This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Lovely. I hope you tell somebody afterwards how you found your way here. I always find those things interesting. Welcome. Old friends and new friends. So my name is Ed Sadezon. I'm the abiding abbot at the city center. and I just recently returned from spending three months leading the winter practice period at Tassajara.

[01:02]

So this is the first time I've spoken since December here, and it's nice to be back and have a chance to spend some time with you. I thought I would share a little bit about the Tassajara practice period in case any of you are not familiar with that. We had 55 students who came down on January 5 and committed to live at Tashara for 90 days and follow the schedule and the guidelines of the practice there. The schedule is... I was just looking at the schedule this morning because already I'd forgotten. And it was... See, it starts at 3.50 in the morning with the wake-up bell followed by... Well, I seem to have misplaced it by some zazen, and then some more zazen, and then breakfast in the zendo. Yes, we eat oryoki style in the zendo formally, so you're sitting in formal posture.

[02:07]

And after breakfast, there's study, and then after that, there's a little cleaning of the temple grounds for a half hour, and then either a lecture given by someone, a lot of times the leader of the practice period, or zazen, and then After that, there's some more zazen and some kenyan. And then some more zazen. And then there's lunch. In the zendo, seated in formal posture, oryoki style. That ends at 12.30. But then the afternoon is quite relaxed. You have a little break, and then you go to a work meeting, and you work for three hours. doing various chores around the temple. And then you have an hour break where you can exercise and go to the baths and take a bath. And then you go to evening service and dinner. And then after dinner, there's zazen, kinyin, some more zazen. And you end at 9.30, you go to bed.

[03:10]

And then you get to get up at 3.50 the next day and do the same thing over again. And it probably sounds, well, the main thing that I would like to say is, which I think you picked up on it, there's a fair amount of zazen going on. This is a place you go to if you want to get into zazen. I mean, if you like sitting zazen here in the mornings and you've done a couple of one-day sittings and you're thinking, I'd really like to figure out what zazen is about, this is a place to go. And I also said you have to follow the guidelines And I brought it with me because I was so amazed by it. It's six pages long, small type. It tells you everything, how you're supposed to bow to people. You know, things like you observe silence from evening zazen through lunch the next day. So actually, at Tassar, there's a lot of quietness. Do not play musical instruments or listen to music during practice period. Do not run in the central area. Just a lot of when you can go and get fruit from the back door of the kitchen.

[04:14]

It's very explicit guidelines. So you feel like you're totally taken care of. You don't have to do anything but follow the schedule and basically the guidelines. Oh, plus I forgot to mention there's three seven-day sashins, one to begin the practice period, one in the middle of the practice period, one at the end of the practice period. But if you're sitting that much zazen, a sashin is kind of just like, oh, we're sitting a little bit more in the afternoons than we were before. It's about the same thing. The tasar practice period is the most traditional way of training we have in Zen Center. This tradition of a 90-day practice period goes all the way back to the time of Buddha when they would... deraveling monks would, during the rainy season, stop for 90 days and practice in one place. And Suzuki Roshi said it was the most important reason we started Tassahara, was to be able to have this tradition of a 90-day practice period. And this was the 95th 90-day practice period we've had since we founded Tassahara.

[05:18]

The first one was in 1967. That's two a year, one in the fall and one in the winter. And Tassar was the first place where that kind of 90-day practice period was ever established outside of the Orient. So it's a very special thing that we can do that there. It's called the winter practice period, but actually the weather was so mild at Tassar this winter that I called it the spring practice period. It was really beautiful. Anyway, I'd like to share a couple of quotes from the first... practice period at Tassahara, which Suzuki Roshi led. And at the end of that practice period, which was in the summertime, that was, I think, the only summer when we did, there was a Sashin and he gave this lecture, and one of the things he says is, it is possible to practice by yourself, but when we practice in a group, we can help each other, and by practicing with people under the same conditions, we can eliminate self-centered practice.

