Good evening and welcome. We're in the middle of our second month of our two-month spring practice period. We've been focusing on the teachings of Zen Master Hongxue in our lineage, who lived in the 1100s in China. We've been looking at his practice instructions on silent illumination or serene illumination from this book I did a while ago, Cultivating the Empty Field. Actually, for the people in the practice period formerly, I had picked out six of these practice instructions, and I've been in my talks going through them. Actually, yesterday morning went through the last of the six, and so I'm going to review the one yesterday and a little

[01:07]

bit of basic teaching today and continue with that the rest of the practice period. So the starting point, the very beginning of these practice instructions, he talks about the field of boundless emptiness. The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. So this, he says, then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. So this basic reality of emptiness, of serene illumination, is always available. It's what is here. And all of our human, particular human, grasping and anger and fear and

[02:08]

confusion gets in the way of that. He says a little later, talking about the practice of true reality, it's simply to sit serenely in silent introspection. When you have fathomed this, you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions. The empty, wide-open mind is subtly and correctly illuminating, spacious and content without confusion from inner thoughts of grasping. So this possibility of serene illumination is what we begin to connect with in this sitting practice. And as we continue to do this ongoingly, it becomes more and more available. It's kind of what brings us here in the very first place. We have some inkling of this somehow. In spite of all of the greed, hate, and delusion in our own body, mind, and in the world, we see that there is this

[03:15]

possibility of something else, this spaciousness, this openness, this awareness. So how do we brush away all of the problems that beset us? So I want to read a little bit of what I, the last one that I talked about yesterday, Graciously Share Yourself. Bill's following the book, so it's on page 55. And I won't read the whole thing, I think, but he starts by saying, In the great rest and great halting, the lips become moldy and mountains of grass grow on your tongue. So this is an image of what it's like when we settle into deep sitting in retreat for numbers of days. We have a three-day

[04:17]

sitting coming up, but doing this practice can feel like that when we sit for a while in silence. The lips become moldy and mountains of grass grow on your tongue. So we start from turning within, facing the wall, facing ourselves, just stopping, turning away from all the machinations of the world and of our habits of trying to manipulate everything to get what we want or get rid of what we don't want and so forth, just to settle, to find this inner calm and settledness. And also, the other side of that is the possibility of spaciousness and opening. But sometimes in this great rest, it feels, we feel like our lips may become moldy and mountains of grass grow on our tongue. And somebody suggested yesterday that this is also about how we connect with the

[05:17]

grasses in the mountains and our body becomes connected with that. He says, respond with brilliant light to such unfathomable depths as the waters of autumn or the moon stamped in the sky. So Hongshu uses much nature imagery to show the kind of natural quality of this awareness. Respond with brilliant light to such unfathomable depths as the waters of autumn or the moon stamped in the sky. Then you must know there is a path on which to turn yourself around. So in many of these, even though, you know, we start from this sitting and turning within and settling, deep settling and sustained settling, there's also this responding and turning around to join with the world. And this particular practice instruction emphasizes this. You must know there's a path on which to turn yourself around. He talks about penetrating from the topmost

[06:20]

all the way down to the bottom. When you have thoroughly investigated your roots back to their ultimate source, a thousand or 10,000 sages, all the great ancestors we venerate in our spiritual lineage and all our other cultural lineages, a thousand or 10,000 sages are no more than footprints on the trail. In wonder return to the journey, avail yourself of the path and walk ahead. So we do this practice of settling, stopping, calming, opening, finding our own inner spaciousness. But then we go out, we continue, we walk ahead with a hundred grass tips in the busy marketplace, graciously share yourself. So grass tips in Chinese and Zen is an image of all of the phenomena with

[07:22]

all of the business of the world in the busy marketplace, graciously, gracefully. Without a care, freely share yourself, wide open and accessible, walking along casually, mount the sounds and straddle the colors while you transcend listening and surpass watching. Don't be caught by the sense objects. Don't be caught by, don't believe everything you think, as the Muppet sticker says, don't be caught by our thoughts and feelings, which are just more sense objects. Be aware of our thoughts and feelings so we pay attention. We see the colors of the wall in front of us or the floor in front of us, the sounds around us, but we don't have to be caught by them. We don't have to be caught by our thoughts and feelings.

