I vow to taste the truth of Bhagavad-gita's words. Good morning. Even with all the windows open, it's pretty warm in here, isn't it? For the last four or five months or so, I've been on a sabbatical, and the sabbatical has done its work in allowing me to have some fallow time, uninterrupted fallow time,

[01:07]

in preparation for taking on a new position at Zen Center, which is the position of abbess. And last Sunday, actually, there were two ceremonies last weekend, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, and I know a number of you were at both those ceremonies, or one or the other. On Saturday night, the former abbot, now the senior Dharma teacher, Norman Fisher, Zoho Ketsu Norman Fisher, stepped down from being abbot. And we say step down because that position is called the mountain seat. So he stepped down from the mountain in a wonderful, warm, intimate ceremony. He had just had an operation, and so when he climbed up to the seat, he kind of needed some help getting up and getting settled. And as someone said, it's great to see how decrepit you were

[02:11]

climbing up and down. It makes everyone feel somehow closer to him. So it was a chance for people to give their appreciations, express their love and appreciation for Norman and for his teaching and for all the work he's done and all the ways that he's helped Zen Center. And I think one of the main themes was how healing his abbacy was for so many of us, just his way and his commitment to healing others and to healing the community. So he'll be actively involved with Zen Center for many, many years, but after this next year, he'll be more stepping out on his own

[03:17]

in new ways. So we'll all miss him. And then the next day on Sunday was the Stepping Up Ceremony at the Mountain Seat Ceremony, and that too, it's hard to say exactly what it was. For each person who participated and for each person who was in the assembly, it was what it was for each person. But I'm over and over again so impressed, I guess, with the power of ceremony itself, with the power of ritual and that form of human activity, ceremony. And I think many people are not particularly drawn to ceremony or think that they're not, and yet want to find some way to make events and experiences and landmark times in our life,

[04:24]

to make them meaningful. And human beings tend to create ceremonies to do just that. And when you put enough energy and effort and devotion into a ceremony, into a particular form, the meaning arises, the meaning is expressed. Even though it may look like, if you read it, if you read the ceremony, these five people go here, and then they bow, and these five people go over there, and they offer incense, and then they run up and down, and the drum goes, and they bow, and they inspect the seal of Zen Center, and you read it and you think, you might think this is nonsense, this is a bunch of nonsense. But when people actually devote their energies to creating a ceremony, just like a theater piece, actually, for those of you who have been in theater, when you work on a piece, on a play, and put everything into it,

[05:26]

the process itself is so meaningful, and the play itself can be transformative to the audience and the people doing it. And I think, that's how I think of ceremonies, they are transformative. Just listening to the rain. So, although there's a poem where it says, the meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the arrival of energy, and that's how I think of this ceremony. The meaning isn't in just the description of the ceremony, but in the arrival of the energy that's brought there. That's the meaning. So, there are many parts to this ceremony, many opportunities for me to offer my appreciation

[06:31]

and my gratefulness to this practice and to all the teachers who have come down through the ages to practice and to teach, and thanking all the people that helped create the ceremony. And there was a robe that the Sangha made and gave me, and the sewing teachers coordinated, all these different people sewing, so all these things were part of the ceremony. And there was a part where people could offer congratulations or words, and I wanted to read what Pema Chodron, many of you probably know Pema Chodron or have heard of her, she's a Tibetan teacher who has a practice place in Nova Scotia, and she wasn't able to come to the ceremony because she's in retreat right now, but she sent word,

[07:31]

and I think this particular advice was given to a yogini, a Tibetan yogini, I believe the name is pronounced Labdul Drolma, but I'm not sure that's exactly it, please excuse me. So I think this advice is not just for someone taking the mountain seat or taking this position, but to all of us in our lives, in our family lives, our work lives, our practice lives. So this is what she said, Reveal your inner thoughts. Approach what you find repulsive. Help those you do not want to help. Anything you are attached to, let it go. Go to places that scare you.

[08:34]

If you do not grasp with your mind, you will find a fresh state of being. So these I feel are very helpful advice, this is very helpful advice, although you don't want to go too far. When it says approach what you find repulsive, and go to places that scare you, I don't think it actually means to seek out the most scary and repulsive situation you can find and then just kind of barrel your way in. It's more repulsive things, or things that we find we want to avert from or that we're afraid of, those come very naturally in our lives. Some reticence to talk with so-and-so about such-and-such at work or in family or in practice life.

