Good morning. Can you hear me well? Good. I was going to ask you, how's your zazen going, but I was reminded of the first sentence from a lecture that's in Not Always So versus a Guru. She said, how do you like your zazen? I think it may be better to ask, how do you like brown rice? Zazen is too big a topic. So, of course, that was back when everybody was on a big food trip at Tassajara and into Zen macrobiotics and all kinds of things. And it seemed like food, brown rice was the, you know, the direct path to enlightenment, as far as we could tell. Seemed like we ate it all the time. So... Speaking of food trips, Suzuki Rishi was not, I mean, he ate everything we gave him, and he didn't like brown rice too much because it was too hard for him to chew.

[01:48]

His teeth weren't that great, but he carried on with us. But I remember on one trip, one of his students was major into vegan stuff or all this macrobiotic stuff, and they had to stop for lunch because Suzuki Rishi was hungry, and they found some local cafe and walked in and There was just nothing on the menu this guy could eat, so I think he finally decided there was this cheese sandwich that would be okay, so he ordered the cheese sandwich, and Szugarish ordered a big hamburger. And the food came, and Szugarish looked at the hamburger and said, I don't like this, and pushed it over to him and traded him for his cheese sandwich. I thought that was a great lesson. I just remembered it. Anyway. I wanted to get in this morning right away to this koan, because the koan that was prescribed for this morning is a really wonderful koan. And so we'll get into it.

[02:50]

This koan is called Nonsense People in a Dream. And I was reading a comment by Hakuin on this particular poem. And Hakuin said, It is truly the gate of the Tiger Cave of the Blue Cliff Record. Difficult to get through. If you genuinely penetrate it, then the 1,700 koans are giant cookies. So if you want to just whiz past the other 1,700 koans, just go for this one. The rest will be little cookies for you. So here it is. I'm going to use Suzuki Hiroshi's... presentation that comes from Shaw in his book. So this was like, you know, before the Cleary's Blue Cliff Record. So this is the pointer. When complete liberation from the cord of desire takes place, and when there is a perfect cessation of effort motivated by wrong desires, I'll read that again.

[04:01]

When there is a perfect sensation... cessation of effort that's motivated by wrong desires. Then even from an iron tree, blossoms might open out. Is this so? Is this so? Even a very artful or clever boy may make a mistake because of his cleverness. Even if one's skill is tactful enough for free activity in seven vertical and eight horizontals, one will still be led by the nose. The fault? Ponder the following. So that was the pointer. Well, that seems pretty straightforward. You just have to have complete liberation from the court of desire. I think Buddha was the first one that brought forward that idea related to suffering. So here's the koan. And somehow the way Shah does all these koans in his book is he always starts with, attention, exclamation part.

[05:10]

So are you all paying attention? Attention. The official Riku, while conversing with Nansen, said, quote, Choho said, heaven and earth and I are of the same root. All things and I are of one substance. Isn't this a wonderful statement? Isn't it? Wonderful statement. Very good Buddhist statement. Nansen called to the official, called the official to him, pointed to a flower in the frog garden and said, the people of this time who see this one flower are like people in a dream. The people of this time who see this one flower are like people in a dream. Okay. That's why it's titled Nonsense People in a Dream. So just to go through some of the characters in this play.

[06:13]

So Rico lived from 764 to 834. He was a high official of the Tang government in China. He was a disciple of Nansen Fugen. Cho Ho was a disciple of the famous Kumajara, Kumrajiva. who came to Chongzhan in 401 and translated many Mahayana sutras. Cho Ho was one of the four philosophers mentioned in connection with Kumajira, in connection with Kumarajiva. And Nansen was a disciple of Basso. So that's from the introduction by Shah. So Cho Ho was an important part of the transmission of the Mahayana into the Chinese culture. which was difficult and complex to do, as the emptiness teachings are not easy and the language in Chinese was so different from India. So this was early transferring, transmitting the Mahayana scriptures to China, and Choho was an important part of that transmission.

[07:27]

And this line that was quoted up here as part of one of his famous four books that he wrote. So these are the three players here, Nansen, Riko, and Master Choho. So Nansen, as I stated before, was one of the great disciples of Basu or Matsu, and he was a teacher of Joujo. So you would remember him from wonderful case 19, in the Mumangkang, where Nansen is called, ordinary mind is the way. Zhaozhou asked Nansen, what is the way? Nansen said, ordinary mind is the way. Zhaozhou said, should I try to direct myself toward it? And Nansen said, if you try to direct yourself, you betray your own practice. Zhaozhou said, how can I know the way if I don't direct myself?

