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas, or we could say your, your, uh, he, he, he talks, Aumja talks about earlier, these tendencies we fabricated into apparent habits, our emotional afflictions, our ingrained karmic legacy. Um, he says, sit through it and let go of everything. So during a day of sitting, during Sashin, during a day like today, there is this approach of just sitting through it. But this letting go is subtle. It doesn't mean to kind of ignore or crush all the thoughts that come up. I mean, that's one approach, but this letting go is very subtle. In some ways, I would call it the essential art of zazen.

[06:25]

Letting go is not ignoring. How do we allow, how do we acknowledge, how do we feel what we feel, but not get caught by it? Just sit through it. Letting go also means to be intimate with. Letting go means to see, to feel how we feel, but then not get involved with it. So in the very beginning of the practice instructions, Hongzhe says, The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. The whole affair functions without leaving traces and mirrors or responds without obscurations.

[07:26]

At the end, in the passage we'll talk about, graciously share yourself, he says, similarly, wide open and accessible, walking along casually, mount the sounds and straddle the colors while you transcend listening and surpass watching. Thinking and feeling is another one of those sense faculties. Thoughts come up. So we're sitting looking at the wall and we see color. We're sitting and we're aware of sound, whether it's sounds coming from the streets or sounds coming from the kitchen or whatever. And in the same way, there's the sounds coming from our thoughts and feelings as they arise naturally in the middle of sasana. So here he's talking about gaining such steadiness. How do we find our steadiness in this upright sitting? He says you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas.

[08:28]

Let go of your ingrained feelings. Just let go. Don't get caught up in these, but don't push them away either. Thoughts come, we let them go. They may come up again. We don't have to ignore them or destroy them. Allow yourself to be the person on your seat right now. Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly. Light and shadow altogether forgotten. Drop off your own skin. and the sense dust will be fully purified, the eye readily discerning the brightness." So this letting go of everything goes along with drop off your own skin. This drop off your own skin is a kind of precursor to what Dogen says a century later, he says, drop off body and mind. Shinjin Datsuraku is actually more than Shikantaza, more than just sitting.

[09:30]

Shinjin Datsuraku is the phrase that Dogen uses more for Zazen. Just drop off body and mind. It doesn't mean destroy your body and mind. It doesn't mean, you know, get a lobotomy and mutilate your body. It's just let go. Just let go. This letting go is so subtle. to steadily practice this art of letting go, feeling what you feel, being aware of this invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained feelings, and yet not getting caught by them, not making them partners, not being Not getting into thinking you have to do something about this invisible pounding and weaving. Just let go. And here Hongju says, drop off your own skin. It's the same character as drop off, Datsuraku in Sino-Japanese, or in Japanese, as later Dogen will say, drop off body, mind.

[10:42]

Shinjin Datsuraku. Drop off your own skin. don't hold on to that which separates you from everything. So in the Song of the Grass Hut, Shakyamuni says, don't separate from your skin back here and now. Here, Hongshu says, drop off your own skin. So we pay attention to the ingrained feelings, the invisible pounding and weaving. We feel what we feel. And yet, let go. Let go of it all. So this is one of the core arts of this steady practice that he's talking about here. Steadily, gaining such steadiness, steadily practicing.

[11:50]

Just sit through it and let go of everything. Just keep paying attention. Take the next breath. So there's a lot going on in this paragraph. Yes, we do have this invisible pounding and weaving. We do have this invisible turmoil. We have to, sometimes it doesn't come up so much. Sometimes it's the most difficult part of maintaining our practice. And we each have our own version of it. And yet it's part of our human legacy. So Hongju is a little stern about it. To gain such steadiness you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained feelings and ideas.

[12:55]

If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil you must just sit through it and let go of everything. But I'm suggesting that the way to do this is Not to try and crush your humanity, but just, okay, here you are with these feelings. Let go of everything, just let go, gently. Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly, light and shadow altogether forgotten. Drop off your own skin and the sense dust will be fully purified. the eye readily discerning the brightness, this bright empty field, which is here from the very beginning. It's not something you have to create or uncover or figure out. It's the way things is from the very beginning. And then he offers another core teaching of suttas. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied. This accept your function in Sino-Japanese is ji-ju, ji-yu.

[14:05]

no, ju-yu, ji-ji-yu, which is from, which you may, some of you will recognize from self-fulfillment samadhi, ji-ji-yu. To accept your function and be wholly satisfied. So this is one of the main teachings that Dogen talks about later. He says that the criterion for zazen is ji-ji-yu samadhi, the self-fulfillment the self-fulfillment or the self-accepting its function, samadhi, the meditation of accepting your function, literally. So Hongxue here says, accept your function and be wholly satisfied. So in the way Dogen uses these characters that Hongxue uses here is that one of his names for this practice, this serene illumination, this dasa, which he calls the criterion of this practice, is just to, well, it's a way of fulfilling yourself, it's a way of realizing yourself, it's a way of enjoying yourself, and that is just to accept your function.