[09:38]

Some feeling of, gee, I just, oof, I don't really want to talk with that person. It's going to be hard. That kind of thing. Go there to something that scares you. Go there. And I suppose that also is help those you do not want to help. Sometimes we don't want to because people are difficult or someone may be difficult, so we turn away from that. So as an advice, you can tell, I don't want to help that person. If you can notice that, then go there. So I don't want this to be taken incorrectly and find yourself over your head because that doesn't help anyone either, to go over your head. So this last one, if you do not grasp with your mind, you will find a fresh state of being.

[10:41]

So grasping with the mind is, one of the basic teachings in Buddhism is that grasping things is basically delusion. That's also a line from a poem, The Merging of Difference and Equality. Grasping things or clutching at things, Suzuki Roshi translated it as, clutching at things is basically delusion. And trying to seize, the word grasp means trying to seize with the hand, grasping, clutching, holding on. Now, at first take, you may think, well, I can hold on to things, hold on to my job and hold on to my relationships and hold on. That's not true. Grasping things isn't, I can hold on to a piece of pie. Grasping things isn't delusion. But if you study carefully, trying to hold on to something,

[11:43]

you see that there's no thing that will stay put long enough for you to actually hold it. It goes right through your fingers or the pie is either eaten up or it will compost right in front of you if you sit there long enough. There's nothing you can hold on to. Grasping things is basically delusion. And the... Can you hear me okay with the rain? It's okay? And the over and over habitual way that we try and hold on to things and grasp at things is suffering. In fact, the traditional way to define what suffering is is the 5 skandhas or the way the self is, a definition of the self is these 5 heaps or skandhas. The 5 grasping skandhas is suffering. So Pema says,

[12:46]

if you do not grasp with your mind, you will find a fresh state of being. So what is it like, what might it be like to not grasp at things? What could that be? How am I going to get up in the morning if I don't grasp or apprehend with my mind in a certain way that it's time to get up, I better get going, I've got to get to work. That's the kind of grasping too. What other kind of state of being might there be? So in the ceremony, in the Mountain Seat Ceremony, one of the areas, one of the parts of the ceremony was for me to, or the person taking that position, to make a commentary on a koan. And the koan, synchronistically or serendipitously, that I chose to talk about was Mind Cannot Be Grasped.

[13:47]

It's actually, this koan is part of another koan in the commentary. It's really a Zen story that doesn't have its own, it's not pulled out as its own separate koan in the koan collections, but it's in various ways in commentary. You can find it. And Dogen Zenji, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, has a whole chapter on it in his masterwork, The Treasury Eye of True Dharma, called Mind Cannot Be Grasped. So he goes into it at length. And I wanted to tell the story and then we can talk about it some more and we can study it together here. So Mind Cannot Be Grasped. So the story is about a teacher named De Shan, who was a Chinese ancestor living in about 850. And he was a master of the Diamond Sutra,

[14:49]

which is a perfection of wisdom sutra. And he studied this extensively and lectured on it and did commentaries on it and made commentaries on other people's commentaries. And it was said that he made so many commentaries that if you weighed them all, they weighed, you know, like 20 kilos or something. He did a lot of work on the Diamond Sutra and a lot of talking about it. Well, one day De Shan heard that in the south of China there was another kind of teaching that was based on putting forth the teaching that mind itself is Buddha. It wasn't based on any kind of scripture or sutra. And he was very incensed at this, very angry that someone, and thinking that they were teaching the wrong kinds of things and this would be bad for Buddhism.

[15:50]

So he set off on foot over the mountains down into the south of China to find a teacher, this teacher that was teaching this way and to set them right. And he was going to show them because he was really the most knowledgeable about the Diamond Sutra, this very marvelous sutra. So he set off to go there carrying his commentaries and the Diamond Sutra on his back in a big backpack. He set off. And he crossed over the mountains and rivers and he got to the south and he, on his way to this monastery, decided to sit down by the side of the road and just rest himself for a while because he was pretty tired. So he was sitting there and an old woman came down the road and she sat herself down next to him as well. And he looked over to her and said, What kind of a person are you?

