This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you for coming out to Green Gulch on this beautiful, rainy Easter Sunday. I wanted to look up the word Easter, and it comes from a pre-Christian goddess of spring and the dawn, the East, and lots of ceremonies around fertility and new life and renewal.

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have been practiced and performed for millennia. And the rabbit, just a little detail about the rabbit, the rabbit turns out is able, when pregnant with one litter, to get pregnant with a second litter. Therefore, it's connected with this great fertility and this time of year. So just a few words about the Easter Bunny for you. This evening begins a seven-day intensive sitting called Sesheen, and a number of people We'll be practicing in that way for seven days. And this also concludes the end of the practice period here at Green Ultra, a two-month time of sitting and study and meeting face-to-face, practicing closely and intimately with Dharma brothers and sisters.

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So the sesshin, this last seven-day sitting, will be the culmination of this time together. And for this practice period, often at the end of a practice period when there's been a head monk, there's a big ceremony where the head monk or head student receives questions from all the practice period participants and all the former head students. And this ceremony starts out with a story. The ceremony is inaugurated with a story. It's a very famous old story about a Zen master who was the first, called the first Zen master in China.

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So I wanted, because this story won't be told in the usual way for the practice period, I wanted to bring it up with you this morning, talk about this old story, this koan, and see how that might reflect on our seshin together and our practice. and the practice of compassion. So the story is about the Zen teacher Bodhidharma. And Bodhidharma was the 28th Indian ancestor in the line from Shakyamuni Buddha onwards, the 28th, and then also called the first Chinese ancestor in China because Bodhidharma was from India and he ended up coming to China to teach and to spread the Buddhadharma.

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And Bodhidharma, maybe some of you are familiar, he's a very popular figure in kind of folklore and also in Zen lore and Zen teaching a very, what shall I say, great gratitude to this particular teacher. And I should also mention that it's really not known that much about, you know, in accurate detail whether he lived or not. There's a lot of legend that's bound up in this story. And yet, just like a myth or a folk tale or a fairy tale or a Zen story, it doesn't matter so much whether it's factually, historically, scholastically able to be verified.

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The story meets us and enters us in a way that is beyond whether This person actually lived in this way and had these particular conversations. So the story, just like all of our stories, have a reality and a significance that goes beyond whether we can track it factually. It has an archetypal meaning for us. So bearing that in mind, you know, bodhidharma, You might feel closer to Bodhidharma and Bodhidharma's teaching and way than to your very own grandpa. How could that be with this, maybe a legendary person? But it can happen. So I'm going to say a little bit about Bodhidharma and about this story.

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and then about our practice in relation to this story. So Bodhidharma came from India, southern India, and his father was a prince. He was a prince. He had two other brothers. And when he met his teacher, Prajnatara, Prajnatara... that Bodhidharma had enormous potential by the way he interacted with Prajnatara, who was teaching at the palace and was given a very, very precious jewel by Bodhidharmas, who wasn't called Bodhidharma at that time, by his father. And in talking about the preciousness of this jewel, the way Bodhidharma spoke, this teacher, Prajnatara, thought, this person has great capacity, but the time is not yet ripe. I think this is an important point. The time is not yet right.

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All the causes and conditions have not come to maturity to say anything or to act. And later, when Bodhidharma's father died, he was mourning his father and went into a kind of absorption, a kind of deep, concentrated absorption, and sat with... his father's body for many days. And Prajnatara saw this and thought, the time is ripe. He's ready. And he ordained him and gave him more teachings afterwards. And Bodhidharma had really understood something very deeply. And he stayed, and Prajnatara said, I want you to stay and practice with me For 67 years, 67 years after I die, and Bodhidharma, before you go and teach, before you go out into the world and start teaching, and then I would like you to go to China and bring the teaching to China.

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So he... practiced with Prashnatara for a number of years, and then Prashnatara died. And then he stayed on teaching in India for a long, long time, 60 years, it says. And then he finally took leave of India, got on a boat, and it took him three years to get from India to southern China, Guangzhou. He landed in southern China, a very humid city. certain times of the year, and he arrived in China. Now, he had a very famous meeting when he arrived in southern China, and he met with the emperor, the emperor of this place called Liang, Emperor Wu of Liang. Now, to meet with the emperor, if you can imagine an emperor of China, there were different dynasties at the time, an emperor of a dynasty.

