This morning I want to talk about non-Zen Zen masters' everyday mind is the way. case number 19 of the Luman-Kant Ordinary mind is the way, ordinary, everyday mind.

[01:07]

This is the case. Joshu, this is between Joshu and Nansen. Joshu asks the question and Nansen is his teacher. They're both very famous Zen masters. Joshu, even more famous than his teacher, maybe. Nansen was maybe 50, and Joshu was maybe 20 at this time. I don't know. But although Joshu had very good understanding, even when he was quite young, this question is coming from him to his teacher. So it's not a question of someone who has no understanding talking to someone, asking a question of someone who does. But the question of someone who already has realization speaking to his teacher

[02:15]

Joshu earnestly asked Nansen, What is the way? Nansen answered, The ordinary mind is the way. Joshu asked, Should I direct myself toward it or not? Nansen said, If you try to turn toward it, you'll go against it. Joshu asked, if I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the way? Pretty logical. Nansen answered, the way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is a blank consciousness or confusion. When you have really reached the true way beyond all doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong? At these words, Joshu was suddenly enlightened.

[03:24]

And then there's Mumon commentary. Mumon says, Nansen was asked a question by Joshu. and Joshu's base was shattered and melted away. He could not justify himself. Even though Joshu has come to realization, he will have to delve into it for another 30 years before he can fully realize it." That's a very interesting comment. And then Luman has a verse. He says, the spring flowers, the moon in autumn, the cool breezes of summer, the winter's snow. If idle concerns do not cloud the mind, this is man's happiest season. This poem is quite wonderful. And the third line, if idle concerns do not cloud the mind, is a direct expression of ordinary mind.

[04:46]

So here he says, Joshu says, earnestly asks Nansen, what is the way? And Nansen answers, the ordinary mind is the way. Ordinary mind, we can look at ordinary mind in several ways. We can say ordinary mind is our ordinary activity. Washing dishes, going to work, driving the car, making progress in our lives. social concern, so forth. Or you can say ordinary mind is the mind which is not concerned with anything in particular. This is what we call clear mind.

[05:49]

So We're always talking about these two sides of mind, and we call them the bright side and the dark side. And the bright side is where everything is illuminated in its distinctiveness. You are distinct from me. The pillar in the middle of the Zendo is distinct from the floor. The altar is distinct from the Zavatam. Everything has its character and characteristics which make it into what we call it, I think, The dark side is that side of reality in which there are no distinctions.

[06:57]

The pillar is the floor. The altar is the pillar. The Zapatan is you and you are me. No distinction. This is, in the dark side, in the dark, you can't tell one thing from another. So this is, we sometimes refer to it as the absolute oneness. And the bright side we refer to as relative side, where everything is illuminated in its distinctness. So ordinary mind has both these sides. And practice is based on not understanding so much, but on realizing that when the brightness of the dark side and the darkness in the bright side

[08:23]

So Nansen answers, the ordinary mind is the way. Ordinary mind. And Joshu asked, should I direct myself toward it or not? And Nansen said, if you try to turn toward it, you go against it. And Joshu asked, if I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the way? Nansen answered, the way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion and not knowing is a blank consciousness. When you have really reached the true way beyond all doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong? if you, seeking after it, you know, he asked this question, well, can I go for it?

[09:41]

Can I go get it? Most practices, in most practices, there is a goal and a way to the goal. But in Zen practice especially, we always equate the path with the goal itself. And especially in Soto Zen. Soto Zen is the most goal-less practice. I don't say that our practice is just Soto Zen.

[10:43]

But we do have this characteristic of a practice where we're not going to a goal. practice is not leading to someplace. This is nonsense practice that he's talking about. If you seek it as something, you go against it. You pass it by. Literally pass it by. If you listen carefully to what everyone, all the teachers say, it's always just be here in this moment. This is your goal. The goal is to be right here. The whole goal of your life up to this point is to bring you to this spot.