[06:22]

Suki Roshi emphasized the wonderful power of practicing in a group. When I was first at Tasarai, I ran into some people that went out into the woods and practiced for 100 days sashin by themselves in the woods. And when I asked them if they'd asked Suki Roshi about that, they said, we did, and he said he thought it was a little selfish. So he goes on, the purpose of group practice is not the observation of rules and rituals, Although the rules do allow you to focus on your practice and to live according to the essentials needed to practice together, the purpose is to obtain freedom beyond rules and ceremony, to have naturalness, a natural order of body and mind. Although the rules do allow you to focus on your practice and to live according to the essentials needed to practice together, the purpose is to obtain freedom beyond rules. He goes on, to live in this world means to exist under some condition moment after moment.

[07:28]

We should have the flexibility of mind to adjust our being to these conditions so that when we do change our attitude or circumstances, there will still be a fundamental imperturbability to our minds and bodies. This imperturbability gives us absolute freedom and we should practice our way until we obtain this. Group practice is the shortcut to the imperturbable mind, which is beyond concepts of personal or impersonal, formal or informal. The shortcut. Now, it may not seem to be the shortcut when you're living with 55 people and the person on the serving crew always irritates you with the way they help you serve, or the fact that The wake-up bell rings at 3.50 in the morning, and you're supposed to get up and get to the zendo. You know, a lot of times you actually don't feel like getting up at 3.50.

[08:31]

I don't know about you guys, but that's the way it is, sort of. And sometimes you're kind of tired in the late morning and don't feel like going to the zendo either, but you do this. And so he says we should have the... flexibility in mind to adjust our being to these conditions when our attitude changes. Like with all these rules and all of this form you have to fit into, eventually you rebel against it. And you say, this is stupid. I'm going to go talk to the abbot or the director about why I have to be doing this, because this is just stupid, you know. And... you notice that your mind is quite disturbed about these things. Why do I have to always bow to that person when I pass them in the pathway? I don't like them. They don't like me. And you want me to bow to them. Why is that? So your attitude changes. The circumstances change.

[09:32]

Various things occur down at Tassar. We had a fire out in the campo shed. We had to get up in the middle of the night, go change it. We were tired the next day. how to have a mind that remains imperturbable with all these changes that are going on inside of you and outside of you. What kind of mind gives you the freedom to act appropriately in every circumstance because you're not pushed around by what's going on inside your head and you're not pushed around by what's going on outside in the world. that imperturbable mind. And what's surprising and wonderful about a 90-day practice period is you actually start to settle into something that's quite wonderful while you're there. So I just, this is maybe not exactly an advertisement, but I just thought I would mention if anybody is wondering about whether going to a 90-day practice period of Tassar, because people

[10:38]

say scary things like, oh, it's impossible, it's difficult. Well, that's true, too. But actually, it's wonderful. And most people that go say it is wonderful. So, of course, we do practice periods in the city. We just finished one this winter, and we're doing a six-week one coming up soon, and I'll lead a fall practice period here in the city, and the practice periods in the city are wonderful because you can get a taste of the feeling of practice, do a sashin, siddhaza in the morning, while still being engaged in your busy work life, because as I certainly understand, and I'm sure you guys all understand, it's not so easy to take 90 days and go to some remote place where you don't have the internet. And so it's very difficult to keep your life going in that faraway place.

[11:39]

You have to figure out how to organize your life to do that. But it is a very traditional, wonderful way that we practice. And, of course, I'm very grateful that... When I'm at Tassar, I feel very grateful to be there and do that practice. And when I'm in a city, I feel, oh, so grateful that we have this wonderful urban temple where we have all these affinity groups that come in in the evenings and all these different ways that we can practice here. and bring zazen into the daily life we lead here. As I was mentioning, the winter was so mild that I had renamed it the spring practice period. Of course, we had a marvelous, wonderful storm early in February that the creek level rise six feet and cleared everything out. We had large trees rolling down the creek, it was magnificent. But unfortunately, it didn't continue. We all know we're in a California drought, and we hope that will reverse itself this coming winter.