[08:24]

We pay attention, we're aware of them, but still we can move ahead and graciously share ourselves. How do we do that? How do we meet the world and take care of the world and respond to the world? So this is a practice of settling, of serenity, is, you know, a word for peace, for calm, and illumination. So in the Guideposts for Serene Illumination, he talks about the balance of calming and of illumination, of insight, of awareness. This is another one of the practice instructions. I didn't, excuse me, didn't, this is one I considered to be amongst those to encourage you to study in the practice commitment period, but I couldn't have all of them, but this is called The Amazing Living Beings.

[09:25]

It's on page 51. So I'm going to read this, or a lot of it. Our house is a single field, clean, vast, and lustrous, clearly self-illuminated. And when he says our house, you know, partly this could refer to particular lineage or school or way of teaching or way of practicing, but more broadly it refers to just our way of being in the world. Our house is a single field, clean, vast, and lustrous, clearly self-illuminated. When the spirit is vacant without conditions, when we're not caught up in trying to grasp at things in the world, or trying to manipulate things in the world, or trying to manipulate ourselves, not making ourselves into objects, not making the people around us into objects. When the spirit is vacant without conditions, when awareness is serene without cogitation, then Buddhas and ancestors appear and disappear, transforming the world.

[10:28]

So Buddhas and ancestors don't ignore the world. They appear, they emerge and disappear, transforming the world. In the Lotus Sutra it says the single cause for Buddhas appearing in the world is to lead suffering beings, sentient beings, into awakening, into the way of awakening, the process of awakening. Anyway, Hongjo continues after that. Buddhas and ancestors appear and disappear, transforming the world. And then he says amid living beings is the original place of nirvana. This is the basic teaching of Mahayana Buddhism, of the Bodhisattva way, which Zen is part of. Amid living beings is the original place of nirvana. So in early Buddhism there was the idea of nirvana as being the escape from the world of living beings, the escape from samsara, the escape from suffering.

[11:33]

But Hongjo says very, very straightforwardly, amid living beings is the original place of nirvana. And then there's this paraphrase of something from the Flower Ornament Sutra. He says, how amazing it is that all people have this but cannot polish it into bright clarity. This is available. All of us have this possibility, this reality. It's right here, right around your seat. How amazing it is that all people have this but cannot polish it into bright clarity. In darkness unawakened, they make foolishness cover their wisdom and overflow. But one remembrance of illumination can break through and leap out of the dust of kalpas, all of the confusion and delusion of the ages. Radiant and clear white, the single field cannot be diverted or altered in the three times. The four elements cannot modify it. This bright luminous field, no matter how bad things are,

[12:42]

we can't destroy it. This is quite encouraging, you know. Solitary glory is deeply preserved, enduring throughout ancient and present times as the merging of sameness and difference becomes the entire creation's mother. So this is a reference to the harmony of difference and sameness, which we sometimes chant, also a chant by Shuto whose Song of the Grass Hut we just chanted. And this is kind of the background philosophy of Zao Dong and Shuto Zen that we just, that is our lineage. So Hongzhe was an important predecessor of Dogen, the Japanese monk in the 1200s who brought this lineage from China to Japan. And then it came to America in the 1960s from a number of teachers, Japanese teachers, including my teacher's teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. But the basic underlying,

[13:47]

I don't want to say philosophy, it's the basic kind of practice principle is that this, there's this side of sameness, we could say, or the universal that we do get some sense of when we practice, the sense of the ultimate. And then there's the side of difference, all the particulars, all the particular problems in our world, in our lives, all of the differences and all of the ways in which our mind is, can be very skilled at making distinctions and differentiations, both sides, the side of sameness, the side of difference. And our practice is not to reach oneness, but to integrate this background awareness of wholeness in the everyday world of the problems that come up with all the distinctions. So to graciously share ourselves in the problems.

