This morning, I'm going to talk about an old teaching story, case 91 in the Book of Serenity, Shoya Roku. This is a story that features a Nanchuan, great Chinese master of the 19th century, Nansen in Japanese. And the story itself has with many of these All stories is fairly brief. And the first character in it is Officer Liu Gang, who was a fairly significant government official, who was also a good Zen student and a student of Nanchuan's. Officer Liu Gang said to Nanchuan, teaching master Songchao was quite extraordinary. He was able to say, Heaven and earth have the same root. Myriad things are one body.

[01:03]

So I'll come back to Songkran. Nan Chuang pointed to a peony in the garden as they were walking and said, people today see this flower as in a dream. So that's the story. And that one line is, Well, there's a lot there. People today see this flower as in a dream. So I'll come back to Song Zhao and who he is and what he's saying and how Officer Liu is quoting him, but first of all, just people today see this flower as in a dream. So do you see the rose on the altar? Maybe Alex and Helga can't see it from where they're sitting, but... Do you see it?

[02:06]

Do you really see it? Often we see things as in a dream. As you were sitting facing the wall, did you see the wall as if in a dream? Buddhism is the study of awakening, the study of awareness. How do we see each thing, our own lives, this moment, awake? Or do we see it As Nam Chuan said about this particular painting, we see this flower as energy.

[03:15]

Many aspects to this, many ways to turn this flower. So Shakyamuni held up a flower, the story goes, on Vulture Peak. And one of the students smiled. And Shakyamuni said, oh, now I have, now Mahakasyapa has the Chudamai treasury, the wondrous mind of Nirvana. Maybe all the other disciples saw that flower as if it were a dream. How do we not get caught by the dream of our life? How do we wake up and smell the roses? So, just sitting here this morning, I noticed that Maybe I was a little sleepy and you know it's possible while you're sitting zazen to see whatever arises as in a dream.

[04:31]

Sometimes dream narratives, dreams or you know in a dream everything is a little strange. Things happen in funny order or you know things happen suddenly or anyway. Our dream awareness is Well, we sometimes think it's a little different from, you know, when we're walking around. But Nanchuan said, people today see this flower as in a dream. And we can get caught in the dream of our life. We all have stories. Some of them are all very, you know, seem very clear and linear, not wild and... and flowing and strange like in a dream. But do we get caught by the dream of the story that we believe about who we are and what the world is and how things are?

[05:34]

When we're walking, doing Kenyan walking meditation, do we actually believe there's a floor there that will meet our foot as we take the next step? So far, that's been fairly reliable. Nobody has fallen through the floor here in this temple during Kenyan. It hasn't happened yet. But in many ways, we have dreams about reality. And just to say, when we have sleepy dreams and things move around and all logic and proportion is kind of blown away. Well, things happen out of order. Anyway, is that the dream? Anyway, just the statement, people today see this flower as in a dream, is powerful.

[06:35]

I would advise you to It's just this short statement that Nan Chuan made. And again, he was pointing to a specific peony in the garden and said, people today see this flower as in a dream. You might remember the statement by Nan Chuan and see if you're seeing a dream or if you're seeing the flowers. So this also implies the Buddhist practice of bare attention. of vivid awareness of just the wall or the floor in front of you, or whatever it is, the next thing you're doing during the course of the week. Many ways to turn this, but Nanchuan said this in response to a commentary that Officer Luz quoted. He'd been reading Songzhao, and Officer Luz said that Songzhao was quite extraordinary.

[07:42]

And he was. So I want to talk about who Sung Tsao is and what he said. And the commentary to this case in the Book of Serenity goes into that to quite an extent. And so I'm going to quote from some of that. Sung Tsao was a great Buddhist teacher in China before Bodhidharma came from the West and started Chan or Zen. Sangyal died in around 414. He was a disciple of Kumarajiva, great, great translator of Sanskrit, Buddhist texts into Chinese. I think Kumarajiva maybe died the year before. He lived a lot longer. Sangyal maybe only lived 40 years. Kumarajiva lived around 70 years. Kumarajiva translated You know, most of the translations that we know of Buddhism from the Chinese were from Kumarajiva, the Lotus Sutra, and the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, and the Mahakirti Sutra.

