The universe has us overwhelmed and wondrous. Our mind is rarely met with even a hundred thousand million Good morning, everyone. I want to speak this morning about the space of practice.

[01:07]

And I want to talk about that in terms of the Song of the Grass Hut. So you're welcome to... Thank you. You're welcome to look at that or not, but it's on page... So I spoke about it a little bit last week and about Chito, who's the author of this, and who is one of our great ancestors. And also Ben Connolly, who has a priest from Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, who's going to be here. A couple of weeks from tomorrow, last Monday of the month, this has a new book called Inside the Grass Hut about this old teaching poem from the 8th century.

[02:17]

So Chateau lived 700 to 790 and is a few generations before Dongshan, the founder of the Soto or Xiaodongzhang. So this is a very important figure to us. And really, this verse is about the space in which he practiced in and how to create that space and how to take care of that space. So he says, at the beginning of this, I built a grass hut where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it's been limped in, covered by weeds. So he had many students, at least at some point. But at some point, he also literally built a grass hut, a thatched hut, near his temple.

[03:21]

And his name Chito, to be informal, could be translated as rock head, or stone head, but it also means just on the rock. And actually, Jim Mitchell, who wrote a little book about sort of teaching poems, took this photograph. That rock is still there. So I'm gonna pass this around. This is the, It's overgrown now, but this is the... I'm not sure which part of the picture his little fat grass hut was actually on. It's to the left center or the rock to the right, but this is the rock on which Shito built his grass hut. But really what he's talking about more than this, and actually there's a tradition of Hermit, Zen Hermits living in small spaces, but really what he's talking about metaphorically is this room and your Zabatoner chair and the space in which we practice.

[04:30]

So this is important to us. And there's this whole idea of sacred spaces and sacred space, which works in different ways in our Western tradition and in Asian traditions. So we could think about architecture and different kinds of spaces and creative spaces, the kinds of things that Frank Lloyd Wright built, including down in Hyde Park, Robey Park, right across from our little grass hut called Rockefeller Chapel, where Neo Zahn leads the sitting group, and Stephen has practiced there, and Laurel's been there, and I'm not sure if any of the others of you have. How do we create a space for Zazen?

[05:33]

This is an important part of our practice. Actually, this is one of the main things that Zen priests need to learn and learn and know how to do, which is to create a space of practice. So this structure, the architecture, the configuration of this room and of the whole temple is partly, well, in various ways based on many traditions of sacred space in the Zen tradition, in the East Asian Buddhist tradition, not just Zen. But this is a key issue. How do we make a space that is conducive to allowing the space on your Krishna chair to allow Buddha to be there? So, Shakyamuni says, although the hut is small, it includes the entire world in ten feet square, an old man, which he was, illumines forms and their nature.

[06:48]

So, This 10-foot square goes back to the Malakirti, the great enlightened layman in India who had this small room, supposedly 10-foot square, and Zainab is now called Hojo after that. But whatever the size of the space, how does that space, how do we create that space for Growing Zazen mind and Zazen body, the Buddhist body. This is an important part of our Zazen posture too, being upright, being present. Breathing. Gently inhaling and exhaling, relaxing into Buddhist body. So, you know, there's this controversy about, you know, effort.

[07:53]

How much effort do we need to make to, you know, how do we sit, you know, in perfect zazen posture and never move throughout the period? Well, this is a nice idea. But also, Shakyamuni Buddha says, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. So what kind of effort does it take to relax completely? Or what kind of lack of effort does it take to make the uprightness of complete relaxation? This isn't just a matter of, you know, so there's a particular space that we are occupying today. Well, we've been occupying it a lot since we opened the space. January 2009, I think. Anyway, this is space that we're all occupying together today. The ceilings are fairly high.

