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. My teacher, Reb Anderson, was just here for about a week with his family. one way of describing a difference between he and I is that, at least when he was younger, I think his approach to practice was what he once described as kind of mean to himself. You know, that he decided, I will be concentrated, I will count my breaths for a whole period of zazen. And at some point he saw how how mean he was being to himself and changed his ways.

[01:02]

And I would say I never had that kind of, you know, kind of let's do this kind of thing. In fact, I would say, you know, probably my hindrance is more on the side of complacency than on we're going to get this thing done, you know, enlightenment, we're going to get it. So I'm like, oh, you know, life is pretty good. Maybe it's enlightened enough. So neither of those are exactly right. So over the years, we have talked about this in various ways, and we were talking about it again this time. I don't know if he knew that's what we were talking about, but it's one way of thinking about it. And he said... You know, I do still give myself a challenge that I know I won't be able to complete so that I will have something to try for.

[02:12]

So, for instance, I give myself the challenge of being present with myself all the time. And I know I don't do that. Over and over again, I don't do it, but it's something I can continually try to do. And I thought, that's pretty good, you know. It's not imagining some way that you should be and then trying to make yourself into it. It's just, I will be with, but actually with, you know, not just, it's all fine. Actually, I'll try, at least. to be present with myself. It was actually very encouraging to me to also, like, okay, let's just try. Whenever you think about it, I say it to myself, whenever you think, whenever the thought comes into your mind, try to be present.

[03:15]

Just try to be present. And I thought that this actually goes pretty well with what I wanted to talk about tonight, which is the first case in the Book of Serenity, which some of you have probably heard me talk about before. The Book of Serenity is the Soto-Zen Book of Koans. Koans are those Zen stories that often don't make any regular sense, or any sense. This is the Soto, and mostly those, when you hear about the koans, the Zen koans, it has to do with Rinzai Zen, which is another kind of Zen, not the kind that we practice here. But this is a book of Soto koans, and this is the very first story in that book. And I think it's there for a reason. It's there, the very first one, for a reason, because it kind of epitomizes this particular practice.

[04:18]

So I wanted to bring it up again tonight. So the story goes like this. One day, the world-honored one ascended the seat. Manjushri hit the gavel and said, clearly observe the Dharma of the King of Dharma. The Dharma of the King of Dharma is thus. And then the world-honored one got down from the seat. So this is the story that is the very first one in a book of Soto koans, or how to live Soto Zen. In some ways, you know, koans are a little bit like dreams. You know, sometimes you hear that in dreams, if I have a dream, I'm actually every character in the dream. And koans are a little bit like that, too. When you're sort of... settling into a koan, it's good or fine or possible to feel your way into every part of it.

[05:26]

So in this story, I'll just go through it one more time. So one day, the world honored one, and that is generally thought to be the Buddha. And I'll just say, you know, one really salient feature of the Buddha is that he was a regular person. He wasn't a god, he was somewhat special, but he was a regular person. However, he was also called the World Honored One, the very special one in all the world. As I was writing my notes for this talk and I wrote this down and I wrote the World Honored One a couple of times, and then I decided to just abbreviate it, and I noticed that its initials are W-H-O, who? Who is the World Honored One, or the World Honored One is who? So, the World Honored One, the Buddha, for now, ascended the seat.

[06:33]

And often that means like this, you know, got up to teach. But basically, he also sat down. So he ascended to the seat and he sat down. And then Manjushri, who is the personification of wisdom, hit the gavel, hit a gavel, and said, clearly observe the Dharma of the king of Dharma. The Dharma of the king of Dharma is thus. So Dharma, as probably all of you know, is the teaching. And we could call it, or I will call it tonight, The teaching of how to be free. The teaching of how to be free. So the personification of wisdom says, clearly observe the teaching of how to be free of the king of Dharma, of the world-honored one. The Dharma, the teaching of how to be free of the world-honored one, is thus.

