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. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. You're not strangers. Neither are you. Welcome. Act 4, Scene 1, The Tempest, by William Shakespeare. Our revels now are nearly ended. These are actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision... the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve.

[01:10]

And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. So today is the first day of our last seshin, at the end of which we are going to break the spell of practice period, a spell that has taken us a full three months to cast, all of us. So even though I'm going to be talking each day of this seshin about karma and about relative truth, the stuff as dreams are made on, The truth is that I am going to miss us. This has been an enchanting time to share with you here in this place, this beautiful place. We are the 108 and forever shall be.

[02:17]

So it's my wish that all of you will continue to grow and thrive and heal whatever hurt is left inside of you. your old karma, and that someday maybe we'll meet again. Marry meet, marry part, and marry meet again. I hope so. But as for now, I have some thoughts to share with you before we go our separate ways, starting with this one that I have named Talk Number One. And in it, the familiar framework of the two truths. Eno said at the work circle the other day that repetition seems to be very helpful for ensuring that the message gets across. So I found this to be really true about this teaching of the two truths. It's been very helpful for me to keep repeating the lessons, you know, repeating the teaching of the two truths.

[03:21]

and particularly in trying to better understand these two stories that I came here hoping to talk to you about this practice period. The first one about the dog, and now this one about the wild fox. So the framework of the two truths, which I hope you remember, was presented to the five ascetics following the Buddha's awakening under the Bodhi tree. In a short sermon known as Turning of the Wheel of the Law, In his first sentence of the sermon, he included this admonition to the monks. O monks, there are these two extremes that should not be cultivated by one who has gone forth. Which two? Devotion to sensual pleasures and devotion to self-mortification. The middle way discovered by the Buddha avoids these two extremes. which might help to explain why it says in the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism that all proponents of Buddhism are, in a sense, proponents of the middle way.

[04:28]

The middle way is the basis for understanding what the Buddha meant by the non-dual nature of reality. Not one, not two, non-dual. So if you imagine something like a scale that a baker might use, for weighing ingredients, whatever's placed on one side of the scale requires the other side to have any meaning. Without the other side, then there is no measurement. There's no way to tell. So one side does not exist independently of the other side. Is something depends on isn't something. And right way depends on the wrong way. I depend on you, and beginnings depend on endings. This teaching of the middle way, of the interdependence of all things, and in particular, is important to each of us in our relationship to reality, the whole of reality. And as I said, this was an experience that the Buddha had as he gazed up and saw a star on the horizon.

[05:37]

And he saw that it, the object of his awareness, was not outside of himself. It was not separate. No it, no me. non-dual. Not one and not two. So, in other words, no thing can exist without everything. And that's the truth, and that's called the ultimate truth. So the ultimate truth is the first of the two major frameworks that we need to understand what's going on with the Zen school, and in particular with these koans. The truth I talked about during our November session just a few weeks ago was all about Mu, the ultimate truth. No. Just no. But what about no? Couldn't I know?

[06:38]

And the other major framework, which also appears in the first sermon, is the relative truth. And this is the truth about the relationships of things to one another. In particular, relationships that help explain how suffering comes to be. What causes our suffering, and most importantly, how our suffering might cease. And this is the Buddha's teaching in the first sermon of the Four Noble Truths. There is the noble truth of suffering. Birth is suffering. Aging is suffering. Sickness is suffering. Death is suffering. Sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering. Association with the loathed is suffering. Dissociation from the loved is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering. In short, the five aggregates, the five skandhas, affected by clinging are suffering.