[08:55]

You know, it's got width and length and it's centered around Buddha. But How do we create the space of Zazen? How do you create the space of Zazen when you're sitting at home in between times of coming to Ancient Dragon or other places? And then, you know, so this is a subtle art. Also, when you sit outdoors, so sitting outdoors is a wonderful tradition too. So sometimes you might try that if you have the time. In the old days in India, before zendos were constructed in China, monks came together during the rainy season, but then they went out and wandered around, and they would sit facing a tree. So now we sit facing the wall. Oh, thank you, Lord, for stretching for us. But back in India, they just sat facing a tree. So I guess they had some large trees there.

[09:55]

We sit facing a wall. Maybe not so different, although our walls are not made of wood, but our floor is. In some ways, it's helpful to have a sort of confined space. In some ways, we're confined by the uprightness and the vastness of Buddha. We're building Buddha's body, so we This is a good space, actually. I think this is a good size for a Zenda. You can get a bunch of people in here. But it's not too wide. So NeoZon has this amazingly difficult job of creating a space, a grass hut, a space that's in the middle of Rockefeller Chapel, which is this, it's non-denominational, but it's a Gothic cathedral, old style, with very lofty ceilings and very, You know, when you sit at the end of it, you sit up on the front, and at the end there's these stained glass windows.

[10:59]

It's humongous, it's huge, and there's organs playing around sometimes. It's a very different space, and you can't get very close to the wall or any trees in there. You just turn away from the center. But even there, how do we create this space of Zaza? Somehow, we've done that. Ryozan's managed to help make that possible. People sit kind of like this, smaller. Rectangle. So all of this is about what is this space of Zaza? Again, he says, though the hut is small, it includes the entire world. This also has to do about the space right around your cushion or chair. So I forgot to put out the session guidelines this morning, but part of it says to take care of the space around your seat, to keep it neat and so forth.

[12:06]

So even though the space of one Zabaton is small, it includes the entire world. Each of you sitting here this morning, are vast and contain multitudes, as a great American Zen poet said. Each of us is here thanks to the sponsorship of many beings. Parents, family, friends, teachers, many beings allow you to be here and to practice this relaxed, upright Buddha sitting. So I'm hoping next year we'll have a few more outdoor events. We don't have a yard really to go walking in, but it's not just about, it's about being confined, but also it's about sense of spaciousness too.

[13:10]

What is the spaciousness in this room? What is the spaciousness on your cushioned chair? So I want to talk again about some of the particular lines in this song of The Grass Hut. And again, Ben Connolly will be here in a couple of weeks from tomorrow to tell us about his reflections on this. There's a story about... Well, before I go to that, one of the lines here in this song We don't have the tune. I'm hoping some musicians sometime will get the tune to these lyrics. But he says, just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest. Thus this mountain monk doesn't understand at all, speaking of himself.

[14:12]

So a lot of the teachers call themselves this mountain monk. And actually, even though we're in Chicago and there's no mountains around, We need a mountain name for this temple, because all temples traditionally have various names. We have Ancient Dragon, Zen Gate, Koryu, Zen Monji in Japanese. But we don't have a mountain name yet. We should have that. But anyway, this sitting with head covered is a specific reference to Bodhidharma. So we have a statue of him standing, not sitting, on our altar from his temple, Kongshan, in China. But there are many images you can see of him sitting upright with a quilt over his head because it was cold there in Northern China. And he was sitting up in this cave and it was pretty cold. And actually, in Japanese monks' halls, where they sleep in the monks' hall too, they have a quilt that's at the end of their sitting space in little cabinets where they have the bedding, so they sleep there.

[15:20]

But in the morning, you're allowed to put the quilt over your head, because it might be pretty cold. So that's a specific reference in this. But also, just sitting with head covered, not letting your head go too far. off into the distance maybe. Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest. So this idea of resting or relaxation is not how we usually think of Zen maybe, you know, as something very severe and austere and rigorous. But all things are at rest, thus this mountain monk doesn't understand at all This is kind of challenging. For many Western Zen students, this is the hardest part of Zen. I have a number of students who really are very sharp analytical minds and really want to figure things out and understand everything and know how the teaching fits together and all that.

