This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Well, it's great to be here, I have to say. It's awesome. At the risk of sharing too much information, it turns out that the most convenient way to to do this from, you know, as a non-resident is to wear this kimono and hakama and then just when I get here, throw my robe over the top and so on and so forth. But I have to say, the thing that it does is it makes it much more difficult to sit down because you have at least twice as many pleated garments on as you did previously. And that's, I'll have to get used to that. But anyway. So I'm going to give a talk that's a little bit prompted by a koan, and it might be case six of the Blue Cliff record.

[01:18]

It's in men's every day is a good day. And so here's what I thought I'd do to start off, right? I'm gonna recite the khan, and while I'm reciting it, it would be great if everyone could just sit quietly and feel what happens as I recite it. And the good news is that it's incredibly short, so you don't have to spend too much time doing that. And then if you want, when I'm done, you can, it would be great if you could, at least a few of you could speak up and give your impressions. And if there are people out in the world online that raise their Zoom hand, maybe we can do that too. And then we'll move on from there. So, yin men's every day is a good day.

[02:23]

Inman was addressing the assembly, and he says, I'm not talking about before the 15th day. Tell me something about after the 15th day. And as usual with young men, nobody could answer. So he responded on their behalf, and he said, every day is a good day. So let me say that again. Yunman says, I'm not talking about before the 15th day. Tell me something about after the 15th day. And then in the end, he answers on their behalf. He says, every day is a good day. And you know, if whatever comes up for you is just, I have no clue what he's talking about, then that's fine too. So any responses to that? Any thoughts? Anyone out there in the interwebs?

[03:40]

Go ahead. I get the separating of a day out of all the days is like separating a self out of all being. Very good, yeah. You've set up my talk perfectly. Yes. Who else? I would be happy if we turned it down, or even on any of them. Well, it really makes me think I've had some really bad days in my life, and so it raises this question for me about what were those days.

[04:48]

Yeah, that's really good. I think it's safe to say that everyone has bad days, and some people have really, really bad days. And... it makes you wonder what the hell he's talking about, right? And maybe wonder about the... There's the bad days, some of them are really obvious, and then there's this middle ground where it becomes murkier, right? What's going on there and what do you call it, right? So yeah, absolutely. Anyone else? Well, that's good.

[05:54]

Thank you. So, it's worth noting that when Yun Men says the 15th day, I think he's talking about a lunar calendar in which the 15th day is the full moon. And so if you think about it that way, then at least conceptually, he might be referring to awakening, right? So maybe he's saying, I'm not talking about before the day you wake up. tell me something about after the day you wake up, and then afterwards he says, every day is a good day. Or maybe he's not doing that. It's possible that both are true. It's like you said as well.

[06:57]

It's like you saying, separating out this one day from everything has a certain... problematic quality, right? And, you know, you will not be surprised to hear that the reason I decided to give this talk this week is that we've just enacted the biggest 15th day of the whole Western calendar, you know, what is it? Ten days ago, right? So... People make a really big deal out of it, and they do a lot of thinking about before New Year's and after New Year's. I presided at a memorial service last Saturday, which was kind of wonderful.

[08:00]

And afterwards, there was a reception, and there was a tremendous amount of talk among people who... had decided that they were going to stay sober for the month of January, and then here they were in this really emotionally charged environment and really felt like they wanted a glass of wine. Anyway. And the other thing that Yun-Men's doing is he's setting up a duality, right? He's saying before... the 15th day and after the 15th day just like before new year's and after new year's just like as you said self and other you know the in the in the recasting of predicate logic that was written by this guy g spencer brown he says you can construct all of human logic starting with just a distinction you say the first distinction which is a distinction between self and self and other blooms into a whole world exactly right but um the you know zen buddhism in general and zen in particular are full of dualisms and lists right so you've got

[09:25]

enlightened and not enlightened. You've got before the 15th day and after the 15th day. You've got big mind and conventional mind. You've got things like the Bodhisattvas' Four Methods or the Eightfold Path. You've got Buddhas and sentient beings. And it's worth noting that this is in the context of the Zen distinctions are in the context of a Mahayana Buddhist school where one of the primary axioms of Mahayana Buddhism is that all of those dualities, lists, distinctions, categories, and so on, experiential categories,

[10:27]

are empty, right? Which means that they're not true, right? Fundamentally, from a logical perspective, it means they're not true, which is sobering, and it would be more sobering if we didn't chant it nearly every day, but it's still sobering, right? And there's a kind of a dodge that has been invented in the context of Buddhist philosophy and also invented in other philosophical schools, in particular, a lot of Western philosophy and so on. And I think independently invented, which means that it's pretty useful, right? But this whole two truths doctrine, which basically says that there's there's two truths.

