Good morning, everyone, and welcome. So we have some new people this morning, which is great. set their first period of zazen. And we also are near the end of our two-month practice period that some of us have been doing. And this is my last talk before we do our closing three-day Sashina retreat next weekend. We've been talking about stories from one of the important scriptures about bodhisattvas, the Lotus Sutra, and I want to talk this morning about one of the important teachings from that, about skillful means, or upaya in Sanskrit. Skillful means, we've been studying several stories. This is from chapter two of the Lotus Sutra.

[01:02]

And it says that the single great cause, the single reason for Buddhas, and we could say Bodhisattvas, enlightening beings to appear in the world is to help beings enter into the way of awakening. to help relieve suffering and help to help beings awaken. That's the reason for Buddhas showing up. Buddhas, awakened ones, and bodhisattvas doing the work of Buddhas, helping beings to awaken. So this practice of skillful means, of being helpful, is subtle and challenging. And it really has a strong relationship to the mind of Zazen, the mind of this practice of just sitting upright that we've been doing, being present

[02:07]

facing the wall, facing ourselves, inhaling, exhaling, being present in the reality of who we are and how we are and how the world is this morning, beyond our ideas of what reality is, just paying attention to what's actually happening, seeing thoughts and feelings coming and going, and and to notice that it's beyond our control. So skillful means is not about controlling things. So I want to talk about skillful means beyond control. So skillful means is about, in zazen mind, is about supporting reality, support dharma. This word dharma means teaching. It also means reality or truth. So we support and allow reality, and we support and allow Buddha to be in our bodies and minds and in the world.

[03:19]

And we allow this response of skillful means, this compassionate response. so skillful means is about responding to the differences in the world. Each of us has our own different way of expressing Buddha, expressing Buddha's body in our lives. Each, all of the different beings have different ways of different practices, different teachings that are helpful at different times for them, for us. So skillful means is about noticing these differences and responding to them, and also accepting different teachings at different times. What is a compassionate response?

[04:24]

How do we meet reality so that we can each in our own way best express helpfulness rather than causing harm, best express our deepest reality and share that and allow that? So Douglas last Sunday talked about Kanon Bodhisattva or Kanzeon, the bodhisattva of compassion, whose name means to hear the sounds of the world, the suffering of the world. the different bodhisattva figures take on different forms. And again, this skillful means is about responding skillfully to the different kinds of beings and to the different kinds of needs and to the different aspects of the beings that appear on our own cushion or chair. How do we As we're sitting, see this reality.

[05:29]

How do we allow ourselves to be kind to ourselves as well as to different beings in the world? So there's many different forms of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Kanzeon. I think we have eight different images of Kanon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, in this little temple. One of the forms that Douglas mentioned has 1,000 arms, 1,000 hands, and each hand has an eye in it to see from different perspectives. Some forms of Canon have 11 heads. It's hard to see unless you look closely, but the one on this wall has 11 heads to see from different perspectives. So part of what the chapter on skillful means talks about is that there's one vehicle, there's a single purpose, a single cause for Buddha appearing, and that's just, how do we find our way?

[06:37]

And how do we share our way to awaken, to help relieve suffering? And yet, there's a thousand, arms and each hand has an eye to see different possibilities, different perspectives. And many of the hands have different tools in them, flowers and vases full of nectar and bells and many things, many tools. So how do we use the tools that are at hand to help in each different situation. So skillful means isn't a matter of some instruction manual. And skillful means is a matter of trial and error. It's a matter of making mistakes. It's a matter of being, in some sense, beyond control or out of control.

[07:41]

In some sense, we can't control anything. Well, sometimes. Each of you have some things that you can control. You can control when the alarm clock rings or however that works for you. You can control whether you get up or go back to sleep, you know, for example. You can control whether you brush your teeth or not. There are things you can control. And some beings are very powerful, and they think they can control lots of things. So there are powerful, I don't know, business tycoons, heads of corporations, politicians who think they can control, and political parties who think they can control lots of things. Sometimes they find out they can't. The world is alive. The world is complicated. The reality is shifting and changing, and many things are happening in this room right now.

