Dogen's extensive record, Ehikoroku with Shouhaku, we'd get to the Hongzhou passages and he would kind of, Shouhaku would be kind of lost. I don't understand what this means, you know, and we'd have to, you know, I'd have to kind of guess at it for a while and finally we'd come to something that, oh yeah, this is what he's saying. So he uses lots of allusions, literary allusions, common to, I mean it was common to the kind of educated literati of his period, Song China. But also it's extremely poetic and lots of images and one of the things about Chinese is that it's a very evocative language. English is a very precise language. It's very good for writing instruction manuals. Chinese is a very evocative language where each character has numbers of meanings so it's very good for writing poetry, imagistic poetry. Anyway, Hongzhou uses that. So he's not easy to read at all. So that's a little bit. So. So. Yeah, in somewhat different ways.

[01:05]

Well, one of the books is just the verses and the cases and verses that became the Book of Serenity. And there's actually another collection of 100 cases and verses, of cases and prose writings that became another Koan collection. That's another one of the nine volumes of his collected record. And then there are the Dharma Hall Discourses or Jodo, a lot of which are in the Heikou Roku. Some of which are in the Heikou Roku. Translated in Dogen's extensive record. What's the other book called? The other case of Koans? It hasn't been translated. It's, wait a second, after. Yeah, I've never heard of it. Yeah, it's, no, it's in here in the introduction somewhere. So give me a second and I'll find it. No, I'll find it. Well, I guess it's not in here where I can find it.

[02:09]

Anyway, I can let you know. But there's another whole Koan collection like the Book of Serenity, but it's. Record of Further Inquiry. Thank you very much. Yeah, so that's another Koan collection. There are many Koan collections that have not been translated into English. So actually what I was going to do at this point, I want to talk a little bit, there's this kind of bilingual pun or problem when we say Buddha nature. Because part of what Hongzhe does, part of why he's so evocative is that he uses lots of nature metaphors as a way, as part of his poetry, but as a way of showing the naturalness of this process of aligning with Buddha nature, this process of integrating the ultimate with our particular situation. But I wanted to just, before I go into that,

[03:11]

partly because it's relevant to that, go back to some of the background. So Hongzhe articulated this Soto meditation practice in a way that had never been done before, in this very poetic, very evocative, very helpful way. It's clear that the actual practice he was doing, he didn't make up silent illumination or serene illumination meditation. That goes back in the lineage before him, I would say to Shito and to Dongshan. And one of the places that I look to, and I understand that you all chanted here, is the Song of the Grass Hut or Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage. So I just wanted to mention a few lines of that because it's kind of this context. You know, the Sando Kai, the identity of relative and absolute, presents more the philosophical context of Soto Zen, this dialectic of ultimate

[04:15]

or universal in particular. Song of the Grass Hut, though, is more kind of the practice side. It's how we build our own space of practice. A lot of Zen is defining a space that's conducive to this meditative awareness. And that's a lot of what Hongzhe's doing. And the Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage by Shito is, you know, has some clues to that that I think is one starting point for what Hongzhe's doing. So just to pick out a few lines sort of at random. We can talk more about this if you want to, but I just wanted to kind of reference it here. Well, he says, just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest. Thus, this mountain monk doesn't understand at all. So this image of just, of course, there's just sitting, which is echoed by Dogen in the practice we do. This idea of head covered goes back to the pictures you may have seen of Bodhidharma

[05:19]

where his head is covered over with his quilt. Have you seen those pictures where he's sitting in the cave in the snow in northern China? Some of the famous pictures of Bodhidharma, his head is covered, sitting with his quilt around him. And that is still the practice in monks' halls in Japan, in sodos in Japan, where you sleep at the same place in the meditation hall where you sit and take oryoki food and so forth. And there's the early period in the morning, it's sort of informal, you kind of pull the quilt over your head because it's cold. Or you don't have to, but you can, it's permitted. And so that's a specific reference to that, that head covered. But also it's kind of, poetically, head is covered. We're not caught up in cogitation, we're not caught up in discriminative thinking. Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest. So Hongshu talks a lot about the rhythms

[06:25]

and nature of rest and activity. And then Shuto Sekito says, thus this mountain monk doesn't understand at all. Again, I'm talking about it in a way that we can talk about in terms of understanding, but that's not the point of it. The point of it is just to express this. He says, living here, he no longer works to get free. So liberation is not something you work at to get. Dongshan says, the dharma of suchness is intimately conveyed by Buddhists and ancestors. Now you have it, preserve it well. In some sense, what these people are talking about, Dogen and Hongshu and Shuto and Dongshan, these ancient masters, are talking about something that's already here. It's not about something that you have to get or figure out or understand. Our job, the Buddha work, our life work, is how do we take care of it? How do we preserve it well? So we no longer work to get free.