[12:41]

But the other side of that was with slightly warmer February and March, the trees started leafing out earlier. And for those of you who've been to Tussar, there's this marvelous collection of maple trees that leaf out and have these maple blossoms that come down that are just fantastic. The bees are swarming around them. When I was at Tussar in the early days, someone reminded me, although I forgot about it, that we made tempura out of maple blossoms, which sounds better than it actually is, as I recall. But anyway, we were very much back to nature when I was there years ago. But then after the maple blossom leaf, after the maple trees leafed out, then the sycamore trees, those beautiful sycamore trees leafed out, and then the alders along the creek leafed out, and I just was having this sort of love affair with trees down at Tassara. And the red bud came out, marvelous trees. So that, plus the fact that it's Earth Day next Wednesday,

[13:47]

and there's all kinds of Earth Day celebrations going on today all over the country, I thought I would talk about this famous koan, famous case of the oak tree in the courtyard. So many of you may be familiar with it, but it's okay. It's a good case to hear again. So this is case 37 in the gateless barrier. And case 47 in the Book of Serenity. So it's a famous enough case that it's in two collections of koans. The primary problem one has when you first face this case is in the gateless berry, it's called the oak tree in the courtyard. And in the Book of Serenity, it's called the cypress tree in the courtyard. I have to decide what it is. And so I always like the oak tree in the courtyard because we have these marvelous live oaks. in America, and at Tassar we have these great big coastal live oak trees.

[14:50]

So I decided it was gonna be the oak tree in the courtyard, but then I went to Zhao Zhou's temple where this particular koan happened in China, and there's these magnificent hundreds and hundreds of year old huge cypress trees in the courtyard. And so apparently it was the cypress tree that Zhao Zhou was referring to in this story. And after some research, I found out that it was the same Chinese character, but somehow when it got translated into Japanese, it became an oak tree, and in China it stayed a cypress tree. I'm sticking with oak tree because I went to Tashara, and that was the first tree I fell in love with at Tashara, so here we go. Here's the case. Are you ready? A monk asked Zhao Zhou, he's the abbot of the monastery, what is the meaning of bodhidharmas coming from the west? What is the meaning of bodhidharmas coming from the West? And Zhao Zhao said, the oak tree in the courtyard.

[15:51]

End of case. It's an easy case to remember. What is the meaning of bodhidharmas coming from that? Well, first of all, in the Book of Serenity, it isn't what is the meaning of bodhidharmas coming from the West. It's what is the living meaning of Zen Buddhism? which is a sort of more straightforward way of saying it. This is a kind of fancy way of saying it. Bodhidharma, as you know, was the founder of Zen in China. He's the person that brought, came from India, took him three years to get to China, and then went in China and set up the Zen school. So one question is... one way of looking at it is, well, what was this monk asking? Was he saying, I'm looking for some truth about Zen, and I'm going to do it by trying to find out what was going on with this great teacher Bodhidharma years ago, and that's how I'm going to, and I'm going to ask my teacher about what spiritual depth that person had, and my teacher says, doesn't say anything about Bodhidharma, he says, go look at the oak tree in the courtyard.

[17:04]

So... interesting response. And Zhao Zhao was famous for some things. Well, now I'm going to read you, because that's too simple, so in all these koan books, the stories, they have additional commentary to make you feel more confused. So here's Wu Man's first comment. If you can see intimately in the essence of Zhao Zhao's response, there is no Shakyamuni in the past and no Maitre in the future. Shakyamuni was the original teacher in Buddhism, and Maitreya is a future Buddha. So there's neither the past or the future Buddhas if you see into the essence of Jiaojo's response. One might translate that as to say the immediate moment of awareness of the suchness of things. That's what's happening if you're looking at a tree, if you really get a tree. you have an immediate moment of the suchness, of the reality of this moment, aside from all conceptual understanding, then that's a Buddha of all time, past, present, and future.

[18:20]

Now here's Wumann's verse. Words do not convey the fact. Language is not an expedient. Attached to words, your life is lost. Blocked by phrases, you are bewildered. Words do not convey the fact. Language is not an expedient. Attached to words, your life is lost. Blocked by phrases, you are bewildered. I'm just throwing that out there. We're going to get to that at the end of the talk. So I did want to say a little bit more about the characters in these stories because that helps flesh them out. So Bodhidharma was this... famous teacher who came from India, came to China. China had already had Buddhism there for several hundred years. And there's a famous story of Bodhidharma being invited by the emperor, who was a big supporter of Buddhism, had built lots of temples and monasteries and supported lots of monks.