[16:25]

It's possible to do that, but the point is, as Shih Tzu says, this mountain monk doesn't understand at all. What does it mean to not know? So this is part of the space that we sit in. We can't say, we can't know how wide and vast are all the beings sitting, inhabiting, occupying this room right now. All the people and other beings who've been in this room since we've had it in this configuration. And all the beings who are on your chair or cushion right now. Somebody you met at a party 10 years ago you don't even remember is part of what's going on sitting on your chair right now, or cushion. How could we possibly understand all of that? All the hard drives in all the worlds, in all the solar systems where they've developed, where Apple has proliferated, couldn't measure

[17:33]

the rawness and completeness of this moment. So sometimes people feel like their practice is stale. Some of you have come here and done many sittings like this. Some of you are new today. It can feel like Zazen is just, okay, I'm going to go sit on my cushion. Taigen said I should, or somebody said I should, or Buddha says I should, or my mommy said I should, I don't know, whoever, whatever. But, you know, I could feel like, oh, what is this? I'm just distracted, and I'm sleepy. But actually, what's happening right now is so, Inconceivable and strange and just all the things that are happening in this room right now, all the different worlds that are in this room right now. Ayshan coming back and adjusting the heat under the, whatever we're having for lunch.

[18:44]

Everything that's going on in this room, we can't possibly understand it all. And yet people, you know, We have scientists with us, you know, who actually do understand a lot about what's going on. So it's possible to understand up to some limit. But Shinto said, this mountain monk doesn't understand at all. Was he bragging? I don't know. One of the great early Zen teachers in America, Sung San Sunim, a great Korean master, his teaching was very simple. And again and again, he would just say, I only don't know. It's challenging for us. There's a lot of very intelligent people in this room. I just don't know. Can we do that? This is part of the space that Shinto is talking about. And there's a story about this, another story.

[19:47]

One of the students once came to him and said, what is the essential meaning of Buddhadharma? Occasionally students ask such questions of teachers. It's maybe a little impudent to ask for the whole thing right now. But then again, that's, you know, part of our Zen spirit. And Shinto responded. He said, not to attain, not to know. So, you know, there are various schools and approaches towards Zen, and some of them stress various kinds of attainments that you can get. And, you know, there is a kind of development and opening and blossoming of our practice. Sometimes, you know, over the years, sometimes, you know, suddenly we see something. But Shinto said the point is not to attain and not to know. Thus, in suchness, this mountain monk doesn't understand at all.

[20:55]

How can we, you know, go through our day? How can we sit through a period of zazen not knowing what we're doing? Oh my gosh. Could we do that? Not to get anything out of it, even. Of course, there's transformation that happens in practice over time, but... There's no attainments and nothing to attain, the hard superstition. The student was very good. He later became a teacher himself. Tianwan Dao was his name. He asked Shih Tzu then, well, beyond that, is there any other pivotal point or not? Isn't that enough just to hear that there's nothing to retain? It may be enough for some of you, but it wasn't for the sky. He said, what other pivotal points are there? And Shinto said, the wide sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting.

[22:00]

The wide sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting. So this space of zazen, the spaciousness that is available in our sitting, You know, you may be just bothered by all the distractions going on during any given period of Zazen. Thinking about this and thinking about that and this problem and that problem and all the ways in which we're not perfect or not doing it right or whatever you, how do you think about those things? Or it could be just clouds of sleepiness and haziness. But Shukla said for us that the white sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting. The vast Buddha mind is okay with your distractions and your sleepiness and your patterns of grasping and wanting to know or wanting to get something. Of course, we all want to get something. This is how we manage to survive adolescence and reach adulthood.

[23:08]

We learn how to get things. We learn how to manipulate things and manipulate ourselves to get rid of things. And we work for years and years Some people go to therapy trying to get rid of this and that, you know, whatever. But the white sky doesn't care. The great empty space of Buddha's mind just, you know, accepts all of it. And the clouds keep drifting by. Unless this mountain monk doesn't understand it all, living hearing no longer works to get free. So, Shinto, in this teaching poem, is sort of emphasizing effortlessness, or wu-wei in Chinese, as the Taoists call it. Just enjoy your breathing.