[07:27]

We work, there is Buddha work, but it's not about trying to figure something out or reach some higher state of being or get some dramatic Kensho experience. If that happens, that's great, but that's still just the beginning of practice in a way. So that line about sitting with head covered, when I was reading, I don't know if it's a thing about Japanese or Chinese, but when I was reading it, I assumed that it meant when you were sitting in the grass hut, covered by the grass hut that you had made in Zazen, but it specifically addressed a piece of cloth. Yes, yes. But it's also what you said. So these are poems. This is part of this tradition we're in is it's a poetic tradition. Some parts of Buddhism, Nagarjuna and a lot of Tibetan Buddhism, and it was very reasonable. And there are parts of Chinese Buddhism too that are philosophical and didactic and you can kind of try and approach it philosophically. Zen particularly is poetry and images and metaphors.

[08:31]

So if you heard it as with head covered by the grass hut, that's right, that's true, that's part of this too. Again, it's appreciating the tones, appreciating that whatever response you have to it is part of it. So even, well, maybe some misunderstandings can take us away from the practices. I guess that's possible, but since it's poetry, whatever it evokes in you is part of what's there. Yeah, and I wasn't, in my sangha, we actually chant this as it is here, but when I translated it, I wasn't so much focusing on enchantability. So I'm sure there could be some refinements, but then it has to be accurate to the original poetry.

[09:32]

So that's the challenge in translating. Kyogen thinks of this as head covered by the Zen. And that's true too, yes. Your thoughts are covered by Zen, essentially. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, all of that. Yeah, that's the same thing. That's right, and when I was in one of the sotos, I practiced it and did sashin with Tanaka Shinkai Roshi outside Kyoto, we actually did that. And also at Shogoji, where I did a practice period, we actually did that in the morning. You wake up and you get your, sit up and it's like your quilt, it's like your sleeping bag, if it's cold enough, you put it over your head, or you can't. And then you sit one period like that, and then you get up and wash. Yeah, yeah. At some point, people start to get up and. Between sleeping and.

[10:34]

Yeah. Then there's a formal period of zazen at some point. A couple other lines in here. Well, there's one line that in some ways, to me, includes the whole of our practice. Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. So this is the whole of this dynamic of turning within, seeing this inner serene illumination, and then just return. We have to come back out into the world. Sometimes we come back out into the world by offering this practice at a place like this. But we are engaged with the world. But there is this turning away from samsara and then coming back into our fundamental relationship with all beings. Yes, question. So when you turn within, and you say you're seeing this illumination of some kind, there's a person seeing this illumination, and then is that, you can live life,

[11:38]

you know, regular life, day-to-day, moment-to-moment, seeing that illumination and living from that? Except that the- Or is there always- The way you said it sounded to me like you were talking about illumination as something outside. So the illumination is the way we see. It's not that there's some illumination outside of the turning within. So I'm gonna come back to that in terms of very specific instructions that Hongzhe has about how to work with our seeing and hearing in zazen. So I'll come back to that question. But it's not exactly like there's some thing, illumination, that then we take outside. It's part of the inner dynamic that we don't necessarily see it with our regular eyes. It's part of how we are once we have settled into the practice of just sitting upright and breathing and being aware and coming back to our center and balance. And Suzuki Roshi talked about losing

[12:42]

your balance against the background of perfect balance. So it's this return that's important. So we return to something, and Hongzhe calls that illumination. We can use various words. But it's not like there's some particular colored light somewhere that we have to see. It is in your sitting. Yes. One question I have is on the line here. He says, living here, he no longer works to get free. What exactly is he referring to there? Well, our work isn't about getting something called liberation. There's not no, there's just, he doesn't understand at all. There's nothing to understand. Just taking the next breath. And to me it's about faith in a way. That may be controversial or confusing because that English word, usually we think of as believing in something. But in Zen, it's we take another breath.

