Good morning, everyone. Welcome. We're in the middle of this practice commitment period and talking about teachings from, stories from Dongshan, or Tozan, the founder of this Tsao-do or Soto tradition that we practice. So I've been talking about various of these stories from my new book, Just This Is It, about the practice of suchness. And I want to talk today about suchness and what that is, or how we can approach it. So I want to tell a story or two about that. But first I want to say a little bit about these Zen stories themselves. So the classic Zen stories are from Dongshan's period in the 800s. But

[01:08]

the reason they've been studied for 1,200 years is because in some very basic way the stories are about your practice issues and our own stories. So one major part of how we think and how we see the world is in stories. These old teaching stories, sometimes called koans, are not something that you have to figure out or explain or reach some understanding of. In our tradition, we use these stories as a starting point to play and free associate in terms of our own practice. So these traditional stories help us to see how we're practicing now and what the issues that are involved in that are. So don't worry about understanding

[02:16]

them or not. Don't try to figure them out. They're not riddles that you need to get some response to. There's not one correct response. But how do these story meanings inform us and help support us to do this practice of zazen? So that's the point. And it's not about figuring out the stories so that we're finished with them. In some ways, these stories, some of us have been studying for many years and we can keep coming back to. And they've been studied for 1,200 years because we never finish with them. They point to aspects of our practice body that continue to unfold. So just to say that, to start, this idea of or this teaching or practice of suchness or just this is the starting point of the stories

[03:18]

that I've been telling. The first story of Dongshan that I've talked about is Dongshan's departing from his teacher who's named Yunyan. And he asked his teacher what his essential teaching was. And Yunyan paused and then said, just this is it. Just this. So and then Dongshan later on, after he left, was waiting across the stream and saw his reflection and realized that I am not it, but it now is me. So there's this complex relationship between reality, suchness, just this situation, and ourselves and the stories we tell about ourselves. And he says, we're not it, but it actually is us. So this suchness is about how we are unfolded

[04:24]

in reality. So I want to focus today on a story about one of Dongshan's main students who was named Yunju. And so he talked about suchness. Yunju is the student of Dongshan from whom Arminiage, leading to Dogen in Japan, comes from. One time Yunju said, if you want such a thing, you must be such a person. Already being such a person, why trouble about such a thing? This first sentence, if you want such a thing, you must be such a person, might also be read or translated as, if you want suchness, you must be a person of suchness. So what is this about? What is this suchness business? The longer quote that that's from, Yunju said, one who has comprehended has a mind like a fan in winter, has a mouth

[05:31]

growing moldy from disuse. So this suchness or this as such, so suchness is not a thing, and I'll come back to that, but seeing just this as it is, practicing with suchness, with such, as such, doesn't help anything. It's not useful. He says it's like a fan in winter. This is not something you force. It is naturally so, Yunju said. If you want to attain such a thing, you must be such a person. Since you are such a person, why trouble about such a thing? So this idea of such or things as such or our life as such, first of all we meet this in our zazen practice. So we sit upright and present and face the wall and face ourselves and settle into what is it like to be the person on your seat. What's

[06:41]

going on there? What is this? So part of this is a kind of practice of attention, paying attention to just this. Of course, many stories and thoughts and all kinds of stuff comes up as we sit. Our mind is very busy and our brain continues to secrete thoughts, and we don't try and get rid of those, but all of it is just part of this such as it is. Already we are people of suchness. Already we are people willing to face ourselves and this reality and what this uprightness is. So this suchness is dynamic, it's active, it's not static. Everything is changing. Inhale, exhale. Each breath is unique. We may recognize habits

[07:46]

of thought and patterns of thought, and that's part of the practice is to see that and to be with that as we sit. But actually each moment, each thought, each situation, each breath, each step as we do walking meditation is unique and fresh and new, and it's very hard to realize it as fresh. Maybe our ego needs to function by having stories and patterns and we think we know who we are. Dogen says about this saying by Yonju, Life is borne along by the passage of time, hardly to be kept for even a moment. Rosy cheeks have gone away somewhere. As they vanish, there are no traces. When we look carefully, there are many things gone which we can never see again. The red heart doesn't stay either, it comes and goes bit by bit.

