Truth. It's a koan, and koans are Zen folk stories, teaching stories, and according to Eiken Roshi, each of them is presenting the universal from a specific viewpoint. Yes, in the Book of Serenity, in his introduction, There are a hundred koans, so a hundred specific points of view, each pointing to the same universal. Now this one is important. It's the first case in the book of record, and the second case in the book of Serenity. So, we know it must be important. It's the very first one that was given to Juso and the very first one of these books. So let me read it to you.

[01:04]

I imagine you want to hear it if you haven't heard it before. uh, the highest meaning of the holy truth. Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truth? Bodhidharma says empty, without holiness. The emperor said, who is facing me? Bodhidharma replied, I don't know. The emperor did not understand. After this, Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze river and came to the kingdom of Wei. Later, the emperor brought this up to Master Chi and asked him about it. Master Chi asked, does your majesty know who this man is? The emperor says, I don't know. Master Chi said, he's the Mahasattva Avokitesvara transmitting the Buddha mind seal. The emperor felt regretful. So he wanted to send an emissary to invite Bodhidharma back. Master Chi told him, Your Majesty, don't say that you will send someone to finish him back.

[02:04]

Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him, he would still not return. That's the case. The principal actor is Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma is a key player in the development of Zen Buddhism. Most of you can see his picture back there on the wall. Unfortunately, you in the very back can't see it, but there's Bodhidharma, and he's hanging here in the Zen Do. We only have a few people here in the Zen Do hanging. We have Bodhidharma, who brought Buddhism to China. We have Dogen, who brought Zen to Japan. We have Suzuki Roshi, who, I could say, brought Zen to California. And we have the Buddha, who started it all. And we have our female representative, sort of covering the entire space.

[03:05]

So Bodhidharma is a key guy. He's the first Chinese ancestor. They called him the wall-gazing Brahman, for reasons we'll get into. Let's see. After he left and went to the Kingdom of Wei, he went to the Shogun... I'm sorry, he went to the Shunlin Monastery, where he is said to have sat gazing at the wall for nine years. And while he was doing this, he also invented Kung Fu. And he... was so, sitting was so important to him. He wanted to stay awake so he cut off his eyelashes, his eyebrows, eyelids, so that he would stay awake better. And put the eyelids aside and from them sprouted tea. So we have him to thank for tea as well. On the other side of the coin, in some pictures he's very fierce and mothers used to scare, maybe they still do, scare their children with, well, get Boney Dharma after you, if you don't mind.

[04:18]

So, he has quite a reputation. In Japan, there's a bunch of dolls and whatnot. Some of you may be familiar with the tradition where a person has an activity or a wish or whatever they want to make. They color in the eye of the doll, the Bodhidharma doll or the Dharma doll. And if they get the wish or accomplish the task, they color in the other eye. And all of these are burned at New Year's. So they start over again at New Year. Even if you didn't get what you wanted that year, you could start over again, New Year's. Emperor Wu, who's the straight guy in the koan, I see him as... he's kind of like us, in a sense, especially as early students, when we're first learning about Buddhism. We have a lot of questions, and we're studying a lot of text, and we want to know a lot of things. And so that's what Wu is.

[05:20]

Both of these people are in other koans, but I'm not going to get into those. I want to make sure I've got time to finish. The koan actually starts in the middle of a dialogue between Wu and Bodhidharma. Traditionally, it starts out where you can sort of think of Wu as the emperor, and he founded the kingdom of Luoyang. And in one biography I read, he basically was the governor of that area. And when there was a lot of chaos in the country, he basically took over and made it a sovereign country. So he was a pretty strong personality to be able to do that. He was also interested in Buddhism, and they called him the first great Buddhist emperor. They did a lot of study. And he also built a lot of monasteries and allowed a lot of people to become ordained, nuns and monks.

[06:30]

And for this, of course, he was developing, he thought, a lot of merit. And he heard of Bodhidharma. I'm imagining he heard of Bodhidharma as this holy man who was coming through his country. And he said, well, let's bring him. I want to talk to this guy. So Bodhidharma comes before him. The emperor says, hey, look at all this work that I've done. I've built monasteries and ordained people. And what kind of merit? Doesn't this give me some merit? And Bodhidharma says, no merit. So it is to say, if he had put a lot of time and energy and wanted his gold into this merit, and he wasn't getting it, it's a little taken aback, maybe. And you kind of wonder, in the doctrinal schools, there's a lot of discussion about merit. And the idea of merit, if you don't remember, is that when you have a lot of merit and you die, you're reborn into a better place than you had before because you developed all this merit.

