Though the target is true meaning. Good afternoon. So I feel like I managed to read a fair amount of the practice instructions this morning, so I want to try and leave time for discussion this afternoon. I know a number of you anyway have had a chance to read some of Cultivating the Empty Field.

[01:06]

For those who haven't, I wanted to say a little bit just in terms of giving context. So the person whose writings I was reading this morning is named Qiantong Hongzhe, and he lived in the 12th century in China, and he was in the Xiaodong lineage of Chan or Zen. Chan is a Chinese word and Zen is a Japanese word, and I don't know, they're all now English I guess. And Xiaodong is the Chinese for Soto, which you probably are more familiar with, which is the Japanese word. So he was in that lineage and basically, very poetically as you heard, articulated the meditation practice of that teaching, which goes back to the 9th century in China, back to the man who wrote the, what do you call it, the Identity of Relative and Absolute, the Sandokas, in

[02:10]

Sekito in Japanese, or Shido in Chinese, all these funny names. Anyway, so Hongzhe had a very large monastery in eastern China and wrote a great deal, very beautiful writings about this practice. He also wrote the, originated the collection of koans called the Book of Serenity or the Book of Equanimity, he picked the cases and wrote the verses. And his lineage was later transported to Japan by Dogen, who was a great, great nephew of his in terms of the Dharma. Dogen was a Japanese monk in the 1200s, in the 13th century, a century later in Japan, who went to China to study the Buddhist teaching and went to the same temple where Hongzhe had been the abbot of Tiantong and was awakened and brought that back to Japan.

[03:15]

So his teachings are very, Dogen's teachings are very close to Hongzhe's. And I had the very great good fortune and was blessed with the classes and conditions to be able to translate some of this material in this book, Cultivating the Empty Field. So as I said, I wanted to have discussion this afternoon, but I thought I would just read a little bit from one of the poems in here. And say a little bit about this teaching and then we can just have a discussion about it. Can everybody hear me okay? Let me know if you can't, please. So this is called the Guidepost for the Hall of Pure Bliss. So it's appropriate to read in this hall today. And I'm just going to read part of it and say a little bit about it maybe.

[04:19]

Deep existence is beyond forms. Wisdom illuminates the inside of the circle. Inside the circle, the self vanishes, neither existent nor non-existent. Intimately conveying spiritual energy, it subtly turns the mysterious pivot. When the mysterious pivot finds the opportunity to turn, the original light auspiciously appears. So part of practice is to be there, to be in that place where we are turning and can be turned, to be at that pivot. So that when the opportunity arises, we're there. Baker Risher used to say that enlightenment is an accident and practice makes us accident-prone. So, just to be here, to be in this space, to be turning ourselves, to be open to be turned, to be sitting right on that pivot,

[05:23]

that mysterious pivot of spiritual energy. When the mind's conditioning has not yet sprouted, how can words and images be distinguished? Who is it that can distinguish them? Clearly understand and know by yourself. So we have to look at that space where our conditioning has not yet manifested. We have to go back to that place where our thoughts emerge from, where our feelings emerge from. We return within ourself. We turn the light back within and settle in to this space. Whole and inclusive with inherent insight, it is not concerned with discriminating thought. When discriminating thought is not involved, it is like white reed flowers shining in the snow. One beam of light's gleam permeates the vastness. The gleam permeates through all directions, from the beginning, not covered or concealed.

[06:25]

Catching the opportunity to emerge, amid transformations it flourishes. Following appropriately amid transformations, the pure bliss is unchanged. The sky encompasses it, the ocean seals it, every moment without deficiency. In this achievement without deficiency, inside and outside are interfused. All dharmas transcend their limits. All gates are wide open. So everything we do, everything we are, everything we say is limited. We live in a limited world. We live in a world of limitations. We all have particular conditions and conditioning and situations. Right in the middle of that, we all transcend those limits. There is a gateway to vastness in each thing, in each limitation. To fully accept and be in our limitations, there is an opportunity, there is a pivot. All dharmas transcend their limits.