[08:55]

Many, many, many, many sutras. He was kind of the top period, he said. And he had many assistants who helped him translate. And one of them was Tsongchapa, who later wrote many commentaries and essays, and the one that Officer Liu, well, before that, before I even talk about it, there's a story in the commentary about Officer Liu and Nanshuang. Officer Liu had been studying with Nanshuang for quite a while. It says he was a member of the Supreme Court, whatever that was in Tang Dynasty China. And one time he had asked Nanshuang I've raised a goose in a bottle, and it gradually grew too big to get out. Now, without damaging the bottle or injuring the goose, how would you get it out? Nanshuang called to him. Sir? Lu Geng responded, yes. Nanshuang said, it's out. And Lu Geng was awakened.

[09:56]

Anyway, that's just a little story about the way these people talked to each other back then in China. But in this case, Lu is quoting from Sun Tzu. He quotes a commentary by Sumjiao called Nirvana Has No Name, about wondrous existence, and the forequote, this is writing by Sumjiao, the mysterious way is in ineffable enlightenment. Enlightenment is in merging with reality. Merging with reality involves seeing existence and non-existence as equal. Not getting caught on the side of emptiness or nothingness, not getting caught on the side of things do exist. And then Tsongkhapa goes on, when you see them equally, the others and self are not two. Very important.

[10:57]

Fundamental Buddhist teaching, that others and self are not two. We imagine we're separate from others. We tell stories, we have dreams about ourself and who this person listening to these sounds is on your cushion or chair. But actually, others and self are not two, Sobja says. Then he goes on to say, therefore, heaven, earth, and I have the same root. The myriad things and I are one body. Being the same as me, they're no longer existent or non-existent. If they were different from me, that would oppose communication. If we were separate, we couldn't talk with each other. Therefore, neither going out nor being within the way subsists in between. And the commentary from the Book of Serenity says, Lu Gan quoted these two lines as being wonderful.

[12:07]

He hardly realized that this indeed is talking about a dream. So this is subtle. What Sun Tzu was saying is wonderful, actually. Yes, it is. He's talking about the mysterious way of ineffable enlightenment, and in merging with reality, and not being caught in existence or non-existence. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. And that others and self are not two. Heaven, Earth, and I have the same root. The myriad things and I are one body. So as Shuto or Sekito says in the Song of the Grass Hut, inside the hut is the whole world. on your sitting cushion or chair. Everything you've ever experienced is part of what is going on. This is true. And yet, the commentary says, and following along with Nanchuan, that he hardly realized, that Lüge hardly realized this is indeed talking about a dream.

[13:15]

Even so, the commentary goes on, when someone as great as Master Shuto of Sekito, who wrote the Song of the Grass Hut and the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, He was vastly awakened to the way while reading the traditions of Somjau. So Somjau is very important in our lineage. He was before Bodhidharma, but he wrote about the nature of awakening and awareness in ways that are very deep. And when Shinto or Sekito was reading Somjau, he came to a passage which said, the ultimate person is empty and hollow. He has no form. Yet of the myriad things, there is none that is not his own making. Who can understand the myriad things as one's self? Only a sage. Reading that, Sato Sekito awakened and said, a sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not himself.

[14:16]

And then he sat down and wrote the Harmony of Difference and Sameness. So why does Nanchuan respond to this quote? Again, going back to the main case from Officer Liu, quoting Sun Zhou saying, heaven and earth have the same root, myriad things are one body. Nanchuan pointed to a peony in the garden and said, people today see this flower as in a dream. So there are all kinds of ways in which we can get caught in some dream. We see the world as if in a dream. We can do that. We can get caught by that. This is maybe our normal way of walking around. People don't appreciate, don't feel grateful for that rose on the altar.

[15:25]

many other flowers that we encounter in our life. How do we not take things for granted? How do we not get put to sleep by the mass media so we don't see the flowering of our society and the dying of the flowering of our society, as if in a dream? How do we see clearly? Many ways to look to turn this flower. In this case, in this case 91 of Shoya Roku, Book of Serenity, Nanchuan, you know, here's this, his student, this very eminent government official, quoting Sung Cheol, he doesn't say anything about that directly, he just says, oh look, People today see this flower as if in a dream.

[16:28]

So, first of all, maybe it's necessary for us to study Sung Chau or other great Buddhist teachers, to analyze our experience of the ultimate, to see that all things are empty, and all things are self. So, you know, what Sang Chow says, in some way this is, of course, true, that everything in the universe is a creation of your body-mind. We all do this together. Self and other are one. Maybe we create the dreams together as well. So, if we hold to one side, the side of things exist as they seem, that's a little funny.

