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. I wanted to continue with parts of the Buddha's story of his enlightenment and what led up to his sitting under the Bodhi tree and also a few words about the talks and bringing up the first case from Shouyoroku, Book of Serenity, which illustrates or expresses, well, I don't know what expresses, but there's silence in there, that's why I want to bring it up.

[01:13]

The different talks that are given during the session are not necessarily, don't necessarily meet each person. After giving a talk, one of these three talks I received, a thank you note, a shoemail note, how helpful that was in wanting to put some of the things I said, I think it was the first talk, maybe the second, about kind of internal frivolous talk and idle chatter, hollow discussion internally, ways to work with it as kind of first aid, you know. And someone else felt that was more than not helpful, but not necessarily Buddhist teaching and substituting these kinds of things I was suggesting. So just the same with medicine, you know, if you don't have an illness to take that particular medicine, it's poison, right?

[02:38]

And when you need to have or hear that medicine, it meets you completely. So not everyone's in the same place, not everyone's working on the same things, not everyone's efforts, and karmic consciousness, everyone is completely unique. And if, just like in the shizō ceremony, at the end we say, if my words or actions have disturbed you, please, at Gringosh we say, wash your ears in the purest sound of the ocean waves here in the Tassara Creek. So please, just... just sit zazen during Dharma Talks, which is the practice anyway. Just sit, and whatever words arise, you can, just like in zazen, let them come and go. So usually in zazen,

[03:54]

when thoughts come up, both, you know, memories, negative thoughts, daydreams, these kinds of things, our practice is, as you heard the first time you received sazan instruction to neither push them away nor grasp onto them, allow them to come and go, arise and vanish. Stay with your posture, breath, and no involvement. And involvement is both pushing away, trying to avoid grasping, pushing and pulling, any of that. Just allow them to come and to go. This is full functioning. We do have thoughts that arise. As Ujjama Roshi said, just like Other parts of our body and organs are secreting various things.

[04:59]

The brain secretes thoughts. So it's just full functioning. And we needn't get caught or follow the train, which is discursive, coursing along with them. We allow them... to come and go. So our practice is to continue just sitting in our upright posture, relax from the inside out, find center, and allow ourselves to fully function without controlling, without trying to make something be some particular way. This is our psychophysical, full-functioning, dynamic, five skandhas, full-functioning.

[06:05]

I brought up Mara yesterday. Another name for Mara in Buddhist teaching is the five grasping skandhas. So when we're grasping after any kind of experience or thoughts are caught in this way. This is called Mara. It's another name for Mara. But the five skandhas just functioning fully, Dogan calls prajna, wisdom. So the problem is not that thoughts arise and vanish, or the nature of those thoughts. It's how we get caught. which is that first aid lecture that I gave, for a particular situation where you might be caught in a vortex, not able to come back to posture and breath, and let arise and vanish, but are caught.

[07:10]

So this kind of thinking with thoughts that arise and vanish, it's not I am thinking this. It's thoughts are arising. Just like sounds are arising and other sensations. And if you need particular medicine, try that medicine. If words are disturbing to you or some resistance or reaction, I think that's okay. And we can also look at that. I remember when Thich Nhat Hanh came to Zen Center in the 80s, I think it was, late 70s, 80s, he was teaching the half-smile practice.

[08:19]

sitting with a slight smile, and I was just so, like, just... I'm not going to walk around with a smile on my face, sit in Zazen with a little smile. That was ridiculous. And I actually said something to him about this half-smile in a kind of arrogant way. When I look back at it, like... It's so embarrassing, actually. Just think about how I brought up this little half-smile. Fast forward decades later, taking a course at Stanford on compassion, with the neuroscience around compassion. In the meditation instruction, they said it was a kind of... not stress reduction exactly, but a mindfulness beast, they were talking about relaxing the body, and they said, imagine you're just about to smile.