[07:31]

All gates are wide open. Through the open gates are the byways of playful wandering. Dropping off senses and sense objects is like the flowers of our gazing and listening falling away. How do I like that? I'm going to read it again. Dropping off senses and sense objects is like the flowers of our gazing and listening falling away. So when we look, when we listen, when we think, when we feel, there is a flower there and we have to let it fall. All of these flowers of our life, all of our perceptions, all of our thoughts, all of our wonderful imaginings, all of the art and music, all of our culture, all of our loved ones, everything is a flower and flowers are constantly blooming and falling away. So this is our life. Gazing and listening are only distant conditions of thousands of hands and eyes.

[08:31]

So he's talking about this lady up here, Guan Yin, Kansayon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. So we chanted to Kansayon, the great Bodhisattva, already today. And in some of her form she has a thousand hands and eyes. So there are wonderful statues in Japan where you can see this seated or standing figure literally with a thousand hands and each hand in its palm has an eye to see. And there's a wonderful story, one Zen fellow said to another, who actually was his brother, why does the Bodhisattva of Compassion have so many hands and eyes? And the other one said, it's like reaching back for your pillow in the middle of the night. So in this space we just respond. There's nothing to figure out, nothing to say, nothing to plan, just what comes to hand. Gazing and listening are only distant conditions of thousands of hands and eyes.

[09:40]

The others die from being too busy, but I maintain continuity. In this wonder of continuity are no traces of subtle identifications. So we have many subtle identifications. We have many ways in which we identify ourselves and identify the world and be able to identify our friends and family and everything. We need to do that, of course. We have to know who we are. But actually all of these identifications are just limitations and they're opportunities to burst open into this vastness. So this wonder of continuity, the last thing I want to say, because the last time I had dokesan with one of the teachers I studied with in Japan, who I liked very much, he said to me, understanding is easy and understanding is not important. The point is just to continue. So just to come, to keep coming, day after day, week after week, month after month,

[10:48]

and putting ourselves in this space, at this mysterious pivot. There is openness there. Anyway, I've said enough. If anybody has questions or comments to offer or any discussion, I would love to have us discuss this empty field. Yeah, good question. So I mentioned this morning the technique of turning the light within, taking the backward step. And in a sense, this meditation practice and meditation tradition is about going beyond techniques.

[11:49]

It's so simple, there's no technique. But it's so simple that almost no one can do it. Everybody wants a technique, everybody wants a method, everybody wants some clinical, empirical technique that will advance them on their way. So actually in objectless meditation, in my own sense of it, there are myriads of techniques. And as long as we don't hold on to any of them, please use them. There are libraries full of meditation techniques in the Buddhist tradition. And all of them come up naturally from our zazen. These weren't things that somebody thought about and calculated and consulted a computer and wrote down. They all come out of our experience of just being here. But yes, they are very useful sometimes to use some techniques. So maybe you've heard about counting breaths, for example,

[12:53]

or just following breath, or working with koans, working with the old teaching stories and focusing on one phrase from an old teaching story, or reading Dogen's unpacking of those stories in myriad ways. Or there are many techniques with breathing. There are many techniques with physical postures and working with physical energy. Mantra is another technique. Mantra is part of Zen, by the way. The heart sutra that we chant every day in most Zen temples ends with a teaching on mantra practice. So if you want to use gatte gatte, paragatte, parasangatte, bodhisvaha, you can say that to yourself in Zazen, that's all right. All of these techniques are part of the tradition. But the point is to let go of all of them. But also, if it comes up to you something, to settle, to get to that place where we can just be in that mysterious pivot, then fine, use what you need.