[17:52]

If we hold to It's all a dream. That's the non-existent. That's a little funny, too. Neither existence nor non-existence works. How do we look at the reality of our life, the reality of form and emptiness, the reality of this question? So, you know, the Buddhist teachings... So, when Bodhidharma came, and as Chan or Zen developed in China, part of the emphasis was to cut through all of this great scholarship which had existed in China. All of these great Buddhist schools and sutras that Kumarajiva had translated, there was already a very well-established Buddhism in China before Chan. But Bodhidharma and then his successors, including Namsen and Nanchuan, were about bringing this into our reality and our experience, not just theoretical.

[19:02]

People today see this flower as in a dream. So there's a way in which the problem here is Officer Liu getting caught up in this philosophy, but also in getting attached to the ultimate state. The most dangerous attachment, I often say, is the attachment to non-attachment. Here, Officer Liu seems to be attached to the ultimate, to oneness. So again, there's so much in this story that I'm not going to get to all of it today, but others and self are not two. As Hongjiao says in this quote that the commentary mentions. And in the case, Officer Liu quotes Hongjiao saying, heaven and earth have the same root.

[20:09]

Yes, they do. Myriad things are one body. Yeah, and? Ishin and Laurel aren't the same. So they're the same, and yet. So again, Officer Liu said to Nanchuan, teaching Master Songzhi was quite extraordinary. He was able to say heaven and earth have the same root, Myriad things are one body and Nanchuan pointed to a peony. It wasn't just some flower, it's a peony. It's a particular peony in the garden and said, people today see this flower as in a dream. So self and other things and I,

[21:17]

as some have said, our one body. And yet, also, we need to appreciate the differences. Thich Nhat Hanh says, not one, not two. So Officer Lu, you know, really appreciated Sun Tzu and had understood something, actually. And yet, how do we not get caught in some dream? Very subtle, some of these dreams. So in the commentary that continues after that, Wang Tsung, the commentator in the Book of Serenity says, if you say the meaning of the teachings is the ultimate principle, why did Buddha still hold up the flower? Everything's just one body.

[22:20]

Why even get up from your seat? We should just stay here, sitting in the seat. or the place you are at now for the next week or 10 weeks. Forget about doing temple cleaning. Forget about tea and cookies. Buddha still held up the flower. Why did the great ancestor Bodhidharma still come from the West? If you say the meaning of the teachings is the ultimate principle. Officer Lu is missing something. Even though Chateau also appreciated Song Zhao, which led him to write The Merge, the harmonizing of difference and sameness. And that's part of the point. We are all one body. And also, we should appreciate the particularities. So Nanshuang's answer, Officer Liu, used the grip of a petro-monk.

[23:30]

He brought out the sickness worm and broke up his nest. Pointing to a flower in the garden, he called the attention of the officer to it and said, people these days see this flower like in a dream. So we know these dreams become nests. We can settle into some comfortable version of who we are. and what the world is, and what reality is. Can we actually see each flower, not be caught in a dream? And the commentator goes on, it was like leading him to a 100,000 foot high cliff and giving him a push, causing his root of life to break off. If he just pushed him over on level ground, he wouldn't have even understood by the time the next Buddha was born on earth. I am not saying don't study. In your sitting, see this oneness.

[24:31]

Maybe given the dream that we have in our lives, in this society, in this world, we need to see, very much need to see how we're all connected, how we're not two, how the whole world comes up as a result of the dream. that we are all creating right now. We need to see this and experience this ultimate reality. So maybe I shouldn't tell you the story until, you know, after we've sat for seven days or something, but we only do three-day sittings here anyway. But all of you have been sitting for a long all of you have some taste of this not-to, of this wholeness. I know that because you're here. So it is necessary to see this non-separation.

[25:41]

Kastanahashi even called that the essence of Dogen's teaching. We're not separate. from each other, from anything in the world. And yet, people today see that flower as in a dream. But it's not so simple. What is awakening about, actually? What is our practice about? So this story and this phrase, which, again, I advise you to remember. People today see this flower as in a dream. How will you see for yourself? How will you not have some dream about the wall or the floor in front of you as you sit?