[08:30]

And Nansen said, the way is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine way, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation? With these words, Jajo had sudden realization. And then though Jajo had realization, he could confirm it only after another 30 years of practice. So how many people are familiar with this koan? Please. I mean, surely more than half of the people in this room know this koan, right? Maybe not. Well, it's beautiful. I've lectured on this koan here. I've lectured on it in Austin and in Green Gulch. This is one of my favorite koans. Isn't it great? A young student

[09:32]

Zhao Zhou, at age 23 or 5, after being in the monastery for three or four years, because he came and met Nansen early in his life, says, wait a minute, what's the way? What's going on here? Tell me, what is the way of practice? What is it? And Nansen's answer is, ordinary mind is the way. Ordinary mind. Your everyday mind, the mind that is going on right now in your head, in your body, that is the way. And you go, well, that's a relief. I don't have to go anywhere to find the way. It's right here in my head. Excellent. Oh, wait a minute. This crazy mind, this monkey mind that's driving me crazy and causing all the suffering, that's the way? That can't possibly be the way. That's why I came to Zen Center and said this Sashin was to get rid of all my suffering mind. So I'm confused.

[10:33]

So Nan said, so Jao Joe said, I don't know. This may be some mind that I'm not familiar with. How do I direct myself towards it? And then Nan Juan said, if you try to direct yourself, you will betray your own practice. So this ordinary mind that's with you, because if you try to direct it, that's some goal-seeking, thinking part of your mind that's going to go get something good. And that will betray your practice. So Zhao just said, okay, well, I got to give up that part. So how can I know the way if I don't direct myself? Nanshuan said, the way is not subject to knowing or not knowing. It's not in that realm. Knowing is delusion, not knowing is blankness. If you think you know something, you're deluded. If you think you don't know anything, you're just stupid.

[11:36]

So in between there somewhere. If you truly reach the genuine way, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. That's the mind of the ordinary mind, as vast and boundless as outer space. which cannot be discussed at the level of negative or affirmation, pluses and minuses, good and bad. So anyway, that's not the Cohen we're going to talk about today, but it's a beautiful Cohen. But since some of you weren't familiar with it, I thought I would just sort of like flash it by you there. So back to our real koan. So the official Riku, while conversing with Nansen, and you can see that not, by the way, I just wanted to mention it. So after this event, early training with Zhaozhou, Zhaozhou stayed with Nansen until he died, which was 40 years.

[12:40]

So Nansen came when he was young, stayed with his teacher for 40 years. Zhaozhou stayed with Nansen for 40 years. Then he went on pilgrimage for another 20 years, and then he founded one of the great training temples in China. quote unquote, lived to 120. And there's probably more koans in the three books, the Book of Serenity and the Book of Record and the Mumakon by Jiaojo than anybody else. So Nansen was quite a good teacher. So anyway, the official Riku, while conversing with Nansen, said, Choho said, heaven and earth and I are of the same root. All things and I are of one substance. Isn't this a wonderful statement? And then Nansen called the official to him, pointed the flower in the frog garden and said, the people of this time who see this one flower are like people in a dream. So here's Suzuki Roshi's commentary on it. And there really were only two or three paragraphs that Suzuki Roshi did on it.

[13:41]

So I'm going to just read it because it's pretty good. Or at least this is one way to look at it. Choho's famous statement in his last work, Heaven and Earth and I are the same root. All things and I are of one substance is wonderful. It's a wonderful statement. Isn't that true? Heaven and earth and I are of the same root. Heaven, earth, you, me, we're all of the same root. What is that same root? Well, one answer would be we're all just being here. We're all just part of this being, existing reality that's happening, that's unfolding here. All things and I are of one substance. We're all made of this one substance, which is whatever this is that's going on.

[14:42]

We were physicists. We'd say, well, is it energy? Is it matter? Is it light? Is it maybe all three of them? What is that one substance that we're all made of? So, excellent statement. You'd call me almost a basic statement of oneness from Buddhism. But Sugerashi goes on, it's wonderful when it is not applied to Riku's own attached view of the oneness of all things being in the realm of the explicable. So Riku is... too attached to this idea of oneness, this idea of oneness, thinking that what I've just described, reality, the oneness of everything, the one root of everything, is actually something that we can understand with our mind and can be explained by words. Can't be done. The absolute is not explicable, but Rico is attached to it.