[07:42]

And then there's the noble truth of the origin of suffering. Desire is the origin of suffering which produces endless circling. Desire accompanied by relishing and lust. Relishing this and lusting after that. In other words, desire for sensual pleasure, desire for being, desire for non-being, for extinction. And then there's the noble truth, number three, of the cessation of suffering. It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go and rejecting of that same desire, leaving not a rack behind. And then the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering. It is this noble eightfold path. That is to say, right view, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

[08:55]

So the Buddha said that this four-part framework, explaining the cause of suffering and the end of suffering, was all that he had to teach. That was it. We just heard it. And with this first framework, we have the Buddha's non-dual vision. And with the second framework, we have the basis for the Buddha's teaching of causality. So non-duality and causality. Thereby answering such very human questions as, how did I get here? Where am I going? Why do I suffer? Who are you? And what difference does it make how I behave? Relative truth. truth about our relationship to our relatives and then there's the question that's most important to our aspiration for enlightenment which we may not even know that we have how did i come to see the world as separate from myself so there's a more detailed explanation of causality in particular of the connection between suffering and its cause

[10:09]

And that is the 12-fold chain of dependent core rising, also known as the wheel of birth and death. There's an illustration of that in the reference book, if you've taken a look at it. It's quite wonderful. I actually drew that wheel and filled it in with all the little beans. It's very helpful to do that. One way to learn. Make a little drawing of your own. So identifying the parts of the wheel and coming to understand how it all works together is the clockwork of the mind. And this was the focus of the Buddha's attention while he was sitting there under the tree. Making a diagram of the wheel is basically drawing a map of your mind. Such self as dreams are made on. As our dreams repeatedly arise, abide and cease. Arise, abide and cease. in seemingly endless clouds of sorrow and delight, the pattern that the Buddha called samsara, endless circling.

[11:10]

What we are today comes from our dreams of yesterday. Our present dreams build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our dreams. So cutting through these entangled patterns of delusional thinking is the purpose of mu, of no, stop it. Just cut it out. As we sometimes say to people who are irritating us, cut it out. And, of course, oftentimes it's our own mind that is irritating us. So cut it out. The two weakest locations on the wheel for making cuts, the first one is at ignorance, but unfortunately that's really unlikely to happen because that requires us to wake up. The easier link is the one between feelings and desire. That's where the flashing red lights on the dashboard are starting to glow, as the car of our desires begins careening out of control.

[12:17]

Feelings, if we listen closely, are telling us to slow down before desire takes over the car. And how? Move. Don't move. Hold still. Keep your foot on the brake and wait. Which is a lot easier to do when we're sitting here together in the Zendo. It's easier to wait and wait for the bell. We all do it many times a day. We just wait. What's harder is to try waiting when we're working together or calling our family and our friends on the phone. So this is the challenge. How can we grow? our patience, our ability to wait. So Zazen is really, basically, a really good time for us to develop patience, the practice of patience. The practice of no, or at least not now.

[13:25]

Not now. The first of these two frameworks, the teaching of non-duality, was the focus of the koan about the dog. that I talked about last Hsing. And as I said, Zhaozhou's answer to the monk wasn't about the dog. It's about this very activity of asking dualistic questions in the first place. Well, does it or doesn't it? Are you or aren't you? Should I or shouldn't I? So liberation for the awakened ones is through the practice of not clinging to dualistic questions of any kind. such as, the dog has got or hasn't got, or why her and not me? Those painful questions. The dog is just an object of perception, just a feeling, just an impulse to act, until once we have awakened, it is just a story about a dog. There is no dog.

[14:27]

However, it's ironic that stories are all we really have to find our way out of what Artenzo called the samsara cinema. First by witnessing how those stories are made, and then to understand what kind of stuff they are made of, which is not much. And finally to free ourselves from their mesmerizing power, which is just what these koans are designed to help us do. by probing into the tight weave of our mental fabrications, prapancha, if you remember that, from the frog jumping into the pond, those waves, mental elaborations, we come to realize that stories have no bottom, they have no sides, have no boundary lines, there's no true beginning or true ending, and that realization will set us free. Kerplop. We'd be free. to be flexible and creative and joyful and kind.