[19:22]

And Bodhidharma meets the emperor, is invited into the emperor's court. And the emperor asks him, how much karmic merit have I earned for ordaining Buddhist monks, building monasteries, having stupas copied and sutras copied and commissioning Buddha images? And Bodhidharma says, no merit. And then the emperor says, well, what's the highest meaning of the holy truths? And Bodhidharma says, vast emptiness, nothing holy. And the emperor says, well, who's standing before me saying all these outrageous things? And Bodhidharma says, I don't know. So this is a very famous dialogue, a very famous story. And it sort of shows that usually you would get your head cut off for talking like that to an emperor. But Bodhidharma was interested in seeing if this emperor could meet him outside of a defined person of who he was. Oh, I'm Bodhidharma, a famous monk from India. You're emperor. That's who we are. Let's have a conversation. No, he just wanted to meet him person to person.

[20:25]

So Bodhidharma left. the emperor, and wandered north across the Yangtze River and sat in a cave doing zazen for nine years until he found a disciple that he could transmit the Dharma to, and that was the beginning of Zen practice, Zen school in China. So clearly a pretty tough guy, pretty guy committed to, and there's a marvelous painting, a scroll of Bodhidharma in the hallway when you go out, and please do go out and get tea and cookies afterwards, right by the stairway. It's large, about six feet by five feet, and you take a look at him. He looks pretty ferocious. He was a ferocious guy. His teaching was a teaching outside the scriptures, pointing directly at the mind. That's our Zen way, a visceral feeling for your life.

[21:26]

not a whole bunch of ideas about what religion is or a whole bunch of behaviors, but actually experiencing your life, the life of a Zen student. So that's Bodhidharma. And the question is, what was the meaning of him coming and establishing the Zen school in China? That's what this monk is asking. And he's asking Zhaozhou, and who's Zhaozhou? Well, Zhaozhou is probably one of the, there's probably more koans more famous Zen stories about Zhaozhou than any other teacher we have. He was greatly loved by Suzuki Roshi, and he's my favorite, well, probably one of my two or three favorite teachers. This is 778-897, ninth century China. When he was a young man, he traveled to a monastery, found his teacher, and he studied with his teacher for 40 years. And when he was 60 years old, he decided to, his teacher died, so he went on pilgrimage for 20 years. And when he left for pilgrimage, he said, what did he say?

[22:31]

I will ask my way of a child of seven if he is good enough, and I shall be a teacher of any old man of a hundred. So, you know, usually in China, it's very hierarchical. You would only teach people younger than you and study under people older, but he was willing to reverse it. So he did 20 years. years of pilgrimage, testing and refining his understanding, and then he settled down at the age of 80 in this monastery, Zhao Zhou's monastery, and he taught there, according to the records, for 40 years. Anyway, a long time. He was an old man, and he was very famous for being very simple and ordinary. There's many of these stories. I'll just tell a few of them. A student comes and says, I just entered the monastery, please teach me. And Zhao Zhao would say, have you had your breakfast? And he said, yes. And he said, go wash your rice, go wash your bowl.

[23:34]

You've eaten your rice gruel, go wash your bowl. Well, that's not ordinary Zen instruction. It's sort of very down to earth. You've eaten your breakfast, now go wash your bowl. there was a, during an upcoming practice period, Jaojo was meeting all the students. So the new student, if a student came to him and as he was interviewing him, if it's a new student, he would say, have you been here before? No. Well then, have a cup of tea. Then the next student would come and he'd say, have you been here before? And the student would say, yes. So he'd say, go have a cup of tea. This kept going on and so the assistant to the Jaojo said, why do you keep saying the same thing to a person whether they've been here before or not been here before. And he says, go have a cup of tea. So he emphasized the ordinary activity of our life is where you find just as much depth and truth about life as doing special things.

[24:40]

This is really our Zen way. This is why we do work. in the afternoons, and work has always been part of our practice. Washing your bowls, having tea, the ordinary things that you do have as much depth and truth in them about life as special fancy things. So tremendous emphasis on the ordinary activities of our life, and of course, that's exactly what this story is. It's a story about a very ordinary down-to-earth thing, in Jiajou's temple where I was, they have these enormous buildings, you know, Buddha halls and zendos and ceremonial halls and bell towers, and there's these enormous courtyards between them with these fantastic large sycamore trees, not sycamore, cypress trees. It would be very easy as you're rushing from the Buddha hall to the zendo to not even notice the cypress tree. And so he's saying, well, you're busy in your head thinking about