[08:52]

So this tender heart, this rawness of our own experience comes and goes. This is also such as such. Some of us have been sitting around in this room many times before, and yet each time is new. Each breath is new. How can we face the rawness and tenderness of our actual experience? So part of suchness, the practice of suchness, which we're trying to explore during this practice period, is just to pay attention to this experience, to this breath, to enjoy our breathing, to enjoy the tenderness and rawness and fragility of each situation. So one of our great ancestors before Dongshan was named Shito, or Sekito.

[10:05]

He wrote the Song of the Grass Hut and the Harmony of Difference and Sameness we sometimes chant. And one of his students was named Yaoshan, who was the teacher of Yonyan, who said just this is it. He said that when Yaoshan first showed up to practice with Shito, he'd been a lecturer, he'd mastered all of the Buddhist scriptures and teachings, but he heard that there were these chanters and people who pointed directly at the mind and became Buddhist. So he journeyed and came to sincerely inquire about this from Shito. And Shito responded to Yaoshan, suchness is ungraspable and it cannot be grasped beyond suchness. As such or non-such, it cannot be grasped at all. What about you? Shito commented that suchness should be studied in non-grasping.

[11:11]

One may inquire into ungraspability within suchness. Suchness is the realization of ungraspability as such. So our habits of mind, our usual stories of mind are about getting things. We want to get some answer. We want to understand what is all this suchness business anyway. We want to know who we are. We want to get a hold of our experience. This is a very deep habit as part of being a human being or the kind of consciousness that human beings have. Where we think in terms of subjects, verbing objects. We think of me and everything else as outside. But suchness is the study of ungraspability. We can't get a hold of it. It's like a handful of rain that we might try and grasp, but it's flowing through our fingers as we realize this non-graspability.

[12:25]

So I want to step back and look at this teaching of suchness. Well, before that, I'll tell another story about yunju, which I've mentioned before, but it's a story about the path. So we usually think that in our ordinary conventional world, we think that there's some process by which we get a hold of something. Once we figure out this, then we can figure out that, and there's some progression. In spiritual practice too, we often think that there's some stages of progress. And that if we practice long enough, we'll understand or we'll figure out something. Or at some point in the future, we'll have some great realization or whatever. But one time, Yunju had been walking around in the mountains.

[13:37]

And Dongshan asked him where he'd been, and he said he'd been walking in the mountains. And Dongshan asked if he had found a mountain to reside on, if he'd found a place where he could stay. And Yunju said, absolutely no, there were no mountains suitable for him to reside on. Dongshan inquired if Yunju had visited all of the mountains in the country. And Yunju said he had not. Dongshan commented that Yunju must have found an entry path. How did you get here? How did you find your way to this engagement with suchness? But Yunju proclaimed, infatuatedly, no, there's no path. Dongshan said, if there's no path, I wonder how you have come to lay eyes on this old monk. And Yunju replied, if there were a path, then a mountain would stand between us. And Dongshan approved this, saying that henceforth not even a thousand people could hold down Yunju.

[14:42]

So the very idea of a path, this idea is so deeply ingrained in us, that we finish first grade and then we get to second grade and so forth. It goes way back. But the very idea of a path, from the point of view of suchness, implies some separation, that there is some distance in space or time that we need to traverse to get to some particular destination. So this is what Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, talked about, non-gaining attitude. It's not that there's not some transformative function in our practice, as we continue to sustain it, but it's not what you think it is. And whatever goals you may have for yourself, that's fine, it's okay. This is our ordinary way of being in the world. We practice trying to get somewhere. We have some idea of what we would like to do or accomplish. And that might be very fine and wholesome. But from the point of view of suchness, there's no place else.