[26:47]

We go through, you know, driving on Lakeshore Drive, we don't necessarily focus on all the, you know, we, as in a dream, can drive a whole mile or three and somehow avoid some huge car wreck without necessarily paying attention to, oh, what's this, that car in front of me or this car next to me. We can function as in a dream. We learn a dream in which we can manage. So can you see that dream? So I'm going to turn it a little further. Dogen Zenji Ehe Dogen, the 13th century founder of this branch of Zen Buddhism, Soto Zen, who had mastered all of these stories.

[27:51]

He knew about Manjuan, Pieni, very well. But he wrote an essay in Shobo Gensokyo called Muchu Satsuma, expressing the dream within a dream. And in that essay, Dogen said that all Buddhas and ancestors awaken in a dream. So when Lan Shun said, people today see these flowers in a dream, you know, well he said, he's encouraging us to wake up, but what does that mean? Should we destroy all dreams? Well, where would we be? So there's a teaching about dreaming too. It's only in this dream that we can awaken. We awaken from dreams. Thanks to causal and all the karmic entanglements of your life, and your parents' lives, and your culture's life, and maybe your own past lifetimes if you're into that.

[28:54]

Here you are, with a chance to practice and look at this dream. We arrive here, we arrive at practice through causes and conditions, through a whole complex of dreams. So seeing the flower in a dream might be okay, or it might be necessary. But then how do we wake up and see the flower, or how do we wake up and see the dream? And there is this whole practice of conscious dreaming, you know, in various shamanic traditions. where students are encouraged to see that they're dreaming and actually see how they can, and some of you may have experienced that, to actually change what's going on in the dream based on your intention and your good wishes.

[30:06]

And actually in the medieval Japanese context that Dogen was teaching in, often people saw bodhisattvas in dreams. People received teachings in dreams. And Keizan Zenji, the second founder of Soto Zen, used dreams and took advice from dreams to decide where to build temples and things like that, and when to hold ceremonies. And yet Nanchuan said, people today see this flower as in a dream. So Dogen said that all Buddhist ancestors can only awaken in a dream. But he said that what Buddhists do is to express the dream within a dream. So maybe the point is, you know, I don't want to, I'm not going to settle on any one place.

[31:14]

The flower is churning. The dream is churning. We're here to practice awakeness, and yet... Dogen said all Buddhist ancestors express the dream within the dreamland. He goes on to say this isn't about being dreamy. How do we take care of all of the flowers in this tree? How do we appreciate the flowers? So I'm not going to say much about it, but I'll just read you Hongsha's first commentary on this case.

[32:17]

Shining through detachment and subtlety, the root of creation, appearing and disappearing in profusion, you see the gate. Letting the spirit roam outside of time, what question could there be? So in dreams, you know, in the dreams we have when we're sleeping at night, time does different things. Somehow we jump around in time when it's possible sometimes. Maybe some of you have experienced that. Letting the spirit roam outside of time, what question could there be? Setting eyes before the body, you know ineffable being. When the tiger roars, blowing on the cliffs starts moaning. When the dragon howls, moving clouds or the caves are dark. Nanchuan breaks up the dream of people of the time, wanting knowledge of the magnificent, honored one to be. So there's a reference here to the future Buddha Maitreya.

[33:20]

How will Buddha appear in the future? And actually, there's much more about this story that I'm going to be able to say this morning. I'm going to continue tomorrow talking also about the story in the book of Serenity before this, which is about another great teacher, Yangshun, who had a dream where he went to Maitreya's palace, and things happened there. So again, in East Asian Buddhism, people use their dreams to seek some teaching. And yet, This is all about awakening. How do we wake up to what's going on in our world? How do we wake up to taking good care of our life, taking good care of our Sangha, taking good care of all of the different Sanghas we're involved with? How do we harmonize sameness and difference? People today see this flower as in a dream.

[34:25]

enough for me to say this morning, but if any of you have any comments, questions, dreams to share, or other reflections, please feel free. Or if any of you have stories about flowers, we'll listen to those. Tom? So expressing the dream within a dream is, the perceived reality is a facade, so expressing the dream within a dream is, a piece of the dream explains itself as a facade. No, it's you expressing what the dream is for you. Seeing through the dream, but not running away from the dream.