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And here's this monk coming, this Buddhist teacher. There had been Buddhism in China before, but Bodhidharma was bringing a particular kind of teaching in which it said he pointed directly at the mind. And he met with Emperor Wu of Liang. Now this is the very famous koan, this meeting with Emperor Wu of Liang. And just some background about Emperor Wu. Emperor Wu had been, he got into his position of emperor through the way often people do get into power, through and assassination and murder and who knows what in order to get into power. And he was very regretful about this once he did get into power. And he turned his life around and took up Buddha's practice in a very, very serious way.

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He studied Buddhism. He established... many, many temples and monasteries. He supported the monks. He established ceremonies in China. He really made a huge effort to propagate Buddhism, to support Buddhism in his part of the world. And also he studied himself and taught. He began to be called the Buddha Heart Emperor. So he had practiced and taught and given alms and support to probably thousands, really, of monks and nuns and clergy. And I don't know how he was feeling about it, but he might have been feeling, you know, this was good work. And I'm happy I did this work. And here comes this venerable teacher from India who had been teaching for so long.

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coming to meet with the emperor. So at this point, the emperor asked him a question. And the emperor's question was, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? What is the highest meaning of the holy truths? The highest meaning of the holy truths. And Bodhidharma answered the emperor, empty, no holiness. Empty, without holiness. You know, you can imagine the emperor, what do you mean, you know, empty, no holiness?

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And he was kind of dumbstruck maybe, but he said to Bodhidharma, who is facing me? And Bodhidharma said, I don't know. Or also it's translated, I don't know. Who are you? Don't know. And after this exchange, Bodhidharma left the emperor and crossed the Yangtze River and went north into the northern part of China to the kingdom of Wei. And in the kingdom of Wei, he established a kind of hermitage there and a cave. And it said he faced the wall for nine years. practicing zazen in this very simple way, facing the wall. So after Bodhidharma left the emperor, the emperor brought this encounter up with another master there, Master Jur.

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And he said to Master Jur, In this discussion, Master Jurer said to him, does your majesty know who that man was? And the emperor said, I don't know. And Master Jurer said that that person was the mahasattva, the great being, Avalokiteshvara. the bodhisattva of infinite compassion, who had come to pass on the Buddha's mind seal. And the emperor was, oh my goodness, I missed my chance here. And he wanted to send emissaries, send people to go and fetch him back.

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incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, was here, and I didn't recognize him. So he wanted to send emissaries to find him and bring him back. And Master Jury said, Your Majesty, don't send anyone. Even if we sent the whole country after him, he wouldn't return. So this is the story of Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu. And there's many, many further legends around Bodhidharma. For example, it's said that he taught at Shaolin Temple, and there's a kind of apocryphal connection between Shaolin Temple and

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the martial arts and Bodhidharma, although this seems to be a more modern connection. But Shaolin Temple was where he practiced, and he had disciples, four main disciples, and he transmitted or passed on his... The second ancestor of China was Huayka, and there's lots, of course, stories about Huayka and Bodhidharma. And now there's an interesting part to this story that's kind of hard to understand, but there were two, while Bodhidharma was teaching, there were two other teachers, basically, who were filled with malevolence, really, towards Bodhidharma and jealousy. And the story is that they tried to poison him like five times. And finally, after Bodhidharma had transmitted the Dharma and the

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that Dharma was safe and would be passed on, he died. And even though he had promised that he would come back to India, it's said that he died in China. But then there's a further story that years later someone saw him walking in the mountains in the Himalayas, walking towards India. He said he was going to India and that it was Bodhidharma. And he only had one sandal. was only wearing one sandal. And when this person came into China and told this story, they unearthed his remains, and there was just one sandal in the grave. This is a little story of, I don't know what you want to say, more stories about Bodhidharma. So, what does this have to do with our practice, you know? What is the highest meaning of the holy truth?

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What does that even mean? You could say that another way of telling this story is that the emperor was very involved in the results of his actions or the merit of that he was accumulating by practicing in this way and supporting monks and establishing monasteries and teaching, that he may have had something in mind that there was some gaining idea or some wanting something in return, wanting at least acknowledgement from this teacher that he had done good things, And you might say, well, what's wrong with that? Isn't that just our regular life?