[15:45]

So Suzuki Risho says, as long as Rico clings to the idea of oneness, he is said to still be making an erroneous effort motivated by wrong desires or craving. This attachment will lead to disappointment, even though the idea of oneness is not wrong. So we know the second noble truth, the cause of suffering is desire or craving. You think you can get rid of desire, but you can't. But anyway, Rico is desiring this oneness. He's craving it. He's attached to it. And that is what's going to lead to a disappointment, even though the idea itself is not bad. So I could give a lecture here about picking and choosing a famous koan about desire and picking and choosing another. But I can't because I'm supposed to be giving a lecture on this thing. So I'll just sort of wave my hand at desire.

[16:47]

So we desire things. We crave things. That's what human beings do. And Buddha has told us that craving is the cause of our suffering. So when we're a new student, we immediately think, well, I'm just going to get rid of all that craving. I'm just going to quit desiring things. And that lasts for about, I don't know, maybe a day, maybe an hour. Until you realize it's just impossible. You know, that is just built into who I am. And so the problem is not so much desire. In fact, craving desire is kind of the driving force of our life. But the question is, it's not the desire itself. It's what we're focused on. And normally we focus on our personal self-fulfillment. And that's what eventually causes anxiety. our suffering because it will never be able to be fulfilled. That desire cannot actually be fulfilled. But if we widen the scope of desire, if we widen the scope of desire to be the desire of, let's say, a bodhisattva, then that desire is directed in the right way.

[17:59]

In the pointer, which we'll get to later. Oh, he says it here. He says, Riko is making an erroneous effort motivated by wrong desires. So wrong desires. Desires related to your own selfish desires, self-fulfillment desires. So Tsukirishu goes on and says, Riku should try to know why he clings to a particular idea, and he should try to follow the way to attaining single-mindedness free from points of view. I love that. Single-mindedness free from points of view. Usually when we're single-minded, we have one particular point of view that we're aiming at.

[19:01]

But he's saying we should attain single-mindedness free from points of view. This effort is necessary if he is to have full appreciation of reality. Because Rico and others seek for temporal satisfactions from worldly viewpoint, clinging to their own standpoints, and do not follow the correct way of practicing zazen with perseverance. We should definitely practice zazen with perseverance. This is day six of a seshin, so your concentration is excellent now. You can... practice zazen with perseverance. They cannot see things as they are. So Nansen pointed at a flower and said, people of this time who see this flower are like people in dreams. So this free from points of view is a pretty standard comment in Zen. And Sikiroshi wrote an entire chapter on it called Believing in Nothing, which I'll read some of.

[20:06]

He said, I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary to believe in nothing. Do you get that? Believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color, something which exists before all forms and colors appear. This is very important. No matter what God or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on self-centered ideas. You strive for perfect faith in order to save yourself, but it will take time to attain such perfect faith. You will be involved in idealistic practice and constantly seeking to actualize your ideal. You will have no time for composure. But if you are always prepared for accepting everything we see as something appearing from nothing, we would say emptiness, knowing there is some reason why the phenomenal existence of such and such form and color appear, then at that moment you will have perfect composure.

[21:13]

So it's so easy for us to get caught up in any idea we have about our practice, and that idea we have about our practice will cause us problems. So I'm sure that we'll be trying hard on our last full day here to keep our practice as good as it can be. But if you notice that you're criticizing yourself for your practice, you're being too idealistic. You've got some idea about what your practice should be and you're, Suzuki Roshi would say, being too idealistic about it. So finally, we're gonna get to the core of this koan. Nansen pointed at a flower and said, people of this time who see this flower are like people in a dream. So I was kind of wondering why Siddhartha didn't comment on that sentence since almost every other common, you know, lots of commentary on this koan and a lot of it focuses on this.

[22:25]

What does it mean? People of this time who see this fire are like people in a dream. I raise the question, are you walking in a dream? Are you living in a dream? Are you awake? This is a common thing people say sometimes, don't they? So I was thinking about it. I was thinking, well, what do I know about dreaming? You know, generally dreaming, what you do when we go to sleep at night. so i thought well i should try to be smart about that so i went to google looked up dreaming and after about 20 minutes i was totally confused i don't think anybody really knows what's going on when we're dreaming there's lots of scientific studies the mind is organizing the past activity it's had during its waking life storing some of it memory doing very other things trying to rationalize it doing all this but of course whenever i'm dreaming there's pretty wild kind of strange things are happening sometimes i'm flying sometimes i'm in this house and sometimes then all of it i'm some other country i can't figure out who i'm with i think somewhere i read this but it's all sort of some projection of your own self you know this is a whole story your mind makes up that you live in when you're dreaming so let's just sort of

