Can you hear me? We have several different technological problems going on here. One, two. One, two, three, four. Now it's loud. Okay. One, two. I think it's still a hair loud. Okay. Yeah. Right. Well, these are relics. That's what we're going to talk about today. Relics of hair. Okay, thank you. Still a little what? I'm not hearing any feedback, so that's good. Too loud in the back? How about now? Let's vote on it. Okay. Now you've ruined my mood.

[01:16]

Now I'm going to get back into it. You know, the hairs of the Buddha are, these are relics, seriously. I'm going to talk a bit about relics and this poem. In Sri Lanka, I visited the Temple of the Tooth, which is a very famous and very deeply revered place in the city of Kandy, and boy, there were hundreds and hundreds of people filing by the purported tooth of the Buddha, held in a box, that was [...] in a box, and probably more. And then, just recently in Burma, the Shwedagon Pagoda, which is about 340 feet high, contains two hairs of the Buddha.

[02:25]

Now, since he shaved his head, you know, that gives one pause, how big were these hairs, And I was going to bring you, and I forgot, at a meeting I went to last year, they gave every participant, and there were about 300 of us, little plastic cases with relics, Sharira, purportedly of the Buddha. And if all of the relics and hairs and various teeth were added up, you know this would make a Buddha that was probably told in the Empire State Building. So I don't know. At any rate the question that seemed to be on people's minds was incomplete yesterday and then some people talked to me about it is this perplexing question of what's

[03:31]

he reckon with the fact that the Buddha was saying he had a choice to live till the end of this world system? This is quite aside from thoughts that people had about how he was in relation to really the question is, how could he have had a choice? And that's an interesting question, which will have to go unanswered. I think when I was thinking about it last night I realized it's as perplexing a question as perhaps go back to the Gospels the resurrection is you know so you know if we're talking about a man a human with a body how does this work how is it resurrected

[04:45]

And then I was thinking, I was listening to the echo as Ross was reciting it yesterday and the first two lines of the echo in the ceremony is, the Dharma body of the Buddha cannot be seen within duality. For the Dharma body there is no coming or going for it fulfills all things. In the sutra, and in those sutras, and even more in the Mahayana sutra, there's not a distinction made between the Dharma body and his manifesting human body. So the Dharma body cannot be seen within duality, then what is the body that we are seeing? And what is, if this is true for the Buddha,

[05:56]

and we are all embodiments of Buddha nature, then what body is it that I am seeing, if I look at Alexandra, or I look at Matt, or I look at Sue, which body is that? can we actually make a distinction? And also, how much or how little of it am I seeing? And when it comes right down to it, how much or how little of that Dharma body, of my own Dharma body, am I seeing? I think again and again the Buddha was exhorting his followers when he was saying, be a lamp unto yourself, to do this difficult task of seeing your own light, seeing it as completely as you can.

[07:12]

And how do we do that? That's actually, that's I think why we're here this weekend, right? even though we may not know quite clearly that that's the reason why we're here, we may not be able to answer if somebody asks us, but what were you doing this this weekend? Our Dharma body brings us here, our Dharma body knows why we're here. The question of birth and death is of course the perplexing question for all of us and we get scared, understandably. I've been there, I'm sure many of you in this room have been there, touching the fear of one's own death, whether it be imminent or

[08:21]

at some unknown time in the future and touched by the death of those that we love even though in some deep way we comprehend that all things are fabricated and compounded. I think last, about a week or so ago, when I was on the East Coast, I had dinner with... I was playing music at a bar, and one of my oldest musical friends has a new girlfriend or partner. And he said, well, she really wanted to get together and have dinner, because she had been a very close student of Alan Liu.

[09:24]

People know about Alan? Alan Lew was a BCC student. That's where he began. He's a poet and a rabbi at, was it Beth Shalom? Does anyone know? And he was a sort of co-teacher and partner and collaborator with Soketsu Norman Fisher, who also began practicing here. And they were both students of Sojin's for a time and saw that as their route. And Alan, after a career as a, not a career, a job, a time as a bus driver, decided that he was going to go back to school and he became a rabbi. and he was, he combined Zen teaching with Judaism as his friend and fellow poet Norman combined them as well and so they did a lot of co-teaching.

