Good evening, everyone. Good evening. So we've been talking about stories about suchness from Dongshan, the Chinese founder of our lineage, Sao Dong or Shoto lineage. Tonight I want to talk about his teacher, Yunyan. So Yunyan is the one who said in the story about Dongshan leaving his teacher, when he asked Yunyan, what his reality or dharma or basic teaching was, Yun-Yang paused and said, just this is it. And as I talked about that central story, Dongshan then left and looked and saw his reflection in the stream and said, it now is me, I now am not it. And in that story, there's actually some question. Monk later asked Dongshan, did Yunyan himself know it is or not?

[01:01]

And Dongshan said, if he didn't know it is, how could he have said that? If he did know it is, how could he be willing to say it? So there's questions about Yunyan all through. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about Yunyan's own practice. He was noted as a Zen failure. He didn't get it for a long time. So I want to talk about that a little bit. But then I want to talk about one of the really great stories from Yunyan, about the moon and about being too busy. So it's a very important story for us these days. So a little bit about Yunyan's earlier practice He had a brother named Daowu, and they practiced together with various teachers. And Yuanyuan studied with a couple of the great teachers of the classic period in the 800s.

[02:16]

One of them was Baizhang. He eventually became a student of Yaoshan, who we honor in our lineage. And then later he also studied with Nanshuang. So some of you know these names, it's not important. But Yaosheng studied for 20 years with Baizhang. He said that he was Baizhang's attendant for 20 years and didn't get it. So this is kind of notable because Baizhang is one of the great teachers in all the history of Zen. So his brother Dao persuaded Yunyan to come back and practice with Yaosheng. And Yaoshan asked Yunyan about Baizhang, and Yunyan couldn't really say anything. Once Yaoshan asked Yunyan, what do you do about birth and death right in front of you? And Yunyan responded, there's no birth and no death in front of me. And Yaoshan said, you were with Baizhang for 20 years, and still you have not gotten rid of your commonness.

[03:19]

So this is interesting for him to say that saying there's no birth and death is kind of commonless, but the point is that Jungian was still attached to some view of transcendence beyond birth and death, of getting rid of birth and death, of some ultimate state beyond this and at that point. And anyway, there are various stories about Jungian's failures as a Zen student. One, another time, Baizhang asked Yuanyan, Yaoshan, excuse me, his, eventually his teacher, asked Yuanyan again about Baizhang's teaching, and Yuanyan mentioned, oh, one time Baizhang entered the hall to teach, and he, then he drove away the monks with his staff. And when they were almost out of the room, out of the hall, they called out, oh, monks.

[04:21]

And when they turned around, Baizhang asked, what is it? And Yaoshan heard that and said, why didn't you say that before? Now, finally, thanks to you, I can see Baizhang. So anyway, at that point, Yaoshan understood a little bit and awakened. So, if these stories are kind of opaque and inscrutable to you, don't worry about it. The teacher and the founder of our school, Yun Yan, didn't get it either for a long time. So, you know, we're descended from a very famous Zen failure. And there's other stories about Yun Yan. Then going to study with Nan Chuang, who was another great teacher, in that period, one of the great all-time Zen masters and all that. And also, I'm not getting it. One time, his brother Dao was listening in as... What's this under?

[05:28]

I think this was under when he was studying, when he went back to Yaoshan. And yeah, this was later on. They both went back to Yaoshan. And his brother Dao was listening in, sitting outside the Dog Center, listening to their conversation. And Yun-Yan was so obtuse that Dao was just so heartbroken because he'd been taking his brother around to all these great Zen teachers and he didn't get it. Dawu bit his finger so hard it bled. Anyway, these are some stories, a little bit of the stories about how Yunyuan was a great set failure. And in the book, this is it, it goes into more detail about it. They're kind of complicated, some of the stories, but the point is that he had a reputation for just, you know, you get it. And that's okay, because eventually he became the teacher of Dongshan.