[25:43]

sutras and various things. Pay attention to the tree as you walk by it. Now we get back to trees and the wonderful trees I told you about at Tassara. And I've noticed myself, I've had a long... relationship with trees. I was raised in New Mexico on a 7,000-foot plateau about 30 miles from Santa Fe with the Jemus Mountains rising behind. So there were these marvelous ponderosa pines and Douglas fir trees. And then up near the ridge there were these aspen groves, marvelous aspen groves in the summertime. If you've ever been in them, they let so much light through because the leaves are so light that there's grass that grows under them and flowers. So you sit in a forest of flowers And high grass, marvelous. And then in the fall, they turn golden. All the hills are golden. Marvelous trees. And down in the desert, you have the pinyon forest. And in the canyons, the rivers filled with cottonwoods.

[26:46]

Trees are just marvelous things. I'm trying to get you into the feeling of trees. Trees, like if you had to choose one Zen teacher, pick a tree. pick a tree and see if it will teach you about Zen. I live here five days a week, but I also have a wife and a home in Mill Valley, and behind my home is a big forest, because that's the way Mill Valley is. I hike up there with my neighbor sometimes, and we get to a redwood grove. My neighbor always hugs the redwood trees. I'm not really a tree hugger. Are you guys tree huggers? I like to touch them with my hand, and I like to look at them, especially redwood trees are so fantastic. You look up high through them, they're like a cathedral, aren't they, redwood forests? You're in a church, the sky sort of peeking through way above there. So what is it like to actually be with a tree, to actually experience a tree?

[27:57]

aside from all the thoughts you might have about the magnificence of the way the water is going up and down and the leaves are coming out and the shapes of the limbs to just get the light quite right and how they mix together. There's a zillion things one can think about trees, but actually to feel a tree, to get what it's like to get out of your head and be with a tree, to feel a moment in an afternoon in a forest with a tree. That's what Zhajo is saying. Of course, he's saying in the courtyard, but it's a forest too. So that's the basic thrust of this story. But to get deeper into it, as always with these little koans, there's a longer version of the koan, and that's what I'm going to read you next. And this is the longer version. A monk asked Zhajo, what is the meaning of bodhidharma coming from the west? And Zhao Zhao says, a cypress tree in the courtyard. And then the monk says, please don't teach me with reference to outside things.

[29:02]

I'm asking about inner truth. We get that, right? I mean, you know, what does it say in the Genjo Cohen? To study Zen is to study the self. You know, we study ourselves. We don't think that the solution to our suffering exists out there somewhere. If somebody... provokes us and makes us angry. Part of our practice is to not say, oh, you made me angry, but say, oh, wow, I got angry. What's that all about? Studies the self, inner truth, not trees out there. And Zhao Zhou says, I don't teach you with reference to outside things. I'm not talking about outside things. So the monk comes back, because these monks are wonderful in this way. Well, then what is the meaning of Bodhidharma is coming from the West? And Zhao Zhou says, the cypress tree in the courtyard. So what's he talking about here? We're talking about an experience that's not a matter of subject-object, not an object out there that's a tree and a subject inside me that's experiencing that tree.

[30:14]

We're talking about some way of being in reality, of experiencing the world that's not about subject-object. I mean, we've all had those experiences. I'm sure while I was at Tasara, one morning I was standing by the stream watching. It was one of those days when the sunlight was coming through and turning the ripples in the stream golden so it looked like the stream was just a bunch of gold water running down it. And the leaves were just that perfect green that happens when they've only been out there for a few days. so gorgeous, the perfect temperature, a slight breeze in the air, and then this butterfly goes soaring down the creek right in front of me. You have a moment where time stops, where you're one with nature and you really can only feel grateful to be alive. Some kind of experience like that, moments of connection

[31:22]

to everything, are part of our lived life. And this koan is a suggestion to open yourself to that. It's a suggestion to open yourself to that with trees, but you can open yourself to that with the bowls you wash or maybe telephone poles, but trees are so much easier. And zazen helps us to feel that way. I'm sure that the students at Tassara had many experiences like that because they told me about them, but they're sitting 10 periods of zazen a day, but just one period of zazen a day, just taking a deep breath for three deep breaths while standing in the Whole Foods line can give you a break, a moment, a chance to just be present in that moment. feel what that's like to be alive, to feel your life free from all the conceptual wrappings we put on it.