[08:51]

Each one of you has whole worlds that are part of who you are. And in terms of ordinary, everyday routines, maybe you can control some of that. in some ways control is possible as a yogic feat. but that's not the total purpose. So I want to tell a story about a kind of yogic control, just to show that, you know, in some sense this is possible. So this is a really complicated story and I'm just going to tell parts of it. This is from the Book of Serenity, one of our collections of teaching stories or koans. This is a story Maybe I'll tell the whole story, and I'm just going to focus on certain parts of it, and it's really elaborate. So don't worry. With all of these stories, don't worry about understanding it. Don't worry about having some control over it.

[09:53]

Don't worry about it controlling you. But there's a point I want to make about it. So this is a story about a great Chan master in China. in the 800s named Yangshan, and he asked a monk who was arriving, where are you from? And the monk said, from Yu province, which is why you, but it's a kind of funny bilingual pun. It's from Yu province. Yangshan said, do you think of that place? And the monk said, I always think of it. He was a very honest monk. He always thought of that place he came from. And Yangshun said this interesting thing, and I could go into it, but I'll just say a little. The thinker is the mind, and the thought of is the environment. So you all know that, as the people who were sitting for the first time, you probably had some thoughts during the time we were sitting. And there's the thinker, and there's the environment, all the things that you were thinking of. So the thought of is the environment.

[10:56]

They're in our mountains, rivers, the landmass, buildings, towers, halls, and chambers, people, animals, and so forth, Yangshun said. Then he gave this meditation instruction. Reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind. Are there so many things there? And the monks said, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all. So he apparently had some actual apprehension of what we call emptiness. He saw that there was no real thing to think of and there was no real thing that was thinking it. But Yangshan said, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. So I could spend the whole rest of the time and spend days talking about that, this stage of faith and stage of person.

[11:57]

But just hear that even this great accomplishment that this monk had, and it was, was not complete. He had fulfilled something, but he hadn't quite taken personal responsibility. The monk said, to finish the story, don't you have any other particular way of guidance or particular teaching? Yangshun said, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Based on your insight, you only get one mystery. You can take the seat and wear the robe after this seat on your own. So he basically said, go and sit Zazen. Go back and take your seat and keep sitting. But then there's a follow-up, and this is really what I wanted to talk about, about Yangshan, who was this great master. And this is a story about, about Yangshan,

[13:01]

Well, the commentator for the Book of Sorenity comments on the monk saying, here I don't see any existence at all, by saying nowadays hardly one of 10,000 people reaches this state. So this monk that was visiting Yangshan from Yu province had really controlled his mind. He had done this. It's possible to do this in meditation. So I'm talking about skillful means in meditation here. It's possible to do this thing that this monk had done. If you have a lot of time and space, and some of us are gonna be sitting for three days next weekend, to really focus your mind. It's possible to do this kind of thing. and have this level of, we could say, control. So, Wansong, the commentator, says, nowadays, hardly one in 10,000 people reach this state, and that was back in the Tang Dynasty, in the Golden Age of Zen, they call it. If they do, then they point to themselves and only see one side of things, not knowing that by delighting in the road, one ultimately fails to reach home.

[14:09]

Yangshan had traveled the mountain path, so he especially pointed out a living road, the stage of person. But then he tells this story about Yangshan, and this was the point of my talking about this story. In the past, as Yangshan was meditating in front of the monk's hall, in the middle of the night, he did not see mountains, rivers, buildings, people, or even his own body. All was the same as space. So we're told that this great teacher, Yangshan, had this experience in meditation of realizing very deeply that all things, Irving Park Road, Lake Michigan, the Tribune Building, all of this was the same as open space. The next morning he reported to his teacher, Guixiang, great teacher, who said, and Guixiang said, I reached this state when I was studying with Baizhang, another great teacher. This is just the achievement of melting illumination which dissolves illusions.