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We do wholesome things and we want to be respected and acknowledged and thanked and, you know, we don't want it to be overlooked. Is there any problem with that? Is that... Does that go against our practice? And I would say that in our conventional life together, in our everyday, mundane, daily life, yes, this is fine. We have thank you. We have praise and blame. We have acknowledgement of things that we've done. And we call that, you might call that merit, you know, that's been accumulated or positive energy we've accumulated.

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And that's, this is our daily fear. This is, there's nothing special about that. We understand that. And there's, you know, some pain and pleasure. And if we weren't praised or thanked, we might feel pain. And if we were thanked, then we feel pleasure. And this is the eight wins of the two sides, you know, of this is our dualistic life of praise and blame, pleasure and pain, good reputation, bad reputation, and one more of the eight wins. But the emperor didn't ask about that. The emperor didn't ask Bodhidharma about our conventional life together. He asked Bodhidharma, what is the meaning of the highest truth?

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Another way of saying this is, what is the first principle? What is the main universal principle? mind seal. What is the highest meaning? And there's some humor there even because he's asking what is the highest? What is the ultimate? What is the universal meaning? And Bodhidharma says the highest meaning? You're asking for the highest meaning of our practice? There's nothing holy. It's like the highest, there's no holy. That's the highest. The highest is there's no holy. It's empty of holiness, meaning this word empty means that in the Dharma world of impermanence there is nothing that's abiding

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in a way that we can grasp it and have it. That's the highest meaning of the holy truths is that the holy truths are, you might say, like space. They're ungraspable. You can't, Mr. Emperor, Your Majesty, you can't have it. It's already gone. All those wonderful things you did, it's over. Well, how about now? How are you practicing now your majesty what is the meaning of the highest truth is about our practice right now not about all the good things that we did and the great Dharma talk we gave and how we were so helpful to everybody sometime and wanting to hold that and bring it out and say look what I did look how good my practices and this is And at the very same time, yes, we can say someone practices very hard.

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We respect someone. We count on them. We have confidence in their practice. And what is it that we have confidence in? We have confidence in that they're not holding to their practice as this thing that they have and are going to bring out and show you every two seconds. That's what we have confidence in, that they already forgot about it. But we have confidence. And what is our confidence? It's a no confidence. This, you know, this might sound like I'm talking in circles. And this is... I don't think... Not only... Is there no way to talk about it? But even trying, it will sound like circles, maybe. If we can hold these two things at once, the merit of no merit, the emptiness of holiness,

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So in our sazan, you know, when we're sitting, and many of you are about to be sitting for seven days, to be able to sit like Bodhidharma, you know, Bodhidharma sat with his mind like a wall. Not that I always think of his mind like a wall, just the way a real wall is. I think of a garden wall, you know, that's... covered in moss and little animals live in there and it crumbles and rain falls on it and it's not like dead like some kind of dead nothing stale nothingness it's it's alive and stable and there's nothing to be grasped nothing to get a mind like that that's Just clearly aware.

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Clearly aware without having to grasp anything. So sitting in this way, what merit is there, you know? If we're sitting in order to gather merit or to get something... We will be sad, you know. There will not be such a great feeling. And, you know, sometimes people actually, just the other day, a total stranger who I just met sat next to me at lunch, and he turned to me and said, so how long have you been practicing? That must be a story. Tell me the story of how you came to practice. You know, it's like the story of how I came to practice is an endless tale, you know. I can dip in somewhere and say something, but the intimacy and the unending, flowing, how it is that I came to practice the never-ending tale can... The time wasn't ripe.

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The time wasn't ripe to talk with this person And I wasn't sure what it was they wanted to know, really. But I did, some things came up, like, oh, I've been practicing a certain number of years, you know, like there's some decades there. And I realize now, at this time in my life, it's embarrassing, you know, to say, I've been practicing... for a certain length of time. Earlier it was, I think there was some pride. Oh, I've been practicing for a year or two or three or whatever. Isn't that wonderful? And now that it's been much longer than that, it's best not to say anything, probably, you know? As someone said, all this expensive Zen practice gone for naught, you know?

