nice to be here
i am
am i
a formal practices
rudimentary competitive
how is to be and how it is here on a daily basis and zen center and so i forgot that it was a third of the month
sweet to see here
i found her
decked out with food and so on as he
how is this on a third of the month i forgot about that and it was a beautiful thing to see
i appreciate
the suzuki roshi is saying going back to haiti after a long time but being there and being moved to tears by just the everyday life
you don't notice it when you're in the middle of it that's even bothersome sometimes although i probably nobody here experiences that that way but
personally i found it bothersome once in awhile but
when you come and see it really appreciated and sunday if you're not in the midst of it either looking down upon it from heaven
are living elsewhere in this world
deal appreciated to seeing a daily round practice very nice
tonight i want to talk about case ten of the moment can i've been
lecturing on the move on kinds
so i thought i'd share this case tonight with you
you a solitary and destitute
the case
a monk asked
za tion
saying i am ching srei solitary and destitute
can you fill up my larder
josh allen said venerable way
chinch way said yes earth
sasha and said you have already tasted three cups of the finest wine of genuine and still you say you have not moisten your lips
so that's story and woman's comment goes a chinks way seems humble
but how is he really
sasha has the i to see tell me where and how has changed way drunk his wine
a woman's purse
with the poverty of fontan and the spirit of shown you though he can barely eke out a living
he dares to compete with a rich
so as all of you know the moment khan is forty eight cases are compiled by master milan who as a rinzai or lindzey monk
personally i don't think that much about the different schools of buddhism much less of zen
i've always been interested in all forms of buddhism all the schools of buddhism
and i really feel that there's one school and the buddhist school and that's it
all the various teachings as far as i can tell hang together very well and although there seem to be on the surface contradictions
really there aren't any contradictions
and i find that i can study any kind of buddhist traditions and find different wonderful angles on one seamless teaching that is very clear and very consistent so i'm not much of a one for the school says this that school says that and so on
still though
there are different traditions that more or less maintain different approaches although every teacher and every tradition is different
but anyway you could say given all that that more or less lindsay zen
tends to put a big heavy emphasis
on the experience of oneness the experience of dropping self clinging and merging with the universe
that experience which is a necessary part of any school of buddhism
but it's emphasize really strongly in lindsay school
every school including lindsay school recognises that we have to work on gradual cultivation and little by little improvement we have to work on concentration after work on kindness and compassion we have to work on seeing through and letter
go afflicted emotions on encouraging comments etc etc etc all that we have to do
but in the end
all of it proves unsatisfactory
and they've even counterproductive
if it isn't built on a foundation of insight
it leads to the zero self abandonment
or if not throw us off abandoned at least foundation of a strong confidence in a strong faith in
an aspiration toward
self abandonment
so anyway in the moment con since it's compiled by master model and lng markets stressing this point of self transcendence all the time
but this is a soto corn style on in the lng collection here
ah the soto style which is by comparison usually a subtle dialectical approach
that tends to be resistant to definitions and distinctions fuzzy zen
missed then like suzuki roshi said
so they say soto zen is non dual approach to buddhism non dual approach to send and don't forget a non dual means
a non dual and dual
because if it didn't had only met non dual and a dual than it would be dualistic right
so nando soto zen is non dual and dualistic
in other words
all views all approaches are included within each other
without any ranking or hierarchy among them
so the buddha worlds
the inside worlds and the ordinary everyday world's i really seen as no different
the powerful experience of oneness and self transcendence an ordinary mixed up everyday garden variety in delusion
i'm not really so far apart they're really seem to be coming from one route one source one taste
not exactly the same thing but also not really different
so this kind of talking gets had a real fast
and i apologize for that
but of course in the end the point is not to be hetty or to master a lingo although such a thing could be done
but rather the point is to be able to appreciate
in the radical present moment this of our lived experience
simply the way things actually are
which requires that we are able to see through are many many projections preconceptions about ourselves in the world
so because the coin has the steam and or theme we know it's a soto go and but even if we didn't know that from theme we know it's soto call on because the characters in
corner soto school people that a dead giveaway
the teacher of the con is soutien or so zone and japanese is one of the two founders of the school the other founder being dunked on our toes on but instead of calling it the
