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. Wow. There's so many people here. My favorite kind. So how many of you think you're children? Raise your hand. You know, everybody raised their hand. Is that amazing? That's right. Do you know why everyone raised their hand? Why does everybody think they're children? Any ideas? Because we were. We were all children. I was very small when I came out. Well, not that small. Ten pounds was not that small, actually. My mom said it was pretty hard. But anyway, we were small, and then we learned things just like you do, and here we are.

[01:02]

Now, we're called grown-ups, but really, really, we still remember. And because of that, we still like to play, and we like to hear stories, and so I have a story. And would you like to hear a story? You too? Okay. This story is called Play With Me. Who knows this story? Good. It's my favorite one. Play with me. Can you hear me in the back? Okay, great. The sun was up and there was dew on the grass and I went to the meadow to play. A grasshopper sat on the leaf of a weed. He was eating it up for his breakfast. Grasshopper, I said, will you play with me? And I tried to catch him. but he leapt away. A frog stopped jumping and sat down by the pond.

[02:04]

I think he was waiting to catch a mosquito. Frog, I said, will you play with me? And I tried to catch him, but he leapt away. A turtle was sitting on the end of a log. He was just sitting, getting warm in the sun. Turtle, I said, will you play with me? But before I could touch him, he plopped into the water. A chipmunk was sitting beneath the oak tree, shelling an acorn with his sharp little teeth. Chipmunk, I said, will you play with me? But when I ran near him, he ran up a tree. A blue jay came and sat on a bow and jabbered and scolded the way blue jays do. Blue jay, I said, will you play with me? But when I held up my hands, he flew away too.

[03:06]

A rabbit was sitting behind the oak tree. He was wiggling his nose and nibbling on a flower. And rabbit, I said, will you play with me? And I tried to catch him. But he ran into the woods. A snake came sneaking through the grass, zigging and sliding the way snakes do. And snake, I said, will you play with me? But even the snake ran away, down into his hole. None of them, none of them would play with me. So I picked a milkweed and I blew off the seeds. And then I went to the pond and I sat down on a rock and I watched a bug. making trails on the water. And as I sat there without making a sound, Grasshopper came back and sat down beside me. Then Frog came back and sat down in the grass, and Slowpoke Turtle crawled back onto his log.

[04:13]

Chipmunk came and watched me and shattered, and Blue Jay came back to his bow overhead, and Rabbit came back and hopped around me, and Snake came out of his hole. And as I sat there without making a sound, so they wouldn't get scared and run away, out from the bushes where he had been hiding came a baby fawn and looked at me. I held my breath, and he came nearer. He came so near I could have touched him. But I didn't move, and I didn't speak. And Fong came up and licked my cheek. Oh, now I was happy, as happy could be, for all of them, all of them were playing with me. Okay, so now you get to go outside and play, and you can run and make noise.

[05:21]

It's okay, because that's okay, too. All right, so thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it that you come. Thank your parents for bringing you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. You're welcome. Bye-bye. Hi. Oh, you're welcome, sweetheart. You're so welcome. You come back, okay? Love to see you again. I remember you.

[06:23]

What's your name? Oh, yeah, I remember you, Elias. Yeah, me too. Me too. You're welcome. So welcome. See you soon. again.

[07:54]

So I have another story about play from the Zen tradition. A monk asked Great Master Mazu, apart from the four propositions and beyond the hundred negations, please directly point out the meaning of living Buddhism. The Great Master said, I'm tired out today and can't explain for you. Go ask Zitsang. So the monk asked Zitsang, and Zitsang said, why don't you ask the teacher? The monk said, well, the teacher told me to come and ask you. Zitsang said, I have a headache today and can't explain for you, so go ask Brother Hai. So the monk went and asked Hai, and Hai said, When I come this far, after all, I don't understand. The monk related this back to the great master, and Matsu said, Zang's head is white and Hai's head is black.

