I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Good morning. Can you hear? Okay. In Master Mu Man's collection of koans called the Mu Man Khan, case number ten is called Qing Shui, Solitary and Destitute. I'm going to use a Japanese name, transliteration of names, rather than the Chinese. So Qing Shui is Seizei, and in the case, a monk said to So Zang, I am Seizei, solitary

[01:12]

and destitute, please give me alms. So Zang said, Venerable Seizei, Seizei said, yes sir. So Zang said, you have already drunk three cups of the finest wine in China, and still you say that you have not moistened your lips. Then Mu Man has a comment, and he says, Seizei is submissive in manner, but what is his real intention? So Zang has the eye and thoroughly discerns what Seizei means. Tell me, where and how has Seizei drunk the wine? Then Master Mu Man has a verse, with the poverty of Fan Tan and the spirit of Xiang Yu, though he can hardly sustain himself, he dares to compete with the other for wealth.

[02:14]

So this is the koan. Poverty is the subject of this koan, seems to be the subject of this koan. Poverty has many faces, and we can think of poverty in various ways. For a Zen student, poverty can mean various things. When we begin to practice, we are very enthusiastic. Usually, we come with some enthusiasm, or when we begin to practice, we gain some enthusiasm, and we may go for quite a while, because when you first begin to do something, it's all

[03:18]

new and exciting, and opens new vistas for your mind and spirit. But then at some point, something new becomes something usual. Actually when our practice becomes something usual, it's a very good place. But it seems like, what am I doing now, this question comes up. Two years ago, I was so full of enthusiasm, and now what I do just seems so commonplace. And then we start looking around for something new, some new thing to catch our interest. So, this is a very critical place.

[04:20]

And what was once very vital, now seems commonplace and without spirit. So this is a very important place for a student, this kind of desert place. Where it seems like there's nothing interesting or exciting to spur us on. But this is a very important place in everyone's practice, whether you're a Zen student or not. If you have some, whatever your spiritual life is, at some point you come to a dead place. A place where nothing seems to work so well. So there are variations on this dead place.

[05:26]

Sometimes it's called the dark night of the soul, where no matter how hard you try, you can't really connect with your spiritual life, and you feel isolated. At this point, one has to continue through this place, groping, because there are no guidelines. This is the place where you walk along in the dark and feel along the wall to get to where you're going. And this kind of practice depends on very strong faith. So in our initial entry into practice, our confidence should be built.

[06:36]

So that when we reach this place, this desert place, we know how to continue. With nothing, with seemingly nothing to sustain us. And this is a test of our sincerity and our confidence and our faith. When everything is seemingly taken away, it's easy to do something when there's lots of support. But when all the support is taken away, then what? Zen students should be able to practice no matter where they are or what they're doing. We say, hell is just another place to practice. So this is one kind of poverty.

[08:00]

Another kind of poverty is, or another attitude toward poverty is, the attitude of cherishing not having, or feeling inspired by not having, or accepting the challenge of being unsupported. The challenge of being what I might call the conservation of energy. Conservation of energy means being able to do the most with the least means. To do the most with the least means is to live always on the edge of life.

[09:08]

Constantly being vitalized by that edge. So that you don't have time to fall asleep. Kind of like the way a deer lives in the woods. The deer lives through the winter with nothing, almost nothing. Then when spring comes, the deer enjoys the spring and fattens up. But then next winter, same thing. So whether it's winter or spring, it's just life. A deer doesn't think this is poverty. The deer just lives from moment to moment with what's in front.

[10:13]

This is transcending wealth and poverty. So sometimes wealth is poverty, sometimes poverty is wealth. You can't say always. So this brings us around to what this koan is about. A monk said to Master Sozang, Sozang was a very famous monk, a very well-known monk. And in China, in the 8th century, he was a student of Tozang. And Tozang is the founder of our school. In China. And Sozang was one of his Dharma heirs.

[11:18]

And the Soto school is named after Tozang and Sozang. The two characters, So and To. So the monk asked Sozang, He says, I am Seizei, solitary and destitute. Please give me alms. Solitary and destitute. Well, a monk, if he's a monk, knows that he's solitary and destitute. It shouldn't be a question with him. Is he complaining? Or is he bragging? It's a little bit ambiguous here. Solitary means alone. All alone.