[06:32]

who wrote the Precious Mary Samadhi, which ends sometimes, and who's the founder of her school. But, you know, I think Yunyan was actually really great. And there's a number of teaching stories, or koans, between Yunyan and his brother Dauro. So the one I want to talk about tonight is one of those. And, you know, I feel like this is a very... relevant, important story for us in our time, in our busy world. Anyway, the story goes like this. One time, Yun-Yang was out in the monastery sweeping the grounds. And this is a common activity for monks cleaning the temple. We usually do this on Sundays, sweeping and cleaning the temple. And Da Wu came by and saw Yun Yan, and he said, too busy.

[07:36]

And Yun Yan said, you should know there's one who isn't busy. And Da Wu said, do you mean there's a second moon? And Yun Yan held out his broom and said, which moon is this? So that's the whole story. So I want to talk about that story tonight. We'll have some time for discussion. So again, I think knowing the people in this room now, many of you often feel like you're too busy. Even the ones who've retired sometimes are too busy. And sweeping the ground feels kind of like, gee, that would be a nice pleasant kind of pastoral activity, going to some temple and sweeping the ground. It doesn't feel like busyness to us. But anyway, all of you have your own version of being too busy. Or most of you. I won't speak for everyone.

[08:39]

I know I do. And Dabu, who in stories seems to be Yunyan's older brother, is kind of always kind of pushing him. I say, too busy. So some of you, I might have said this during Zazen, but I didn't. Some of you might have been too busy during Zazen, figuring out all your to-do lists and all of that. And of course, we say, don't try and get rid of your thoughts and feelings. It's OK. But can you find this space that beneath that, beneath your busyness, within your busyness, This is the issue. What is the relationship of your busyness to what Yun-Yan said to his brother? You should know there's one who's not busy. So, you know, when we come and sit here, sometimes we sit for a day, and some of you may have positions, hitting bells or doing other things in this machine.

[09:44]

You know, it's really a time to... And even coming here on Monday night, just sitting for a period, there's a time to start to know the one who's not busy. And it actually helps in our busy life to know this one who's not busy. So Yanyan said that, and I said, do you mean there's a second moon? So this is a really important question. Is the one who's not busy separate from the one who's busy sweeping the temple or doing whatever else you think, you know, working at your computer or whatever else you think you have to do while you're busy? Is there a second moon? Is there a second reality? And Yuen Yung did this, to me, amazing thing. He didn't answer one way or another.

[10:46]

He just said, that is Bruce, and which moon is this? So there are many aspects to this story, including what is the moon? And where do we see our fullness? So the moon in Buddhism and in East Asian imagery is kind of this, when they say the moon, they mean the whole moon, the full moon. this big round room. So, when was the last full moon? Easter. Okay. So is that moon waxing or waning now? See, we don't know because we're too busy on our busy streets. It's waxing and waning. Okay. It's finished waxing and it's starting to wane. Okay. So, People in Asia traditionally, and still, they know when the full moon is. Anyway, and I don't always. But, which moon is this?

[11:46]

So, the point is, the Daoist concern was that, that Yunyan was making a reality of being not busy that was somewhere else, separate. Like, from his situation right there, like there were two realities. And we might see the primary work of Yunyan and of Dongshan, and of our tradition, as the full integration of awareness of underlying suchness, or wholeness, with its compassionate expression, right in the busyness, in the midst of the world. How do we see those fitting together? So this is a case in the Book of Serenity, and the commentator says, Yunyan and Zhaowu illustrating the active conditions of the dongshan, or sotok, sadhana progression, the one who is not busy need not be passive and dormant.

[12:53]

So being not busy doesn't mean just kind of sleeping. You know, you might do that. It's okay to sleep. But one song says, as you eat, boil tea, sew, sweep, or we could say all the other things that we do in our time, you should recognize the one who's not busy. Then you will realize the union of mundane reality and enlightened reality. In the Dongshan progression, this is called simultaneous inclusion, naturally not wasting any time. So my teacher was asked, what does it mean to not waste time? So we just chanted the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, which ends with Do not pass your time in vain, or don't waste time. And when we asked that, Liv said that we're wasting time whenever we don't know that there is one who's not busy. So how do we know the one who's not busy? How do we... Not just when we're sitting on a cushion, although there too.