[16:52]

And she said, I'm an old woman selling rice cakes. And he said, I would like to buy some rice cakes to refresh my mind. Now I want to stop here for a minute because the koan kind of turns on this. The word in Chinese for refreshment, I'd like to have some refreshment, is the word tán xīn. Xīn means mind or heart-mind, actually, and tán in this case means refresh. So it's a kind of little colloquial, idiomatic expression in Chinese. Tán xīn means refreshments, meaning food or a treat like that, but the characters themselves are refresh in mind. So he said, I'd like to have some refreshments, tán xīn. Will you sell some rice cakes to me? And she said, What is that great load

[17:56]

you're carrying on your back? And he said, Have you not heard? I am called Xu, king of the Diamond Sutra. I have mastered the Diamond Sutra. There's no part of it that I don't understand. And she said, Oh, and the load that I'm carrying is commentaries on the Diamond Sutra. And she said, May I ask you a question about the Diamond Sutra? And he said, Go ahead, just ask. So she said, I have a question and if you can answer it, then I'll give you some rice cakes to refresh your mind, but if you can't, I won't sell you any at all and you'll have to go hungry. So he said, All right, go ahead, just ask. So the old woman said, I've heard it said in the Diamond Sutra that past mind cannot be grasped, present mind cannot be grasped, and future mind

[18:57]

cannot be grasped. So which mind do you now somehow intend to refresh with rice cakes? And Dushan was dumbfounded. He was speechless. He had nothing to say. And the old woman at that point shook out her sleeves and headed on down the road. She didn't give him any rice cakes. Dushan after that went on to this other teacher and ended up actually burning the Diamond Sutra and all his commentaries later on, and was enlightened with another teacher. But they say that he was, with this speechlessness there, he was ripe, he became ripe. Now, so if past mind can't be grasped and present mind can't be grasped and future mind can't be grasped,

[19:57]

how do we, what do we do, you know? How are we going to live? We can't get a hold of anything or just, where do we even stand, our two feet? Right? Isn't it scary, just the thought of it? Go to where it scares you. Now Dogen later on, looking at this, had a lot of things to say. First of all, we like this old woman. We think she's really great and I like her a lot. And we think Dushan was really defeated in some way by her. He was dumbfounded. But Dogen goes on to say that the old woman, it isn't clear necessarily that she was fully understanding either because we don't hear from her. She shakes out her sleeves and heads on down the road. Now that's interesting. So we don't really know necessarily, although we have a feeling she knew what was up. Dushan didn't, he couldn't say anything, so because he couldn't

[21:01]

say anything and she didn't say anything back, we don't know what her understanding was. And Dogen gives lots of different possibilities. He could have said, well, past mind can't be grasped and present mind can't be grasped and future mind can't be grasped. With what mind do you intend to sell those rice cakes? He could have said that. She could have said, he says she could have given him a rice cake for every mind, past, present, and future. She could have slapped him around in the face with her rice cake. He had a lot of suggestions what could have happened there. But we're left with the fact that she didn't say, she headed on down the road. Now some other teachers feel that the fact that she just stopped him and he was speechless was enough. But Dogen, he leaves it open

[22:01]

because in his commentary he says, you have to say something. There's got to be something you can't just assume. Someone has to come forward too. So I leave it to you to think about that old woman and what she was up to. But we're left with past mind cannot be grasped, present mind cannot be grasped, future mind cannot be grasped, and grasping things is basically delusion. So what kind of practice takes that all into account? I want to leave that there just for a second and back up or back around to something else that happened in the ceremony, which is there is a point at which there was a chance for me to make some personal comments, personal statement. And I mentioned my gratefulness

[23:02]

to my life Dharma partner and husband, Steve, and I mentioned that we were yoked together like two oxen plodding along in the mud. And I've always thought that that's kind of the way it was, two oxen, they have this yoke, which is this wooden contraption kind of with places for two heads and kind of walking along and kind of looking over at each other and kind of, how you doing there, and keep plodding along in the mud. And someone at the ceremony who's a Jungian psychiatrist said that the word yoke, the word yoke comes from the same word, the root of it means, and in Jungian understanding, the Latin word conuntio or join together. And the word yoke is very interesting because it means to join

[24:06]

and union, and yoga, yoga comes from it. Yoga is, the practice of yoga is about joining and being unified with truth. And we sometimes think of zazen also as a yoga or being unified and yoked. So to join, and also the, oh, this is really, this is really interesting. I hope you find it interesting, I did. But the Greek word for the same word of yoke is like zygon, z-y-g-o-n. And the word zygote comes from the same word, which means yoke or union, unified. And zygote is a,