[12:21]

Withdrawn from everything. But solo, solitary, can also mean nothing left out. This universe is one solitary being in which we all participate. So solitary is also ambiguous. Solitary can mean completely at one with or it can mean completely withdrawn from. When we feel alone and solitary, it can be the most devastating experience or it can be the most fulfilling experience. So alone, alone means at one. Actually, but solitary here has the feeling of withdrawn

[13:28]

because he says destitute, but it's still ambiguous. Solitary and destitute. Please give me something. What can you give me, teacher? So he's kind of probing Sozon, probing the teacher. This is a good monk, probing the teacher. Nevertheless, we can't say that he's not solitary and destitute. On the other hand, is he really? Where is this monk anyway? So Master Sozon gives him a response. He says, Venerable Seizei. And Seizei says, Yes, sir. This is where the koan is. Right there.

[14:29]

And Sozon says, You have already drunk three cups of the finest wine in China, and still you say that you have not moistened your lips. This is this kind of response. The three cups could be Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. He could be saying, Look, you know, you're completely sustained by Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and you say you haven't yet drunk. You say you're still destitute. What do you mean by that? Traditionally, monks have no possessions, are celibate, beg for their food, and

[15:34]

own a few robes, and they're not allowed to own too many, and are free from all obligations, worldly obligations. So this is a kind of mixed blessing. So, in the Meiji era in Japan, the government made all the monks marry and have families. And that's the tradition that our practice comes from. The tradition of married monks. Our teachers were all married monks. So, in a way, we're not really monks. Kind of a combination of monks and householders. Householder priests, or householder monks,

[16:46]

which is a kind of synthesis. It can either have the worst part of both, or the best part. This is what all the priests are struggling with, is this hybrid lifestyle. Difficult and rewarding, but very unusual. In Korea, around the turn of the century, the monks, the government allowed the monks to get married, and to have their families live in the monastery. But it didn't work. It didn't work very well. And I can see clearly why it didn't work.

[17:50]

Because the monks married people who were not other monks. So if a Zen student, if a priest wants to get married, they should marry someone who is a practicing student. Otherwise, it doesn't work. Because the householder part and the monk part have to balance each other and be compatible with each other. If they're not, then one or the other takes over, becomes dominant. And if the householder part becomes dominant, which is very hard not to, then the whole relationship goes that way. And you no longer have any practicing monk.

[18:56]

So one has to be very careful. There's something to be said. Well, in this country, there are not so many real monks. And some question whether or not there should be. But when you practice this style, you can understand why there were or have been and are celibate practicing monks. Although it's deprived of many things, it's much easier. Nevertheless, a priest who is married and has the problems of a family also understands people, ordinary people, better. And that person doesn't...

[19:59]

It's more difficult for that person to have a kind of exalted feeling or a separate feeling. So in this calling and answering, Venerable So-Zang, Master So-Zang says, Venerable Tse-Tse. And Tse-Tse says, Yes, sir. This kind of... This is speaking to each other with everything dropped. This is where they come together in their understanding

[21:04]

with nothing in between. This is where they express their sincerity. Very simple, calling and answering. There are many koans about calling and answering. Just saying, Tse-Tse. Yes, sir. There was a teacher in China who had a student and every day he would call the student to him. And when the student came, the teacher would say, What is it? He did this for 18 years. And finally, at the end of 18 years, the student gave him a good response. And the teacher said, You don't need to come anymore.

[22:08]

But it's also like when a child, a small child calls his mother. He says, Mom? And the mother says, Yes. Mom? Yes? Mom? It's not that he has anything to say. He just wants some response. Just wants to connect. And there's nothing to say. When we see each other, you know, and meet each other, and greet each other, we always feel, Well, now what am I going to say to this person? How are you? Isn't it a wonderful day? Blah, blah, [...] right? Oh, I'm fine. But really, all we have to do is bow.

[23:15]

This is in the monastery. Whenever we meet someone, when we practice in the monastery, whenever we meet someone, we just bow. Wherever you are, when someone's coming toward you, you both stop and you just bow. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to say, Oh, how are you? Oh, I'm fine. Blah, blah, blah. Nice weather today. Just bow. That's all. This is like everything stops. The whole world stops, and there's just this meeting, and the whole universe participates in this meeting, and then you just go about your business. This is great wealth. And also, this is like,

[24:23]

sometimes we say host and guest. Host is technically, in Buddhist terms, means absolute. In Christian terms, it would mean God. In Buddhism, the absolute or Buddha nature, or many terms. And host is like the individual. I mean, guest is like the individual. Sometimes, in Buddhism, they say priest and minister. Prince and minister. So this is a relationship. In this case, Sozon is host, and Seze is guest. This is like host and guest meeting.

[25:28]

It's like God calls Adam, and says, Where are you? Adam says, Here I am. No need to be destitute or isolated. Yet, there is nothing, and yet everything is there. Sozon is the expression of this. Sozon is everything and nothing.