[35:33]

It's not the dream expressing a dream. This is what Buddhas and ancestors do. I think Dogen is saying is, we see we're in a dream. We see these flowers in a dream. And yet, OK, when we're in a dream, can we see that it's a dream? Can we express how to take care of that dream? But the whole dogen of Buddhas, a way of expressing a dream, so that Buddhas dream, but that's still actually self-referential then to the real dream. Well, I think we can understand it in lots of ways. This is what Buddhas do. But I'm saying to you, I'm encouraging you all to express the dream within the dream, and to wake up, and to see that we're seeing flowers in the dream. And then, how do we take that on? So yeah, Dogen emphasizes expression.

[36:39]

We have to express. The Sazen is a mode of expression. Sazen is a creative act, and it informs all of our creative and expressive acts in the dream of this world. Thank you. Ishii. Thank you. I feel like we're thinking about it in a dualistic kind of way, that there's the dream or there's awake. And I guess that's what you're trying to say when expressing the dream within the dream, because I wonder if there's some... I have my doubts about whether we'd get to be fully awake, but can we... are there different degrees of dreaming? Or different degrees of awakeness? Part of the point of, I'm not sure about Nanchuan's statement, but part of what I think Dogen is pointing at is there's various aspects of awareness.

[37:49]

There are various aspects of dreaming. I mean, just thinking about going to sleep, there's dreamless sleep, and then there are various kinds of different REM activities. So there are different qualities of dreams. We were born into this dream. We have this life. Again, how do we appreciate? How do we not? So I think they're seeing through the dream, but also part of the Japanese medieval idea is that there is a gradation of awareness. So to take it away from dreaming and awakening, it's just awareness. What is the quality of awareness going on? Sure, because can't we just grasp onto appreciation then? You know, that, oh, now I'm appreciating. And that's just a dream of appreciating. That could become a dream, too. Any of these things, any particular awareness might become a nest that we get caught in. Good, yes. That's right.

[38:51]

Hey, Steve. As questions arose, it occurred to me that I kind of thought of this in the context of Yeah, so the story that Steve's alluding to, a complicated story that I won't go into completely, but by Jean-Ricard Pajot, a man and old an old Zen person who was actually a fox, who was actually an old Zen person anyway. But the punchline of that story is to not disregard or ignore cause and effect. I think that is very relevant to this talk about dreams. How do we not ignore the dream?

[39:56]

How do we not ignore our sense that we are just dreaming about something? So it means seeing through the dream, but also means taking on, okay, your position in the dream. How am I going to express Buddha's love in this dream? Yes, sir? When we start that image, that line about But I'm sensing that, or what I'm interested in that is, in a way, we have to allow ourselves to be led up that, like we would in a dream, and how dreams function, how sometimes we need to go to sleep so that our subconscious mind or this other mind can lead us up this thousand-foot cliff so we can see something and get, you know, maybe dashed off some rocks on that cliff.

[41:05]

Yeah. Well, you put it in terms of being led there, and I think that's one side of it. There's also the saying, when you get to the top of a hundred foot pole, take another step. So, you know, whether you're led to, through a kind of, through our faith and devotion to the top of a 100-foot pole, or whether we worked very hard and in great effort in our meditation to get, to reach the kind of understanding that Officer Liu had from studying Song Chao. Take another step. Nathan. I'm reminded of Something I read in a book by Masao Soseki, an old Rinzai teacher. He wrote a book called Dream Conversations.

[42:16]

In that book he said something like, in many Buddhist teachings, they teach to see the world as dreamlike. And this teaching is only an expedient means and is not the ultimate or fundamental teaching. And he didn't go on to say what the fundamental was, but he did say that seeing the world as dreamlike is just an expedient means or skillful means. And in that similar Tibetan text that I've read, there's a lot of emphasis on seeing everything as dreamlike. It's kind of a phantasm. dream-like quality is also an expression of reality, so, in a way, an expression of the, say, being, or whatever.

[43:19]

Well, if you're talking about reality as the whole body, as Sun Tzu is, then you can't exclude the dreams. Are those, like, outside of reality? Is there anything outside of reality? It's like it's got to be the ultimate, or fundamental, But again, I feel what Nanshuang's pointing to, what Dogen's pointing to. Where are you in the dream? Or where are you outside the dream? Or where are you watching the dream from? And how do you take that on? So if there's another comment or two, I don't want to settle these questions. Please remember what I'm saying.

[44:21]

People today see this flower as in a dream.

[44:25]

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