[15:29]

What we were born to be. Which is just what the mysterious old monk sitting in the back of Hyakusho's lecture hall had failed to do. He had failed to break free of his own stories. I am a person of the way, he thought, and I am not subject to cause and effect, he thought, again and again and again. Endless circling. Until... Kerplop. He was a fox. Now I'm a fox. Now I'm a fox. Now I'm a fox. For 500 lifetimes. So I think Hyakyo-jo had fallen into what is called a do-loop. And the only cure for do-loops, as I understand, is to unplug the computer. To stop the do. Stop it. Also, as I said last, as a meditation technique, the koan about the dog can allow us as meditators to experience a cessation or a stopping of the mind, stopping the incessant activity of the mind, also known as monkey chatter, or as Dongshan calls it in the song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, Baba Wawa, baby talk.

[16:50]

Once the mind is stopped or sufficiently slowed, it's possible for self-view, worldview and one's own personal ideas about reality to be suspended for a time it's possible to see how our incessant story making is blocking our view of reality as in the metaphor of the clouds are covering the moon the clouds represent the veil of our subjective ideas and our imaginings our projections our fantasies our stories and our dreams that are blinding us to the objective, causal, and karmic relationships hiding right behind them, such as how hate leads to hate and kindness leads to kindness. Being blind to the objective workings of reality is called being blind to cause and effect, which is the subject matter of the second koan in the Mumongkan. Hyakujo and the wild fox.

[17:52]

So my understanding is that in the Minzai tradition of koan study, once a student has accomplished, I guess, or passed, I'm not sure what to say, mu, given it at least some serious attention, then it's strongly recommended to follow up that koan with this koan, the story of Hyakujo and the wild fox. So Hyakujo and the fox is intentionally aimed at the negative tendencies into which a practitioner may fall through some incorrect behavior. understanding of Mu. And for this reason, these two koans are treated as a balancing pair, which in the true Zen spirit, I hope you might try seeing for yourselves, you know, how these two work together as you continue in your own life of practice through this lens of teaching, Buddhist teaching and practice. As a balancing pair, meaning as guidelines along the edges of the middle way, The dog and the fox can aid in correcting our tendencies, the tendencies of our human minds, towards dualistic thinking.

[19:00]

Yes or no. This way or that way. Nothing or something. In other words, these Dharma stories can support a practice that avoids the two extremes, neither falling into the pit of duality on the one side or the pit of no duality on the other side, but striding... as best we can, more or less, down the centering line of the middle way. So, as I said earlier, the second framework from the Buddha's first sermon is this teaching of cause and effect, which is also known as this and that causality. If this, then that. If not this, then not that. a basic teaching that has been found among the oldest inscriptions on ancient Buddhist stone temples throughout India. If this, then that. If not this, then not that.

[20:03]

So ironically, the most significant example of falling into one of the two extremes occurs in this very teaching of causality itself. On one side of the road is samsara, and on the other side of the road, nirvana. A dualistic eye sees these two states of being as separate and not equal. A dualistic eye sees the path leading to the cessation of suffering as a pathway from here to somewhere over there, from here to somewhere else. Dualistic scene splits the universe in half with all the good stuff on one side and all the bad stuff on this side. And poor us trying to find a way to the middle. In the nondalistic eye, the Buddha's eye, as Nagarjuna says in the fundamental teaching of the middle way, there is nothing that distinguishes samsara from nirvana. There's nothing that distinguishes nirvana from samsara.

[21:04]

And the furthest limit of nirvana is also the furthest limit of samsara. Not even the subtlest difference between the two can be found. So... You know, how much more tied up in verbal knots and gateless barriers could we possibly get than that? So in the view of many teachers, this is exactly what these teachings are trying to do, right? Where they're trying to place us is stuck inside the usual ways we have of getting unstuck. You know, we try to get unstuck by threatening or retreating or brooding or hiding, fantasizing. or just forgetting all about it. Having been trapped inside the cage of our own karmic conditioning, inherited by us through countless generations, once we have even the tiniest taste of selflessness that leads to the cessation of suffering, it is very tempting to then identify with that.