[15:28]

What does that mean? The ju of ju-yu, the accept, is the same as accepting or receiving the precepts, the same character. But here it's accept your function. Accept, we could say, the situation. that you find on your seat as you sit for a period or a day or whatever, in the middle of this pounding and weaving. What is your function? What is your situation? What is the combination of causes and conditions that you witness as you inhale and exhale? This is self-fulfillment. This is the self, wholly satisfied. So we say, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate and delusion, born from body, speech and mind, I now fully avow.

[16:42]

This is maybe, from another angle, a different way of saying that. Accept your function. Accept your situation. We could say accept your place in the mandala of the Zendo, the place you're sitting in. Accept your role in the Sangha today, or this month, or we could say the greater Sangha, accept your function in this life. And what does it mean to accept your function? How do you take on the possibilities that you have? Each of you has your own special gift. You know this is meant to be true. Each of you has your own interests, your capacities, your ways of seeing.

[17:45]

How do you accept that and take it on and find total satisfaction in that? This is what he says is the the outcome of dropping off your own skin, of letting go of everything. Ah, okay, let go of all that, all this stuff. Don't push it away, just, okay, here it is. And accept your function. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied in the entire place. You're not restricted. The whole time you still mutually respond. So that's the third part of what I wanted to focus on in this. The first is this letting go and dropping off your own skin. The second is accepting your function. And then the third is this mutually respond.

[18:47]

Of course, they're all part of one thing, but to accept your function is to find mutual responsiveness. Accepting your function is to find your way of responding to the situation, to the function of your life. So this is taking responsibility, but it's a mutual responsiveness. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied in the entire place. You're not restricted. We, you know, we feel restricted, you know, sometimes by our situation. We feel, we, you know, we feel restricted by our function sometimes. Oh, if only I was, you know. had some other, you know, we, this is some human tendency that's, you know, well, you know, you all know about this. Wishing you were some other way, wishing you were some other, wishing you had some other capacities than all the wonderful capacities you have.

[19:54]

But here you are. Here the way unfolds. Accept your function. including all of the changes and all of the dynamics of your function. It's not a static thing. Be wholly satisfied with how it is that you are here now. you're not restricted. The whole time you still mutually respond. So this idea of mutual response is a key part of the background philosophy of, we could say, Soto-San or East Asian Mahayana. You can look at it in terms of the Huayen mutual response, the fourfold Dharmadhatus. Anyway, this mutual response, we each have a responsibility and the world actually responds to our response. There's this mutual response of ourself and this dynamic possibility of the world right now.

[21:04]

Sometimes we recognize this. Sometimes we forget about it and we think, we feel, we can feel bereft, we can feel like there's no way we can function in this world. But actually, when we take on accepting our function, when we let go of and drop off this this invisible turmoil of the pounding and weaving of our ingrained emotions, just let it go. We can find this mutual response. We can find a way to be helpful in the world. And the world can show us how to be helpful. So then, right after that, it echoes the harmony of difference and sameness. Right in light, there's darkness. Right in darkness, there's light. And then Hongzhi ends with this poetic passage. A solitary boat carries the moon. So the moonlight, you know, we can see this, this is some old Chinese landscape painting.

[22:07]

This is my own boat, and there's the moonlight shining on it. The solitary boat carries the moon at night. It lodges amid the reed flowers, gently swaying in total brilliance." So, this is an image for how maybe we respond or how we can find our function, our possibility, our usefulness in this world, in this dynamic process. So there's so much in this passage. Again, this letting go of everything. Just let go of everything. And when we do that, gently, what's happening here? What's going on, on your seat?

[23:08]

We all have all these stories, ingrained ideas about who we are and how we are and all of these thoughts and feelings. Just let go. Drop off your own skin. What's going on? We don't have to be caught up by all these stories. Just feel how it feels to be here. This body-mind. Here. Today. Now. Next breath. And then the eye readily discerns some brightness. And then accept your function. How is it that we can be useful? How is it that we can function in the world, in this body-mind? And be wholly satisfied. Occupy your space. Occupy this body-mind. Occupy your seat. How do we take that on?