[14:53]

So again, amid living beings is the original place of nirvana. So he says, um, solitary glory is deep, deeply preserved, enduring throughout ancient and present times, as the merging or harmonizing of sameness and difference becomes the mother of the entire creation. This is, this is the source of everything right now. This realm manifests the energy of the many thousands of beings, this creative energy that is, becomes available through our practice, through this sitting. This realm manifests the energy of the many thousands of beings, all appearances, merely this field's shadows, truly enact this reality. Another way of saying graciously share yourself. So, um, this is this practice, uh, we've been studying this practice period, we'll continue studying, how do we graciously share ourselves with a hundred grass tips in

[15:57]

the busy marketplace? This is the meaning of this practice. And, uh, so we've been doing this, studying this teaching from Hongxia of settling, of, uh, feeling on both sides, the settling and the opening, the spaciousness, uh, the, uh, focusing of serenity and calmness, and then, um, allowing the, uh, illumination, the awareness, the insight and the imagination. Uh, so, um, these aren't really separate, but as we sit, both arise, both the focusing and, uh, the, uh, as we, uh, you know, and Hongxia talks about the,

[17:07]

the patterns that we've, the tendencies we've fabricated into apparent habits. So we each have, um, our own particular version of the greed and anger and confusion that are, that are, are the, uh, human legacy. And, uh, you know, this isn't just our own personal, uh, problem. It's part, we, we receive this from our culture as well. So we have, uh, the common legacy of this. The point of this practice and, and the point of practice period is to, uh, settle and find this more deeply within ourselves, but also to then step out into the world and graciously share ourselves. So this is, um, this practice is about how to be more, uh, more settled, more open so as to be more helpful in the world. So in this practice period, I've been focusing on the, on the, um, teachings of Hongxia and resisting,

[18:16]

talking about resistance and the resistance and all the things that are going on in, in, uh, in our country. And, uh, I'm going to indulge just a little bit, um, because it's been a crazy week. Um, our, you know, it's just kind of obvious, at least it seems to me that our government is illegitimate. Um, our, uh, the kinds of things that, uh, this administration is doing and the way in which it's not being held accountable and, um, that the mass media is, well, there's starting to be resistance and, and, and we see resistance in many places and people complaining to Congress people and marching in the streets. And it's a very interesting time. Um, and, uh, again, the point of, of doing this practice period and this meditation practice is to

[19:24]

find our own wholeness so that we can respond more effectively, each in our own way. There's no one right way to respond and resist what's going on. But, uh, and, you know, if I start itemizing all, all the, uh, craziness that's going on, there's no end to it. Um, uh, the firing of the FBI chief and, and, uh, today revealing that the president revealed top secret information to the Russian ambassador when he met with him. I mean, it's just, it's, it's, uh, unbelievable. But I, I, well, the thing that, that one of the things that struck me is that, is that the attorney general, uh, with his history of extreme racism is, uh, has, is now intensifying the war on drugs, which is just such, has been

[20:32]

such a fraud and has, has increased the mass incarceration, which is just another form of the continuation of slavery, which was supposed to have ended, you know, after the civil war. But in fact, we've now have, um, a racist mass incarceration, which have, in which people are arrested for nonviolent crimes and, uh, um, and then, uh, private, they're increasing number of private prisons. There was a bipartisan move to decrease that, but now they're private prisons are hiring out, uh, prisoners to, um, for slave labor. Anyway, it's, um, there's just, there's no end to talking about how, um, how much this government is, uh, serves the billionaires and the fossil fuel companies and the weapons manufacturers. And, and the other side of all

[21:36]

that is that there's part of what the empty field and serene illumination has to offer. There's a positive vision of how we can live together as human beings. You know, this practice offers that being helpful instead of harmful, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not that hard. We have, uh, technology now. We didn't, I don't know, 10, 20 years ago, but we have technology that we don't need fossil fuels to, to, to provide our energy needs. We could provide healthcare to all, we could provide living wages to all. I mean, there is a positive vision of how to live in harmony. Sangha is about trying to live with cooperation rather than, you know, do unto others before they do unto you. So, um, you know, anyway, this practice is about