[10:30]

He was a very, a wonderful teacher with a great heart for people and a great heart for society and he died very suddenly about four weeks ago. He was out for a walk and he had been training some rabbis in Baltimore and he just died of a heart attack. So this woman, my friend's friend, we had dinner together and what she asked was, well, what does one do when one's teacher dies? And what came to mind was the following koan, which you probably know. I told her the story and then I, when I got home, I copied it out for her.

[11:33]

This is case 55 in the Blue Cliff record. It's called Dawu's Condolence Call. Dawu was one of the, really one of the early Tang Dynasty masters. He was a, just a very strong teacher and there are other cases involving him. So Dawu and his disciple Qin Yuan went to a house to make a condolence call. when they got there, Chin Yuan hit the coffin and said, alive or dead? Dawu said, I won't say alive and I won't say dead. Yuan said, why won't you say? Dawu said, I won't say. A little later after they had done the service,

[12:38]

they were returning to the temple and Chinyuan said, you're going to have to tell me right away because if you don't tell me I'm going to hit you, which is kind of radical behavior for a student towards a teacher. Dawu said, you may hit me but I won't say and then Chinyuan actually did hit him. After which, when they got back, Dawu suggested that Xinyuan should probably leave the temple for his own safety, even though, you know, you would imagine nobody could see. this exchange, still everything comes out, there are no secrets.

[13:48]

So, later, after Dawu had died, Chen Yuan went to another student who had become a master, another student of Dawu's, and brought up the story and said, well, you know, what do you have to say about this? Xie Shuang said, I won't say alive and I won't say dead. Yuan said, why won't you say? Shuang said, I won't say. I just won't say. And at that moment, Xie Yuan awoke. He came to some awareness. So then the story continues. A little later, Chinyuan took a hoe into the Dharma hall.

[14:53]

a place where they would do their recitations and chanting. And he went back and forth from east to west and from west to east with his hoe. And Xishuang came in and said, what are you doing? Yuan said, I'm looking for relics of our late master. Where else would you look for them? in the dharma hall, which is where the dharma is transmitted and conveyed. Xizhuang said, vast waves spread far and wide, foaming billows flood the sky. What relics of our late master are you looking for? Yvonne's comment in response to that was, this is just where I should apply my effort.

[15:58]

So that's the story. And I thought I would talk about that just a little bit. This is an urgent question for Qin Yuan. It was a question that compelled him to strike the coffin. It was clear that this physical body that was contained in the coffin was not alive. It had died, but alive or dead. it perplexed him, it worried him. I was thinking this morning, for some reason it occurred to me, I have a friend who collected music in Madagascar, and in Madagascar they have this interesting ritual, it's called famadina, or turning of the bones,

[17:19]

So in the wintertime, every year, the families go out to the cemetery and they dig up the bodies. They dig up their ancestors and they unwrap them and they're wrapped in expensive cloth. take measure of what's happened to these compounded things in the previous, in the year that's just come, and then they re-wrap them in fine cloth, and then they take them out, and they parade them all around the village, and they have a big dinner, and the corpse is the guest of honor. because they want to make sure that the ancestors are not uninformed about what happened in the village in the previous year.

[18:28]

And this is still a tradition that lives on there. And I think that one could realistically ask, dead or alive, when they're taking out the corpse. In a sense, I think it's because what they are really caring about is the dharma body. And that whole body is then a relic. So that's one realm of relics. But this is an urgent question and I think that we can also look further if we look at Qin Yuan's question, alive or dead, perhaps he's coming from one place.

[19:35]

But where is Dao Wu answering from? Dao Wu won't say, I think, because he is reluctant to answer the question that he believes Chinyuan is asking. Does that make some sense? He has an entirely different question about what is life and what is birth and what is death. He's coming from a place where, and I think this goes back to, this goes back to the echo that we use. He's coming from the place of understanding that for the Dharma body there is no coming or going.

[20:42]

And if he were to answer, Chinyuan, he would be putting birth and death in a box, which is precisely what he doesn't want to do. He wants Chinyuan to understand how to see has something that cannot be put any place, and there's a poem at the end of this koan. Rabbits and horses have horns. Oxes and rams have no horns. Nary a hair, nary a wisp, like mountains, like peaks.