[15:16]

Just. Later on, when you are teaching, there can be no one who surpasses this. And Wansong says, I say no one but Yangshan could realize this, no one but Guishan could recognize it. Okay, so this is an example of someone who has had a great, you know, a meditator who has had some great meditative accomplishment, who has controlled his mind and awareness and reality itself, in this really extraordinary way. So people sometimes come and ask me about such things. And they want that kind of experience. But remember Wansong, the great commentator of the Book of Shunran, he said no one but Yangshan could accomplish this and no one but Guishan could recognize it. But what I want to talk about today in terms of this is

[16:20]

that our life is not about controlling things. And even if, you know, it happens, even, you know, sitting for a day or a period in Ancient Dragon's End Gate with the traffic going by Irving Park Road, it happens that, you know, at some point, there's a pause and our mind is steady. And there's nothing, nothing to turn off. And we're just there. That can happen. But even that is not the point. Our practice is deeper than that. Our practices of skillful means is beyond control, beyond trying to control, beyond being controlled. We're not trying to achieve some total perfect environment.

[17:27]

That's not the point. We're not trying to realize some perfect experience or perfect understanding or perfect reality. This practice of being present and upright allows us to be steady and clear and take another breath and be able to enjoy our life and have some glimpse of something that goes beyond. But we can't control reality. Change happens. The people who think they can control reality and can control the world, you know, change happens. No elected leader or whatever or big corporation can control things forever.

[18:35]

Reality happens. The world is alive. People are alive. And as we sit on our cushions, we develop this dynamic practice of patience, of being able to be present and to be right here in the middle of our life, in the middle of change, in the middle of all the problems you have, all the problems the world has. And facing the wall, we can learn to face ourselves and face the world and face each other and face the people in our lives. And we can't fix it. I mean, sometimes you can fix something. Sometimes, you know, you can, you know, some people are very handy and they can, you know,

[19:38]

Brian fixed our mail slot and put a thing on the inside so that the wind didn't come in. You know, we can fix things sometimes, but ultimately everything is shifting and changing and wobbly. So how do we appreciate the possibility of skillful means? I want to repeat, maybe a couple of you were here Monday night when I talked about these four ills of religious practice. This is from the Complete Enlightenment Sutra. These are four traps that we can get into in our practice. And it recommends finding a teacher who can cure you of these four ills. These are trying to base your practice on, one, performance of works, doing good works.

[20:50]

Now, it's not that you shouldn't do that, but to think that that will control your practice and that that's all that there is to practice ignores, you know, how are you settling? How is your awareness? That's the first one. The second one is trying to base your practice on cessation of mental operations, it says. This is really common. A lot of people, maybe it's mostly people who haven't done zazen, but people have the idea that enlightenment is getting rid of all the thoughts, particularly when you start to sit zazen and your monkey mind is rolling around. I could just get rid of all the thinking. Oh, that would be perfect. You know, empty space, enlightenment. So we had a few people here who sat zazen for the first time and you may have been surprised to notice that your mind was rolling around and you had some thoughts.

[21:52]

And probably most of you in this last period of zazen had a few thoughts. So the point of this practice is not to get rid of mental operations. Thoughts and feelings arise. So our instruction is when that happens, okay, notice that. If you see that you're on some stream of thought and that you've been flowing through that for the last couple minutes or the last 20 minutes or whatever, okay, pause, come back. to your breath and your posture and your uprightness, and more thoughts and feelings may come up in the next breath. That's fine. Just pay attention to whatever's happening. But the point of the practice isn't to get rid of your thoughts and feelings. That's just more thoughts and feelings. Okay? So that's the second one. The third one is to try and base your practice on acceptance of things as they are. And that's really tempting.

[22:53]

And I think a lot of spiritual people in our society think, oh, I should just go with the flow and accept everything as it is. And that's not real acceptance. Because, you know, our bodhisattva practice is to actually pay attention to the world and to try and be helpful rather than harmful. So acceptance is not passive acceptance. To accept things just as they are ignores that we have some response and that we have some responsibility, we have an ability to respond. And when we see something we don't like in our own patterns of grasping and anger and confusion, we can look at that and get to know that and stop acting out and causing harm based on that. Or if we see a friend or family member acting in some way that's harmful, we can pay attention. Not just accept that, but see if there's some way we can use skillful means to respond in a way that might be helpful.