toso school of zen because notion came first that's hard to say toso so they put it in reverse chronological order soto
anyway the story begins with the monk who named chinchwad who comes up to our founder social on and says i am solitary and destitute can you fill up my larder can you help me out
i'm a little free with my a version of the translation here and there are many different versions some of them say can you give me arms i'm poor and destitute can you give you arms other ones say i'm poor and destitute please make me rich immediately and but i
to it can you fill my larder
so what is what is he what does the monk saying and what is is how is he coming across
one idea that some commentators on this case say is that he is the monk is expressing despair
and total spiritual poverty is no in the midst of a dark night of the soul struggle
utter darkness even to the point of depression
which is
i'm sorry to tell you those of you were rather new to the practice usual part of any spiritual path sorry but
there's no avoiding these moments
or even well along the way you never know you never know so anyway one interpretation is that this monkeys in that condition approaching the master in their condition
so this kind of despair in the path is actually something really good
sometimes i say to people they come to see me and they tell me that there in total despair and it's hopeless and all that and i'm saying great wonderful keep it up and they often don't like that much but i can't help it because i really feel sometimes that in that condition they're really ripe for awakening
so it's really important to learn how to work with despair and depression and and darkness in in the past not to deny them but in a way to welcome them and learn how to live with them to manage them how to make use of these states never to be surprised by them
or disliked them
to be able to work with your despaired this depression dark knight in that way is probably unnecessary armor for the path for all of us
misery is something of course is natural for all of us to wish to avoid
but an end as we all have discovered i'm sure misery is unavoidable sometimes and it can even be advantageous
without a little misery now and then we might be going around and a self congratulatory frame of mind and thinking how much good frame of my we've been able to accumulate over the years of our practice and how well we're doing and so on which might make us complacent or am i make us want to accumulate
even more
good feeling so that we will be from fully protected in case something should ever go wrong
and then when it does go wrong and a terribly negative state of mind arises were shocked amazed discouraged and our despair is exponentially increased
by our
trying to avoid it
so a certain amount of misery added into the picture now and then helps to prevent that kind of stupidity so it's actually pretty good
when you're miserable it's obvious that ah
attachment to any state of mind is fruitless
especially miserable ones but also good ones in fact you can you can actually tell you know all this misery comes exactly as a consequence of the attachment to the previous good state of mind this becomes clear and so miseries a good teacher that way it inspires renunciation inspires letting go
whoa giving up
being totally hopeless
which in the end is always necessary
so after a while on the path we become kind of sewers of and great appreciators of misery
we see the the virtues of misery and the importance of it
because as soon as misery arises we immediately no ahah
now it's time to bear down and really get com really get focused misery reminds me of that
and then i can make a more steady less boisterous confused kind of effort
even though it's still misery it's not the same kind of misery it's a little different kind of misery
so anyway that's little bit ah
what's the word side avenue there
ah but that's one interpretation of chinks way that he's feeling miserable and that is presenting himself to his teacher i'm in misery to help me out
but i'd actually don't think myself that this is what he's presenting
at all
solitary and destitute the words sound like a difficult or miserable disadvantageous condition but i don't think that it really is an expression of despair but rather an expression of a great peacefulness
i think he's using these words to describe nirvana
the christians have an exp expression that similar to this they say poor in spirit by which they mean not pathetic and deprived but radically simple three
dependent or nothing
alone in some very positive way that lonesome are lonely but alone
of course there is such a thing as loneliness which is a terrible affliction illness of the heart you can feel lonely even when you're in a crowd
but i don't think the monkey is lonely
he is alone he is perfectly alone he is free and this is what he's presenting third session
his achievement he has dropped body and mind he's let go completely and he's asking saturn john okay now what
so
we're getting there are two ways we can look at his question to the teacher one way is to take him quite literally
that he recognizes that in the soto way of practice the non dual dualistic way
nirvana is a stage
because everything is a stage
every moment is the first and last stage
no matter what our spiritual condition or accomplishment
any one of us can go to a teacher if we're lucky enough to encounter one
make our bows