[32:31]

Of course, as soon as the butterfly was way down the road, I started writing a story in my head about it, because that's what we do. A storyline comes, and then I'm living in my stories. And that's wonderful, I mean, that's real. You know, our stories are real stories that we live in. But the unfortunate part is those stories we think are actually a description of reality. And they aren't. They're just our story. And they're sometimes a very crude understanding of reality because they're based on our early childhood and various other things. And there's a way in which these stories start to cause us suffering. So the reason I'm going in this direction a little bit is to say Zazen or our Zen practice is not to give us a kind of rarefied exotic Zen experience from time to time, although that's a nice thing to have.

[33:44]

It's... If that was what it was, I mean, there's a lot of ways to do that. The fact is, though, if you keep returning to a real connection to a life bigger than the stories in your head, a life bigger than the descriptions of reality that you keep generating with this fabulous mind that we have, if you keep training yourself to touch that your life becomes freer, more joyful, and you cause less trouble in the world. Does that make sense? And it's fairly simple because even though... We have this incredible desire to wrap meaning on everything. Oh, something happened, I'm gonna describe it, I'm gonna understand it, I'm gonna figure it out in my head.

[34:50]

The figuring out in our head is always sort of tilted by all of these prejudices and problems and conceptual. It's impossible. And if you've ever really paid attention enough to your thinking in this way and the amount of clarity it brings to your life, you'll notice that most of the time it doesn't bring clarity, it brings suffering. And the truth is the actual world that's right in front of you has a lot of intelligence in it, a lot of meaning in it, meaning that is beyond what you need to add anything on. And if you're in connection with it, it will tell you how to live. Time is flying by here. I had this wonderful, well maybe I'll do it anyway.

[35:51]

We were studying the Heart Sutra and part of the Heart Sutra which is a foundational text for Zen people. It says a bodhisattva relies on wisdom and thus the mind is without hindrances. Without hindrances, there is no fear. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana. So what's this wisdom we're talking about? The wisdom we're talking about here is the wisdom to see reality, as I've been describing, like the oak tree. And if you can see that, then you don't have the hindrances. What are the hindrances? The hindrances are all these ideas in our head, all these ideas. obstacles in our mind, all these covers we have. I could tell many stories, but I'm sure you have your own stories where you are sitting there trying to relate to another person and your mind is just obscured by your view of them, who they are, what the story is, what your view of yourself is, and you can't actually see them

[37:03]

You can't see what's in front of you. But if you have the wisdom to step outside of these obstacles, these hindrances, then you have no fear and you can have an imperturbable mind. Far beyond all inverted views. Inverted views is the idea that I mean, mostly we think that our thoughts are running... I mean, our thoughts are running our life, right? You think something, and you tell your body to go do this, you think something, and so who's running our life? Is it our thinking that's running our life? Or our... I mean, our thinking is marvelous, don't get me wrong. I mean, I think, you know, to have a human mind and to be able to think thoughts and express words and language is a fantastic thing. I mean, it's one of the great gifts we have as human beings, but...

[38:04]

There's a way in which we believe our thinking so much that our thinking dominates how we act instead of our whole being. And our whole being, our mind, bigger than our thinking, and our body is busy contacting, in touch with the wider world, in touch with, quote, reality. And that being should be where our life force and decision-making comes from. not just our thinking mind. And it's inverted when our thinking mind is what's running our life instead of our whole mind and body. Commentary. So I wanted to read, get to the verse, which I'll read again. We might as well end with the verse. Words do not convey the fact.

[39:06]

Language is not unexpedient. Attached to words, your life is lost. Blocked by phrases, you are bewildered. And I'm going to read Robert Aiken's commentary on this because it's so kind of wonderful. Words do not convey the fact. That is true, isn't it? In the pungent English proverb, fine words butter no parsnips. Fine words butter no parsnips. The word butter is neither salty or smooth, right? The word butter is not the same as having butter. So words do not convey the fact. The fact of our life is not conveyed by words. So the oak tree in the courtyard, you have an image of an oak tree, you have a thought about an oak tree, but you actually have to go encounter the oak tree. Language is not an expedient. Language will not get you to the oak tree.