[21:48]

The golden relics still exist right now. With white foaming waves flooding the skies, where can they be put? There's no place to put them. Even the one who returned to the West with one shoe has lost them." So these lines, the golden relics still exist right now. with white foaming waves flooding the sky, where can they be put? There's no place to put them. The relics of the Buddha, the Dharma body, includes everything. It includes all of us, it includes this room, it includes this planet, It includes everything that is happening at this very moment.

[22:50]

You can't place them anywhere because you can't separate them from what is continuously unfolding. When Chinuan went to Xishuang and asked the question, all the commentaries say that Xishuang's response was fresh. Xishuang wasn't just saying, you know, you don't get this so I'm going to, I'm just going to give you the same answer that Dawu gave. I think the freshness of this response in a sense one way that I'm looking at it is that Qishuang's refusal to answer was out of his understanding that Dawu had given

[24:10]

that it was right there and for him to give an answer would have been to put that woo in a box. So maybe this is a little abstract but I think when I was talking to this woman Sarah and she was saying how do I what do I do when my teacher has passed on there's really nothing to do but to be yourself and to recognize how deeply one has been changed, one has been transformed or affected by one's teacher and I use that word very our parents, our friends, anyone who has influenced us.

[25:22]

Everyone with whom we are in relationship and interaction transforms us in ways that's very difficult for us to see, but absolutely. And that's what I think Chishuang was paying respect for. There's another story which you've all heard many times. That's the kind of the farewell story of another of our ancestors, Dongshan, when he left his teacher, when he left his teacher Yunyan. Yunyan said, as Tungshan was preparing to go, after this separation, it will be hard for us to see each other.

[26:23]

Tungshan understood to some degree and responded correctly. Rather, it will be hard for us not to see each other. And then Tungshan asked Yuenian, after you have completed this life, what shall I say if anyone asks? Can you still recall your master's true face? After a long silence, Yunyan said, just this one is. Just this one is. This puzzled Dongshan, and he didn't really have a response for this, so he set off on his journey. And when he came to a stream, he saw his reflection and was awakened to the meaning of just this one is and then he composed a verse some wonderful verse that I think speaks exactly to both to how we're transformed by all of our teachers

[27:36]

and what responsibility that places upon us to be ourselves. So this verse is, do not see him anywhere else or he will flee from you. Now that I go on alone, I meet him everywhere. He is the same as me, yet I am not he. Only if you can understand this can you manifest suchness. So this is what Suzuki Roshi was getting at when he said, when you are you, Zen is Zen. often I suspect if you're like me you compare yourself for kind of think about yourself in relationship to your teacher.

[28:43]

Fortunately he's not physically in that seat right now so you know I can say this you know I am not he if we hadn't met. I can't imagine, actually, I don't even think I'd be alive. But that goes for others, too. There's both joy and grief in that. I was thinking about relics, I was thinking this morning, my father died about 29 years ago. We did not have a great relationship. It was difficult. And I loved him. And he loved me. But he didn't know, we didn't know how to deal with each other at all.

[29:50]

And there was nothing I could do for him that was right or acceptable. Nothing. except when he died. When he died, then I had to deal with the Dharma body and also I had to deal with the relics. I got there soon after he had died and his body had been shipped off to the mortuary for cremation and there wasn't the, he didn't believe in funerals or rituals of any kind. But we needed to do something. The immediate family and his wife and my sisters. So a relative had a boat. My father was very, was on the water all the time. This was in Florida.

[30:53]

And we went to the mortuary and got the ashes. I don't know, has any of you ever done that? It came in this little cardboard box in a plastic baggie with a twist tie. And I just said, oh, this is kind of tacky, but, you know, it's, yeah, and there was this box that was a little heavy. You know, these kind of chopped up bones. But that's, you know, that was the residue of his physical body. It was precious and it was uncomfortably mundane. And we took it, we took out on a sort of windy morning, we took them out from Miami Beach, out the hall over the outlet. where the inlet where the sea runs into the May and out a couple miles to where the Gulf Stream begins.

[32:01]

And you can see that because the color of the water changes from a kind of greenish blue to a dark indigo. And it was a day of intermittent sun and clouds. I remember, you know, then we had to unpack this box and scatter the ashes, which was my job. It was something that finally something I could do. And I still, with absolute vividness, remember this kind of sound as the ashes joined with the water and as the sun glinted off little particles and specks of white bone as they were they went quickly down through the blue waters.