[26:37]

Sabaki Roshi says, Sozon is good for nothing. If you think that Sozon is good for something, then it's not the Sozon that we're talking about. But there's nothing more valuable than this good for nothing. So Master Wunman says, in his comment, he says, Seze is submissive in manner. He's being very accommodating, turning himself over to the teacher. He says, Please, give me some alms. But what is his real intention? Sozon has the eye and thoroughly discerns what Seze means.

[27:45]

Tell me, where and how has Seze drunk the wine? And then, in Wunman's verse, he says, With the poetry of Fontan and the spirit of Xiang Yu, though he can hardly sustain himself, he dares to compete with the other for wealth. Fontan and Xiang Yu are legendary characters in ancient China and used as examples of people who, when everything is taken away from them, they rise to the challenge. So Fontan was a government minister and administrator in ancient China and he lost his job or quit. I can't remember which. And he set himself up as a fortune teller and moved his family around in a cart.

[28:49]

Somebody said, a shopping cart? Some kind of cart. A Chinese cart. And the whole family was very happy, even though they didn't have anything. The whole family was very happy. I told this story yesterday in Berkeley and I said, and he was very happy. And then somebody said, Well, what about his family? We all have lots of agendas. So today I'm saying, he and his whole family were happy. And the spirit of Xiang Yu was about a warrior. Xiang Yu was a famous warrior general and I don't want to tell you his story. It's too controversial. But I will tell you a story about somebody I know.

[29:55]

And this story, when I was a beatnik in the 50s in North Beach, there was an old man, he was in his 70s, quite a large man, and he was a hobo. And he had a beard that came down like this to a point, a white beard came down to a point. It was beautiful. It came to a point. And it was about a foot and a half long. And his name was Heinz. And he said, you see, Yeah, my name is Heinz, but I'm not one of the 47 varieties. Or maybe I said I was one of the 47 varieties. And he was what we call a hobo. He said when he was young, he and his father drove sheep

[30:58]

from Montana to San Luis Obispo. So this man was never poor. He just had a lifestyle, which was a correct lifestyle for him. And he knew how to do everything. And he was full of lore. And he was completely a generous person. His whole life was generosity. And he used to say, I live under the bridge. This is a term that hobos use. It can mean wherever they are. And he knew all the hobos. And usually hobos don't associate with society. But he felt free to associate with society, with people.

[31:59]

And he was always smiling and felt very happy. And he was always giving things away. He used to go to the grocery stores and get huge bags full of old fruit, which were just about ready to go, and hand it out to people. Of course, not everybody wanted it. But he would say, well, you can put it in your reefer. And I always thought a reefer was a marijuana cigarette. But a reefer to him was a refrigerator. He never had a refrigerator, but he knew people had them. So he said, you can put it in your reefer and keep it. He was a great teacher for me. I felt a lot of affinity with him. But it's interesting. Hobo is also a Buddhist term. It means a dharma mendicant.

[33:04]

A ho means dharma, and bo means something in there, like mendicant or Buddha or bodhisattva. So there's some similarity between a hobo and a hobo. And attitude toward our wandering, actually, we're all hobos, even though we make a great effort to secure ourselves. We're really all hobos. And part of the pain of our life is not realizing the strain or conflict between our real existence, which is that we're hobos, and our need for security. This causes big problems for everyone and in the world.

[34:10]

We have left-home people and at-home people, householders and wanderers. But a wanderer needs to know how to be at home wherever they are. And a householder needs to know that wherever they are, there's no secure place. So, a big question always comes up. Where are we? At any moment, where are you? You can say, well, I'm blah, blah, blah. But really, where are you? Where are we?

[35:17]

When, if a big wind came and took all of our, all of our dwellings away, and all of our possessions away, where are we? So, we need to establish our security, but at the same time, on what? So, Seizei says, I'm solitary and destitute. Please, give me something. Actually, we're all, each one of us is Seizei, solitary and destitute. And at the same time, we all have drunk three cups of the finest wine in China. So, ultimately, what do we depend on?

[36:30]

Where do we really find our security? What's really sustaining us? One day, the Buddha was walking along with a number of people, and Indra was one of them, and he stopped and said, this place is good to build a sanctuary. And Indra took a blade of grass and stuck it in the ground. He said, the sanctuary is built. So,

[37:59]

Mumon says, with the poverty of Fontan and the spirit of Xiangyu, though he can hardly sustain himself, he's talking about Seizei, though he can hardly sustain himself, he dares to compete with the other for wealth. This is just a way that Zen commentators have of praising everybody. Sounds like he's putting him down, but he's actually holding him up. So, I invite you all to continue sitting Zazen forever. Thank you. Thank you. May our intention

[39:01]

evilly penetrate every being and place with the true merit of Dazui.

[39:18]

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