[11:49]

When your life finally ends, you can say, the whole practice of my life was to bring me to this spot. And then you can breathe a deep sigh of relief. Nothing more to accomplish. But we can say that at any moment, actually. It's possible to say that at any moment. This is sometimes referred to as really dying. Great death. Nothing more to accomplish. Then you can just turn your life over to everyone. Then Manson, Joshua says, well, what if I don't go after it?

[13:08]

These are two sides. What if I don't? Then what happens? That's the colon in itself. If I go after it, I miss it. And if I don't go after it, what then? How can I find it? So it puts you in that kind of spot, you know, confusion or perplexity. But perplexity is, that perplexity is where you are. You know, so much of the time when we have a big problem, we're trying to get out of the problem. And we can't appreciate where we actually are. And we want to always find resolution. Life seems to have this kind of pattern of movement and confusion and great concentrated confusion and release.

[14:26]

If you look at kind of the rhythmic pulse of life, our activity gets more and more concentrated until it gets very, very tight, and then lots of tension, and then everything free, and then all the particles come back together again around some kind of center, and get very tight again. That's pulsation of life. And if we really want to live, completely. We don't ignore any part of that pattern or any part of that rhythm. So whatever we do is important. Every single detail or part of our life has some meaning or importance to it. You could say ordinary mindfulness is the way.

[15:36]

If you wanted to answer Joshua's question, you could say ordinary mindfulness is the way. Not being separate from every moment's activity. When we talk about the positive, sometimes when we talk about the illuminated side and the dark side, sometimes we say positive side and negative side. You can describe these sides in various ways. The dark side is sometimes described in a mathematical equation as zero.

[16:48]

And the illuminated side is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, or any combination. But all the numbers in this equation are based on zero. Zero is the common denominator. And the multiplicity is above the line. So most often, people are caught up in the multiplicity. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. But they can't see below the line to zero. And don't realize that zero and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten is ordinary mind.

[17:57]

And sometimes people get stuck in one side or the other. If you're a Zen student practicing meditation, your problem is getting very good at being a Zen student. If you get to be very good at being a Zen student, then you have a big problem. And sometimes it's called Zen sickness. which means that you rely too much on zero. You don't know how to multiply and divide and add and subtract. So if a good teacher will

[19:08]

throw out a good Zen student if he's too good to maybe become a little more worldly. Learn how to get along with people and learn what some of the problems in the world are and how to deal with them and how to actually help people that way. And for someone who is too worldly, can't sit still, doesn't understand zero, a teacher will always say, just sit down. Just sit. Never mind all that stuff. It's not important. There's one person I know who There's no way to deal with that person except to just say, sit down.

[20:18]

In our busy life, we have so many connections, so many wheels going, that our mind gets just full of wheels. and tubes and wires connecting, and sometimes the wires, they get crossed or you get closed circuits. The one who's inside making all the connections gets confused. And you find the circuits going around and around and around, and closed circuits, and circuits that kind of interfuse with each other and make logical sense but are not real. This is one of the sicknesses of our times. Because we have so much information, our minds are, we train our minds to be like computers. We create the computer as a model of our mind, and then we train our mind to be like the computer.

[21:30]

So the mind creates the computer, and the computer trains the mind. And it's a kind of relationship, but you know what happens when computers get off. It causes a lot of suffering. This one person I know has a mind like a computer, but all the circuits are completely either closed circuits or they're connected to each other in random ways. Everything makes sense logically, but nothing makes sense realistically. Our world is kind of like that, too. So, Joshu says, then if I don't try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the way?

[22:44]

And Nansen answers, the way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion, and not knowing is a blank consciousness. The way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. A few minutes ago I talked about our style of practice, which is just being. And this style of practice of just being doesn't depend on knowing, doesn't depend on not knowing. The more you know, the more we actually know, the less we actually know. So there's another one of those. It is directly related to, if you look for it, if you directly seek it, it runs away from you, deludes you.

[23:52]

And if you don't know, that's like, This is also, you know, not just Eastern psychology, but everyone in the West knows this too. The beginning of wisdom is to know your own ignorance. And to know that we don't know is the beginning of wisdom. And we also talk about the unknowable. Not knowing refers to unknowable in the sense we say, well, what is a person?