[13:55]

By the way, one other thing is that I'm talking about Hongzhe as part of the Soto tradition, but we may have some idea if we read some books that there's this big difference between Soto and Rinzai. And if you go to Japan today, you might feel that too. And I'm appreciating being here in Maureen's temple, I feel very much Maureen here. Yeah. Yeah. Historically, this is the way it's always been, actually. So Hongzhe was one of the leading people

[14:58]

on the Soto lineage in his day, and Dawei was very noted in the Linji, the Rinzai lineage in his day, and they were very good friends. And Dogen, in fact, inherited both Rinzai and Soto. So I'm both Rinzai and Soto being Dogen's lineage. So all this stuff about different schools and different teachings, you know, the point is what is your life and how do you use these resources. So don't get hung up on all these differences. Leave that for the academic scholars. I sat with Maureen and I heard her today. So anybody else? Anything you want to share from your experience of just trying to practice with this stuff today? Also, please. Or questions or whatever. Yes.

[16:48]

They're called mountains. They're also temples in the ocean, too. You know, I was talking this morning about this oscillation, this going back and forth, going within, seeing the mountain and the ocean and the sky within us, and going back out into the busy marketplace, as Hongshu says. So in a sense, Zen people have been going for a thousand years up to the mountains to sit. And we get some sense of that just coming to sit for a day, just going to someplace in our house where we sit for 30 minutes. We're always going back and forth between the mountains and the cities

[17:48]

in the marketplace. That's where our practice lives, is in that kind of interface. And for each of us, there's a different rhythm. So each one of us has our own mountain spirit realm. Each one of us has our own way of being in the mountains. And some people need to go to the mountains for a day. Some people need to go for three months. Some people need to go for 30 years. But everybody comes back. And so there's this constant going back and forth. And it's like our inhale and our exhale. I like the way you described the practice. put these pieces. You said you're very self-assured

[18:49]

that you've practiced and you trust in the Buddha. But there's also a lot of things that you don't expect from me. And that was in the practice in introduction and in the expression in the shoes. Like I'm not sure if you wrote that section, but you did something. I was totally taken by the use of the word I don't think there's a bucket, I know there's no bucket, but I don't think there's a bucket that has a lot of mushrooms left out. And I want to let you know today that I really, really love you. And it's not just myself, because I would like to ask you to come and love me,

[19:49]

because I'm kind of like your father, and I'm great, I'm great, and I'm going to love you. Thank you. Yeah, there is a bucket, and there is a bottom that falls out, and it happens each moment. And sometimes we're right there with it, and sometimes we're trying to build some new bucket. We're carrying buckets on our back, yeah. Yeah, no, it's an important question, because it's something that's very easy for us to misunderstand. So people in the Suzuki Roshi lineage that I'm ordained in don't even like to talk about the word enlightenment, and that can be too much too. I mean, something happened, Shakyamuni Buddha was awakened. He saw the morning star, and he saw that everything is Buddha. And of course, he wasn't the first.

[20:55]

There have been Buddhas, upon Buddhas, upon Buddhas. But I think we have, as Westerners particularly, we have some idea that there will be some experience, and then we'll be whatever we imagine, fixed, or perfect beings, or whatever. And that's really dangerous, and it's nonsense. The point is, this is already enlightenment, but we have to continue making it real, making it work in everybody's life, because everybody depends on you right now. So we don't practice in order to get some other experience somewhere else, in order to become some other person, in order to be in some other higher state of being, or lower state of being, or whatever. Sometimes that's used as a technique, and in some parts of the Rinzai school, and in some parts of the Soto school,

[21:55]

they talk about getting Kensho, getting some opening experience. But that's not the same as this idea we might have about some ultimate, final enlightenment, after which you are this perfect being who can never do any wrong, or whatever. So even Hakuin, for example, the great, great Rinzai Zen master who established the system of Koan training in the Rinzai school today, he had many opening experiences from the time he was a teenager until he was in his 80s. Fifty years later, he would have a Kensho on, the same story he'd had Kenshos on sometime before. He would say, now I understand it. Enlightenment is endless. The other thing is that enlightenment is not a thing. The Diamond Sutra says very clearly, there is no mark by which we can know enlightenment. So anything you say about it is wrong. It's not a thing. And when we talk, we tend to...