and say
i've been practicing for such and such an amount of time but i'm just beginning here's what i haven't working on please guide me in any of us can at any time i go to a teacher and say that with full seriousness
i been practicing and i'm just beginning
so maybe the market saying this also he could be arrogant he may be saying well i'm finished i've achieved nirvana i'm beyond the beyond what do you say about that
well
i find that they're always many realities operating at the same time simultaneous truth manifesting so i would choose both of those options and say that the monk is probably has both these attitudes as is so often the case in real life you go and ask for some
advice some teaching then when somebody gives you that you find that you really hate it because you already knew and you don't want anybody to tell you he's no you didn't know that the beginning
anyway whatever the case
the monk goes to sow schon
says asked this question and soutien
without responding in an indirect way simply calls him vulnerable
now this calling someone like that it's a very commons and pedagogical technique
it seems like a trick but it really isn't a trick
when you realize that most of our suffering and misperception
which leads to are suffering
comes from the fact that we are so completely and utterly entangled in language and thought that we can't ever get out
when you spend a certain amount of time watching people hurt themselves terribly
it hurt others around them
in serious ways because of this
you do really want to find some way to point a direction outside that box
now the odd thing is that in fact we are already outside that box guess maybe we're confused yes maybe we're in despair may be were violent greedy selfish and so on
and yet at the same time
if we open our eyes
we see beautiful clouds are like we've been seeing lately a sliver of moon with venus in the vicinity
even though aware
angry
our breathing goes on
night and day
despite the fact that we're so much despair we want to die
and are tender a human heart can still be sometimes moved to tears even though
it has been hardened perhaps by lifetimes
of all that has happened to us
so our minds and emotions may be in a terrible snarl
but beneath all of that despite ourselves
existence flows on
and that's where our healing comes in
mr touch in with the breath
the dutch in with the feeling of the body seeing hearing smelling tasting
so quite often as in teachers ignore mixed up questions
to respond to them on their face would only be to get stuck in and like a tar baby so instead the step around those questions and one great way of doing that is just call out to the person venerable
and naturally automatically unintentionally without thinking about it the person says yes
here i am a living breathing response
so this is the answer to all our problems in the end we are called forth by our life
and whether we like it or not we're always here for it we always respond we always dwell within our condition
and we act on it we say yes here i am
in in the bible often in key moments
one of the people in the bible is called on
and it says in hebrew haney knee pain and then it means here i am
as what like and the story of abraham
god calls out the abraham and he says haney here i am and many other times in the bible has said
automatically this response comes up if you're human being and your called you always answer here i am
yes despite everything i am alive i am here
so instead of are complications
religious or material or psychological
we take one step back into the bare facts of our life
simply that we are life joined in that to all that is alive
our body and mind flow with reality and they work
and no matter what kind of state of mind wherein are who we think we are or aren't
we are always expressing ourselves uniquely moment by moment
here i am
so with this sound sean has already pretty much succeeded in demonstrating so in to his disciple
and that's how it is with us to even though we may not be coming forward like chinks way
showing off our nirvana
we don't come forward always with some spiritual wealth
and always wishing for a little bit more
that wish itself and our condition itself
cut free from our linguistic
entanglements
he's already what we have been seeking all along
so the master says you have already tasted three cups of the finest wine of chairman and still you say you have that moisten your lips
some of the translation so you have already tasted three cups of the finest wine and china
but actually says on which is a place in china
famous for one course
milwaukee i guess would be the equivalent
in the united states
earn epithelia i'm thinking a beer but that value
napa valley
anyway the reason that i think it's good to leave it as chinchwad is because joshua is not only a genuine i mean is not only the name of this famous place where are
fine wine is made but it's also the name of a zen teacher who was a precursor of a notion and soutien
in other words steve sort of progenitor of the soto line
so this fine wine must be the fine wine of the non dual fuzzy misty soto practice
the three cups i think is also important because three cup stands for three positions in a dialectic of the none do a way of practice
like the hungarian dialectic in a thesis synthesis thesis antithesis that's hard to say that thief with antithesis synthesis
you can fill in any really any position you want but maybe the one that works best for this particular case is nirvana