[07:40]

Just this person. sitting there. And then some time after that, it's been pointed out many times in both the Bible and in lots of Zen stories, we don't know what the amount of time is between sentences. So at some point, the world-honored one got down from the seat. It could have been 40 minutes, which is a typical Soto Zen period of Zazen. So this is one way to understand this story. Another way to understand it is to put ourselves in these actors. So in this, we are the world-honored one, each of us. And I believe this is actually what Soto Zen is talking about, what Soto Zen is saying.

[08:42]

not talking about, is doing what this particular practice is doing. So each one of us is the world-honored one. And we sit down, we ascend the seat, or we sit down, and wisdom says, clearly observe, just observe the teaching of how to be free, Just clearly observe the teaching of how to be free. What is that teaching of how to be free? The teaching of how to be free is thus, is this particular world-honored one sitting there. This king of Dharma, the teaching, the Dharma of the king of Dharma. So king has its problems. That word has its problems. Gender is, of course, one problem, king. Also... you know, we don't, you know, king, king, what does that mean, king of what?

[09:44]

So I was trying to think, you know, what would I say to myself or to you about when we're talking about ourselves being the world-honored one, what? The queen of dharma has the same, at least the same problems that king does. So I thought, although it's not nearly as poetic, But still, I think it's true. The center of Dharma. That each of us in our body, in our regular body, in our regular human body and mind, are the center of Dharma. And more than the center, we are the available center. We are the place where each of us can... find the Dharma. Each of us can find it right here where we are in this body and this mind.

[10:49]

So clearly observe the teaching of how to be free of the center or of this person who's at the center of Dharma, at the center of the universe, actually, for each of us. The teaching of Dharma is thus. The teaching of how to be free is thus. So I think this is really the main teaching of Soto Zen. That we sit down and the teaching of how to be free is immediately available. It may take us some time to understand it. We may have to sit with it for a while before it becomes clear to us how this... This body, this mind could be the teaching of how to be free, but it is immediately available. There's a poem that goes with this case, which the story kind of narrows it.

[11:56]

Here, this world-honored one, this one sitting right here, clearly observed this teaching. So it kind of makes it narrow, just like this. Be there with yourself. The poem broadens it. The poem is a commentary on the story, and it goes like this. The unique breeze of reality. Can you see? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. Incorporating the forms of spring. As the wolf goes through the warp, the weave is dense and fine. One continuous thread comes from the shuttle, making every detail.

[13:02]

How can this even be spoken of on the same day as false cause? or no cause. Say it again. The unique breeze of reality. Can you see? Continuously creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. One continuous thread comes from the shuttle. As the woof goes through the warp, the weave is dense and fine. One continuous thread comes from the shuttle, making every detail. How can this even be spoken of on the same day as false cause or no cause? So this poem is, I think, again, expressing the same thing, but in a much wider sense. You know, the unique breeze of reality is, again, one thing, one person,

[14:04]

One moment. It's unique. It's happening now. And yet, it is the breeze of reality. It's what makes up reality. Continuously, creation runs for loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. So, for me, this gives me such a feeling of all of time. You know, the ancient brocade of birth and death happening over and over and over again. Even though it's unique, there's this unique breeze happening. Still, there's a story that happens, you know, the pattern of the brocade happens over and over again. And yet, in each of those moments, each of those threads, there is a form of spring. In this ancient brocade, there's right now, in this moment, are the seeds, the spring-like seeds of the next moment.

[15:17]

As the woof goes through the warp, the weave is dense and fine. I think this is talking about how closely connected we are, how our place in this ancient brocade, our place right at this moment, is right at one place. It's like right here. This is where we are. And we're not like over there. I'm up here. You're there. We're in our place at each moment. We're in the place where we are. And the weave is dense and fine. You can't just, like, move over a little ways just because you think I would be a prettier thread if I was, you know, had somebody else's hairdo or if I had a nicer personality or, you know, whatever we might think. Oh, I would be a better part of this brocade if I was different. It's not like that. It's like the weave is dense and fine.