[08:59]

That's it. So for many years, I have preferred to think that what I'm doing here, dressed like this and living like this, in a community of like-hearted people is a kind of play. And three senses of that word of play. The first one has to do with being playful. You know, bringing out those parts of ourselves that are full of wonder about the world and are very eager to have others join us in our play. And whatever it is that we truly are wondering about, whether it's science or math or yoga or building things, helping people, I think of this type of play as being akin to the idea of vocation, of a calling. In another sense of the word play, I think of Zen as a performance piece in which we use costumes, stage settings, chanting, liturgical instruments and movement to evoke within each other a kind of deep communal resonance.

[10:11]

It reminds me of how early humans must have gathered in the dark to drum and to sing while waiting for the light of day. This kind of play is what creates communities and traditions. And the third kind of play that we're doing here at Zen Center has to do with the play of the mind. Primarily, as the Buddha discovered, the working of his own imagination. So the play of the mind has been fascinating meditators and religious seekers and philosophers and nowadays neurobiologists for a very, very long time. In the Zen tradition, we view this fascination as an entry point or a Dharma gate into the practice of the Buddha way. Dogen said, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. So how do we study the self? Well, we study the self by studying how we think, what we're thinking.

[11:13]

and by studying how the way our thinking is determining the outcome of our lives. I think it's this word way in the Buddha way that leads to ask a few more questions, like which way? Or the way to what? The way to where? And who is it that we're going to find when we arrive? These are very Zen questions. What is it? Where is it? Who is it? So for me, there's often this question comes to me as one of the teachers here at Zen Center. It's like, can you show me the way? Can you tell me the way? Which reminds me of that other great pilgrimage story when Dorothy asks the scarecrow, can you tell me the way to Oz? And he says, well, you can go this way. or you can go that way, or you can go either way.

[12:17]

So it's not really good directions, but he did offer to go along with her. So that's something we also offer to do. We're not sure which way, but we'll go with you. This fall I've been offering a class here at Green Gulch on the Yogacara teachings, which are also known as the mind-only teachings. which along with the majamaka, meaning middle way teachings, are foundational to this school we call Zen. And what I like about the Yogacara teachings is that they seem to give us some direction for entering into the study of Zen. And they also travel along with us along the way. So this morning, I'd like to introduce you to some of these teachings without forgetting the spirit of play, which I have grown more and more certain is the approach to awakening that the Buddha and the ancestors intended for us to take.

[13:25]

The spirit of play. Suzuki Roshi famously said, Zen is so serious that we had better not take it too seriously. The primary interest of the Yogacara school is the mechanism by which we humans come to believe that the world is external to us. This mechanism is precisely what the Buddha was studying under the Bodhi tree when he came to realize that inside and outside were simply two different names for the one radiant moment of experience. that one that is happening for all of us right now. You know, this one. Inside or outside? So, this radiant moment of experience that we're having right now is the only moment you'll ever be conscious of throughout your entire life.

[14:30]

There's a famous story from the Zen tradition to this point. This story appears in the Platform Sutra of the sixth ancestor of Zen, whose name was Huynong. One evening, Huynong, who was on the run, for reasons I won't go into right now, sought shelter under the eaves of a temple. When the wind started stirring the temple banner, he heard two monks arguing. One said that it was the banner that was moving, the other that it was the wind. Back and forth they argued. but they were unable to realize the true principle. Hway Nung said, pardon a common layman for intruding into your lofty discussion, but it is neither the banner nor the wind that is moving. It is only your own mind that moves. With that, the teacher of the monastery recognized that Hway Nung was no ordinary man and asked Hway Nung to accept him as a disciple.

[15:34]

So the mind-only teachings utilize the logic of non-duality to articulate a pathway to liberation, to which all Buddhist practices are said to lead. In other words, they teach that our conscious awareness and the objects of which we are aware are not separate from one another. And at the same time, How we experience those objects of awareness depends a great deal on what kind of a day we're having. One of my friends, a senior Dharma teacher, Leslie James, who is down at Tassajara much of the time teaching, some of you may have met her there. She's been a feature of Tassajara for 40 years? It's a long time. She said in a lecture a few years back that she noticed that the signal for Zazen that morning was not very skillfully hit.