samsara and the union and non difference of nevada and samsara which in other words is the emptiness of our phenomenon
so all roads in my and buddhism always take you back to the same place emptiness here we are again
an emptiness though
no way to get away from emptiness
it's really the key to our practice this teaching of emptiness it's really the key to some is in our living
i lately i've been thinking about emptiness as potential
at all things are empty means that all things are in their most fundamental aspect not actual but rather potential
you look up potential in the dictionary it says a capable of growth or change dynamic you know something that's potential is at any moment
ready to manifest but it hasn't manifested the actual is the opposite of potential
so is a kind of funny thing potential it's something real and yet it isn't actually anything soon as it becomes something it's no longer potential
and then another definition of potential and science deserves a contactable term and science and it's means
the work required to bring a unit of electrical charge or mass from an infinitely distant position
to a specific designated point
a lot of work needed to bring something from an infinitely distant position to a specific point
his potential
so that's pretty good a definition for emptiness i think
or as the diamond sutra explains emptiness everything is an illusion a bubble a dreams a mirage
a flash of lightning
we take this ungraspable ever shifting show of potential space-time concept
and we make it into a pathetic little world of separation and then we suffer over it
we made it and then we suffer over it
it's not that we're supposed to be going beyond this world that our senses live in
to be solitary and destitute like the monk and the story abandoning everything is unreal
for a higher class peaceful zen reality
no there isn't any more peaceful reality that we are aspiring to
everything has it really is
is complete
already special extraordinary and unrepeatable
as it actually is is already infinity nothingness
which arrives that
it appears as
in the sky so to speak this moment of our lives
here i am
so the important thing to remember in all this is that things are not what they seem to be
but our experience is subjective always and our thoughts are just that there are thoughts they appear according to our conditioning
they are not
at least in their relative aspects as content thoughts
absolute truth
as we seem to be committed to thinking that they are thoughts are only thought they are manifestations of the absolute truth it's true but not in their literal this and their interest in the fact of they're coming at all
when we see that about our thoughts are projections our moods we can appreciate them and we don't have to get entangled in them and wrapped up in them
and when we're not entangled in our own thoughts and moods and states of mind the world of a sudden appears quite flexible and workable manageable even wonderful
opportunities
potential abounds everywhere
as you all know the usual language to discuss this in soto isn't is the merging of difference in unity and there's a whole complicated system called the five ranks
and there's a whole paragraph of my talk about the five ranks which i think i'll skip
because i never been a big fan of the five ranks as i don't really like it that much in and
and besides that you know
dogan didn't like it either so
that gives me permission in to completely cut into like in it
he felt i think that they're teaching was a little too abstract and he wrote about fascial about this in this show gorgonzola chapter called spring and on and which i recommend to you
because it's mostly an exposition
of the most wonderful of all the
soto zen coins
which are now going to tell you a map you will know this one probably are many of you do this one has to do with the duncan who was once asked by a monk how can you avoid heat and cold
and this was a very important question to me because i hate it when it's really hot in the summer
and i grew up in a place small town and little small world and in my mind i actually it's hard to believe but i actually thought that everywhere in the world is hot in the summer there is no place where it's not hot in the summer so in the summer would come because every place i ever lived was really hot in summer human tears
will you know
so somebody said one day the summer was approaching and i was freaking out and i said where can you go where it's not hot
a friend of mine said eureka california never gets below sixty eight degrees in above sixty eight degrees in the summer and eureka california i thought my god
really
could there be such a place and i went i moved to eureka
so my whole life changed quite a bit because it is anyway this has nothing at all to do with the story but
i'm i guess don't show how can we avoid heat and cold and don't schon
i didn't say go to eureka california he said
why don't you go to a place where there is no heat and cold
hmm
monk said
what do you mean a place where there is no heat or cold and don't shine replied when it's cold the cold finishes you off
when it's hot your totaled by the heat
so that's pretty good
advice right is very clear very practical
how can you escape misery and difficult conditions
well of course you can't
we really can't
there are various uncomfortable circumstances
but an end there's really only one uncomfortable
condition and that is