[15:45]

Here we are. Here is the place. Here the way unfolds. There's not some other place to get to. And the very idea of a path implies this separation. So Yonju disdains any path, and he affirms this present communion he has with Dongshan. So, again, this is very radical, subversive to our usual way of thinking, to our usual ways of telling stories. It's not about getting to some other place where things will be better, where we'll get the things we think we need to be happy or whatever, or we'll get rid of the things we think we need to get rid of. It's actually seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting justice. So our practice is called Just Sitting. It's very simple. It's very hard to do.

[16:46]

So often I'll tell you things you can do. Because a lot of times we need that. It's okay to count breaths or to listen to sounds or to repeat a phrase from a teaching story or sit with that or to use a mantra. There are all kinds of things we can do if we want something to do. But basically, just this. That's it. So sometimes in Zen they talk about sudden awakening. But sudden awakening is not about some sudden flashy experience you're going to have sometime in the future. I mean, those kinds of experiences happen sometimes, but that's not the point. Right now, here, we are. Just this. How do we sit as such? How do we be willing to pay attention and meet this red heart,

[17:50]

this raw, fragile, tender moment now? So, having said all that, I have to say that there's no such thing as suchness. I'm using the word, but there's no such thing. There's... I mean, it's a traditional teaching going back to India and Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, tatata. So maybe it's more fun to think of it as tatata. But, you know, we can translate that as suchness or thusness. But actually, suchness is not a thing. Just like emptiness is not a thing. In Buddhism, we talk about emptiness.

[18:52]

Maybe in some way, suchness and emptiness are flip sides of the same thing. Different ways of talking about this same raw reality. Emptiness is not nothingness, so it's hard not to see it that way. But emptiness is just the reality that each thing, each of us, each element of the world of suchness, is empty of self-existence, is empty of being separate from everything else. So, taking Han's wonderful example, if you look at this thing I'm holding up, can you see the clouds? Can you see the nitrogen in the soil? Can you see the logger who cut down the tree? Can you see the trucker who drove it to the mill? And so forth. Each thing, whatever we point to, is a combination of everything. This is what emptiness is about. That nothing is separate.

[19:54]

Everything is empty of selfness. Even though, conventionally, of course, you all know your address and maybe your social security number and all these stories of personal history about who you are. So, non-self doesn't mean getting rid of your ego, but to see that it's empty, to not be fooled by it, that it's a story. So, we talk about stories and we play with these stories. And part of that is to undo or loosen up our sense of our habitual stories, that we can actually see new stories about who we are and what we're doing, and how we want to be. And so, all these Zen stories are just to give you some other stories you might play with. But this traditional teaching of suchness, I think, is useful in a lot of ways.

[20:56]

So, going back to Chinese Buddhist teaching, even before Chong, before Dongsheng, there was discussion of this in the Huaiyang school. They decided that one side of suchness was absolute, unchanging, ultimate. But also, suchness shifts to accord with phenomenal conditions, with the particular situations we're in. So, as well as the calm, inactive aspect of suchness, there's this dynamic quality that expresses itself through all the phenomenal, including providing the capacity for realization. So, we all got here this morning through various particular phenomenal conditions. We took the elevator, we walked, or we drove, and there were various particular situations and conditions

[22:05]

that allowed you to get up in time to do that, and so forth. And who you are sitting on your seat right now is a combination of innumerable causes and conditions. And yet, here we are. So, talking about this as such, as opposed to as emptiness, is to see this positive dynamic aspect expressed in the world, so we don't run away from the world. Suchness doesn't exist on some mountaintop in Tibet or Japan or California. Suchness is just this. As you were sitting here this morning, you were sitting as such. And to see that as expressed in the phenomenal world is one aspect of this traditional teaching of suchness, which does go back to, it's described in Indian Buddhism, it's in the Lotus Sutra,

[23:09]

but particularly as this developed in China when it came to Japan, this idea of suchness as expressed as the phenomenal world became, quote, a crucial step toward the profound valorization of empirical reality, which developed in the Japanese Tendai school that Dogen was initially ordained in. So, this sense, this taste of things as it is, all of the situations of this world as such, and to pay attention to that and to really engage with that. How do we engage with things as it is, this suchness? Again, it's not a thing that we can get a hold of. Our language is such that we think of such as a thing,