[07:36]

At least that's my understanding of the way it works. The trouble with that is that at least in the school that we are part of, really have to get down in the trenches and work ourselves, do our zazen. And just giving away things and helping other people without that, probably not very good. And certainly just giving away your gold is not going to give you the understanding and the insight and the realization that is what we're really going after. So he said none. Bodhidharma said none. And then we pick up the koan from there. I'll read that again. First part. Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, what's the highest meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma said empty, without holiness. So, what are the holy truths?

[08:41]

And one commentary I read that talked about that in the doctrinal schools, there's the real truth and the conventional truth. And the real truth is that it does not exist. And the conventional truth is it is not non-existent. So, the real truth is it is not existent. And the conventional truth, it is not non-existent. So they kind of work against each other in a sense. And the highest holy truth is that the real truth and the conventional truth are not two. So you might say, well, maybe they're one. But they're not two, so they're not separate. They're the same together. And I was thinking, this makes great reading and a lot of fun to sit around, the Buddha scholars sit around drinking tea and eating cookies, talking about this and what it means. And The trouble is, of course, that, as I understand it, Buddhism is not something we just sit around and talk about.

[09:48]

We want to live it. Bodhidharma wanted to move Emperor Wu from this talking-about mode into the living mode. So he said, emptiness, no holiness. Kind of like Alexander cutting through the Gordian Knot. Let's not worry about the real truth and conventional truth and whether they're two or one. It's just empty. And don't worry about holiness. There's no holiness. Just, there it is. So that leads us to the question of what is emptiness. One text I was reading talked about it. It's really two characters, two Chinese characters together, one called empty and the other boundlessness. So you can translate that as emptiness and boundlessness. It's pretty big, pretty big stuff. And I've seen several different discussions of this.

[10:48]

First off, in the Heart Sutra, we have all dharmas in their own being are empty. So, the Dharma Sutra is sort of echoing Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma is echoing the Heart Sutra. And think of that as things are... dharmas are temporary and permanent. show me something like El Capitan or a small rock and say, well that's pretty permanent, that's not going to go away. But moment by moment little molecules are falling away from that rock and it's not the same last instant as it is this instant and perhaps not the same as it's going to be in the next instant going forward. So that rock is temporary. El Capitan, alas, is temporary. So if you're going to climb it, better get to it now. And a human being is the same.

[11:52]

We're the same. We eat food. We process that food. We eliminate. We use the food for energy and the energy of our thoughts. And we like to think that our thoughts are permanent. But if you notice, if you watch them, they are always moving. They're always scurrying around here and there and everywhere. Yeah, you have repetitive thoughts, but there's a slight little difference between them. A little different situation between the thought you had of, I love mommy today, than I love mommy that you had two years ago. And mommy's changed too. So the person you loved just two years ago is different from the person you're loving today. So we're not the same. And also things are conditioned. And they're impermanent and they're conditioned. And what we mean by conditioned is that they They exist only because of the things that are around them that have helped bring them into formation.

[12:58]

We're here in part because our mother and fathers got together. We're here in part because some farmers grew some food. Distributors brought the food to us, somebody cooked it for us, and here we are. So we require all of those other agents to bring us to life. and to keep us in life. And if they went away, we'd have a hard time. We wouldn't be here. So we're kind of conditioned. And so it's hard to nail us down, who it is we are and where it is we are. And so that's some of what is meant by the idea of being empty, is that You can't really lock in on something because it's always slipping away. It's always changing. New molecules are coming in, old molecules are leaving. And it exists there because of all the supporting activity that's around it, like Indra's net.

[14:03]

We're all connected together. And each of us exists because of all the other connections to us. The zendo is a good example. The zendo doesn't have any inherent quality that's zendo-ness. If we took it apart, we would not find a zendo anywhere there. We'd find wood and beams and pictures, but we wouldn't find a zendo anywhere. So, a zendo is, in a sense, empty. Philippe Capleau wrote in one of his books, he was the author of Three Pillars of Zen, and unfortunately I've forgotten the name of the book that I was reading to get this out of, something like Zen Comes to America. When he was studying in Japan, he was translating for his Roshi, and this American man came to visit and stay in the monastery. This man was well-versed in Buddhism and well-versed in Bodhidharma's emptiness, the Heart Sutra's emptiness, and he was spending the night, I guess several nights, and instead of