[24:00]

Or if we see something in the world that is that we don't like, and there's plenty. There's all kinds of... cruelty in the world, you know. We don't have to just accept that as it is we can try and there are all kinds of movements of people trying to change things in positive ways that are actually having positive effects. The Black Lives Matter movement and the climate movement, addressing climate damage, are having positive effects and actually making change. So again, accepting things just as they are is a kind of Basing your practice on that is one of these ills of spiritual practice. And the fourth one is to base your practice on elimination of the passions. So getting rid of desires. Well, you know, we all have desire and aversion.

[25:01]

So trying to control your feelings so that you don't want anything, you know. I happen to have, you know, one of my desires is I like vanilla. I like vanilla ice cream. You know, some of you may not. Some of you may prefer chocolate. We all have preferences. So, you know, try to try and expunge all of your desires. You know, there are people who practice that way. And, you know, we should practice contentment and to not try and grab a hold of all the things we want, you know. But to try and get rid of passions is not the practice. Non-attachment is, so I talked last Monday about passionate non-attachment. Non-attachment doesn't mean indifference or detachment. It means seeing that we don't have to act on our attachments. So again, these four, four sicknesses of spiritual practice are to base our practice on performance of works, on cessation of mental operations, to accept things passively just as they are, or through elimination of passions.

[26:16]

Again, all of those are means, are ways of trying to control who we are and how we are. So skillful means is not about controlling things. It's about allowing response. It's about allowing ourselves to try to respond helpfully rather than harmfully. It's also about allowing kanan, this bodhisattva of compassion, who in, you know, however you want to interpret this, exists in the world. There are many beings who are trying to be helpful. Many, many, many beings all around the world and in our lives who are, you know, offering their hands, trying to help. How do we allow ourselves to be helped? By bodhisattvas of compassion. So this applies to some of the, well, again, just that

[27:28]

You know, we have to accept that we do have this idea of wanting to control things. It's natural. You know, we want to take care of our life. We want to take care of the things in our life. That's okay. But when we see this desire to control things, you know, we can hold it a little loosely. We can see that reality is not is more complicated than that. And we can forgive ourselves for not being in total control. And then we can try and adjust. So skillful means is about trying new things, seeing new options, becoming flexible, but paying attention. How can we

[28:30]

give help, how can we receive help skillfully? How can we respond to whatever situation is going on? And this works on so many levels. And as we're sitting and we're seeing, you know, it works internally too. When we're seeing some aspect of our own patterns of thinking that we don't like, how can we Look at that in fresh ways. How can we, you know, accept that? So, you know, a lot of the people who want to control things use fear. The politicians and the media and so forth, you know, we should be afraid of these people or those people or whatever. We should build walls to keep them out. Courage is not the absence of fear, it's facing fear.

[29:37]

We face the wall to face ourselves. We face the wall to face others and how deeply we are connected with everything and everyone. We don't build walls to keep anything out or anyone out. So in terms of the other stories we've been looking at in the Lotus Sutra, there's one story about Bodhisattva's enlightening beings under the ground. And the Buddha has been asking, who will come in the future evil age and help out and keep alive this teaching, this dharma of the Dharma Flower Sutra, and anyway, just at some point, long story short, the earth splits open and from out of the open space under the ground spring forth millions and huge numbers of great, venerable, peaceful, calm bodhisattvas.

[30:41]

And many of them have many, many other bodhisattva attendants. So there's this huge number of bodhisattvas. Well, how do we, again in terms of, it's not that they're in control of things. But how do we allow, how do we respond and allow them to come forth? So these stories are, you know, we can take them, you know, you could take them literally, but these are also stories about our practice. How do we allow the earth to share awakening with us? How do we allow the earth to share teaching with us? How do we allow the fertility of the ground of the earth and of our own practice. How do we allow awakening teachings to come forth from under our cushion, as we said? Not to control them, but what's coming forth?