[23:48]

pretend that that's what's going on and admit maybe 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 years from now, somebody will give us a definitive understanding of what's going on when we're dreaming. So then the question is, is there something similar going on when we're walking around awake? There's an analogy being made in this koan about when you're awake, you're in a dream state of some sort. So first of all, I was just trying to think about all the ways when I'm awake that I don't notice the flower. I don't notice it because maybe I'm thinking about some project I'm in. Maybe I'm writing the lecture for today and I don't notice the flower that's sitting on my altar. I could be daydreaming about something. I'm sure some of you guys are doing a little bit of daydreaming about food or movies or sex or pickleball or whatever it is that you're... One of my students is so consumed with pickleball. Every time I have Doka-san with him, I'm hearing the latest events around his pickleball.

[24:55]

Then he got an injury, a major setback in the pickleball playing. Anyway, could be daydreaming about that. You could be ruminating about somebody that disrespected you. You passed somebody in the hallway. They didn't bow. They're supposed to bow to you. Maybe he doesn't like me. He bumped into me when I was in the food serving line. What's going on there? You could be in the grips of some complex left over from your childhood. Some kind of compulsive thinking going on. Repetitive patterns. We're just basically lost in our mind. That's a lot of things that happen. What I would call... The normal, understandable distractions. But this lost in a dream idea has a little bit more of an idea like, if we're going to make the analogy with when you're dreaming at night, like you're actually creating the world you're living in with your mind. You know, you're...

[25:57]

your mind projects out and creates the world. We know that there's certain ways we have a feeling of that. Like when you're feeling, when you have a certain mood, do you realize that the whole world has that mood? I mean, you just plant that, paint that mood on the whole world. Or as examples from a certain psychology I studied, you know, talks about pathogenic beliefs left over from your childhood. So if you... If you notice that your father was kind of mean to you whenever you didn't do things exactly right, and he would kind of punish you either verbally or kind of something. And before he did it each time, he sort of raised his eyebrow. So you got pretty sensitive to that, and if he raised his eyebrow, you would be pretty careful and kind of get very defensive. 20 years later, you're working in an office, somebody under some boss, and the boss comes by and raises his eyebrow, and you get very defensive, right?

[27:01]

Because you've learned that that is a signal. But it turns out this boss just raises his eyebrows when he's about to give you a compliment and offer you a raise. So you've projected on the present moment something from the past. You've created a world where if somebody raises their eyebrow, that means they're going to punish you. and and transference works that way a lot too i had a student who i was just having a conversation with and she got very defensive and criticized me about everything and i said well what was that about and we all of a sudden realized that i had made a statement similar to the way her father made a statement and when her father made that statement she always got mad at him because he was pushing her around and trying to make her do things she didn't want to do so so we know this is the way the world is we're planting our vision of the world, our way of reacting to the world, we're actually creating a world we're living in. That's what's called being in a dream. Does that make sense? I kind of got the idea here.

[28:03]

So this Cohen is saying maybe we could not walk around in the dream world so much because if everybody's walking around in their own dream world, how can anybody meet anybody else? So maybe we should stop This dream world production. How do we do it? How do you pull yourself out of this amazing story you've built? So. This is the suggestion for David Bezos. And I'm going to talk about that. But also psychotherapy can be helpful, especially if you want to get rid of some of your pathogenic beliefs from your childhood. Drugs can be useful if you're a manic depressive or bipolar, you know, so there's lots of things that can help. But today we're going to talk about Zazen. And I'm going to focus on Dogen's teaching on the mind, which is his like only real instruction about what to do with the mind that was in the Phucan Zazengi, which was think.

[29:20]

of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the essential art of zazen. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. Well, that's clear enough, right? Or not. Or maybe that's why Dogen is a great teacher and it takes us years to figure out what he's talking about. But actually, It's not so complicated. It's an instruction for letting go of this grasping mind, this mind that is creating this story, and you're all creating stories as you're sitting zazen, stories complete with all kinds of magnificent copy you're writing yourself, graphics, maybe video entertainment's going on in this story. You're the central character of most of these stories. So what is the energy that's driving the production of these stories?

[30:26]

Usually it's your own self-concern. It's coming about from your own. If you take something easy, like you're running a story about somebody that disrespected you in this way, it's all about you. And that's the hook in our thinking. So how do you disenchain? disconnect book how do you how do you take a step back from this production of activity that's going on that's all around how to defend yourself how to make yourself feel better how to all this stuff how do you do it you do it by paying attention to your breathing and your posture because you move your energy away from this thinking mind that's busy producing these stories, and you put it in your body. And you put it in your breathing. And guess what? Your body and breathing is actually connected to the real world right now.