[24:08]

Just enjoy the white clouds drifting through your head. And we have this practice of letting them go and coming back. So this is part of the next part of this I wanted to talk about. One of my favorite lines in this, he says, turn around the light to shine within, then just return. So it's not that we're sitting here in this wide sky of Buddha's heart, kind of thoughtlessly, mindlessly. You have a job to do on your kushina chair. You have some responsibility. And that starts with turn around the light to shine within. So there's always some attention happening. We're always attentive to something. That's the way our minds are. The focus when we're sitting facing the wall is that we're sitting facing ourselves. We're paying attention. We're vigilant. We see these clouds of distractions and thoughts and sleepiness and so forth. And then we return. But in the practice itself, this is a very venerable, famous instruction that appears throughout the history of Zen in various forms.

[25:21]

Turn around the light to shine within. Or Dogen says, take the backward step that turns the light inwardly to illuminate yourself. Or he says, to study the way is to study the self. So we sit facing the wall and we pay attention to what's going on in the body, mind, anya, kushina, and chen. Apart from your ideas of self, all of the masks of self that you have, all of the different ways in which you think you know who you are, what the world is, what's actually happening this period on your cushion or chair? And we pay attention to that. And then we notice that there's lots of clouds drifting along. Okay, then we just return. So part of our practice, maybe all of our practice, maybe the essential meaning of Buddhadharma is just this return. We remind ourselves, oh yeah, Buddha.

[26:24]

So the Pure Land people do this by chanting Namo Amida Butsu, chanting homage to Amida Buddha. But we do this by just sitting like Buddha. Oh yeah, oh wait, am I leaning over, am I asleep? And we come back to uprightness, to Buddha's body on your cushion or chair. So there's a kind of balancing that's at the heart of this. How do we find uprightness? So one thing you can do at the beginning of a day or a period of zazen is kind of sway slightly left and right, find what feels like center in the same way forward and backward. And maybe inwardly you might need to do that in the middle of a period of zazen. Oh yeah, am I, you know, that's center. Can I let my shoulders relax? Can I let my spine hang in its crookedness from a string reaching up to the wide sky?

[27:32]

And then again and again, we turn around the light, take the backward step, turn the light inwardly, and then just return. So this line works on so many levels. It works in terms of what goes on during a period of Zazen. It works in terms of what we do when we come to sit for a day, like many of us are doing here today. And then we go back out. We return to our lives and to our world. And there too, we are present. And we allow this space, this architecture, this uprightness of this heart of this buddha body to express itself in all of the other complex affairs of our life and of the world and how we take care of the world or try to or contribute to.

[28:40]

So just turn around the light to shine within and then just return. Oh yeah, here I am. Oh, I see the sun. Okay. My chin tucked in, it's my mudra. Set. Am I breathing? Oh yeah, that was an inhale. Oh, that's an exhale, yeah. So we just return. And in many ways in our life, the whole idea of the middle way in Buddhism is to find what is balance. How do we take care of the things around us and also take care of ourselves? How do we take care of ourselves and also take care of the people around us? How do we find a balance in our practice? How do we pay attention to all of the particular affairs, all the stuff that we have to take care of, all of the clouds drifting by? But also remember, oh yeah, there's a wide sky of Buddha that I am an expression of. The white sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting.

[29:59]

Dogen commented on this, he said, not attaining, not knowing is Buddha's essential meaning. The wind blows into the depths and further winds blow. So this is, you know, literally we can see this, we can imagine this. the skyscape of clouds and winds. But winds also refers to freedom from attachment and conventions. But also winds refer to approaches to the teaching, styles of practice. Anyway, there are many ways to appreciate and be grateful for this space of practice. So Dogen says, the white sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting. At this time, why do you take the trouble to ask Shuto? So maybe he's addressing this student of Shuto's.