[40:07]

It's not a device summoned up to an enlightened monk. There's a long story there which I will have to skip because we're running a little late. The third paragraph, attached to words, your life is lost. Yes, words are the keys which program most people. Words are the keys which program most people. Such people are used by words instead of using words. Their understanding is not experiential but merely verbal. Instead of coming from life and using words, they act on the basis of concepts which can destroy life. Did you get that? Are words using you? Or are you using words? And so many of the concepts we have in our mind, the words and concepts we have in our mind, destroy life. They destroy your life, and they destroy other people's lives.

[41:14]

There's a kind of brutality with the simplicity with which our mind thinks, and the crudeness which it summarizes our experiencing. So we have to be very careful to not be used by our thinking mind, but to use it. And here's the last paragraph of that verse. Blocked by phrases, you are bewildered. And Robert Aitken says, that is not altogether bad. How else can one practice? Oak tree in the courtyard, bewildered by that, you have a chance. Finally, the phrases in your head get you so bewildered, maybe you can actually have a chance of experiencing this moment of life, the suchness of a tree that you pass. There's no way to eliminate language.

[42:28]

but we need to know what we are doing with it so we don't get entangled at such a great cost to our souls and to other people. If we stop being captured by our thinking mind and listen to the tree, it will tell us everything we need to know about the tree. And if we listen to our friend, they will tell us everything we need to know about them. I'm so tempted to carry on. Because they do carry on, you know, in these koan stories.

[43:31]

They're just one iteration after another. I'll just, I'll read it to you and sort of like just gesture at what it could possibly mean. So here we go. Version 3. A monk asked, does the cypress tree have Buddha nature? Zhajo answered, it does. The monk says, when does it become Buddha? Zhajo said, when the sky falls to the ground. The monk said, when does that happen? And Zhao Zhao said, when the cypress tree becomes Buddha. I mean, you gotta love these people. They just go on and on. And this is just the beginning. There's probably, I would say there's at least a hundred such stories about the cypress tree and jiaojou and the courtyard, et cetera. So I'll just give you a little summary of this.

[44:33]

Apparently in China, since the olden time, cypress tree has been paired to a pine tree because even in the most severe winters, they don't lose their leaves. So it's become a common metaphor for friends who remain constant in adversity. So when it's applied to this story, What was the meaning of Bodhidharma coming to the West? Bodhidharma was coming to the West to find a friend who could be loyal in adversity, to find a disciple. So he went and sat in a cave for nine years until Vekhi, and this is a famous story, stood outside in the snow, cut off his arm and handed it to him to indicate he was a sincere practitioner. It could weather difficult times. I mean, that's just a metaphor for saying he cut off his attachments to his thinking mind. I don't think he actually cut his arm off, but just to settle you down there.

[45:36]

So that is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West was to find a disciple that he could pass his understanding on so this teaching would continue. So in that context, and this is always the way these interactions go, a monk has come to Joujo, to meet somebody, to meet the truth. And the truth that he could meet is Jiao Joe himself. So, in this case, the cypress tree is the monk. Does the cypress tree have Buddha nature? Do I have Buddha nature? Can I become a Buddha? That's what the monk is asking. Jiao answers, yes, it does. When do I become Buddha? Says the student. And Jiao Joe says, when the sky falls to the ground. In this case, the sky is a metaphor for jiaojo because jiaojo is the pine tree. Remember the pine tree that has an internal friend and a pine tree is a metaphor for eternal and the sky is a metaphor for eternal. So when emptiness or the eternal comes to the ground, that is, becomes a human being, that is, when jiaojo manifests the eternal emptiness, that's when

[46:53]

the monk would become a Buddha. And so the monk says, well, when does the sky come to the ground? When will Joujo actually become a Buddha? And Joujo says, when you, the monk, the Saipa tree becomes Buddha. And so it'll happen when you become a Buddha. I'll come down when you... And so this is that famous thing. Only a Buddha and a Buddha can awaken. Only in meeting another person do you awaken. When Zhajo steps forward, when the monk steps forward and they meet each other, then they will awaken and be Buddha. Only a Buddha and a Buddha can thoroughly master it. So that is yet another version of a cypress tree story. Thank you very much for your patience. And if you have any questions, I will be somewhere else. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[48:01]

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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:24]

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