[25:08]

is two gametes, meaning a male and a female sex cell, the ovum and the sperm in this case, and when the sperm enters, only one can enter, and that's this fertilized ovum is a zygote. It's before it breaks, before the cell begins to split, is a zygote, is this union. or conception, right? Conception. So there's just one that just takes one, and then it's a zygote, it's union, it's yoked, and it's conception. So in our Zen practice, we have a term to turn the mind back, to turn the light back

[26:14]

and look at the mind. Now this is a meditation instruction that you find in various places in different actual meditation texts and also in commentaries on koans and so forth. Often you will find, or many places you will find, this instruction to turn the light back, turn the light back, to look at the mind that's thinking. And this practice of turning the light back and looking at the mind that's thinking is a union of the mind that is receiving objects. Mind and objects come up together. You don't have objects and mind separately as sort of two things floating around. Mind and objects come up together, so when the mind perceives objects, that is the suchness

[27:14]

of mind and objects, which is sometimes called enlightenment. The suchness of mind and objects is enlightenment. So the way the mind works is that it just is able to receive one object, one after the other, moment after moment, one object, mind and object together in this zygote way where it just takes, it's just one at a time, over and over and over, which is conception. So this mind and objects, the conception of mind and objects is this union of suchness. And this very mind that operates in that way is ungraspable. This mind and objects that come up together uninterruptedly,

[28:14]

moment after moment, if you turn the mind to watch, to study and look at the mind that is watching mind and objects come up, it cannot be grasped. So the mind that's thinking and discriminating, if you turn and look at that very mind that's thinking and discriminating, that is the mind that cannot be grasped, right there. So grasping things is basically delusion, but our very mind and body that we, we don't have to go somewhere else to some ungraspable, lofty, ungraspable mind somewhere else. Right here, right now, as you hear the sound of my voice, can you not grasp it? The Shakyamuni Buddha

[29:16]

has the instruction, just the heard within the heard, just the sound within the sound, just the sight, just the seen within the seen, just the thought of within the thought of. If you can just stop there with just the heard within the heard and not elaborate or get involved in any way besides that, this is the mind that cannot be grasped. Grasping things is basically delusion, so trying to elaborate and get involved with, which is kind of a leaning into, Reb talks about upright sitting, and when we lean forward in zazen, or lean forward into things, and you may be leaning forward in your seat right now trying to understand what the dickens I'm talking about, but if you can come back to uprightness

[30:16]

and just allow the heard within the heard, or without, and look at the mind that's trying to understand. Uninterruptedly, that's the mind that cannot be grasped, which is your birthright. So, the suchness of mind and objects is this gate. So this is a meditation instruction, but it's, you don't have to wait for a period of zazen to practice turning the light back and watching the mind that's thinking. You can try it out at any time, and what you see is that you can't hold on to it. It's just objects, mind and objects, mind and objects, mind and objects, uninterruptedly so, and

[31:17]

there's nothing to hold on to, and yet there's, you know, there's another koan where a huayka asks Bodhidharma, he's in a state, he's just stood in the snow wanting the teaching for, you know, all night long, and he cut off his arm, showing his sincerity. It's a very wild and extreme story of the sincerity of a student, and he says, Please pacify my mind for me. You know, I can imagine him having this grasping mind, wanting, wanting so much to understand Buddha nature and to understand the truth and to be seeking, seeking, seeking, standing there in the snow frostbitten toast. Please, he says to Bodhidharma, pacify my mind. And Bodhidharma says, Bring me your mind and I'll pacify it for you. And he wakes up

[32:19]

right there because he says, I can't find it, I can't bring it. And Bodhidharma says, Your mind is pacified. So when you see that this mind of grasping and seeking, and when you look at it, when you see that it can't be grasped and you drop grasping through this study of just looking at mind and objects uninterruptedly that are ungraspable, that is calming, that is stabilizing. So, now going too far would be there's no mind to grasp, so there's no mind, you know, there's no nothing and that means there's no practice and there's no

[33:19]

thought of enlightenment and the whole thing, we can just throw it out the window. That's going too far, that's, I always pronounce this word wrong, that's nihilism, right? Nihilism? Nihilism. That's going too far. And grasping at things, holding on is going too far. So the middle way is the way things actually are, which is grasping things is basically delusion. Mind cannot be grasped. And yet, right in there, what do we eat our rice cakes with? Or do anything else with? Take care of our kids? Go to work? Fix dinner? With, the whole Mahayana points to the mind of compassion, that even knowing that there is nothing to grasp and hold on to, understanding this thoroughly, we respond to beings, we respond to whatever happens in the world,