[22:37]

trying to find a way to be helpful rather than harmful, trying to include everyone. You know, everyone's welcome here. We have Muslims in our Sangha. I'm really proud of that. And, uh, to be respectful to everyone. So anyway, I just wanted to say that just to remind us why that we live in this world and, uh, and, uh, how we graciously share ourselves is, uh, you know, something that, uh, it's not, it's not simple how we, how to respond and, and it's not one right way to do it. Each of us has our own way to be helpful in the world. So, uh, end of speech. Um, um, but Hongshu is talking about a way of practicing, a way of living, a way of, uh, turning within and coming without and seeing the wholeness that's possible for each of us and for us together that includes this serenity and this illumination. And that's

[23:43]

something we can actually do and be and engage in. And of course, we've got all this grasping and anger and fear and confusion and all that stuff and all of our bad habits, but we can be friend those. We don't have to, we can, we can be, we can be kind to ourselves and each other and to everyone in the world. So we sometimes do the Metta Sutra, which says, may all beings be happy. So, um, we have a little bit of time for discussion, comments, um, on any of the, uh, practice instruction material I read or anything else. So comments, questions, responses, please feel free, anyone. Yes, David. I have a question. When Hongshu says that Nirvana is right here with the living beings,

[24:52]

is he saying that in the sense of us being kind to one another, being connected to one another, that is Nirvana? He says amid living beings is the place of Nirvana so that we don't have to go somewhere else. We don't have to go to some mountaintop in Tibet or China or California to find Nirvana. It's right in the middle of the situation that we're in now amid our, amid all of our own anger and frustration and selfishness and amid that of the people around us right in the mid of, amid the situation of living beings. That's the place where Nirvana, where we find Nirvana. And yes, and then we have the precepts and the practices of generosity and patience and effort and so forth to guide us in how to do that. So it's a process. It's not, you know, the other, one of the descriptions of Zazen that Dogen uses most often rather than just

[25:53]

sitting is going beyond Buddha or Buddha going beyond Buddha. It's this ongoing process. It's not like, you know, it does, it's true that people have dramatic experiences of opening and that can be wonderful, but that's not the point and that's not the end or goal of practice. The point of practice is this ongoing process of more deeply realizing the possibility of kindness. You're welcome. Other comments, responses? Yes, Bill. Oh, go ahead. I agree with you on, of course, the healthcare. I'm a communist, so I believe in everything for everyone.

[26:59]

But on the business about the president talking to the Russian ambassador, I don't know, there's numerous levels in which I don't really see that, I don't understand what the problem is. I couldn't care less about the U.S. government or this country. I mean, the sooner it falls, the better as far as I'm concerned. But even beyond that, it seems to me from the standpoint of compassion for all sentient beings, wouldn't it be far better if the U.S. and Russia are not in an adversarial relationship? I don't quite understand why the president of the United States, whoever that happens to be, wouldn't be perfectly well entitled to share whatever information that person wants to share with the Russian government. I don't quite understand what the, that just seems to me to be fake news all the way through.

[28:02]

But the point what you said was that it's, you know, being the sources and other countries and the people that we work with, the information is given to us not to be shared, so the information belongs to the original source. It's given to us in courtesy, but not something to be spread around. My guess is that happens every day in many ways, between the so-called, the so-called retaliants. Well, the whole setup of nations is, you know, from the point of view of a world built on serene illumination is a problem, yeah. In terms of how we get there from here, I don't know. May I just add one other little thing?

[29:05]

Sure. So I recently, in my Introduction to Ancient Philosophy course, taught the translation of the Bhagavad Gita, and I actually felt a little more warmly included than I had in the past, but one thing that it raised with me was the comparison between Krishna convincing Arjuna that he had to engage in this battle for the defense of his, whatever it is exactly, it's unclear, the faction of his people, versus Saluda when later there came a point when the Shakya kingdom was under attack, and the question was what would he go home, you know, be the prince or leader that he was supposed to be according to his family tradition, and he did not do that. And that seems to me to say something about what you were just