[33:01]

That is part of the Dharma body that is now indelibly part of who I am and yet I am not he. and yet I see the way I embody the good things and some of the bad things about who he was. So I want to close with, when I wrote to Sarah, the student of Alan Luce, with the whole case, she said, She was very moved by it. And she sent me back this poem, which had been in the last teaching that she had received, that she had been part of, which was only like a month or two ago, with Alan Liu.

[34:09]

And it was from Whitman, from Song of Myself. And it's completely on the same point. The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me. He complains of my gab and my loitering. I, too, am not a bit tamed. I, too, am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me. It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any on the shadowed wilds, it coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air. I shake my white locks at the runaway sun. I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.

[35:17]

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again, look for me under your boot soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, but I shall be good health to you nevertheless and filter and fiber your blood. failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stopped somewhere waiting for you. So if you have some thought or question, Thank you.

[36:52]

We've all, age after age, across all the cultures, across all the world, We have these same concerns, I think. They manifest in different ways. Sometimes we return the relics to the sea. Sometimes we take them out and parade them through the town and sit down and have dinner with them. Sometimes the relics are right here in this room, living and breathing. Well yeah, it's good to study them.

[38:38]

All those ancestors up to the women are in the Denko Roku, the transmission of light, and I think we're just about to have a class in March on the five houses of Zen which cover a bunch of the But I would turn it back to you in a broader way, who are your ancestors? Not just, it's good to know our Zen ancestors, but that's not the entirety of the story. You know, you've got these two, these streams that meet in you. you know this is where I think it's unusual we have we have this biological stream and then we have this spiritual stream and sometimes we have actually we have more than one spiritual stream.

[39:45]

How do they manifest in you and then I was thinking this morning also like well then how is it going to be for my son and daughter who never did know my father or my mother or Lori's father, they know her mother, what continues in them? What form does that keep changing into? Yeah. But as we were talking, I just realized that some of you guys are working with me.

[40:54]

So it is talking about a life of death, and how it is inside the human being, so he's actually alive in their life, in their heart. That's, I mean, that's interesting. I mean, as you're speaking, what I'm realizing is this, I hold them... I really have to take responsibility for their life. in a way that's different than maybe how I feel when they're alive. I don't know. But I think probably each of us does that in a different way and has a different process. But yeah, that's really, I think that's very powerful. Max? I kind of hold the idea of ancestral lineage on two hands.

[42:51]

On one hand, I have a really great reverence for my ancestors, my fathers, and my pathways. How is it that we

[43:55]

It's like, how is it that we take what we do, our activity, our action, seriously, respectfully, without taking ourselves seriously? Without taking these things seriously, things go away. And yet we have to take this, we have to have responsibility for our actions. You know the Buddha, I didn't read this, this whole long section of the sutra yesterday where he talks about how you prepare his body and what you do with it, but he never says you should worship these relics. But then of course immediately after he dies they had to have a whole conference about how to divide them. And they got divided into eight portions and shipped out to these different tribes and groups. But that wasn't actually his instruction. Alexandra?

[45:24]

Yeah. They, we meet to make change. They try to make change and they will only make change so long as we're willing to work with what we're given. Sometimes we resist it. But they're always offering. The offering is, there's just continuous offering. It's, this is the challenge for us. In fact, this is like, what do we do with what's offered? It's not a thing.

[46:40]

Yeah. As soon as you call it a thing, you've got a problem. I know. It's hard to talk about it. Right. You don't acknowledge it. You can dry up and evolve. Right. I like what Dogen, Dogen has a wonderful fascicle, Zinke, just total dynamic working. It's like there's constant activity. There's stillness in the activity and there's activity in the stillness. It's... No. It was something else. it's encountering, you can't get your mind around the dharma body, it's too large, it comes and goes freely, but you meet it in different ways, in different places, you meet aspects of it, your children meet aspects of it.

[48:36]

I met it for a moment, but I wasn't done. That did not resolve all of the difficulties that I had with my father, but it was really, really important. We always have this work that we can do, so long as we're alive. Maybe that's a good place to end for today. It's an interesting stormy day. Thank you. Beings are numberless.

[49:34]

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