[13:45]

Or we take the next step. Or the bell rings and we do the next thing in the schedule. And so it's not trying to manipulate our experience or manage something in order to get something else called freedom. It's just here we are. Hi. This is freedom. Just this. So working to get something else that we think of as freedom is ignoring the suchness of this moment. The uprightness of this moment. My actually, my favorite line though in this Song of the Grassroots Hermitage is, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. So the point of our practice is to relax completely. That's the point of Zazen practice. And that may seem difficult or funny because you may have some problem

[14:47]

with your knees or your shoulders or your mind's wriggling around in like a tethered cold or a cowering rat. But really the practice is just about relaxing completely. Open your hands and walk innocent. And that word walk also means practice or proceed or conduct yourself innocently. And then if you want to know the undying person in the hut, don't separate from the skin bag here and now. Don't run away from yourself with all of the fractures that are there. But just relaxing completely. So this is sort of background that I want to come back to Hongxue and the nature metaphors. But I think it helps to kind of go back to Shih Tzu's Song of the Grass Hut, which is about how we build our practice space. The grass hut is also metaphoric. It's just how we create our own personal space that supports, Zazen is a lot about space.

[15:49]

Dogen later says when one person sits upright in Buddha mudra, even for a little while, all of space becomes enlightenment. So our Zazen is about our relationship to space around us, to the reality that's around us, and vice versa. There's this mutual reinforcing of our inner illumination and the space around us. So this is why one of the big differences between India and China is that in China they had meditation halls. So we're used to, in the Zen tradition, sitting together in the morning or coming together, people like in my Sangha where we meet once a week, we come together sometimes and sit together. That didn't happen in India. And still not what happens in most of Tibetan Buddhism or in South Asian Theravada Buddhism. But in China, maybe just because it was cold and they couldn't wander around, they built these meditation halls. So, where was I going with that?

[16:52]

You don't think in the Bihar they have meditation halls? Well, during this summer rainy season they would come together. So maybe they had some hall where they did the meditation. But I think they would come together to hear the Buddha talk or to hear the teacher talk or to do ceremonies. But they'd actually, they still have, if you go to Thailand, I saw these little rooms. They're like tiny where the monks actually go to do meditation. And they're up on stilts and they're just big enough for somebody to, you couldn't even stand up in them. There is little huts, like little outhouses or something there. And you can sit in them. And anyway, that's, I think that's kind of more what they did. But I don't know. I don't think we really know. You might be right. I was thinking of one reference in the Pali Canon to somebody who's coming to see the Buddha and he comes late. And the Buddha is surrounded by hundreds of people listening to him. And it's clear as this person approaches it, the hall has no sides to it.

[17:53]

It has a roof. And a floor and maybe pillars that you can see in and see the Buddha. You can see all this. Well, they did. Maybe just for discourse. Yeah, I think they did definitely gather together for the Dharma, for teaching and for ceremonies maybe. But not, I don't think, I think the meditation was done mostly alone. But we do it together. And there was something in the grass hut that I was gonna, that reminded me of that and I can't remember now. Anyway. Oh yeah, just, just in general, talking about the space of meditative awareness, the space of serene illumination that part of what Zen priest craft training is about is how you create a space that is conducive to this kind of sitting together. So anyway. I think this is kind of helpful background to go back to how Hongzhe uses nature metaphors.

[18:54]

So I wanna read a few examples. And to me, these are examples of, for Hongzhe, of how this is a very natural process. This process of Buddha nature, of sitting in serene illumination and meeting our own awareness and then integrating the ultimate and the particular. So one example on page 53. People of the way journey through the world responding to conditions, carefree and without restraint. Like 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. This is how perfected people behave. So this image of just clouds finally raining or spring arising in everything, which maybe we feel now here,

[19:56]

this time of year. Like moonlight, the image of moonlight following the current, the reflection of the moon in the stream flowing down. Or like orchids growing in shade. This is his, these are images he's using for wayfarers, for people of the way. For people who are involved in this serene illumination process and practice. Then they must resume their travels and follow the ancestors, walking ahead with steadiness and letting go of themselves with innocence. Which goes back to the Song of the Grass Hut where he says, open your hands and walk innocent, yeah. So this is one example. Some more of just his use of these images from nature. And of course, this is more the everyday world. He's living on a mountaintop and he doesn't, Hongzhe and Dogen,