[13:58]

And is this a separate moon? So this question of which moon is this, or how can you say that there's some other moon that's not busy, as opposed to sweeping the ground, that Yunyao was pointing to, is a really interesting question. And of course, in these stories, there's both a literal and a metaphoric meaning in everything that's said. So they're talking about sweeping the ground and talking about not being busy, but they're also talking about wholeness, enlightenment, reality, suchness. So when Yon Yon held out his broom and said, which moon is this? Well, Dao first said, if so, there's a second moon. One song, the commentator in the Book of Serenity says, only two. There's hundreds, thousands, myriads.

[15:01]

So when we are willing to enter into the world and not just stay in some realm of being not busy that's apart from your tasks and sweeping the ground, then we see how these things come together. It's possible to also see that when we enter into all the business of the world, and all the innumerable activities, that our lives can become fragmented. I think that's very easy for us to see this part of my life, and this part of my life, and that part of my work, and my meditation, and relationships, and going to the movies, or whatever. All the different things we do, we feel like our life is fragmented. I think that's a common ailment that people So, how many moons are there? So, there's a Surat Dhamma Samadhi Sutra in which Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, is sitting on our altar on a lion.

[16:17]

He said, like the second moon, who will say it is the moon, who will deny it? For Manjushri, only one moon is real. So there's only one moon for Manjushri. In between, there's actually nothing that is or is not the moon. So this has to do with the harmony of difference and sameness also. Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom or insight who sees oneness. There's only one moon. It's all one moon. And, you know, that's one way of hearing Yunyan's response. He's denying that there's a second moon when Dawu asks him. You can hear it that way, that there's only one moon. That's the side of wisdom. That's the side of insight or sameness. But part of the story is that we do go out and sweep the grounds. We do take care of many different activities in the world. And we feel, we may well feel, like we're too busy. So Gary Snyder, whose great ancestor says, in America,

[17:25]

Zen practice comes down to two things, Zazen and sweeping the temple. And it's up to us to see how wide the walls of our temple are. So, you know, we can try and clean the temple of, you know, climate damage and racism in America. You know, there's many, many things to work on. So, what is this moon? Is there one moon? Are there two moons? Are there 10,000 moons? There's another story about Dao Wu and Yun Yang, which gets to another part of this. So there's the story about being too busy. There's this line about, you should know there's one who's not busy. And then there's this question about, what is our reality? And there's the full moon, and there's sometimes the crescent moon. This has to do with seeing wholeness, seeing fullness, seeing suchness right now.

[18:29]

This. So as we're sitting facing the wall, facing ourselves, there's just this. And yet, we get up and we're going to go and have tea and cookies. Thank you, Jess. We've got to go out into our world and go in various directions You know, get in our cars and go to the CTA or whatever. Some of us here can walk home, that's great. What happens when we go out into beyond the one who's not busy and into the various activities of the world? So, one way to talk about this is in terms of wholeness and partiality. And this also relates to sameness and indifference. and the harmony of sameness and difference. And so there's another story that includes Yunyan and Daorou.

[19:30]

This is also a commentary in a case in the Book of Serenity Poem Collection. And in Hongzhi's verse commentary, he says, vaguely like the moon through ivy, a crescent at that, talking about something that's partial. In Asia, still, they go out and look at the moon. It's a full moon. They have parties and go out and sit and drink and look at the moon and write poetry, whatever. But that's when the moon is full. There's a story that comes up in that poem case about Let's see, this is a time when two Zen teachers were looking at the moon. One of them was Yangshan, who was a student of Guishan, a great teacher.