[11:29]

There's the provisional, conventional truth, and then there's the absolute truth. And in the Buddhist realm, the absolute truth is inherently ungraspable. Maybe in some Western philosophical or scientific traditions, the absolute truth is not ungraspable. ungraspable and unknowable. It's just we don't know it yet. But in any case, it's a mistake to think that at least in any version of the two truths doctrine that the two levels of truth the provisional and the absolute you know the one the one where we think we've got a self and the one you know we think um there might be an eightfold path and so on and and the other right it it's tempting to think that they are both equally true in some way right

[12:49]

And while it's true that the notion of a self and the notion of the Eightfold Path and the Buddha's Four Methods and the category of sentient beings and Buddhas, while those are useful from the point of view of thinking about, talking about, and so on, Buddhist philosophy, the horrible truth about it with a capital H, capital T, is that truth from the point of view of the provisional is not true. And how could it be otherwise? How could a human mind, I mean, Duggan says this, but it's obvious, right?

[13:50]

How could a human mind really grasp the actual truth about the self the world the relationship between the self and the world um etc right um we're we we live in this world where we build a model of the self and a model of the world that are based on incredibly scanty information and and a desire for everything to kind of work out okay for us, right? And then we animate them in the world, and it kind of works okay, but it's fundamentally delusion that any of that stuff is true at all, right? It's just our best effort in the moment, and you know, Good for us, but it's still not true.

[14:52]

So what was Yun Min doing anyway, as you said? By pulling out this obviously sketchy and even obscured and pointing at it and saying, hey, talk about something. I don't want to talk about what's on one side of it. Let's talk about the other side of it. A few things he was not saying. He was not saying, like, it's a good day, at least somewhere in the world all the time, right? And he was not saying, every day is a good day if you just look at it right, right? If you think the right thoughts about it, right? Or it's a good day because it's better than somebody else's day, right?

[16:06]

And he was not saying, especially not saying, if you pull in the whole... metaphor for awakening thing, he was especially not saying it's a good day after you wake up and it's a bad day previously. He was not saying that. So what was he saying? He's pointing at the practice and the mind that inherently and without the slightest shred of effort goes beyond good day and bad day.

[17:12]

And he's doing it in this confusing way where he uses good day as a marker just to mess things up even more, right? And this is called... falling into the secondary in order to teach people, basically. If you read the commentary on pretty much the whole Blue Cliff record, they use that a lot. And it's a recognition that, one, we don't abide in clarity. Or another way of saying it is,

[18:12]

We're never going to be rid of the mind that draws categories, makes lists, is dualistic, has a bad day, has a good day. And fundamentally, why would we want to be rid of it, right? It's our... tremendously useful, richly rewarding, and incredibly complicated gift. And it's also, not paradoxically, but at least somewhat annoyingly, the source of all our suffering. I mean...

[19:14]

Without it, how could you make poetry? Without it, how could you really do anything? I mean, cheetahs run 80 miles an hour. Whales hold their breath for an hour. Fish don't even need to hold their breath. Birds can fly, so great. But we've got categories. And a few other things. So why would we want to get rid of it, right? the mind and practice he's pointing at is what we practice in zazen.

[20:25]

And we practice it, the sense of practice there is two, is dual. One is, we practice it by doing it a lot. And second of all, we practice it by actually enacting the the opening to this mind that isn't really all that concerned with categories, right? And that isn't bound up with duality at all, really. to speak of, that simultaneously cohabits with our everyday cognition and wrangling.

[21:32]

When Dugan says, there's no distinction between practice and realization. That's what he's saying. He's saying that this practice, this thing that we do when we're sitting and that we hopefully do also when we're standing and walking and lying down and hopefully all the rest of the time except when we're in a utterly dreamless sleep. in which case it's not an issue. It's as natural as the day is long, and it also requires this kind of subtle effort, right? And the practice of it is to

[22:41]

is to recognize and learn that subtle effort. And like all right effort, it's the effort that tails out to nothing and allows... Okay, it allows this. So I took on this project ages ago to write a poem for every case in the Blue Cliff Record, and it's not going all that well, but I did manage to get to this one because it's only case six, okay? And the poem I wrote for this is, it's very short. It's actually a monoku, which means that it's a single line that has the right number of syllables for a haiku in it. And it's... Something like, generous moon, just a day past full, calmly answers all the questions.

[23:54]

Yeah, generous moon, just a day past full, calmly answers all the questions. that every day is a good day. It's not that there aren't questions and it's not that the mind, if you want conventional mind, everyday mind, doesn't cook up difficulties galore, right? But the moon answers all the questions. Experientially, the answer just bubbles up. It's okay.

[25:01]

That might be all I had to say. Thank you. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[25:32]

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