[21:00]

they didn't have electric lights so they couldn't do evening talks like this. They might have lamps up, but it was a very different world. They didn't even have email. So, another one. 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 patch-robed monk follows movement and responds to changes in total harmony. Moreover, haven't you yourself established the mind that thinks up all the illusory conditions? So again, pointing at the way in which we ourselves are creating, even if we put it in modern Western psychological terms, we continue to create those, I was gonna mention before that the Dalai Lama,

[22:01]

when you were talking about that, the Dalai Lama didn't understand this idea of low self-esteem. It took him years to figure out that that was actually a possibility. So we do have our own particular cultural forms of fragmentation. But the teaching here is, look and see, you yourself are establishing, have established and continue to establish the mind that thinks up all of these illusory conditions. And he says this insight must be perfectly incorporated. But part of how, in this section anyway, how he's showing that to us is by presenting these images of nature, of the natural world, which was all around him, to just show the naturalness of this awareness, this serene illumination awareness. So there are many of them in here. I'll just, I'll read a few more. Homager included Song of the Grassroot Hermitage

[23:02]

in his books, in his nine books. Oh, I don't know that he, not specifically, but it was part of the literature that he was familiar with. He certainly, you know, this was part of the lineage. No, he lived in Chiantung Monastery, which was a large, so he had been in different temples before he came to Chiantung, but that was one of the largest monasteries of his time. But do you think any time in his career he would have lived in a hermitage? Was that standard, do you think? Like they talk about after realization, 20 years of writing, he saw the truth. Yeah, I don't know that he did. He did, I mean, there's stories in the history we know about Homager, you know, talks about the different teachers he visited, including Yuanwu, who wrote the Blue Cliff Record.

[24:05]

So again, as I was mentioning earlier, this word hermitage, we think of as something that somebody goes and builds their little, and Shitao probably actually did this, builds their own little hut where they actually practiced by themselves. But then that word, that Chinese character, on for hermitage, is used for small temples, and actually some not-so-small temples. So he was, so I don't know that he did like that kind of solitary practice. That's never been so usual in Chan, although there is this kind of tradition in Chan of people like Han Chan and Ryokan later in Japan who actually were solitary hermit poets. So that was kind of very minority tradition in Chinese Chan and Zen. So it happened, but it wasn't, most of the training is either in very large temples,

[25:12]

like the one that Homager was teacher of for almost 30 years, or in smaller temples. It might be just one teacher and student. Another example of this use of nature imagery. The field of bright spirit is an ancient wilderness that does not change. With boundless eagerness, wander around this immaculate wide plain. The drifting clouds embrace the mountain. The family wind is relaxed and simple. The autumn waters display the moon in its pure brightness. Directly arriving here, you will be able to recognize the mined ground, Dharma field, that is the root source of the 10,000 forms germinating with unweathered fertility. These flowers and leaves are the whole world. So we are told that a single seed is an uncultivated field.

[26:12]

Do not weed out the new shoots and the self will flower. So that's a very dense passage, and there's a lot in there. I want to go back over that, because on one level it works just as a, this is the way koans and Zen poetry work. It works on many levels, including just a very simple, clear level of the natural images themselves. But he's really talking about also how the mind works as a natural field. So he says the field of bright spirit is an ancient wilderness that does not change. And this image of wilderness I like. There's a wonderful book by one of our Americans and patriarchs, Gary Snyder, called The Practice of the Wild. I don't know if any of you know it, but he talks about wilderness in that, in a way that reminds me of this passage from Hongzhe. He talks about wilderness systems. And partly Gary Snyder's talking about the environment and ecology, and he's a nature poet too. But he also explicitly is talking about the mind

[27:18]

and our practice itself as wilderness systems. And he really unpacks a lot in that book. Really recommend that book. But he talks about how our practice is wild. So our practice doesn't happen according to some linear set of stages or steps. It's a very organic process. How we don't, sometimes we might think one period of Zazen it was really wonderful, and another period of Zazen we might feel like we're all distracted, or we're tired, or whatever. But actually what's going on in our practice we can't really see. I mean sometimes we do. But what's going on underneath your cushion or underneath your chair, what's happening isn't always what we think it is, or we don't necessarily know it. How sometimes we get to a kind of plateau in our practice. And that's a very important rich time. And some people get discouraged and leave practice then, because they feel like nothing's happening. But actually our practice is a wilderness system,