[30:06]

saying about nations and nation-states and what do they count for in our attempt to engage in the world with compassion. It's, yes, I certainly don't have answers. It's really difficult, and how do we treat people from other nations with respect, and, you know, we have this setup of nations right now. One of the problems is that some of these nations have these horrible, huge nuclear weapons, and if they get into hassles with each other, the whole thing could end. So it's why I've said that I don't necessarily, you know, that I respect soldiers and policemen because we're in a world where sometimes that's necessary. I don't have answers. I don't know. But I appreciate the questions you're

[31:07]

raising, and, you know, as Caroline said, there are practical problems with what Mr. Trump is doing. Yeah, it's just, it's a confusing time. And so there's not, there often are not clear responses, but it is clearly a confusing time, and the foreign policy of our country for the last 50 years has been, we've interfered with elections all over the world. So I don't know. How this changes, something has to happen that's different from the way things are set up right now, and how that shift happens. Sometimes things happen suddenly after a lot of work, you know, like the

[32:09]

Berlin Wall falling and the Soviet Union disbanding, apartheid ending, or gay marriage becoming legal, you know, or women getting the vote less than 100 years ago after lots of women were campaigning for things. Big changes happen suddenly after a lot of work, and we don't know how that change happens, except we know change happens. So changing hearts and minds is part of how that change happens, and part of that, and that part of how the change happens is what we're about, changing awareness, changing the way people think, changing the way, how hearts open and the way people feel and how we listen to each other. So I think that's what, you know, this practice is about. And that by itself isn't going to be enough to change everything,

[33:10]

but it's part of the problem, part of the equation. Yeah. Yes, Chris. Yeah. Thank you so much, but, you know, I'm sure everybody has these experiences with their parents, or maybe if you had a different set of problems,

[34:19]

but, like, parents saying something like, oh, you need to learn how to entertain yourself, or you're a quitter, or, you know, just getting impatient with children, and, you know, being a, working in a school, I see lots of impatience with, you know, developing teenagers, and from a psychological standpoint, because that's what I'm studying, I'm aware that a lot of, you know, children observe the front when adults give them credit for it. Right. And even develop fully, they've imprinted almost everything that they've seen their parents do, which is why a lot of people will often end up acting out what they saw growing up, even if they're consciously trying to not. And, to me, all of a sudden, I, you know, it's sort of, and then I also thought, as an extension of, like, it's the Jonyers' Monument, and I don't really like the line, killing or giving life are up to you, but I switched it to turning the wheel of the Dharma,

[35:20]

or turning the wheel of samsara are your decision, because, like, seeing all, as sitting, seeing all these things coming up, you know, like, a lot of samsara, to me, at least in the sense that it's portrayed as magnets, you know, as humans, we have these electromagnetic feelings, and we don't know what to do with them, we don't practice, and then they turn into thoughts, and we reify them, and we yell at our kids, and punish people, and continue to create this form of reality that isn't necessarily supposed to be there, and I don't know, to me, all of a sudden, I'm interested in what they do. Obviously, it's easier said than done, but I feel like that chain of being impatient with, like, impressionable people, and yelling at them, and enforcing stereotypes that have been handed down from grandparent to parent to me, to, like, I just, I want to stop it there.

[36:20]

So, if I may, so what I hear you're talking about is how do we break or turn back the chain of karma, and we can see it on a social level, how do we break the chain of the karma of racism, for example, I mean, there are many social, communal, negative, but also we have them, as you're describing personally, in terms of family dynamics, so part of it is, the practice is just to see that, and then the more we can see it and be patient with it, we have a chance to not act on it, to step it, to sidestep it, and it takes time, and patience, and attention, and sometimes we can just, yeah, but yeah, that question of how do we move aside from it is important, and that's very much to the point, but yeah, so we'll continue to look at that, and thank you for raising that possibility, and that's part of our practice, too,

[37:33]

to pay attention and to see how can we, in some ways, practice about going against the grain of our habits, of our conditioning, of our society, but then we go back, and we graciously share ourselves, but there's this going back and forth, and sometimes we have to keep going and seeing how ingrained those tendencies are, so thank you for that, Chris.

[38:04]

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