[22:57]

We talk, as I was saying earlier this morning, we talk in subject and object, and nouns and verbs, and so forth. We kill the world by making the world into these dead objects. And it's not. Enlightenment is alive, which means it's changing, which means we don't know what it is. Thank you for sharing that with us. I think that's a very good point. Is there a difference in East India and East Asia, or Russia, and the Middle East, and Japanese? And if so, how did the Chinese... So you're asking about India and China, the difference between India and China? Yeah. I don't think there's any difference in the heart. My experience of seeing Buddhist teachers from many different traditions is that the heart is the same. The style is different in different cultures.

[23:58]

So... Chan, and the Chan movement in China, which is what we call Zen now, really developed as a way of curing monks, and scholars, and practitioners in China, where Buddhism was already well established, curing them of some intellectual understanding of it, and bringing it back to life. So the point of Zen is just to bring it into our experience, to make it real. But we also... The point is really, what's the difference between American Buddhism and Indian and Chinese, and how do we make it real? So there is a development of the Buddhist teachings, and one can study the teachings in India, and early Mahayana Buddhism, and there is a whole system of philosophy, and I think it's helpful if you feel so inclined to study that. And I could go into more detail,

[25:03]

but I'd have to know what you wanted to know about it. Anyway, there are many schools, and many profound philosophies of Buddhism in India, and they developed in China, because Buddhism is a living thing, so it's developing. If we try very hard to follow all the forms of Japanese Zen, we will invent some wonderful American Zen, because we're not Japanese. So it takes the form, and responds to the problems, and issues, and concerns of people, in particular places and time. And people in different cultures have different psyches, and different needs, and different interests. So the teaching is alive in that way, and it's up to us to make it alive. I mean, we're the ones who are making it alive today, right now, here. Yeah? What's your translation? When you were translating, what was the part, what you were putting into English?

[26:06]

No. I was just trying to put it into English, so we don't have to think about how it relates to Americans. Just to try and translate as accurately as we can. The teaching into our being is... It becomes English, because that's our language. So I wasn't trying to... I was just trying to make it... You know, it's not English or Chinese. Actually, when I was doing this translation, I went to a... I was at a workshop, a weekend teaching, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who was giving a teaching in San Jose on the Dzogchen teaching of Tibetan Buddhism, which is very close to Soto Zen, Shikantaza, and Serene Illumination. And I was translating this, and then I would go to hear him,

[27:08]

and he was talking about Dzogchen, Tibetan practice, and I felt like he was saying the words I translated the night before. So this is just a description, you know, Hongzhe's description, which I tried to put into English that we could understand, a description of this experience, of being in this space, this vastness, this empty field. Yes? You mentioned this morning that you were really thinking about that part of... Well, dust is kind of a jargon in Buddhism for delusions. I mean, we can also see it in terms of dusts and pine needles and things like that, but delusions are what appear in our mind all the time. Delusions are what appear

[28:09]

in our perceptions all the time. So the objects of the world are dusts, you know, all of the thoughts we have, all the feelings we have, they are things that we have turned into dusts, turned into dead objects. So right there is where our awakening is, right there is where the vitality is too. It's not separate. But how do we make the dusts alive? I think that's the question. I'm not sure if that was what you were asking about. Yes, this is me. I'm always struck by the striking down and folding up the habits of the old tenet. And it seems that you couldn't strike down and doesn't depend if something collapses or is on the way to a certain state. Because the emptiness is perceived as secure, is one of the analogies one uses. But when I choose to strike my habits down,

[29:12]

it's hopeless. But in fact sometimes they just fall on their feet. So I was just puzzled by that line. Which page is that on? I love the folding up. The image is wonderful. But the striking the tenet. Who can strike down their habits with such intention? I think that's a problem. I actually have the original with me. I'll have to look at it tonight. As to what part of speech the verb is there, I'm not sure. Maybe I should have said when they are stricken down. But there's times when he does speak in that kind of active voice of you have to... I would say the teaching of it is you have to study your habits. So Dogen says the way is to study the self. And to study the self is then to forget the self. Then we are awakened by all things and body and mind fall away. So actually we can't do zazen.