[28:21]

and how illumination arises, how our ability to express it arises, happens in this kind of organic way that we can't track according to some kind of linear set of stages. Gary Snyder also talks about language itself as a wilderness system. So I was an English major myself, so there are all kinds of ways of analyzing language and analyzing poetry and looking at the structure of language and so forth in linguistics. But if you think about how babies learn to speak, they don't study rules of grammar, they don't learn in any linear way. Somehow they just recognize, I don't know, we don't know, we don't really know. Linguists don't understand how babies learn to speak their mother tongue. And yet it's their mother tongue. They learn something. I happened to meet in the airport this morning on the way here, one of my students from Chicago,

[29:23]

my Ina from Chicago, who happened to be on a two-day business trip to San Francisco, and there he was in the airport. So we had breakfast together, and he has a maybe six-month-old baby who's just come to the point of, he can't speak words, but he can make sounds, and then he waits for a response. He's figured out that people talk, and then the other person talks. So he squeals or makes sounds and then pauses. And he thinks that then the person will talk back to them. So there's this process that happens about how we learn language, but it doesn't happen according to some set of rules or some kind of structure. So again, this idea that the field of bright spirit is an ancient wilderness, it does not change. There's this, it doesn't change because it's constantly changing. That's what doesn't change. But how our practice works, how our life works, how our language works happens in this way

[30:25]

that's not caught by our mental categories. It's not that we should get rid of our mental categories. So I don't know if you have up here that heretical school of American lobotomy, Zen, where you think that if you just get rid of all your thoughts that that would be enlightenment. Anyway, that's, I don't recommend that operation. It will, you could get rid of your thoughts. But anyway, it's not that we should get rid of our critical thinking and our discursive and discriminative thinking. It's just that that's not where it happens in terms of practice. Sometimes we can use that to help us in various ways. Anyway, so this sentence brings all of that up for me. The field of bright spirit is an ancient wilderness that does not change. And then he says, with boundless eagerness. So there's a kind of recommendation there to really appreciate this mystery we're living in the middle of. With boundless eagerness, wander around this immaculate wide plain. Then he says, the drifting clouds embrace the mountain.

[31:28]

The family wind is relaxed and simple. So in one sense, this is just a kind of picture of a natural phenomenon. But also, clouds refers to students, unsui. So monks in training are called clouds and water. Clouds and water, or clouds and water, or whatever. And then mountains are the names of all of these monks. Dongshan is named after Dong Mountain, where Dongshan means Dong Mountain, where he taught, and so forth. So when he's talking about the drifting clouds embrace the mountain, he's also talking about students and teacher. The family wind is relaxed and simple. So again, this is, family wind refers to the style of teaching of a particular lineage. And Hongzhuo uses it for just the family wind of Buddha. But it's relaxed and simple. The autumn waters display the moon in its pure brightness. So again, there's the passage in Dogen's Genjo Koan,

[32:30]

where he talks about the moon reflected in the water, and the moon does not break the water, and each drop of water, no matter how small, contains the moon. Hongzhuo just says, the autumn waters display the moon in its pure brightness. Again, this is also talking metaphorically about how all of us reflect this wholeness, this possibility of wholeness that the moon represents just in its roundness. Then he says, directly arriving here, you will be able to recognize the mind ground Dharma field. That is the root source of the 10,000 forms germinating with unweathered fertility. So this reminds me, somehow tonight particularly of, well, directly arriving here, you'll be able to recognize the mind ground Dharma field. In some ways, the mind ground Dharma field the ground of our mind is this Dharma field,

[33:32]

this field that out of which the Dharma grows. And this sentence tonight reminds me of the Wang Wei poem, follow the stream back to the source and sit and wait for the time when clouds arise. Do you know that? If Wang Wei was an old Chinese poet back in the Tang, the whole poem goes, in my middle years I've grown fond of the way I head out from my hut on South Mountain to see the sights that only I can see. I follow the stream back to the source and sit and wait for the time when clouds arise. Perhaps I meet a person of the woods, we talk and laugh and I forget to go home. But this image of following the stream back to the source, when he says the mind ground Dharma field, directly arriving here is, to me it, well, he says directly arriving here