[31:02]

Why are you bothering to ask about the essential meaning when you're right there in the middle of it? But it's kind of a trick question, as many of Dogen's questions are. So all of you are here asking. Taking the trouble, coming here for a whole day or for a couple periods and a talk, taking the trouble to ask, where is this white sky? What are these clouds that are troubling me? And we don't ignore the clouds either. The white sky doesn't ignore the clouds. It enjoys the clouds. And we learn, you know, so Suzuki Roshi talks about weeds, mind weeds, and weeds, how we compost those weeds, just mixing metaphors. But how, you know, all of those clouds are the food for our spaciousness, for our uprightness. Without the clouds, is there a sky?

[32:06]

Well, I don't know. We can speculate on that. Without the problems in our life and in our world, could we appreciate Buddha? Maybe if there was no suffering, there wouldn't be any Buddha. There wouldn't be any need for Buddha. So maybe someday. I don't think we have to worry about that. I think bodhisattvas have very good job insurance, you know. We don't have to worry about the end of suffering in our particular lifetimes, on some level at least. But here we are. And sometimes it's important to take the trouble to ask, well, wait a second, where's the sky? All these clouds, or how do I... Or maybe the sky asks, oh, how are you doing today, clouds?

[33:09]

So we just sit in the middle of all of this. In the middle of all of this, Shuddha says, the vast inconceivable source cannot be faced or turned away from this great open, The sky, the, I don't know, what is the source of our atmosphere? Probably like everything else, it goes back to the Big Bang or Big Bang before that and we're all stardust and all of that. Anyway, here we are, and when we see this, when we hear about, when we have some sense, when we, as we settle in our zazen, amidst all the clouds, when we settle, sometimes we have this taste, this sense, this fragrance of something vast and inconceivable.

[34:31]

And we can't get a hold of it, but we can't ignore it either. So we keep coming back to sitting and to being present and to allowing Buddha's body to be present on our cushions and chairs. And we're encouraged by Shantideva. He says, bind grasses to build a hut. Find your space of practice. Find your sangha. Find the space in which you can sit in your home. and build a hut, build this Buddha body, and then relax completely. So, in some ways, the essential art of Sazen is just letting go, not being caught by all the clouds and all the patterns, but also not ignoring them.

[35:34]

So this is subtle, this letting go. Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. So you can't force yourself to relax completely. This isn't about making some great effort. Breathing helps. So let go completely, but also, you know, don't give up. Take on all of the, you know, the clouds and the suffering that needs to be taken on. And then he ends by saying to meet the unconditioned, undying person on your cushion or chair. Don't separate from this skin bag here and now. So pay attention right now. Here. What are we doing? Where's the next breath?

[36:36]

How is that pain in your shoulders or your hip or your knees? Can you be present with that? Don't run away from it. Don't try and escape yourself. Here we are. So, This is all just encouragement for you to continue through the day, whether you're here for the rest of the day or returning to your life out there in Chicago, to pay attention, to relax completely, to allow this space of practice to be here. Turn around the light to shine within, then just come back. Here we are. Buddha's posture. In whatever form, you know, cross-legged or kneeling or in a chair, you can still be doing Buddha's posture.

[37:46]

Here and now. Here and now, of course, it's not some restricted here and now. People get caught in that, thinking that here and now is like forgetting about the past and the future in any place else. Here and now includes the entire world. It's all here. So maybe that's all I want to say about this this morning. We will have, for the people who are here for the day, there will be that period of afternoon discussion, but maybe we can take a couple of comments or questions now if anyone has some response. Please feel free. Okay.

[38:55]

So the wide sky is not obstructed by the sounds passing by, the thoughts floating through your grass hut, or the sound of the air conditioner, or whatever other sounds. Here we are. So please enjoy the rest of the day and see what it's like to let go and also pay attention. And don't worry about figuring it all out. Thank you.

[40:16]

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