[15:08]

going to the bathroom, this is the middle of the night, instead of going to the bathroom at the toilet, he would stop at the garden and pee there and then go back to bed. And they discovered this and so Kaplu and the Roshi went, Kaplu I think, translating and like, I understand you're peeing in the garden. Yeah, why not? It's empty. This garden's empty, so why shouldn't I be in it, right? And the Roshi says, this is a holy place. Go pee in the toilet. Hit him. Hit the man. I don't know what he hit him with, but I can imagine it was something. Hit him. This is a holy place. So here we have, on one hand, emptiness, not holy, no holiness. And we have a Roshi, a Zen teacher, saying, this is a holy place. Now, the next part of the koan is... I'll start from the beginning so you kind of get the sense of it.

[16:17]

Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma says, empty, without holiness. The emperor said, who's facing me? Bodhidharma replied, I don't know. So, the emperor didn't understand. So, maybe we will. The commentaries sort of say, well, Wu's now beginning to question whether this Bodhidharma is a real holy man or not. First of all, he said there's no merit, and now he says there's nothing, these holy truths don't have anything in them. Who is this guy? So he asks him, and he gets his answer back, I don't know. I mean, this guy clearly can't be a holy man. I don't know. I was thinking about how Bodhidharma would say that. Would he say, I don't know?

[17:19]

Probably not. Say, I don't know? I don't know! He probably didn't say that either. I don't know. He said it some way. Wu, I think, was looking for a conventional answer. He was looking for what I call a small mind answer, i.e., did this guy have his Ph.D. in religion, in Buddhism, from Harvard or Cal or someplace? Or, since he's an emperor, did this guy have a big army or a small army, or what? And old Bodhidharma, of course, being a crafty guy that he is, recognized that Wu is still coming from a totally different place from where he ought to be coming, where we'd like to see him come, the big mind place.

[18:22]

And so he says, I don't know, which sort of pulls the rug out from underneath Wu. Unfortunately, Wu doesn't know he's had the rug pulled, but he's had the rug pulled out from underneath him. I think Bodhidharma, according to the tradition, he spent 63 years in India studying, doing zazen, meditating, before he came to China. So he had a lot of time to find out who he was. And he probably had, he probably looked at 10,000 different ways of seeing who he was, and each time realizing that that wasn't really what he was. So by the time he got to Wu, he really understood that he didn't understand, or he didn't know. So his answer, you know, was kind of like, I know, I don't know, sort of thing, kind of answer. Okay.

[19:24]

Another way to look at that is, Bodhidharma might have said something like, Well, I'm you, but I'm not you. And I'm sort of giving a little twist to it. Sort of pushing Wu into the sort of saying, well, you know, there really isn't much difference between you and me. That you want to separate, you want to create an object outside of yourself, which is me. So you're asking me who it is I am. Really, we're the same, kind of. But of course, we're really kind of different too. Okay. So, um, who is facing me? Bodhidharma replied, I don't know. The emperor did not understand. After this, Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze river and came to the kingdom of Wei, which I guess is where the Shouwen monastery is. Um, then the second paragraph later, the emperor brought this up to master Chi.

[20:28]

Master Chi is, um, a, another, uh, uh, I don't know if he was a Zen master or if he was just well-versed in Buddhism and was a Buddhist master, if you will, but he understood. And I think the emperor was fortunate he had Chi as an advisor. Later, the emperor brought this up to Master Chi and asked him about it. Master Chi asked, does your majesty know who this man is? The emperor said, I don't know. Master Chi said, he's the Mahasattva Avalokiteshvara, transmitting the Buddha mind seal. The emperor felt regretful, so he wanted to send an emissary to go invite Bodhidharma to return. Master Chi told him, your majesty, don't say that you will send someone to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him, he still would not return. Bodhidharma is a pretty stubborn guy. He didn't want to come back. I puzzled over that last paragraph because it doesn't seem to fit the first paragraph for me.

[21:31]

It's different. I guess the question is, who is Avalokiteshvara? Some of the commentary says, well, there were at least two. I said, no, there were a lot of them. So there are at least four actors. There's at least four actors. Actually, there's a whole lot of actors in this second paragraph. Because there's Wu, there's Qi, there's Bodhidharma, there's me reading at you, and there's all of you out here listening. And I think the sense of this is that all of us are avokitesvara. We don't have to send any emissary to go get him because we got him already. He's right here, right there, everywhere. And so, just don't have to do anything but be right here and my expectations sit.