[20:35]

And he was with a teacher named Shandao, who was actually a Dharma brother of Yunyan's final teacher, Yaoshan. So don't worry about all these names. But they were out there looking at the moon. And Yangshan asked, when the moon is a crescent, where does the round shape go? And when it's full, where does the crescent shape go? So this is a question about the moon, but it's also a question about sameness and difference and their harmony, and the one who's not busy, and the fullness of that. So when the moon is a crescent, where does the round shape go? When we're caught in partiality and in busyness and in illusions, where does wholeness, where does suchness go? When it's full, where does the crescent shape go? So this is an interesting question.

[21:39]

I mean, it seems like a silly question in a certain way. But there are aspects of this. Shanto's response was, when it's a crescent, the round shape is concealed. When it's full, the crescent shape remains. So he's sort of partial to partiality. He sees the crescent no matter what's going on. He sees the incompleteness. We can see that way. We can see that we're incomplete. We can see all the problems of the world and of ourselves. And that was sort of Shanda's position. Delusion is always there, lurking, even in the fullness of the moment. Even when we're not busy, we can get suddenly distracted. So that's one response. But Dao and Yongyan heard about this, and they have responses too. So Daowu's comment was, when it's a crescent, yet it's not a crescent. When it's full, it's still not round.

[22:40]

So Daowu's kind of subtle. He sees that the way we see things isn't the whole story. When we think we're incomplete, there's something more. When we think we are complete, that's not it either. Dao is emphasizing emptiness, the conditioned illusory nature of both enlightenment and of delusion. Neither enlightenment nor delusion is complete. Yunnan, on the other hand, had another response. He said, when it's a crescent, the round shape remains. When it's full, the crescent shape does not exist. So this is Domshat's teacher, the one who had been in this great Zen building, but who became the teacher of the founder of our lineage. And he said, when it's a crescent, the round shape remains. So you can see that. If you go out and look at the crescent moon, you can sort of see the outline of a full round moon, actually. And maybe when you're too busy, you can see when there's not busy.

[23:46]

And when you really see that, when it's full, when you really see not busy, there's no crescent, there's no partiality. Anyway, those are a couple of different positions about this. So these stories, you know, the stories about Dongshan, the stories about Yunyan, we're studying them now here in Chicago, in the, what is this? Okay, so this story has been passed on, and there's a recurrence of this story. Dogen is the founder who started Sato Zen. He brought this tradition and all these stories to Japan. A few generations after him was a teacher named Keizan. the same name as our friend who's taking care of our affiliate Sangha in Albuquerque.

[24:49]

And Keizan was a great teacher, considered the second founder of Soto Zen. And one time, just like Yangshan and Shandao, he was out looking at the moon with his student, Gassan. And Keizan asked him, do you know that there are two moons? And Gassan was perplexed and said, no, he didn't. And Keizan said, if you don't know that there are two moons, you cannot be a successor of the Septuagint. And Gassan was perplexed, and the story goes that he went and sat with great determination like an iron pole for years, before finally realizing that there are two moons. So here the story changes completely when he gets to Japan. Instead of there's one moon, there's two moons. One way to hear that story is that Kezan is emphasizing, clarifying, that the one who is not busy must also know that there's one who is busy.

[25:51]

So, here we are. Not busy, busy. You should know there's one who's not busy. And yet, we still have to sweep the temple. We still have to take care of our world. So, the point of these stories is not to figure out some answer or a perfect resolution of them, but to be with them and allow them to be in us and to use them as ways of looking at our own practice. So, comments, questions? Do you know there's one who's not busy? Which moon is this, anyone? The shadiness of that word, one, are interesting. It could refer to one being, or it could refer to one facet of a person, whether cognitive, emotional, spiritual, or something.

[27:04]

Or one part of a person's attention, or something. Well, that's where you get the many moons. Is there one who knows there's not busy who's just one part of Ben, or is there one sitting right under your cushion, who totally knows one who's not busy? Like, Edema, word-wise, is there a shading to the languages that are translated to English with that word, one, that gives subtlety to that concept? Well, it's just the character one. We actually have it right outside this door on the wall here, because Tanahashi, when he was here, he also did that one-stroke mountain, but he did this. The character one is just like this. It's the first character that all Chinese and Japanese calligraphy students or grade school students spend time calligraphing, one.