[09:26]

Not smiling, but just about to, like the pre-smile. And so I tried that out, and there was this complete relaxation of all the muscles in the face being about to smile. And I appreciated that, you know, as something to pay attention to the tension in my jaw, around my eyes, and my, you know, when we smile, you know, we use less muscles to smile and to frown. And it's a relaxed, you know, smile and the word miracle are etymologically connected. I think it comes from when the baby first smiles, it's like such a miracle. So this pre-smile, I was ready to hear that teaching or that suggestion. But years earlier that was, it wasn't Buddhism, it wasn't okay.

[10:34]

So back to Shakyamuni Buddha's story, Gautama, Gautama. So I had leaped ahead a little bit with Mara and all the ways that Mara interacts. But I want to bring us back to the place where the Buddha leaves the five other ascetics and decides this is not this is not working, this is not helpful, I'm just getting more and more weak." So he goes and he does sit under a tree for a while, and in the area where he sits under a banyan tree, and in that area was a woman named Sujata, who we chant, Acharya, Sujata, And Sujata and her sister, Visaka, became the Buddha's first lay disciples.

[11:49]

Anyway, Sujata, years before, had wished to find a partner and have a child and had prayed to the tree spirit of the banyan tree. And all her wishes had come true. And she wanted to make a special gift to the tree spirit. And what she did was she had a rather large herd of cows, 1,000 cows, so she milked the 1,000 cows and fed that milk to 500 cows, milked them, fed that to 100 cows, milked them, fed it to eight cows, and got this incredibly, oh, and she added in feed this sweet herb. Anyway, this is the story. She got this incredibly sweet milk, and she made rice, milk rice, kind of a rice pudding, and was going to offer this to the tree spirit in thanks, this abandoned tree, tree spirit.

[13:01]

And her servant had gone ahead to prepare the spot, and she came back and said, Mistress, Mistress, the tree spirit is there. Can you believe it? Sitting there, they danced with joy. They were so excited. And they brought, you know, this incredible rice pudding, sweet rice pudding, to the tree, to the tree spirit. Well, it was Gautama, the ascetic, sitting there. And she offered this donation to him and said, please accept this donation from In thanks, and may all your wishes be fulfilled just the way mine were. And she gave it to him. And he ate it all up, you know, this delicious rice pudding. And he was filled with strength, right? Can you imagine? And joy, right, godly. And then he went and bathed in the river that was right near there, the Naranjara River.

[14:08]

He bathed in the river, and the bowl she offered this in was a golden bowl. And he said something like, if I am to fulfill my task, may this bowl flow against the current, you know, backwards up the river. And he threw the golden bowl into the river Naranjara, and it flowed against the current. So it was after eating and bathing that he settled himself under Vicus Religiosa, under the Bodhi tree, and sat. So I wanted to include Sujata and her, this wonderful offering, this meal, that really supported body and mind to sit. And just the way we receive our meals, you know, we eat for the sake of enlightenment.

[15:13]

You know, the five reflections, you know, is our virtue and practice deserving of this? We can reflect on that. And this is good medicine. And we eat for the sake of enlightenment, just like the Buddha did. He ate that good meal for the sake of enlightenment before sitting. So we enact that every day. several times a day, three times a day, twice a day we chant during practice berating. And in the evening meal, the medicine stone meal, we can reflect also, receiving food. So there's a fascicle called Mitsugo, one of Dogen's fascicles, Mitsugo.

[16:22]

And Mitsugo is translated as secret words or intimate words. And it's words that they have various meanings depending on the context, which I think is true with all. with all words. In one context, it could mean something very different in another context. Or even in syntactically, where it's placed in the sentence, it has a different, will have a very different meaning. So mitsugo, this secret word or hidden word or intimate words, and sometimes words between very good friends, you can just say, Not very much, and the person, you know, understands the meaning and responds accurately. Or I think the other day the lamps hadn't been turned down at some point, and I think I did this, that little hand gesture.

[17:37]

And one of our... Doan Ryo or the Yino, I can't remember which, immediately just, that means please turn down the lamps. But somebody else was like, what's she doing? But it was mitsugo. It was intimate. It wasn't hidden. It was in full view, but it was in the context of practicing together over time. And maybe doing this at the beginning of practice, maybe what's she doing? What is she trying to tell me? And sometimes even just a nod across a crowded room to the tanto or, you know, they understand completely. So this mitsugo is an important something that we might study, you know, our intimate communications.