[31:32]

Your thinking isn't. Your thinking is living in a dream world that's produced. But your body is actually connected to the real world right now in all kinds of complicated ways. And if you start connecting to that body, you're starting to connect to something real and present. Now, your story may be still going on. Probably is. But all of a sudden, it's slightly different. That's thinking, not thinking. Your thinking is going on, but you're in a slightly different relationship to it. It's not big. not huge you may not even think it's very much at all but over time that difference will make a huge difference that difference will start to disconnect you from the story dream world you're living in in ways that are crucial to being able to connect in the real world you're living in

[32:38]

like i always am saying the same thing pay attention to your breathing pay attention to your posture and just let the mind go on its own way but that difference will make a difference so i want to bring up another aspect of how we might awaken from our dream and this was from a comment in the commentary Yun Wu made in the Blue Cleary's translation, the Blue Cliff Records. He says, it is like a person in a dream, though they want to awaken, they can't wake up. Called by another, they awaken. Called by another, they awaken. So a kind of fundamental stance we could say is we can never wake up alone. We need help. We need somebody to break us out of our dream. We know that even just our ordinary daily activity, you know, even when I'm, you know, I'm just sitting there lost in my own thoughts.

[34:08]

And my wife says, oh, Ed, look at the beautiful flowers on our rose bushes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we need help. We need help to wake up. Someone calls us. And we wake up. And that person is usually our teacher who's waiting outside of our dream to wake us up. Waiting outside of our dream, knock on the door and wake us up. But it's any friend. Anybody you're practicing with can say, Ed, wake up. Come have dinner. Wake up. Go to the Zendo. so so we're waiting for someone and we're also calling out wake up wake up so there's a famous story by that i just have to bring forward because i only covered three koans so far so this is the fourth koan for today this is called ruyan calls master

[35:21]

So the priest Ruyon called master to himself every day and answered, yes. Then he would say, be aware. And he would reply, yes. And then he'd say, don't be deceived by others and don't be fooled by anything. And he would say, no, no. So you can imagine, kind of like, Ed, yes. Be aware. Yes. Wake up. Yes. So. You know, don't be deceived. Yes, I won't. I mean, no, I won't. So this was a guy that was living apparently in a remote hermitage, and there was nobody there to call out to him to tell him to awake. So he decided to do it himself. Got so in the habit of it that he became famous for it, and it became a koan. And it was his teaching. He would always call out, call out to yourself. So if no one's around and you're trying to wake up, you could just say... yourself because you're not ed ed wake up so that's a wonderful koan too wouldn't give an entire lecture on so in the remaining four minutes or so that i have i thought i would just point to the pointer uh which was this and i'm using the pointer this pointer i decided to use was the one that's from the blue cliff record it's called it goes cease and desist

[36:51]

Then the iron tree blooms with flowers. It's the exact same thing that I was talking about there. So cease and desist. Then the iron tree blooms with flowers. Is there anyone? Is there? A clever lad loses his profits even though he is free in seven ways up and down and eight ways across. He cannot avoid having another person lead his nose, lead him by the nose. but tell me where is the error to test? I quote this case. So from the beginning, they're saying, cease and desist living in the dream, the world created by your self-centered mind. Cease and desist. That's a pretty strong statement. If you get a cease and desist order from the court, they're saying, you better stop that because you're causing a lot of pain and suffering. You're causing a lot of trouble. You better cease and desist immediately.

[37:54]

That's cease and desist. They're using strong language here, and they do that. That's part of this koan style. But it's kind of a warning that maybe this is something you should pay attention to. And then here's the good part. And if you do cease and desist being lost in your dreams, the dream you're dreaming, if you do Your life will blossom as dramatically as an iron tree blooming with flowers. Whoa. I like that. Your life will blossom as dramatically as an iron tree blooming with flowers. And the other side, if you don't, you're like a clever lad who loses his profits, even though he's free in all kinds of different ways and tries lots of different things and wins and loses profits. In the end, he loses everything. So if you don't, you're doomed.

[38:55]

So just kind of a little bit of Zen severity. The human mind is an amazing thing, isn't it? Just amazing. Just an amazing thing. The human body is an amazing thing. A human life is an amazing thing. The world we live in is an amazing thing.

[39:56]

And today all we have to do is just sit here and quietly sit. participate in this amazing activity of your mind, your body, and your world that you're creating with your friends who are supporting you to do this. So take care of yourself. That's an important thing to do. And I wish you well for today. Thank you very much.

[40:36]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.68