[31:47]

And it may not be something we expected. In fact, it's certainly not going to be what you expect. the regular disciples of the Buddha did not expect these underground bodhisattvas. But how can we welcome or listen to or receive these unexpected guides, this unexpected help? The world provides assistance to us in ways we can't control or expect. Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, said, the world is its own magic. This leads to another story where the Buddha, Shakyamuni, who lived 2,500 years ago, more or less, in what's now northeastern India, tells a story about how even though they know that he left his palace, he was a prince and wandered around and after six years had this great awakening under the Bodhi tree and then spent 45 years teaching and was about to pass away after the Lotus Sutra teaching, he says, actually I've been around

[33:04]

for a very, very, very long time and will continue being present for twice that long. And Dogen, the 13th century Japanese monk who founded our tradition, talks about this in terms of how is Buddha present here and now. So again, in terms of skillful means, how do we use that story? How do we allow time to be present in a different way? How do we allow the time of the Buddha to be present not just 2,500 years ago, but 500 years from now? How do we keep Buddha's life alive here this morning? We can't control what this means even. we can't maybe understand what it means. But how do we, skillful means, this kind of skillful means is about being open to seeing things in some new way.

[34:12]

So, without trying to control, anything, I want to stop and ask for your questions and responses and comments. Please feel free. And for newer people too, if you have any just basic questions about what is this strange meditation thing or what are these strange stories about, please feel free. Yes, Sarah, hi. And that's one of the things I realized was that when I'm successful at enforcing that discipline, and I'm able to achieve the things I want, whether it's, okay, I sat through a song today, or I ate a pie, or whatever.

[35:42]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Well, it's OK if you think, oh, that was good. Don't try and control your response to it. I mean, if you feel good, it's not that this doesn't mean that you shouldn't try and have some discipline. Just don't think that you can control it, ultimately. And if you slip, that's OK. We do have intentions, and we do try and make commitments, and we do try and. you know, follow what we intend to do. It's not that we should just, you know, not holding on to control doesn't mean we should just, ah, you know, whatever. So we do have these practice forms. It's just that we can't control them. And compassion means being kind to yourself, being kind to others. How do we hold this all loosely?

[37:01]

If you try and hold on too tight, it's harder to sustain it. The point is, how do we sustain a practice of taking care of ourselves, taking care of things, taking care of doing, responding the way we want to? rather than trying to achieve some great yogic feat like the guy in the story, how do we sustain our practice of regularly doing meditation, regularly doing the things we want to do in our life? And if we don't do it perfectly, that's okay. Skillful means has to do with taking care of ourselves to sustain I don't know if that responds, yeah. But yeah, thank you, that's an important question. Other reflections or comments?

[38:01]

Yes, Michael. Hmm. Say more. Yes, sir. Breathing up and down on so many levels is a way to practice.

[39:36]

Yeah. No, it's good. Thank you. Good. Yeah, having a relationship to our breathing is really helpful. And yeah, what you were saying about, you know, there's two sides maybe, well, many sides, but two of the sides of our zazen and our practice is the focus or discipline, which is important, and also the kind of openness or spaciousness.

[41:09]

Part of Zazen is kind of always giving ourselves, or returning to kind of giving Zazen instruction to ourselves and returning to balance of focus, come back to the breath, or kind of opening to, you know, as Suzuki Roshi says, giving the cow a wide pasture, allowing thoughts to just wander. So, but then coming back, so. Thank you. other reflections. Yes, Paula. Okay. It's right there on the altar on this side. There's an image of the dragons and gate. So actually this comes from a place in China. I forget which of the rivers. Does anybody remember?

[42:11]

The Yellow River? Yalu River, okay. So it's in the, this is one of those long river, deep rivers that runs from west to east in China. And somewhere in this river, in this deep river, at the bottom of the river is this gateway. And when a fish comes to it and swims through it, it becomes a dragon. So they've documented this in China. And you can see, if you look at that image on the right side, there's a fish, and then on the other side of it, there's this dragon. So we called it Ancient Dragon Zen Gate. And I don't know, Hougetsu, you and I and Miyoshi were there when we came up with the name. I don't know if you have any other comments about this. Partly it was that, you know, there's lots of Zen centers all over the place, but I thought, it'd be nice to have a Zen gate, you know.

[43:12]

And so, that's what this is. And ancient, I don't know why we said ancient, but I just, that was very fortuitous because now we're listed at the beginning of many alphabetical listings of Zen places. So, anyway, that was just Kanon, Yes. Zippy dragons. So, and you know, I don't know, who knows, but I kind of feel like maybe down in Lake Michigan, there's one of these, I don't know. Is that what you wanted? Yes. Thank you. Okay. So, well, thank you all for being here.

[44:00]

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