[24:12]

but actually in some ways it's an adverb. One problem with it is to think of it as something, or to think that because everything is such as it is, that just to know that, to hear that, to have some understanding or realization of that is enough. So this is a traditional trap in Buddhist practice. Things are such as they are because you are practicing such. So it's not outside you. Suchness is not something outside you that you can say, Oh, yeah, I know about that, so I'm okay. Suchness is the way we are. I am not it, but it actually is me. So we are part of the whole phenomenal world of suchness,

[25:18]

each one of us in our own way, creates this experience as such right now. Each one of you is indispensable to that. It's through our practice and our need to practice and to engage in such that suchness comes alive. So... So this is subtle. And the practice of this, and these stories are all about how do we meet the reality of this? How do we engage that? And we have precepts and bodhisattva practices to help do that in a helpful way, to help us to support our own engagement with suchness and to help others to do that. This is what our practice is about.

[26:19]

So Dogen has another comment on that, commenting on the story about Yonju saying, If you want such a thing, you should be such a person. Dogen asks, Can you say such a thing or not? If you can say this, you attain the skin and marrow. If you cannot say this, still you attain the skin and marrow. Put aside for now whether you can say this or not, and whether you attain the skin and marrow or not. Don't worry about whether you've got it. How is this suchness? How is it? How does it feel? And then he says, Vipassana Buddha early on kept this in mind and up until now he has not grasped this mystery. This is Dogen being funny, actually. Vipassana Buddha is one of the... We've seen the seven Buddhas before Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, our Buddha, who lived in north-west-south-north-east India

[27:26]

2,500 years ago, more or less, was the seventh of these Buddhas. So we say that Buddha is not just one special person or being or whatever you want to think of Buddha is. There have been many Buddhas. There were Buddhas before that Shakyamuni studied with. Vipassana is the first of these. And Dogen says, Vipassana Buddha early on kept this in mind and up until now he has not grasped this mystery. So can you now say such a thing as being such a person or seeing just this? We've been spending most of our time trying to get more of this or less of that, trying to accomplish things. Our life in the world is about that, even when it's aimed at wholesome things and trying to help the world and trying to help each other. But we're trying to get a hold of something. But suchness is always present, beyond our personal ambitions or desires or preferences.

[28:30]

So even Vipassana Buddha, the first of these we could say mythical Buddhas, kept this in mind. And that's important, to hold in our awareness this sense of this reality here. But even until now, Vipassana Buddha has not grasped this mystery. Dogen says. In the context of suchness, even the immeasurably ancient Vipassana Buddha, described by Dogen as still present, has not yet grasped this mystery of suchness. So this isn't something you can get a hold of. It's ungraspable. So I'll just add one more comment by Dogen. By the way, this is about another story from Dongshan. Dongshan said to his assembly once,

[29:35]

Who is this person who, even when among a thousand or ten thousand people, does not face a single person and does not turn his back on a single person? And then Dongshan said, Now you tell me, what face does this person have? And right then, Yunju got up, left the assembly, I guess in the Dharma hall, and said, This person is going to the meditation hall to practice. So that was Yunju's response to Dongshan talking about, Who is this person, even among a thousand or ten thousand people, does not face a single person and does not turn his back on a single person? So Dongshan's question inquires about the active practice of the person of suchness in the world and amid all these myriad people. Not facing a single person, even while not turning his back on anyone, not being attached to anybody, but also without abandoning anyone.