[34:35]

you will be able to recognize the mind ground Dharma field that is the root source of the 10,000 forms germinating with unwithered fertility. This is an agricultural reference, but still it's this sense of settling, settling into just being present and upright in our meditation, directly arriving here, we start to recognize this source from which the thoughts arise, from which illumination may arise, from which our inner dignity arises. And it can germinate, so then he says these flowers and leaves are the whole world. So there is this practice of just turning back and seeing our thoughts arising. And then again, we construct the whole world and we can construct the whole world unconsciously in terms of our old stories and inner critic and so forth, or we can come back and watch it and become familiar with it and the world continues to be produced,

[35:37]

but when you are friendly with yourself and forgive yourself for being a human being, there's this possibility of just watching the whole thing arise with each breath. So he says these flowers and leaves are the whole world. So we are told that a single seed is an uncultivated field. And of course, from each seed can grow a whole field, eventually. Do not weed out the new shoots and the self will flower. So this is a very dense passage, but again, he's using this nature imagery to encourage us to allow the self to flower, to allow our experience to arise, to be present with it. Any comments or questions on that passage? Suzuki Roshi, my dharma grandfather, said that to give the cow a wide pasture. So to allow our experience to be there,

[36:39]

to allow thoughts and feelings to arise, to not try, when we work with the inner critic or whatever facet of our habits we see that sometimes causes us problems, not to try and crush it, but just to get to know it. Allow ourselves to see whatever is arising and not hold onto it, to let go, to become friendly, not indulgent, but to become familiar and intimate with our own experience. So to not weed out the new shoots, to allow, to spend time with what's going on, to kind of observe, to not, to not turn away from the skin bag here and now, to actually be present with our experience as it is. So serene illumination is not some thing,

[37:42]

some other outside thing that we have to get, it's already all of you are serene illumination. How do we get out of the way of allowing this to flower? The other way we talk about that here is our task is not to get all engaged with the thoughts, the new, old, and the other, but to constantly turn the mind to see what's at source. So I think that's another way of looking at that, is we're not trying to get engaged with things that are bubbling up in the mind, but always find that big space in which they're helping. Yeah, but we don't have to crush it either, just to watch, to pay attention, to observe, to be with it without, we don't have to buy into it either. Of course the same thing keeps arising, that's why they are our conditions. These are the apparent tendencies we fabricated into,

[38:44]

these are the tendencies we fabricated into apparent habits and they are apparent and they are habits. And this is the world of samsara. I feel like we should, anyway, I'm gonna stand up and any of you who want to stretch a little bit are welcome to, we can continue talking. You had a question in the back? No, it's not a different self, it's right here. Does it just, the interpretation of that just stops and then it's just their sense impression? Again, I'm gonna talk very specifically about how we use our senses in zazen and Hongjie's instruction for that, probably tomorrow morning, I don't think we're gonna get to it tonight. So I want to come back to that, I appreciate your question about it. But I also understand underneath that question is a question about well where is it that, what is it that comes up from this? Is it something else? And the point is not to,

[39:46]

stopping it is not the point of it. When you have a witness then you're separate. That's the separation I was talking about before. So it's, once you talk about witness then it's kind of, it's hard to talk about this because our language includes the sense of separation but it's actually this immediacy of presence right now. So we'll come back to this. I appreciate, keep asking me. But we'll come back to it in a different way I think. It's a good question. So I've been talking about this Buddha nature and I want to get tonight to the problem in this nature metaphor stuff. But I want to, it's just hard not to, the poetry is so beautiful.

[40:48]

I'll read a little bit, a couple more. He says a person of the way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain's foundation. And again that could be interpreted as clouds and mountains as students and teacher but it's also just this natural image. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part and the mountain appears. The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds. Every dust is whole without reaching me. The 10,000 changes are stilled without shaking me. If you can sit here with stability then you can freely step across and engage the world with energy. So again here he uses this nature imagery but then he talks about our engagement with that as the point. One more of these.

[41:49]

Just because I think they're really beautiful and again part of what he's doing here is just showing how this whole process of illumination and awareness and settling is this natural event. So this one maybe relates more to Sashin practice. Empty and desireless, cold and thin, simple and genuine. This is how to strike down and fold up the remaining habits of many lives. When the stains from old habits are exhausted the original light appears blazing through your skull not admitting any other matters. Vast and spacious like sky and water merging during autumn, like snow and moon having the same color. This field is without boundary, beyond direction. Magnificently one entity without edge or seam. So this sense of wholeness without any division. This way of seeing our life.