[22:08]

Oh, that's me. The real me. To identify with the absence of self... which unfortunately comes along with an absence of concern, how the absent self is behaving toward the non-existent others. This is the Zen sickness. So one of the dangers that took place historically in the Buddhist tradition was the moral slippage that occurred in the blinding light of a half-cooked realization of nirvana, the land of eternal silent light, as it's been called. Mistaking nirvana for a place where you can live, outside of the dualistic restrictions of a right way or a wrong way, led to many regrettable consequences throughout the history of Zen, right up and to the present day. Sexual misconduct, intoxication and theft, and then lying about sexual misconduct, intoxication and theft.

[23:12]

However, we can't simply ignore nirvana, noble truth number three, the cessation of suffering, which is described throughout Buddhist history as the goal of the path, the end of suffering, the resolution of karma, and so on. So that's why a correct understanding of nirvana takes such monumental significance for all of us as we try to practice in the Buddhist tradition. It's very critical to whether we are growing ourselves into a life of true freedom or devolving further into bondage. From the iron chain of samsara to the golden chain of nirvana. So there's a very early example of what the Buddha said about nirvana. I think it gives us a pretty good taste of what we're up against in trying to understand the goal as being... on either one side or another side of anything that we can think of. Where there is neither earth, water, fire, nor air, neither the highest stages of trance, the jhanas, neither this world or another, nor both together, neither the sun nor the moon.

[24:29]

Here, I say, O monks, there is no coming or going, no staying, no passing away, no arising. It is not something fixed, nor does it move on. It is not based on anything. This, I say, O monks, is indeed the end of suffering. In the perfection of wisdom teachings, the nirvana of the Buddha has been re-envisioned to be an unlocated nirvana, neither in samsara nor in nirvana. leading to this declaration by Nagarjuna that I read to you last, Hashim. Liberation is not some ultimate reality existing beyond the phenomenal conditioned world, beyond the veil of conventional truth. Emptiness is the ultimate truth of reality and of liberation. Nirvana, too, is empty of its own existence.

[25:32]

Nagarjuna also declares that nirvana is a quiescence, that's inherent in each and every phenomena. It's already what's happening. That is nothing. There is nothing, no thing happening. And furthermore, just this is it. And as good as it's going to get. On the edge of this way of talking and of teaching, I am going to turn to the second case in the Muman Khan, Hyakujo and the Fox. This is a turn towards emphasizing the second of the two truths, the relative or the conventional truth as a corrective for a mistaken handling of the ultimate truth. Hyakujo and the Wild Fox Whenever Master Hyakujo held a meeting, an old man sat in the back of the hall listening to the teaching along with the assembly. When the people of the assembly left, the old man would also leave. And then one day the old man stayed behind and the master asked him who he was.

[26:41]

The old man said, I'm not a human being. In the past, in the time of a prehistoric Buddha, I used to live on this mountain. As it happened, a student asked me whether or not a greatly cultivated person is subject to cause and effect. I said they are not subject to cause and effect. Moo. And I fell into the state of a wild fox for 500 lifetimes. Now I ask you to turn a word in my behalf so that I may be freed from being a wild fox. Then the old man asked the master, Are greatly cultivated people still subject to cause and effect? The master said, They are not blind to cause and effect. The old man was greatly enlightened at these words. Bowing, he then said, I have shed the wild fox body, which remains on the other side of the mountain. I am taking the liberty of telling you and asking you to perform a monk's funeral.

[27:46]

So the master had one of the monks hit the han and announced to the community that they would be sending off a dead monk after mealtime. The community debated this, wondering how it could be so, seeing that everyone was fine and there had been no one in the infirmary. After the meal, the master led the group to a cave on the other side of the mountain, where he fished out a dead fox with his staff. Then he cremated it. That evening, the master went up in the hall and recounted the foregoing events. A student by the name of Wang Bo asked, An ancient who gave a mistaken answer fell into the state of a wild fox for 500 lifetimes. What becomes of one who never makes a mistake? The master said, come here and I'll tell you. Wangbo then approached and gave the teacher a slap. Hyakujo clapped his hands and said, I thought foreigners' beards were red.