[30:40]

We can see in the line from Dongshan's Jewel Mary Samadhi, Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire. So this is a pointer towards our actual engagement with suchness. Not seeing a single person also could refer to not enforcing some sense of this person. There's no single person. I'm totally informed by Douglas and Paula and my interrelationship. How could I see myself as a single person? As an isolated person? And yet, Dongshan says to not turn your back on anyone. How do we not be caught up in seeing some isolation, but also not turning our back on anyone, including those parts of ourselves

[31:43]

that come up in Zazen that we'd rather not. We wish we didn't have to see. So part of this teaching is to not make yourself or any piece of yourself into some special thing. And yet, as such, our practice is to not turn our back on anyone. How can we include everyone in this practice? So we don't practice just for ourselves. Of course, this practice, settling and sitting upright and calm, develops some qualities that we might find helpful. That happens. And yet, we don't practice just for ourselves. We do this together. Since Buddhism came to China, we did this meditation.

[32:44]

Ourselves facing the wall, each one of us on our seat, but also together. And everybody else in the room helps you. And you help everyone else in the room. So many of you know that. I encourage you all to sit at home in your spare time. You know, to sit every day or several days a week, even for a little while, just to stop and sit and face the wall and face yourself. Allow yourself to be just this. And pay attention to it. But also, many of you know that doing this together in the meditation hall is very supportive and encouraging for that. And if you just sit on your own, in subtle ways, you can get off balance. So we come together to remind ourselves of just this. To sit in suchness together. And our bodhisattva way is

[33:48]

to recognize that everything and everybody in the world is part of our reality. How do we meet all of it? This is challenging. This requires our engagement, our active practice. And of course, as we sit and inhale and exhale, our mind wanders off. We think about something that happened yesterday or something that we're going to do later today. I mean, this is natural. This is what the human mind does. But then they come back. Oh, here I am. Inhale. Exhale. And pay attention to just this. So maybe that's enough for me to say this morning about this. Are there any comments or questions or responses? Please feel free. Yes, John?

[34:49]

I have a question. Is the statement that samsara equals nirvana short-hand for what you're saying here? Yeah, yes. But maybe I would turn it around and say nirvana equals samsara. That seeing things as such, we see that in this world with these conditions, with these situations. And the other way, too, samsara is nirvana. Nirvana in early Buddhism was about trying to escape from the world of suffering, from samsara, from the rat race, from trying to get a hold of this and get rid of that. And our usual way of being in the world. And in early Buddhism, they did various exotic and specialized practices to try and develop a way of release from, to escape from the suffering.

[35:50]

In the Bodhisattva practice that Zen is part of, we see that just being present, engaging in this substance in the middle of the difficulties of our society, in our own problems, as such, that when we can be present and upright and face that, not know how to fix it, not have all the answers, but to just be willing to sit with the questions, with the problems. And in some ways, that is totality, that is nirvana. And it's hard to stay with that. It hurts. We have to be willing to face the sadness and the difficulties of our life, and the lives of our loved ones and of the whole planet, and the species going extinct and so forth. And yet, there's a tremendous power

[36:51]

to develop, that we can develop to be present and upright right in the middle of that. Thank you. Other comments or responses, please. Ah, yes, Joan. One of the things that I'm finding difficult at this point in my life is realizing that there are ways that I'm disappointing people, that I'm not meeting their needs. That you're not? Not meeting their needs. And, you know, I find my mind goes to justify, well, there's a reason I can't do that. No. But just needing to sit with, well, I'm disappointing them. Yeah.

[37:52]

I understand this. I confess that I am a total disappointment to many of you. And it makes me sad. And yet, we continue somehow. And part of that sense of disappointment, though, is this, I mentioned this last week, that we have this, many of us, I won't speak for everyone, but some idea of what we should be doing. All of the needs that you see, the things that I wish I could do, the piles of books that I really need to read, but I don't know when I'll get to them. And so forth. And all the people who I don't keep in touch with and I wish I did. We can go on and on. But part of that is that we have some idea of suchness, being a person of suchness, as being the some perfect person that if we sit long enough

[38:56]

we will become like a great Buddha who shines light on everything in the world. Well, you know, that's a serious delusion. So perfectionism is one of the great obstacles to practice. How do we just engage suchness as we are, with our limitations? How do we actually appreciate the suchness of the particular limitations of the being sitting on your seat now? So, compassion and kindness means forgiving yourself for being a limited being, not being some super being that you wish you could be. That's a delusion, that's really a problem. Being a Buddha doesn't mean, you know, you have to have patience. But he, you know, he died from eating bad pork,