[22:31]

Well, Emperor Wu has been taking quite a beating. But the literature does resurrect him later on. Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma, of course, goes to the Shonin Monastery and he sits for nine years, transmits the Buddha mind seal to his students and his successors, and then dies. At his grave site, there's a poem written by Emperor Wu. And it reads, Alas, I saw him without seeing him. I met him without meeting him. I encountered him without encountering him. Now, as before, I regret this deeply. If your mind exists, you are stuck in the mandane for eternity. If your mind does not exist, you experience wondrous enlightenment instantaneously.

[23:39]

So, that's about all I have for that cone. I see I've got a lot of time left, so we have a chance to ask a lot of questions. I did a little bit of research on it and wondered what it is. I think it's the... it's Big Mind. It's transmitting Big Mind. You know, like the flower Buddha transmits the Big Mind with the flower in one of the other koans. The word emptiness... I don't know, I always think that... What are these words? None exist. I don't know, it's very puzzling.

[24:46]

Emptiness? I remember once many years ago talking with Sojin about emptiness and I want to talk about void. Nothing's in it. Nothing's there. Absolutely nothing. And that's not really what it is. The word empty may be a little bit misleading because we traditionally think of empty means there's nothing there. But it's really not saying that nothing's there. It's saying that what is there is doesn't have any of its own being. You can't say, I guess it was Aristotle who talked about the essence of something. Is it Aristotle or Plato? It's one of those people. Everything has an essence. Well, emptiness is saying that's not true. Things don't have an essence. You take the bell there, and you melt it down, and there's no bell. The bell is gone. There's metal, but there's no bell. So the bell is empty.

[25:48]

That's the way I think of that. So yeah, the word empty can, I think, mislead us. And indeed, even in the literature, they talk about the heresy of the nihilistic thinking, that things don't exist, that that's not what emptiness is saying. Thanks Richard, that was really interesting. Can you please read that last poem on the Yeah, it's kind of nice because, you know, in the commentaries, a lot of the people who are writing the commentaries are sort of making fun of Wu, and they're calling him a kind of donkey and all this kind of thing. One of the sentences in here, empty without holiness, I think, No, who's facing me? One of the commentaries says, this is a donkey steak. In other words, he sort of will take Wu and will lash him to this, I don't know.

[26:54]

and he'll never be able to get away. So I sort of was really happy to see that they did, in a sense, give Wu credit for being... I mean, with this, Zendo and our Zen Center would not exist without all of us, and other people as well, giving us a lot of loot. We wouldn't exist without money, without the gold. And those people are getting something. And certainly we're getting something by giving. but even the people who are not participating in sitting are getting something. So, anyway, I'll read it for you. Alas, I saw him without seeing him. I met him without meeting him. I encountered him without encountering him. Now as before, I regret this deeply. If your mind exists, you are stuck in the mundane for eternity. If your mind does not exist, you experience wondrous enlightenment instantaneously. I appreciate this talk very much.

[28:02]

It's very heartwarming. And I always relate to Emperor Wu. I don't know how often I miss the mark, but I'm aware of a lot of the times that I do miss it. And it's gone. You know, Bodhidharma isn't going to come chasing after. There are consequences to actions, there are consequences to unconsciousness. And I regret them. And I learn from them. That's the only thing I can do is try to awake the next moment for the next one coming at me. Right, that's the essence of Zazen is to, right, the moment we start slipping away, our thoughts start intruding on our Zazen, we just sort of, oh, and come back. Yeah, thank you. Yes? What's your understanding of if your mind doesn't exist? What's your understanding of that? In the poem, if your mind doesn't...

[29:04]

Well, I think he's talking about small mind here. Does not exist. Right, does not exist. In this case, for example, when you're sitting Zazen and you've sort of quieted down, your thoughts have quieted down, your small mind is shrunk. It's not gone away. And so that's what I'm thinking of. What I think of in this poem, he's talking about your mind does not exist. You experience wondrous enlightenment instantaneously. I'm sorry? Who am I? Well, I'm the experiencer. I'm the experiencer experiencing. I don't know who that is, but something is, I mean, something is happening. And I get up and I remember that. I enjoyed the anecdote about Kepler Roshi and his teacher.