[18:39]

secret, not that we're trying to keep it secret, but that it comes out of relationship, out of context with one another. And there's a word that Dogon actually uses, and it's in the commentary on this koan from Shoya Roku, and it's also in the Maha Parinirvana Sutra, and the word It's kind of a mitsugo word, is in Sanskrit saindhava, saindhava, S-A-I-N-D-H-A-V-A, saindhava, and in Japanese it's sandhava. And this word, it is a word that refers to In the country where this word comes from, the word saingdava means four different things.

[19:44]

It means water, salt, a horse, or maybe three things, water, salt, and a horse. Water, salt, and a horse. Now, if you're calling for your horse, but someone misunderstands and brings you water, you know, to wash up or something, something's, you know, there's not so much intimacy there. So this word sandava is used for the kind of intimate language we have with one another when we are in accord with circumstances with one another, with practicing together. And the story is that a king would... just call out to his minister. And I like to tell the jisha and the anja about this story, sandhava.

[20:46]

The king would just say, sandhava. And then the attendant or the minister would have to know if the king was just waking up, he wants water, bring water to wash. And if he's about to eat, sandhava, we need salt. He's going off to a meeting or, Sai Dawa, bring your horse. So this is in the Mahapari Nirvana Sutra to illuminate or illustrate a kind of connection with one another where we're that close that we can tell, not anticipating, not, oh, they must want this next, but right then and there. What's happening? So how do we... Is it intuit?

[21:53]

How do we catch the meaning? How do we grasp the meaning right then and there, right this moment? And respond accurately, intimately, So this morning, I don't know if it was functional speech or what kind of speech, but I had woken up this morning, right before my alarm, with a Charlie horse. And those, I'm sure many of you, all of you maybe, have had a Charlie horse. It was in my calf, you know, the kind of seizing up of the calf muscle. And, you know, it pounded and stretched the feet. And it's, It's not that fun to wake up with one, you know, that bolt upright with this.

[22:56]

So I mentioned to the jisha, right before we were on our way to offer at the different altars, I said, I woke up with a child you asked this morning, and the jisha said, sorry. And somehow it was so right on, you know, it was so sandiva. You know, what else could you say? There's nothing to be said, but just sorry. Sorry. Not even twice, just sorry. And I just felt, what did I feel? Met. I felt met. Just sorry. So this sign dava, sometimes we don't, There's a kind of, our situations, our circumstances, our conditions, we don't know what's happening exactly.

[23:57]

We're not close enough, we're not intimate maybe enough to know. And we have to, sometimes it's like a puzzle. And so we try something. We just say, sorry. Sorry. What is that sari based on? Our own life, when that happened to us, our conditions, we just respond out of the vast karmic consciousness and connection that's there and just respond. Sandhava. So right before I'm going to go into the koan, which is the world-honored one ascends the seat.

[25:02]

I know many of you have studied this, know this koan. But I wanted to say something about the word ashrava, which means, is translated as leaking, leaking. And it's often, you know, our admonitions for seshin include no reading, writing, and these are often places in which we leak, you know, we flow out. The gathered energy of oneness or one-pointedness kind of flows out into duality. Now, in the, you know, ultimate truth, there is... There is no duality, there is no other, there is no place to leak. However, in the conventional realm, it feels that way, self and other, eye and object, subject to object, these kinds of, and thinking that way is a kind of, it's called ashrava, leak, leaking.

[26:19]

Or another translation of it is defiled. We defile it with duality, the whatness of our reality, of our thusness. So I, and I, you know, during session I do read and prepare for these lectures. Maybe some session I'll decide not to do it that way and just come to lecture whenever comes up. And just, because I can feel a kind of you know, in reading and writing, which, taking notes. But that just comes with the territory. And I try to work with it with one point in absorption, but I can kind of feel that leak. So that's preamble to the koan.