[34:19]

which is compassion, compassionate mind. So the mind of compassion is unhindered, it's unhindered by past, present, and future. It doesn't, the conception, looking at this conception, this zygote conception, past, present, and future, it doesn't stop you. You don't have to be caught in is this past, present, and future. The mind of compassion is unhindered, crosses all lines. And this is the Bodhisattva vow to live for the benefit of all beings, even knowing that there's no beings to grasp. It's like we might think, well, I'll do something for this person, and then I'll get some, I'll get some things back, or all that is ungraspable. There's nothing that sticks, nothing that sticks. If you do not grasp with your mind,

[35:24]

you will find a fresh state of being. It's very fresh. So... I wanted to read this meditation instruction which was given to me. This is from Huang Bo, who lived in China in 850. And this particular, the teachings of Huang Bo was one of the earliest translations of Buddhist texts that came out, and it was one of the first books I got in the 60s, actually. I think the copyright is, my copy is 57. And I realized, just coming upon it while I was preparing for this lecture, that this impressed me. Impressed.

[36:26]

I was impressed with this teaching, and I just wanted to offer it. It's a meditation instruction, but right now we just started a new practice period for the next 7 or 8 weeks. We have a group of about 22 people who are here doing traditional training period at Green Gulch. So this grasping things is basically delusion. How does the mind and body all throughout the day practice this? And that's really what the practice period is about, the schedule, the sounds of the schedule, meaning you hear the wooden board sounded and it means go to the zendo, you hear the bell sound for the end of cleaning, tempo cleaning, go to breakfast. You don't hold on to anything, even the best of intentions like wanting to finish up the job so that it's really done right, so that the bathroom

[37:26]

is really mopped thoroughly, but when the bell rings, you drop that. You don't even grasp the good things, let alone good things meaning the beneficial things. You don't even grasp onto those, let alone the ones that are non-beneficial. In practice period, that's what these weeks are about, letting go of our own body and mind and our habitual ways of doing things. Oh, the kitchen's leaving. Thank you, kitchen. Letting go and not grasping onto anything. This is a fresh state of being, and it also can be unsettling, too. So all throughout the day, not just during periods of zazen, but all throughout the day, letting go, not grasping on. So Huangbo says, were you now to practice keeping your minds motionless at all times, whether walking, standing, sitting,

[38:27]

or lying down, concentrating entirely on the goal. Usually we don't use the word goal. But anyway, entirely on the goal of no thought creation. That's this kind of grabbing on and elaborating and adding to things. So the goal of no thought creation, no duality, no reliance on others, and no attachments, just allowing all things to take their course the whole day long as though you were too ill to bother. You know how that is sometimes when you have the flu and you're just, you have no, you're just, the sun comes up and the day changes and so on. And someone brings you tea and you just are too ill to bother with getting involved.

[39:28]

You just, what would that be like to have the whole day be like that where you're just too, that feeling of being, you just can't bother with getting involved and seizing on it and grasping and adding and elaborating. So this is, this is turning the light inward and not involved in thought creation. Mind and objects, suchness of mind and objects. As though you were too ill to bother, unknown to the world, innocent of any urge to be known, innocent of any urge to be known or unknown to others. With your minds like blocks of stone, that mend no holes. And I think we hear this, blocks of stone, and we think, I don't want to be like a block of stone. But in the new translation

[40:29]

of Fukan Zazengi, the promotion of Zazen, it says, totally blocked in resolute, what is it? In resolute stability. Totally blocked in resolute stability. That's this stone that mends no holes. It's just, you just receive whatever arises without being a stone that, ooh, I'm just the right size to go there. Isn't that good? Isn't that perfect? So to be, this is also mind like a wall, which is another instruction for meditation. So this says, like blocks of stone that mend no holes. So if you're like this, then all the dharmas would penetrate your understanding through and through. In a little while, you would find yourself firmly unattached. Thus, for the first time in your lives, you would discover

[41:30]

your reactions to phenomena decreasing because we're so reactive to things, and this kind of turning the light this way, the reactions to things decrease. And ultimately, you would pass beyond the triple world, and people would say that a Buddha had appeared in the world. So, so to practice being too, what would that be like, to practice kind of being too ill to bother, you know? Would anything get done? Would we get the dishes done? So too ill to bother does not mean that we don't respond to whatever is needed. Too ill to bother is a meditation instruction about our usual, habitual way of grasping, grasping at things. Well, thank you very, very much

[42:45]

for coming today. May our intention...

[42:53]

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