[39:57]

you know. We have to... This is a practice for human beings. And my favorite koan that many of you have heard me quoted from that great American yogi that if the world were perfect it wouldn't be. We practice in samsara because it's not, suchness is not about perfection. Suchness is about just meeting the situation. So I can keep on babbling about that, but I'll stop. Please forgive yourself. Thank you. Other comments, responses, questions about this as such? There's suchness, if we want to call it that. Or anything else. So if you want such a thing,

[41:20]

be such a person. How do we be a person of suchness? Right as the person on your seat. Aisha? I don't know if I can be such a person, but that's, you know, maybe the point. I can only be such a person. I had a similar experience to John about a month ago. Somebody really called me out on something. They caught me in a moment of irritation. I expressed irritation. They had a bad reaction to this. You expressed irritation? Oh my gosh. I know. Right, right. As a Zen student, right. And so, I knew that we were going to have, and they confronted me about it. I knew that this was coming. For a while, I was sort of defending myself in the back of my head. Eventually, it was just like, I just wasn't able to let it go. I was able to apologize to the person and say,

[42:21]

you know, I'm so sorry. I really do expect of myself that I will always approach people with patience and generosity. I really fell short. I kind of acknowledge that I don't think that's always humanly possible. But I felt like I was able to genuinely apologize for not being able to be that person. We were able to sort of come to a better place with that. But then, I had this hope that I would then be like this person, you know, and that I wasn't going to, you know, people weren't going to catch me at a bad moment and I was just going to be like irritated or something. And it didn't happen. And I've just kind of continued to go on being, you know, such a person. I didn't clean up my act. So now you are perfect, just as you are. So, being such a person is not easy, you know. That's why we need

[43:22]

to pay attention. Or we bump up against things. Yeah, and we don't turn our back on anyone, including the person who is irritated, within us. I guess maybe, I'm Josie, along the lines of, I don't know, maybe this is in that same vein, but, I'm a student and I'm trying to work out my schedule for the fall and, there's a course on aggression. particularly like, the new female aggression. And, I was wondering, I was curious and I was looking at some of those and, there was, you know, this idea of like, what is positive aggression and is there such a thing? And, particularly if it's coming from a, typically, self-aggressive of the women who typically turn

[44:22]

their aggression inward and then turn it outward. Is that somehow better? And I suppose I should frame this in something particular to myself. we can do that later. Well, that's, thank you for bringing that up. And I wonder about that course as an aspiring feminist myself. You know, I think women get, women just being themselves get called aggressive for things that a man wouldn't be called aggressive. That's just being a man. So, I wonder about that course but maybe there's some more subtlety to it than that. But, you know, I think, one of the things that happens over years of practice that I have observed and others have observed that women become more assertive which is not a bad thing to, for women to actually express themselves and claim their space and their humanity

[45:24]

might be aggressive to some men. Men tend to get more receptive and to become more sensitive with practice. So, you know, we learn to meet each other. But, please don't feel like you have to hide yourself to not be called aggressive. Anyway, that may not be what the course is about but that's what you want from me. Yeah, that response of, you know, it's all aggression and all that all the time. Or, is there a way in which I can use that in skillful sense? Well, you can be assertive without being aggressive. Aggressive is like, you know, invading Iraq or something. How do we you know, not take, you know, not try and, you know, do unto others before they do unto us or, you know,

[46:25]

our practice is about developing cooperation and collaboration. And that means acknowledging all the different parts of yourself and being willing to assert something when you have something to say. To speak truth to power. But also to listen to others. So, there's a balancing. Anyway, that's a whole different genre of talk but it's a wonderful, wonderful question. Thank you very much. Any other last comments or responses? So, thank you all. Please continue to practice being yourself as such.

[47:09]

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