[30:23]

And for me, I think that's a really important statement, that his teacher said that this is a holy place, don't urinate here. I would really appreciate if you took a stab at how that is a spin on Bodhidharma's nothing holy. What was Kepler Roshi's teacher Yeah, I was thinking of that garden as being holy because of the amalgamation of all the effort that went into it to make it from the monks caring for it. And over probably centuries, given this is in the 1950s probably when he was there and probably that monastery was built in 1400 or 1300 or something like that. of love that went into it.

[31:24]

So it was holy in that sense. It was kind of like the Buddha statue made out of wood. It is just rock. It's just dirt. It's just plants. And if you took them away, you wouldn't find anything there. There wouldn't be any guard craft. It would be empty, if you will. In terms of it not being holy, in terms of Bodhidharma saying not holy, I sort of see that as saying... I thought empty and not holy were kind of redundant. He didn't really need to say not holy. Let's see if I can make sure I get the quote right here. Empty without holiness. Because it's empty, of course it doesn't have any wholeness in it. There's no intrinsic value that it has. The value comes from us projecting into it whatever values we want to have.

[32:30]

And he was trying to bring Wu into an awareness that don't spend too much time thinking and talking about wholeness and how these truths come together into not-to and whatnot. Just stop thinking about it. Go on. That's kind of the way I'm thinking about it now. Do you think Bodhidharma would urinate in that garden? I have no idea whether Bodhidharma would or not. I wouldn't. I don't think. Unless it were just... I just... I mean, there are times when I wouldn't. When I go to Yosemite, Yosemite Valley, I face that choice. I just got to say that the Bay Area book on gardening by Pam Pierce says that human urine helps compost piles. But I've never been that much of a zealot myself.

[33:34]

I'm not talking. Yes. I'm hearing these two stories and I'm really glad always always the two halves are needed to make them closer to the truth. And as I'm listening to this and playing with this and realizing that for me those two stories are about two mind states and both mind states are errors. So when Wu is saying tell me about where I can get holiness and the appropriate, the skillful means to free him from this mind state where reach in and get somewhere and where is it, you know, is to say no holiness. Whereas in the other situation someone has become careless, unmindful. So the skillful means there is to bring this person to an awareness that

[34:37]

bringing ourselves into a, helping ourselves to non-attachment. So both of those are ways of helping someone to non-attachment. So it just sort of depends on where you are and which mistake you're making. It's sort of like, there is no holiness, but everything is holy and everything requires mindfulness. That's what that helped me to do. Yeah, that's very good. Thank you. who was in Japan. And he was with his Japanese friend. And he had to go to the bathroom on the street. And he said to his friend, I really have to go. I don't know where. And the friend said, emergency. Emergency. Go ahead. I was reading that Thich Nhat Hanh actually has a practice of bowing to the toilet before he goes to the bathroom.

[36:14]

And it started with, he would bow to a tree when he was outside. He likes to be outside. And he would bow to the tree. And then he realized, well, the toilet is as holy as the tree. That's why the Shiseo is given the job of cleaning the toilets. It's the best job there is. Yes? I appreciated your saying that, Wu was asking, did you go to Harvard to teach? But I'm feeling something else, and the question wasn't, who are you, but who's facing me? And it seems to me that Bodhidharma was turning Wu's mind inside out and saying, not just, I don't know who I am, but you have to face me and see who I am by facing me and being in your own realm of looking out and being the looker and the answer.

[37:33]

and then say, who am I? I can't tell you anything about your life, including who I am in your life. Yeah, that's another translation, Who's Facing Me. It's the same koan translated, I guess, by a different translator. It's very good. Thank you. Time for one more question? But there's no more questions. There is time for one more. Yes? The part that struck me most about your talk was when you mentioned that the reason you couldn't send emissaries to go after Bodhidharma was because he was still there. Each of us is Avalokiteshvara.

[38:36]

What's that? Each of us is Avalokiteshvara. I probably didn't have a whole lot to say about it to begin with because I don't really have a whole lot to say. Let's see if I can think of something. To me it's smacks of Dogen talking about we're already enlightened. We're already here. We need to realize it, and we realize it by the very first time we sit down in the Siddhasan. We are basically enlightened. So in that sense, we are basically Avokiteshvara. It doesn't take much to be that. It probably takes a lot to maintain it, but it doesn't take much to be it. We're already intrinsically that in our value. I apologize, I probably should have more to say about it.

[39:36]

That's why I'm still a student. Thank you.

[39:43]

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