[24:15]

The whole time, still, you are mutually responding. Sometimes we don't realize it. Actually, that's what's going on all the time. The world is responding to us and we're responding to the world. How do you take it on? How do you say, yeah, okay, here I am. So I'll read the whole thing again and then maybe we'll have a little bit of time for comments or responses. In daytime the sun, at night the moon, each in turn does not blind the other. This is how a Zen practitioner steadily practices, naturally without edges or seams. To gain such steadiness, you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas and feelings. If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil, you must just sit through it and let go of everything.

[25:21]

Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly, light and shadow altogether forgotten. Drop off your own skin and the sense dust will be fully purified, the eye readily discerning the brightness. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied. In the entire place, you're not restricted. The whole time you still mutually respond. Right in light there is darkness. Right in darkness there is light. A solitary boat carries the moon at night. It lodges amid the reed flowers, gently swaying in total brilliance. So, comments, questions, responses. We'll have time, people who are here for the day, to talk about this or anything else more this afternoon. But anyone, comments or questions or responses now? Yes.

[26:46]

And I would say radical acceptance includes that we want to be helpful and make things better. We accept that too. Okay, can you accept that? Is there a winner? Is there a loser? Angie, you have that perplexed look on your face. Yeah. Sure.

[28:27]

So that's good. What does it mean to put your trust in reality? Put it that way. But that doesn't mean like passively. It's like We are here. How do we accept our function in that process? So radical acceptance is not passive. How do we take on our function? How does the world respond to us when we take on our function in taking on the world. To me, that's the question. This is subtle, and it is tricky. What do you think? Okay.

[29:33]

Right. It's not that we can force anything. So harmonizing, that's a good word to put in here. How do we flow with, you know, there's a Taoist aspect to this. How do we flow and harmonize with our responsibility and the mutual response of accepting our function? Good. Yes, Chris. So a problem comes up and I think, I should look into this, or change it, or whatever.

[30:43]

And then to maybe actually not pay attention to all the positives that have happened. And sort of realizing that in the previous way, like I was saying, you can get away with this sort of, as you were saying, you can crush people to file, Good. Yeah, right in light there is darkness, right in darkness there is light, it says. Yeah. So to see the complexity of all of that, not to get caught on some side or other.

[31:49]

Yes, Bill? So sometimes there's like a, maybe there's like a, I have to accept, disharmony is a kind of beauty to, you know, when you think of harmony, it's like a pleasant, beautiful thing. Sometimes, I work so hard to kind of make the disharmony harmony, but it's, it's just too, so much energy. It's kind of impossible and fast. So maybe there's some substance of, Yeah, and our idea of harmony, maybe there's a wider, or I don't know, some other harmony that we don't see yet, or maybe can't see.

[33:03]

Rick. you Yeah, that's right.

[34:17]

But acceptance is a tricky thing, because it can become sort of passive accepting, like accepting injustice or something. I think part of what accepting things as they are includes accepting our response to it, which may include trying to trying to help change in a constructive way. So going back to what Bo was saying, that doesn't mean forcing it. So how do you work with something? How do you accept? It's subtle. In a situation, in a personal situation, with friend or family or something, or in a relationship? How do you work with the energy, accept it, but also not just accept some harmfulness, but try and work, accept it, but also take responsibility for contributing constructively?

[35:23]

So that's also part of acceptance, I think. It's subtle. It's not just passive acceptance. The way I take this is this mutual response. So yeah, this is subtle, I think. Yeah, thank you. Brian. It was very helpful to hear. I've been hearing the Spirit dropping off body and mind for almost three years now. It was very clear when you referred to the body and mind as that which separates us. And the reason it clicked is because I've been meditating a lot recently on that part of the Kenshin koan about identity, sort of projecting the self into the myriad phases of delusion, but letting them express themselves.

[36:31]

For me it's a question of what is this thing I call me? And this thing I call me is a subject that's struggling and interacting with all these I'm just one player in this vast symphony that's going on, and that is me. That whole thing is me. Yeah, so your me includes Bo and Kathy. It's everything all at once. And if I may sort of dissolve the boundaries of the self and just really experience everything as my whole me, so many things get freed up. Good. Yes, Dave. that there's lots of different types of jams.

[37:59]

That means that there's forms that exist and there's contexts that exist, like you're playing in a certain style and your style is harmonic in that style, but sometimes it's time to be Leona Coleman. that harmony to existing or any way to relate to harmony. So, I guess my point is that harmony doesn't always mean doing something that is Sometimes, you know, there is an appropriate time for new forms to emerge so that the harmony can, the full breadth of the harmony can be expressed.

[39:04]

And that's a continuing process. Yeah, I love the jazz analogy. And yeah, so sometimes we have to bring in some disharmony to find a wider harmony. Yeah, good, good, thank you. Great discussion. Kathy. Well, thank you all very much.

[39:49]

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