[42:53]

Further when you return within and drop off everything completely realization occurs. This is a kind of precursor to Dogen talking about dropping body and mind which he does a lot. He talks about that a lot more than he ever uses the word just sitting. Just this dropping body and mind is Dogen's phrase for zazen or one of his main phrases. So here Hongxue says, further when you return within, turn within and drop off everything completely realization occurs. Right at the time of entirely dropping off to liberation and discussion are 1,000 or 10,000 miles away. Still no principle is discernible so what could there be to point to or explain? So this is the experience where the explanation is irrelevant and we can't put it in words. And yet again I say that all of you have some taste of this or else you wouldn't be here. Then he says people with the bottom of the bucket falling out immediately find total trust.

[43:57]

So the bottom of the bucket falling out is a image for this kind of sudden real awareness of this. Just dropping away, letting go. That can happen. And then what is there is just this total trust or trust in totality, trust in wholeness. So we are told simply to realize mutual response and explore mutual response. Then turn around and enter the world. Roam and play in samadhi. Every detail clearly appears before you. Sound and form, echo and shadow happen instantly without leaving traces. The outside and myself do not dominate each other only because no perceiving of objects come between us. So I want to again talk more about the specifics of his instructions about perception and zazen. But this image of roaming and play, roam and play in samadhi. Just to allow yourself to be free and wild on your cushion. Just to, that's zazen, serene illumination,

[45:01]

dropping body and mind, just sitting, is a kind of play, a kind of ceremony, a kind of celebration. This is also a basic approach to zazen in this lineage from Hongzhe back to Dongshan, down to Dogen and to us. That we aren't, we don't sit and meditate to get something else. That our sitting in zazen is dropping body and mind. It is the ceremony or celebration or expression of this empty field. So there's one place in here where he says an empty field can't be cultivated. There's a kind of joke in the title. We can't, this is something that in a way is cultivated just by expressing it. This is kind of the Vajrayana side of soto zen, by the way. This just enactment practice. We are enacting this whole dynamic of dropping body and mind,

[46:03]

of the moon flowing down in the current and so forth. This natural process is happening in our zazen. And our sitting is again not some technique to figure that out or to get something, but is the natural ceremonial expression and enactment of it. So maybe I could just stop. Maybe that's enough for the whole weekend just to say that. Anyway, so these are some examples of how Hongzhe uses these images from nature to talk about this quality of what silent illumination or our zen practice is. And there's a problem with it. And this has to do with this misunderstanding of naturalness. But are there comments or questions, and particularly about what I was just saying

[47:03]

about Vajrayana side of soto zen? Dropping body and mind is not separating from the skin, back here and now. That's how we don't separate from the skin, back here and now is because when we're holding on to some idea of body and mind, we're trying to manipulate the skin back. This is most of what we do. This is what we've been conditioned to do. This goes beyond cultural. There are various different forms in different cultures. But when we're trying to manipulate, sometimes we try and manipulate the object of world out there, so-called. Sometimes we try and manipulate ourselves to get more, so we'll be, I don't know, whatever, smarter or thinner or taller or whatever. Whatever we think will get us what we, this is the usual way of being in the world. So, just to not separate from our skin, back here and now, dropping body and mind happens.

[48:05]

If we're really just sitting here, expressing all of this, enacting all of this, celebrating the ceremony of zazen. Not trying to get anything out of it. And, of course, all of our conditioning is about getting something out of it. So, one of my favorite American dharma poets says, he talks about people who do what they do just to be nothing more than something they invest in. So. Who's that dharma poet? Bob Dylan. Minnesota dharma poet. So, anyway. Yeah, but it's a good question, because how we think is that not separating from our skin, back here and now, is holding onto body and mind. But, actually, to really be present and to really do this ceremony of enactment of the empty field, of being, of roaming and playing in samadhi, of really enjoying this body and mind.