[24:58]

What am I? If we study science long enough, eventually science will come to tell us what we are, we think. We think so, and maybe so. I mean, I think that that will happen. I think that science will come to find out exactly what we are if science continues the way it's going. In Buddhism, we say things are not really something and they're not really not something. You say, yes, this is something. And, no, this is not something. If you stick to one or the other, you fall into the bright side or the dark side. If you say, when we talk about life and death, are you dead or alive?

[26:05]

This is another wonderful thought. Are you dead or alive? If you say, you're dead or alive, if you say you're alive, you also have to say you're dead. You can't say you're dead without saying that you're alive. You can't say you're alive without saying that you're dead, if you think about it. So when we say something like... Is it thing or is it not?

[27:14]

We always have to realize the tentativeness of everything. Nothing really holds still for our scrutiny for very long. You can scrutinize something for a while, but while you're scrutinizing it, it becomes something else. So you'd better be pretty quick in your data, to take down your data. You can talk about something, but already that thing is just an idea in your mind. The reality has already changed. The reality of what we're talking about, thinking about, or investigating, has already changed. So when we talk about constant, something that's constant, that's maybe the realm of zero.

[28:33]

Zero is a kind of constant, and all the numbers are always changing. So we don't say, know something. We're not trying to get knowledge or not knowledge, but just the realm of being. The realm of being means as each thing changes from moment to moment, we change from moment to moment, whatever it is that we are. The numbers are changing from moment to moment over zero.

[29:36]

So Nansen says, the way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is a blank consciousness. When you have really reached the true way beyond all doubt, you will take it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong? At these words, Joshu was suddenly enlightened. Nansen and Mumon give this commentary. Nansen was asked a question by Joshu, and Joshu's base was shattered and melted away. Maybe Joshu was holding on somewhere, like most of us are holding on somewhere. In our practice, we talk about complete freedom, total freedom.

[30:55]

And total freedom means not bound by anything. Not bound anywhere by anything. No place that you can plug your place to stand on. When you have total freedom, it means that wherever you are is your place. But most of us have some place that we're holding onto. That place is some kind of security. You can say, when I talked about goal of practice, you know, I said, just to be here. Just to have the freedom to be where we are is goal of practice. But most of us, to one degree or another, don't have the freedom to be where we are.

[32:11]

And we act out of compulsiveness. And our karma dictates to us. We're very much the victim or caught by karma. And until we know how to really trust the universe, trust ourself. Trust the universe means You know, even though we were breathing and eating and so forth, we have lots of fears. We feared the Russians and we feared the Polans. And we fear the Army and the Navy.

[33:22]

We fear the president. We fear that we're not going to eat. We're not going to make our payments. That someone will steal our stuff. You know, we really live surrounded by fear. Traditionally, a monk's life is to give up everything so that there's no way to have these kind of fears. We always say that in an ordination ceremony, when they cut off the last bit of hair, when the teacher cuts off the last bit of hair on his head, he says, now you're completely free. Now you're completely enlightened and completely free just because of this.

[34:30]

And I used to think, how can that be, just because of this? But it's true. At that moment, you have perfect freedom from everything. No matter what happens, it's no problem. Once we have perfect freedom, then we can engage in all kinds of activities. And we have to be very careful. This is why Nansen said of Joshu, even though you understand it, or even though you get it, you still have 30 years of practice ahead of you.

[35:33]

to mature what you know. When we have that kind of freedom, then whatever our work is, our activity in the bright realm, It's an opportunity to find our freedom in each activity. That's what I practice it. And when you do that, you also liberate other people. So teaching, the most effective teaching is the teaching that's not teaching. It's not meant to be teaching, but is... you're teaching yourself and other people learn something. You're training yourself and that helps other people.

[36:43]

That helps everyone around you. So it's always a great temptation to teach, you know, to want to teach. But for us, the best way to teach is to teach ourself. And immediately, you help other people. Unfortunately, I have to give a lecture. This is not teaching. Suzuki Yoshi once said, it's like making a mistake on purpose. Painting a picture. But when you... You have to be able to say something.