that we are human beings and from this there is absolutely no escape
at least not the kind of escape you're looking for
the real escape the great escape is not to run away
because running away is just restlessness
after you have the vacation and hot tub and the cuisine and the ski trips and the winter lodge and the summer cabin
and the buddhist practice
and the tight she and sixteen and a yoga and the journaling workshop
then what what we do after that
no the real escape is not away from but into the heart of
that's the place where there is no cold and now he right in a dead mathematical center of cold and heat right in the heart of your restlessness and suffering
there's peace when you can finally bore into the absolute center of cold
there's heat nice and warm and when you can finally bore into the absolute center of hit
it's nice and cool
cold is called but also right in the middle of it it's not cold and heat is the same way
in all conditions life guess
are the same
and this is not something fancy or exotic
it's the nature of time the nature of existence the nature of change the nature of all the moments of our life
in this fast colon speaking about spring and autumn logan quotes a number of poems by difference in masters of the past about this case i'll quote you a few of them that are favorites of mine channeling road with indifference there is one this one this
this is difference
drifting and the human world hundreds and thousands of years again and again you want to depart but cannot
in front of the gate just as before weeds grow
this is a beautiful and profound poem to me which affirms
our ordinary humanness are ordinary confusion as the very endless we seek
i think that one thing about practices that after a while one develops a certain amount of patience
and even appreciation
for one's own and other's shortcomings
we no longer wish that they would be otherwise
instead of trying to eliminate them or rage against them
we have an amused and bemused attitude
the difference
am my egotism my fear of failure and fear of success in fear of dying is nothing other than the great oneness of the universe
and a buddhist heart
of course i'm working all the time to change my confusion and my shoddy conduct
that's my practice but it doesn't have to be something desperate
it can even be something affectionate
anyway it's more effective anyway it's affectionate instead of desperate
another poem or this one by pudong
goes like this where there is no cold or hot
is don't challenge phrase this is the place where many zen people get lost
go for a fire when it's cool and cool yourself when it's hot
in this life you can avoid heat and cold
that's pretty good to her even better
so even though you appreciate the depths that are being pointed to here also you know life is pretty ordinary and you have to be practical and i did move to eureka california and it was a whole lot cooler there
didn't necessarily go away but the air was cooler
so yes by all means take a vacation
jump into the hot tub have some sushi
go to the next machine
and enjoy them
without any illusions
pronunciation is not the poverty that the way claims
in the case real renunciation is wonderful wealth
the larder is already full when the potential of the world is unlocked and released into our lives
we can enjoy what comes a good with the bad
pronunciation is the real avoiding of hot and cold
in this case not the giving up with something that you could have had but you know billy let go of
but seeing truly at everything is potential arriving from an infinitely far distance right here
and so it can never be possessed and limited in any way possession is burdensome tiresome i think
possessions whether their material or emotional or spiritual
are a great weight
but renunciation is real wealth
this is the wine that chinchwad is always drinking whether he knows it or not
master months poem with the poverty of fontanne and the spirit of sheung you though he can barely eke out a living he dares to compete with the rich
so these two as often the case in the poems here these are chinese folk heroes shown you and fontan who obviously one illustrates poverty and the other one is the famous person for greatness of spirit
new poem could be a critical poem about chinch way or it could be an appreciative poem about sasha
who is appreciating everything
and needing nothing
and is free and full spirited
really it's beside the point to call him with your poor
he has absolutely nothing
and yet the whole world belongs to him
what time is this usually and
no
okay thank you that's my talk on case them return and i suspect that this is late enough so i'm sorry no time for discussion
is really wonderful to see all of you and i appreciate
your practice it supports me
so please enjoy it
no
oh well shall we haven't you the advices it's okay so yeah yes
yeah
tickets are available
our partner whatsoever
you resist to right under one of the one wealth
dunno i learned the wrong kind of well as
he could happen
yes that would be something he would say yes

he's gonna be moving across the street to you know this tomorrow morning i think
i've been reading to him her
gertrude stein's the geographical history of america can we will have a great time i recommend this book if you haven't read it pretty much it's got everything in there you need to know
but everything you need to know is in there
it's wondering out loud as well
ah yes no questions excellent
okay
thank you