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any way to feel some pride in our practice or how long we've been practicing or our spiritual accomplishments, if there are any. How do we even know there are any? What is it that we might feel proud of and be attached to and want to bring out and want some acknowledgement for? And I think this will be... problematic for us in our sitting, in our practice. This will get in the way. Just like Emperor Wu, you know, this idea of merit or having done all these things. He didn't have the Dharma eyes to see who was before him. Who was before him was the bodhisattva of infinite compassion coming to teach him, coming to teach him the highest meaning of the holy truths, which is what he asked for.

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And it's like, what do you mean empty, no holy? What do you mean? He couldn't see it. He didn't have the eyes to see. And our dharma eyes and the eyes of compassion are the same eyes, I would say. So I wanted to, you know, how do we put together the teaching of emptiness, zazen, and compassion? How do those all fit? And I would say it's really one, this is just one practice. Our compassionate eyes means that we don't hanker after someone else's stuff, let's say, or want to bring in from the outside what we feel we lack.

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When we have Dharma eyes, we see that all phenomena are empty of own being, are empty of substantialness that we're lacking. And that we are of that nature too. And we're all in emptiness practicing together, walking together. So what is there to take and grab and have and compare? This is Dharma eyes. And out of Dharma eyes, which is seeing, and if not seeing directly emptiness, forever keeping it in the forefront, Now for a practice, turning it, studying it, asking about it. And out of this comes compassion, or I wouldn't even say out of it. It is compassion. And this is our Zen practice.

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Our Zen practice isn't some getting to be better than everybody else and more... more fully accomplished or something. It's to have Dharma eyes, compassion eyes. One Dharma eye and one compassion eye and one emptiness eye. All at once. And without those eyes, you can't see a teacher in front of you. Just like Emperor Wu couldn't even see Bodhidharma. Here's Bodhidharma. He couldn't see him. And so Bodhidharma left. He went and he did find students. He did pass on the Buddha mind seal. He transmitted the Buddha mind seal. He was ready with Emperor Wu. Emperor Wu was a worthy fellow. So the highest meaning of the holy truths

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We might say this first principle or highest meaning is that there is just one mind, one. So any kind of merit or accomplishment in oneness, where would you get that in oneness? Where would you find something outside to bring in? So that's empty. Empty of separateness, empty of duality. So our zazen, coming to sit, taking this upright posture, this excellent method that's been passed down for years, You know, this story, Bodhidharma was in 500, he died in 530, something like that.

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And we are still telling this story thousands of years, telling this story, turning it, studying it. And we're not different from Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma, our Emperor Wu-ness and our Bodhidharma-ness. So our Zazen practice, and we're about to enter a time where we have a chance to sit facing the wall, reenacting, reenacting, performing this ceremony of our first ancestor in China, Bodhidharma, who is depicted as looking a little bit scary, you know, kind of really intense. We've got one on the altar right on the left of the big statue. And you can't see his face.

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It's kind of a rough figure. You can look at it when you go out. But often he's got a cape over his head and a beard. But this is the eyes of compassion. Eyes of compassion. Eyes of compassion aren't... You can't say what eyes of compassion look like. You might have some idea, oh, they should be very nice and sweet. And eyes of compassion see, they're Dharma eyes that see that there's nothing to grasp. And therefore they cannot hurt you because you and them are just one Zazen mind. So we get to enact this. We get to sit in this way. without hankering after anything, without pushing anything away, sitting upright in our cave, in our cave of frogs and birdsong and springtime, surrounded by empty beings.

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with eyes of compassion and with Dharma eyes, then all beings are our teacher. All things are our teacher. All things are our own mind. There's nothing outside of that. And compassion flows from that unendingly. So many of you are looking for teachers, want to find a real teacher, and might have some idea of what that is, and maybe want to find the greatest teacher, the best. Will you be able to see the teacher? And the Dharma eyes and the Compassion eyes,

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You transform your eyes. Nobody can give you those eyes. So bodhidharma and the bodhisattva of infinite compassion is just one being. And at the end of the... on Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion. In the Lotus Sutra, it has this verse that says, Eyes of compassion, observing sentient beings, assembles an ocean of blessings beyond measure. Eyes of compassion, observing sentient beings, assembles an ocean of blessings beyond measure. This is what I wanted to talk about today and may it be transformed into Zazen practice and not held onto in any way but just transformed into encouragement to sit and directly experience

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Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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