[27:21]

So this is in the Book of Serenity, which is the Soto collection of 100 koans, or more Soto, even though many of the koans are duplicates, are the same koan that are in Blue Cliff Record or Gateless Gate, Uman Khan, and other collections probably. So, one day, the world-honored one ascended the seat. Manjushri struck the gavel. Clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma king. The Dharma of the Dharma king is thus. The world honored one then got down from the seat. And that's the koan.

[28:29]

And it's the first one in this collection. So one might think this is one of those slippery glass mountains, like what is this? What does this have to do with anything? What is going on here? But here is the world honored one, which is Shakyamuni Buddha. That world honored one is a epithet you know one of the names phrases used to indicate the Buddha coming from you know I alone am the world honored one when the world honored one was born and took the seven steps and sat in the heavens above and the earth below I alone am the world honored one so the world honored one ascended the seat came up to the platform to the dais, to the pulpit, to the dharma seat, to give a dharma talk.

[29:30]

That would be the usual thing. And then Manjushri, bodhisattva of wisdom, had some kind of, it says gavel, some kind of sound maker, percussion, and said to the assembly, clearly observed The dharma of the dharma king. The dharma of the dharma king is thus. And the world hundred one got down from the seat. So in the commentary, I just wanted to mention this. It says... If there had been someone there who could understand the multiplicity of meanings according to situations, as in the Sanskrit word saindava, what would have been the need for Manjushri to strike a beat?

[30:40]

So the world got up and just sat there, just sitting. Is there anything missing there? Anything lacking there? Isn't that enough? Isn't that enough for each one of us to just sit? But Manjushri, I would say, out of compassion, out of compassion for the many, you know, hey, hey everybody, could you look Over there, clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma King. The Dharma of the Dharma King is thus. I don't know what was going on for Manjushri there, if he thought people were distracted or somehow not.

[31:54]

not there, not clearly observing. This is a meditation instruction. Clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma kings and queens and beings, the Dharma beings of all kinds. The Dharma of the Dharma beings is thus that's enough. What else can be said? What is there to say? The poem that goes with this is the unique breeze of reality. Do you see it? creation runs her loom and shuttle weaving the ancient brocade incorporating the forms of spring but nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking Manjushri

[33:27]

said, look over there, you know. What do you mean over there? What over there is over there, Anjushri? Neither over there nor over here in thusness, Anjushri. Why are you telling us to look over someplace? the dharma of the dharma beings is thus. Thus. There's no over there in thus. There's just thus. And the Buddha was silent.

[34:30]

The world honored one said nothing. And there were various places when the Buddha answers in silence, especially for questions that are tangential to relief of suffering and liberation. Like, you know, will I, what was this, what was that, will I be this, will I be that? So out of compassion, you know, these koans are for us, out of compassion, these stories, teaching stories and koans are given to us, passed on. The word thus has a very positive quality to it.

[35:45]

We feel the appearance, moment after moment, of thus, thus, thus. Tathagata itself is the one who thus comes. Tathagata is the thus-come one. And what comes thus is the Tathagata, the Buddha, Buddha-darva, appearing thus Manjushri says, clearly observe. Are we clearly observing?

[36:49]

Thus, thus, thus Kappa One. The unique breeze of reality. Do you see it? Do you feel it? Breezy? You know, the word thusness, suchness, emptiness, are all

[38:10]

interrelated and, you know, ways of looking at the reality of our existence. The shunya, the emptiness, has all the no's, no eyes, no ears, no no's, no abiding self. And it has One can feel those negatives and be frightened almost. In the Diamond Sutra it says if a bodhisattva is not cowed by hearing about this, then they are a bodhisattva. That can happen when we hear. And thusness has a kind of positive quality. Also no abiding self. Thusness appearing. no abiding self, but appearing and appearing and appearing.

[39:13]

This has a kind of positive side. Clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma beings, Anyone left out of that? The Dharma of the Dharma beings is thus clearly observed. Clearly observed without getting involved in externals, pushing, pulling, grabbing. getting caught, or internal coughing and sighing in the mind, as Bodhidharma said.

[40:22]

Inhaling and exhaling, thousands, hundreds, millions of scrolls clearly observed. Let us join the world, the honored one, and ascend the seat, practicing thus.

[41:31]

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.

[41:52]

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