[28:08]

And so you can look at it. It's right out here. And it just means one. However, If we think of the harmony of difference and sameness, is the one just the sameness? Is the one the harmony of them? Going back to what Wansong was saying about including both sides, how do we find... I don't think this is a question of linguistics or etymology. It's how do we find that one within us? And the great American poet Walt Whitman said, I am vast, I contain multitudes. I am vast, I contain multitudes, Walt Whitman said. So, yeah, so there's one, but there's also many. How do those relate? Other comments or responses? Kyoshin, do you know there's one who's not busy?

[29:09]

I was just thinking about a conversation I had today with a person who's quite smart and quite interested in Soto Zen and has been practicing for three months or something. And is worried because she doesn't understand all the koans yet. So I was thinking, I was thinking about a way to talk to her about not worrying about not understanding the koans yet. They're not something to understand. Maybe they're something to stand under, or sit under. So I thought I might report on your talk tonight. I understand you're feeling unsettled because... I mean, it's helpful for you to say, he's a Zen teacher.

[30:16]

Yeah. You know, he's a teacher of the Shantara Formation. Yep. So that might reassure her. I think Dave has something to say. Okay. I'm kind of perplexed because having studied calligraphy, you know, you always want to get the perfect line, the perfect balance. And part of the conflict I have sometimes, and it was very good for me yesterday at the committed practice period, style, how he puts it down and then a line and it just ends infinitely.

[31:29]

It trickles off. That's the point of how it's striving for perfection, which seems in contrast to... Kaz Tanahashi is a world-renowned great calligrapher. If you look at that one out there, From some point of view, from calligraphy mastery, you might say it's perfect. But it's not perfect. It sort of moves around. So I would say, maybe Japanese calligraphy teachers ask their students to get it perfectly, but what they're trying to get perfectly is a kind of imperfection. Imperfection. So one of the biggest obstacles to Zen practice is aiming for perfection. It's not about that. It's not about getting it right.

[32:31]

It's not about being perfect. And you've probably, many of you have heard me say my favorite koan, at least my favorite American koan is from a great American yogi who said, if the rope were perfect, it wouldn't be. So... You know, I could call on any one of you. As a jazz musician, Michael, you know that it's not about some idea of perfection. It's about the flow and the synergy of the different musicians. It's alive, right? Yeah. How is perfection for you in terms of your music? Or is it imperfection? I've only probably been lucky enough to feel that a few times and there's a moment where after you've spent years and hours practicing doing something, you can be in a moment with a group

[33:40]

They're very... It wouldn't take you long to find mistakes, you know, real wrong notes and fingers have slipped and things have been played at the wrong time. But even being still, there's no way in the world that you would go back and fix that with a computer every week. a lot of it. I'd be dead, yeah. A lot of the way shorter stuff is some of the stuff that I really love. Sometimes he goes up high in a saxophone and plays and it's all about the tune. ability or something, you know?

[35:12]

Yeah. Yeah, it's the process or it's the experience or something. And then, Wayne Shorter actually says about his music, and he, unlike maybe what highly produced pop music is like, the stuff that he puts out on record, He'll play that again and again at concerts. So yeah, so this is about kind of being alive and allowing, as you said, the anguish and the feeling and our awareness of suffering to be part of the wholeness, part of the one who's not busy.

[36:31]

It's not about being perfect. It's about, here we are, just this. So wholeness and perfection. We're almost out of time, but if there's one more comment or question, anyone? Bill? I have two very quick questions. Is this the beginning of using sweeping as a metaphor in Buddhism or in Chinese thought? Do you happen to know? I could make some sweeping generalization. But no, I think there were probably various Taoist sages before Buddhism came to China. Probably Zhuangzi did some sweeping here and there. So no, I don't really know. I mean, I think there may be stories about sweeping before this.

[37:32]

In fact, I'm pretty sure there are. I can't remember the other questions. That's perfect.

[37:40]

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