[37:49]

You have to be able to talk. You have to be able to say something So it's very difficult because you know that when you say something, it's not the thing itself. So you have to be able to say something and have the thing you say be the thing itself. Very difficult. That's why there are these koans. The koans are saying something, which is the thing itself. But we look at them. Unless you apply it to yourself, it's just a picture. Every time you read something like this, it's your story. It looks like we're talking about two old teachers in the Tang Dynasty in China, but it's really our story.

[38:51]

or a personal story. And then Nansen says, Lumon's commentary says, Nansen was asked a question by Joshio, and Joshio's base was shattered and melted away. He finally had some. The last thread was cut. He could not justify himself. That's great. cannot justify himself. Even though Joshu has come to realization, he will have to delve into it for another 30 years before he can realize it fully. This is what our practice actually is based on. We don't say, first you come from delusion to learning, and then finally to enlightenment.

[39:57]

If you look at something like the oxherding pictures, looking for the traces, and then you find the traces, and then you see the ox, and then you have this step-by-step kind of until finally you enter the city with bliss bestowing hand. That's fine as far as it goes, but in our practice we start with realization. We start with enlightenment. And then we develop our enlightenment and mature it for thirty years. Thirty years just is a kind of number. Thirty years means forever. Because we already have enlightenment, we practice. It's not that we practice to attain enlightenment.

[41:02]

Because we already have realization. That's why we're practicing. I don't know anything about it. That's good if you don't know anything about it. So the books are good to read as a background for our activity. We should know how other people think about practice and we should know how they thought about it in the past and why the forms of practice have come down to us and how we all develop. We should know something about philosophy and God. But the real thing is what you do, not what you know up here, but what you do

[42:08]

But one person can explain Buddhism to you all day long in a wonderful way, but it doesn't mean anything compared to someone who influences you in how to scrub the floor. How to see someone who really knows how to scrub the floor. and that inspires you. You really put yourself into it. You really become one with scrubbing the floor. This is real teaching. And then Amunman's verse, he says, the spring flowers, the moon in autumn, the cool breezes of summer, the winter snow. If idle concerns do not cloud the mind, this is man's happiest season.

[43:21]

When Yogen Tsunsaki talked about this, he said, I don't want to make any comment on that poem at all. And he's right. I want to make a little comment in a few minutes. I'm going to dirty it up a little bit. Idle. mind, you know, idle thoughts. To just have our activity take place in the clarity of our everyday mind. the clarity of zero. So that when something appears, that's it.

[44:34]

And when something else appears, that's it. We don't have anything in our own heart. We just become one with what appears and move with it. That means you don't need to hate anything. You don't need to love anything. You don't need to think this is good and you don't need to think that that's bad. Then we can just be where we are. Just be, just be here. You know, people, when they went out to demonstrate at the Livermore, their policy was non-violence.

[45:46]

No matter what happens, non-violence. This means emptying your mind. It's like having nothing, no residue, nothing in your heart or nothing at the bottom of your mind. It's a standpoint. Whatever happens, it's not good and it's not bad. That takes a lot of courage to... So it's that nonviolence is a very basic practice in Buddhism and a practice of mindfulness.

[46:56]

And it's not just with policemen. and jailed and so forth. It's like with every moment, everything that comes up in your life. And it doesn't mean that if the dog starts to chew your pants off that you shouldn't hit him. Sometimes a dog needs a good whack. Don't do that again. But you don't have anything in your heart against the dog. It's just a means. It's not hatred or some kind of emotional response. So really, nonviolence is everybody's practice, should be our practice.

[48:10]

It's not some special practice. And if you practice that all the time, then it's very easy to go into that kind of situation. If you're not trying to change your mind or do something special and just be yourself and practice it. So idle concerns is a big point. What are idle concerns? I'll leave us with that question. What are idle concerns? Thank you very much.

[49:12]

Thank you.

[49:17]

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