[49:08]

So, dropping body and mind means enjoying this body and mind. Completely being at home in this body and mind. Means letting go of it. So, this ceremony or celebration we do called zazen, or just sitting, or serene illumination is a way of doing that. So, as I said, that's enough for, now I can go home now, but we'll keep going. Other comments or questions? I was just going to ask you about the phrase, the phrase of the bucket, the bottom dropping out. Is that, did that originate with, is that a traditional phrase? Yeah, it goes back before Hangzhou, yeah. Long before, yeah. Yeah, and I'm not sure who said it first, or, you know. It's been around for thousands of years. It's happened for thousands of years. You know, it happened to Shakyamuni Buddha when he saw the, you know, the morning star. So, it's funny that you can't talk about it. I mean, I could tell about this experience

[50:09]

I had with Baker Oshi when I was serving water to him, and, you know, some stuff happened. But, you know, you hear about somebody else's story of it, and it doesn't mean anything. That particular phrase is all I remember. Yeah, I don't know where the start of that is. I do know that the first time anybody has found any record of the story of Shakyamuni Buddha, holding up a flower, and somebody smiles. And that story, which is kind of the first story of Dharma transmission, there's no record of that appearing anywhere in writing before like the year 1000. So, sometimes you can trace these things, but anyway. So, okay, I've been giving you lots of examples of the naturalness of all of this, and how Hangzhou uses these nature metaphors. But there's a problem, and this has to do with, again, there's this bilingual pun, and it's both in English and in Japanese somehow. So, the word nature, like Buddha nature,

[51:11]

doesn't mean the world of nature out there. It means our nature, our qualities, our characteristics. The Buddha nature is the qualities or characteristics of Buddha. But the word nature in English, also we think of as the world of nature. So, I was walking back in the Jizo garden before, and it was beautiful, and I guess you have wild owls and things, and anyway. So, there's that kind of nature. But the Chinese character for Buddha nature has nothing to do with that. And yet, in English, we have the same thing. And later on, actually, as a response to, because they didn't need a word for nature, because that's just where they lived. But then, as a response to Western technology, there's the Japanese word shizen, which means nature as like nature out there, as opposed to electric lights or whatever. But anyway, the problem with this is that we think natural means automatically.

[52:15]

So, things happen naturally. Things happen on their own, and it's not automatic. So, it's not, so even though, so the transformation that happens when we do this tantric enactment practice called zazen, it doesn't happen just kind of automatically. There's, there is this Buddha work. There is some, you know, there is, each of you has responsibility, has a great responsibility to Buddha. Each of you is part of what's keeping Buddha alive in the world, you know, tonight here. So, there is this need to practice, just because it's, because, so Hongzhou using all these nature metaphors, and he wouldn't call them that. I don't know, you know, how to talk about it in the way that he would talk about it. He's just showing you that this process of illumination is how the world works, with the moonlight following the current

[53:16]

and the clouds fascinated by the mountain and gathering around the mountain and so forth. So, this isn't just some abstraction. It's like how do we, there is the responsibility that you each have to put this into practice, to make this, to bring this into your personal experience. So, I think that was part of what your question was about. So, it's not, again, it's not just some abstraction. So, what I want to get to, and I don't know if we'll get to it tonight, I'll start on it, is how to use these writings as specific practice instructions to get this taste of awakened nature. And again, it's not that you just read this and you have some idea of it or some, you might have some understanding of all this. It is possible to understand how all this works, but that's not it. You actually have to do the ceremony. You have to actually celebrate Zazen. You have to actually sit down and take another breath and so forth.

[54:19]

So, maybe that's, well, okay. So, how does this work? What I want to talk about next is this idea of objectless meditation. So, part of what just sitting or dropping body and mind or silent illumination is, is what we might call objectless meditation. So, I want to talk about that next in various ways. But first, are there comments or questions about anything else or anything I've said or anything I haven't said? Well, I don't think I'm going to get there tonight, but what we'll do is when I get there tomorrow, we'll take a break and go back to the Zendo for half an hour. But I think it's enough just to, at this point, I mean, there are practice instructions in everything I've said, just to see this possibility of wholeness and illumination,

[55:21]

to turn the light within, to feel the naturalness, not the automaticness, but the naturalness of this process of, like the resting of the streams and tides, coming in and going out. This sense of roaming and playing in samadhi. So, you can take that with you to meditation tomorrow morning. But during the day tomorrow, I want to give some more specific instructions to be part of Zazen instruction. So, I want to talk about this. So, I'll probably start with objectless meditation tomorrow morning, but I want to talk about it a little bit tonight, too.

[55:59]

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