[30:19]

Zazen does us, right? And we can't strike down our habits. But in a way, if we are studying our habits with this intention of... There's also this cutting through. Sometimes we need to have that energy. Sometimes we need to push. And it's different for different people at different times. So I think that's my sense of it. We see the way we've... Not just that we have created these habits. It's everything in the whole universe has created these habits. It's our parents and our conditioning and our culture and the way our language is that gives us to think in a certain way. And as we study that, just sitting here letting it arise in our being, studying it not just in terms of cognition or thinking about it or some idea, but seeing how it feels in our knees and our bellies and our back.

[31:21]

We also have to have this intention of opening. Yeah. The way we... We're okay the way we are and the way we are is that body and mind are dropping away. We don't always recognize it. But that's actually what's happening. Because we're living. Practice maybe helps us to see that that's what our life is. Practice is seeing that that's what our life is. It's not exactly also... It's not exactly that we're okay the way we are. I mean, it's not...

[32:24]

It's more like we don't have to be somebody other than who we are. We don't have to acquire something that we don't have already. It's like trying to see your own eyeballs. They're so close. You can't see your own eyeballs. The world is terrible. It's horrible. There are all kinds of horrors and cruelty and atrocities everywhere. I mean, probably even in Rye, New York. I don't know. And yet, the world is perfect just the way it is. There's this kind of... I'm sorry. This is the way it is. Suzuki Roshi talks about finding our balance against a background of perfect balance. So what Buddha saw was that everything is Buddha. What Sangha is about,

[33:26]

what our practice together is about, is how do we make that real in the world? You know, there are, to pick an example that's far enough away so that we won't... nobody will be offended. In Bosnia, there are people, or at least until recently, there were people killing each other all the time because they thought they were different or something, or somebody belonged to some group or whatever, you know. This happens. This is the way the world is. You know, bad things happen. How do we see that, how do we help people to see that they don't need to do that? That actually the Croats and the Muslims and the Serbs, you know, are all the same, are all connected, are all human, are all in existence. They don't see it, that's right.

[34:29]

Yeah, there is change, right? But what doesn't change is the fact of change underneath it, the transformations, the the possibility of waking up each moment. So, we have been given this gift of this practice, of this way of connecting ourselves with everything. So it's our job, you know. So Shakyamuni was enlightened, but that's only half of it. The rest of it is for all of us to how do we make that real in the world. And it's not that we necessarily have to go off and, you know, set up some new institution to fix things, either. You know, that's not necessarily the answer. Sometimes it might be. But how do we fully in our own life, how do we go back out to the busy marketplace and share our sense of wholeness, which is always being damaged by the world.

[35:33]

Then we have to come back in and see that there is a wholeness even in this new problem. How do we go back out and share that? So, you know, you're asking the most important question. You know, how do we make this real in the world? And it's not that it's... And it's actually already there. That's what we have to see. It's not that we have to do great deeds, exactly. It's like, how do we see the fundamental rightness of the leaves on the trees just before they fall? So, ending suffering is not about getting rid of pain or sadness, you know. That's part of the wholeness too. Tolkien says, flowers fall in our attraction, weeds spread in our aversion.

[36:34]

So this is our life. And yet there is a way in which it's all connected. And we can see that balance. Sometimes, you know, we get a sense of that. We get a taste of that. You know, in our left shoulder, you know, during some inhales in the middle of certain periods of Zazen or something. Anyway, that's how I see it. Yes? Not anything that's not in the mind, anything in the mind. No, it's not in the mind. Hmm. Emptiness is just an idea.