[28:49]

There is even a red-bearded foreigner here. So here's some background on this story. Hyakujou, Bai Zhang in Chinese, was a teacher during the Tang Dynasty, which is called the Golden Age of Zen. He was the Dharma heir of Matsu, another very famous Zen master, and his students include Wang Bo, who gave him the slap, and Rinzai. Hyakujou holds a unique role in the Zen tradition as the creator of a new pattern of monastic life. His Zen monasticism included periods of work and farming, traditionally not acceptable for monks in Buddhist India. However, in China, it allowed the Zen communities to become self-sufficient and also physically fit. During periods of ascetic practice, the monks in Hakjo's temple would sleep on the same straw mat as they had been sitting for meditation and on which they then took their meals in a ritual fashion.

[29:54]

Both the lifestyle of Hyakujo's community and the architecture of his monastery became the standard models for Zen monastic practice. Hyakujo's monastic regulations are still used today in many Zen temples, for example, this one. And from his teaching comes the well-known saying, a day without work is a day without food. Given Yakujo's emphasis on guidelines for communal practice, it makes a lot of sense that he would be the icon for a koan focused on the teaching of causality, that every act is a cause that inevitably has a corresponding effect, a principle that underlies both reasoning and morality. According to the Zen tradition itself, one of the most common negative outcomes in practicing with no, or mu, koan is to mistake ignorance for transcendence in other words the essential point of the wild fox story is to make it clear that the practice and experience of passing through the gateless barrier of zen does not negate causality reason or morality the real meaning of breakthrough is breaking through the veil of our subjective ideas our imaginings that blind us to the actual working

[31:21]

of causal relationships. Zen does not exempt us from what's happening, but rather frees us to see what is happening, actually happening, and then to respond, to be responsible. Zen insight frees us from compliance with the mental habits that are arising from our conditioning by the three toxins of greed, hate, and delusion. And Zen insight frees us to be deeply curious about the world and how it's being perceived by this seemingly singular viewing station that I call myself. The mistakes of faulty practice show rather clearly in the careless and harmful deportment of a practitioner. Zen master Tahui describes the effects of mistake and no practice as denying the effects of cause and thus becoming crude and careless. So in the second part of this koan, when Wang Bo comes forward and challenges his teacher about the story, about Abbot becoming a fox, and asks about a counterexample in which the teacher or the student never makes a mistake.

[32:31]

When Hakirjo calls him forward, saying, come here and I'll tell you, Wang Bo approaches the teacher and slaps him. So Tom Cleary says that the slap... in the Zen koan tradition symbolizes the dismantling of the framework of the teaching event once the point has been made. So it's kind of like when we strike the sui qing at the beginning and the end of the practice period. It's like, it's done. Furthermore, Hyakujo acknowledges Wang Bo's mastery of the koan by recognizing him as a red-bearded barbarian, which is the same name the Chinese gave to Bodhidharma who had come from India with a bright red beard. Wang Bo had shown his skill to Hyakujo by first understanding the story and then by transcending the story with a slap to his teacher's face. Hand-to-face transmission. Personally, as a teacher in the California Zen school, I would prefer a hug.

[33:38]

So you're very welcome to do that. Still, this slap, in Wang Bo's case, invites us to give up any attachment we might have to the story that's just been told, to any insight we might have gotten or wish to hold on to as if we could. A skillful means of detaching from skillful means, including the teaching of causality itself. Mu. So here's a poem to end today by one of our own Tassajara graduates. Lovely friend, poet Jane Hirshfield. Three foxes by the edge of a field at twilight. One ran her nose to the ground, a rusty shadow, neither hunting nor playing. One stood, sat, lay down, stood again. One never moved, except to turn her head a little as we walked.

[34:39]

Finally we drew too close, and they vanished. The woods took them back as if they had never been. I wish I had thought to put my face to the grass. But we kept walking, speaking as strangers do when becoming friends. There is more and more I tell no one. Strangers nor loves. This slips into the heart without hurry, as if it had never been. And yet, among the trees, something has changed. Something looks back from the trees and knows me for who I am. Thank you 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.

[35:45]

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