[16:23]

We got here. And one continuous thread runs from the shuttle. Everything. that we do, everything we think, is part of that thread. It's part of incorporating the forms of spring. It's part of what makes the next moment, what makes the next year, what makes the rest of our life, what makes the rest of our world. So this dense and fine brocade that we are the thread of, it's an alive brocade. One of the... sentences in the commentary to this case says the something of Buddhism the Buddhist tradition is based on one mind it says Confucian and Taoism are based on one energy but Buddhism is based on one mind I don't know exactly what that means but the feeling that I get from it is

[17:29]

It's not blind, it's conscious. And then it also talks about even though it's like insects eating wood and happening to make patterns. So even though it's like insects eating wood and happening to make patterns, maybe you've seen these patterns, they look like they were planned, right? It looks like an artist was there carving them out, but it's just insects eating by chance. So even though our life is like that, it's like insects eating wood and happening to make patterns, even though he makes his cart behind closed doors, when he brings it out, it fits the groove. So even though we are living our life in a hidden way, hidden from others, but even hidden from ourselves, you know, we're like insects eating on wood and it makes a pattern.

[18:43]

Or we're like, we're building a cart, we're building ourselves, you know, not so consciously, but building, and yet it fits, fits our world. It is this dense and fine weave that we have helped create and we are part of. I think this is quite different than how we usually feel. We often feel like I don't fit. And we also think, we also don't think we are like insects eating wood and happening to make patterns. We are carefully planning our pattern. We have a lot of thinking to do about what kind of pattern do we want to make as we're, you know, long, you know. No, it's, you know, we have things to decide here. So we have things to decide, and then we don't fit. It doesn't fit. What I tried to make was a failure, you know, especially myself.

[19:46]

I tried to make myself into something. It didn't work. That person didn't like it, you know. I made a mistake, many things that don't feel like this description of Soto Zen to us. So I think Buddhism is saying, or Soto Zen is saying, really the world is about 90, 180 degrees different than what we normally think it is. Actually, this continuous thread is happening moment after moment after moment. We are part of the creating of our universe. We're doing it all the time. It has to fit because it's us. It may not look like we dreamed up we wanted it to, but Soto Zen is inviting us to sit down and clearly observe ourselves

[20:50]

the teaching of how our life is put together. And if we do that, I think we find we can relax a little bit. We can actually... In fact, we sort of have to relax, because one of the things, if we sit down and clearly observe, one of the things that we observe is how... dare I say, neurotic we are. You know, this planning of our way to make patterns in wood, our eating habits, and often it is our eating habits, you know, this planning that we do is pretty crazy. You know, there's a lot of over and over and over and over again the same thing. And anyway, so as we see that, some of that drops away. It's just too weird to continue to. consciously. And another thing, if we're sitting still for a short amount of time, then life does go on.

[21:57]

So in both of those things, in our actually seeing how we're functioning, or how we're trying to function, and in just stopping doing for a short amount of time, some amount of trust of the way the universe works starts to develop in us. We start to see that we are actually not making things happen. Many things are happening in our lives that we don't know exactly where they come from. They come from this one continuous thread that we're part of but we're not in charge of. So it's both a big relief and it's kind of frightening. You know, it's how... much we are not in control of it doesn't suit a certain part of our psyche, of our hopes and dreams, you know. But it does have a, what, a continuance to it.

[23:09]

You know, as we gain a little courage, Actually, that maybe we don't have to run the whole world. Maybe things will... Maybe, maybe, maybe there's some chance that actually I am okay as I am. As we have a little bit of experience of that, then it starts to happen more. Or we start to see that it's happening more. So that this relief... from having to make everything work can expand. And we can enjoy it and appreciate it. So maybe I should stop there for a minute and let you help me see whether I said anything confusing to anybody yet.

[24:10]

Do you have any? statements that you would like to make? No? Okay. That's good. If you think of anything, you may raise your hand. In the meantime, I will repeat the poem once more. The unique breeze of reality. Can you see it? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. As the wolf goes through the war, the weave is dense and fine. One continuous thread runs from the shuttle, making every detail. How can this even be spoken of on the same day as false cause or no cause?

[25:12]

Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[25:39]

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