[37:40]

It's just a way of talking. It doesn't mean nothingness, you know. Emptiness also, you know, maybe you've heard this before, it's a technical word. It means that everything is empty of self-existence. Or you could say it's that everything is empty of estrangement or separation. Everything is totally connected, actually. So emptiness is one way to talk about it. And it's useful to talk about it that way because we get caught up in seeing this thing is real or that thing is real or this is this big problem or that's this big problem or whatever. You know, we have to see the emptiness of each thing that we think is some separate set-up thing. But also we can talk about it as suchness or suchness or thusness or just the way things is. You know, the language is a problem

[38:43]

but one of the things about Hongxia and a lot of the koans too is that there's a way to use the language. Emptiness doesn't mean that we stop talking and, you know, cut off our larynx and be mute forever more. I mean, it might be okay to do that but emptiness and silence can be in the midst of talking too. So this is what Hongxia and Dogen and the great Zen masters teach us with their words. These Dharma utterances show us how to use words to point at what is wordless. How to speak the unspeakable. How to use words to help each other wake up to what is before words. To express words in the silence. This is why we can only talk about this in metaphors or poetry or pictures. We can't explain it. Yes? I have a great deal of difficulty with words.

[39:43]

Good. So often it's just I don't know if I can make it. And they can be very helpful and very useful and also appropriate. But I have a big deal of a problem with them. One thing that happens here is in this discussion sometimes these words have great, great precision about them. Very helpful. And you can pick up the words and make it. Or even use it for whatever that word is you're thinking of. And you're going down that main end and you catch up that there's this whole The guy who

[40:46]

said just is a great deal more than what he just said. The word on his face is just a great deal more than what he just said. I wanted to say one last thing about words. Today we're going to be knowing both of them. The words in my mind keep spreading across the field. It's one of the few characters I know and I don't even know I really know the characters that we've done. But perhaps for people who spoke these words or heard them they were in line they might have been very different they might have been big or long

[41:47]

or bad In the next book that I have coming out soon I translate in one case as magnanimous and that's the context. I think it's very useful to be very aware that anything that you read about Buddhism is a translation into English. It's actually very fortunate for us that we're reading all these new translations and we can assume that most of them are bad translations. So anything that you read, anything that you chant it's very good to, it's helpful to assume that it's a bad translation and each single word you should spend many periods meditating on. That's right. The point is not the words. In the Song of the Jewel Marrow Samadhi it says the meaning is not in the words yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. So the meaning is not the words The meaning is the Dharma. What is the teaching of each word? So what is the teaching of dust? What is the teaching of emptiness?

[42:47]

And that's something that you have to you can talk to Susan and you can read books about these but also you have to find for yourself what does it mean. So don't get caught by the words. Be very careful about the words. Fortunately also some of the translations that are coming out now of Zen and Buddhist texts are pretty pretty good. They don't have the whole of all of the implications of the Japanese or Chinese. But the Japanese and Chinese were using words too and they got just as stuck and they were translating it from the Sanskrit and they were they had the same problems. Chinese and Japanese are very wonderful because they're poetic. Chinese is a very poetic language and you can have all kinds of overtones in the characters and that's wonderful and so you can see resonances and different layers of meaning. You can translate that into English sometimes too. The point is the words isn't what's important. What's the meaning of this? So I told this story to Susan last night when I was translating this at one point a professor of mine

[43:50]

read it and I thought I'd finished it and he said this is no good. Start over again. And I had to go back and with each sentence and with each paragraph sit with it. And what is the teaching of this? So the point isn't to translate the words. If you don't understand the meaning of some text you're reading in English that's been translated you should probably think that the meaning hasn't been translated. But even then you can look at the bad translation and say well what's the meaning of this? Or compare several different translations. That's very helpful particularly with Dogen because there's so many bad translations. Look at a few decent translations and you will and you ask yourself what's the meaning of this and sit with it. So this is one way to strike down the tense of habits is to look at the words that you think you know what they mean and unpack that and what is the teaching of this? And ask Buddha. She'll answer.

[44:49]

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