[16:40]

And then she noticed that neither were the bells or the chanting during service. And then she realized that when the oatmeal at breakfast wasn't well cooked, that it was she that was having the bad day. And then that made her smile. So there's a Japanese poem about this very thing, you know, how many distinct ways there are for us humans to interpret the same event. So it may be mind only, but each of our minds is arriving at its own unique take on this one reality that we share, as I'm sure is happening right now. At the clapping of hands, the carp comes swimming for food. Maybe a tough game. At the clapping of hands, the carp comes swimming for food.

[17:42]

The birds fly away in fright. And a maiden comes carrying tea. Sarasawa pond. At the clapping of hands, the carp comes swimming for food. The birds fly away in fright. And a maiden comes carrying tea. Sarasawa pond. Sarasawa pond means monkey marsh pond. And it lies in the middle of a very famous tourist area of Japan in the city of Nara. There's an abbot of a temple, his name is Takagawa Shunei, who's the author of a book called Living Yogacara, this tradition I'm talking about with you right now. So his temple is very near Monkey Marsh Pond. And in explaining this poem, he mentions that the tea house in the story is at the edge of a pond that looks up at his temple. And that this poem is a very good summary of the essential teaching of yoga chara tradition. And then he points out how it's so. So here's this poem once again.

[18:44]

At the clapping of hands, the carp comes swimming for food. The birds fly away in fright. And a maiden comes carrying tea. Sarasavapan. So the subject of the verse is this simple act of clapping the hands. Ready? all you get and yet as meaning it can be dramatically different depending on the individual conditions of those who are hearing the sound in other words the object of our awareness in this case the sound of hands clapping is always seen under the influence of the mental state of the listener at that very moment it's just like the mind of my friend Leslie on looking at the oatmeal Not so good. So for the carp, the clapping sound means that food's going to be dropped into the pond. And for the bird, it's a scary noise, and they fly away.

[19:49]

And for the maiden, it signals the guests are ready to be served their tea. So we might then wonder, well, what is the truth in any of all of this? And when we ask questions in that way, we may come to see that what we call the truth, our own experience, is never a case of the so-called external world exactly as it is, but rather the world that can only be known by a mind that is deeply influenced by long-held preferences, emotions, and opinions, just like this one. This is my world, the way I see it, the way I feel it. In other words, the world is nothing other than our own mind constructing things, mostly rather simple things, and determining their value. I like coffee, but I don't like tea. You know, Starbucks' entire menu is based on this principle.

[20:53]

Preferences. So this is the meaning of mind only. It's my mind only. And how special is that? Well, that's pretty special. but it's not at all unique. Each of us in this room right now is up to the very same thing, the thinking thing, and which is being deeply determined and influenced by our preferences, also known as our karmic conditioning. I've sometimes had this fantasy of walking around the room during morning meditation and whispering to each person, what are you thinking right now? So what makes this teaching of mind only a bit frightening for us is that we may come to see that when we have a mind of abundance, then we live in a world of abundance. When we have a mind of anger, we live in a world of hatred. When we have a mind of greed, we live in a world of longing, and so on. Buddhist iconography depicts these worlds as destinations, which we arrive in as a result of how it is that we behave towards ourselves and toward one another, based on our preferences and our conditioning.

[22:08]

There are six destinations undoubtedly familiar to all of us. The hell realm, the heavenly realm, the animal realm, the realm of hungry ghosts who are never satisfied, the realm of the jealous gods, who are never satisfied, and the human realm. So I'm not going to go into all of these. They're easy to look up, and they're quite fascinating. But safe to say that the only one that's recommended for those of us wishing to realize the pathway of freedom is the human realm, which looks a lot like Green Gulch on a foggy day. Nice, but not too nice. So this being the case, what the Yogacara teaching tells us to do is to pay close attention to ourselves as we and all of our friends are co-creating the world until we discover the gateless gateway to freedom from our mind-made entrapments.

[23:10]

This is the very same gateway the Buddha came to realize on the morning of his awakening. You know, a very, very good day. So going back for a moment to the story of Dorothy asking the scarecrow for directions to the Emerald City of Oz, I'm imagining that you may have all noticed by now that the Zen tradition, as with many children's stories, it's rather difficult to get straight answers out of anybody. And yet it's the non-straight answers that turn out to be the best ones for getting to where we are wanting to go, especially if where we are wanting to go turns out to be exactly where we already are. The full circle, coming home, coming home. Like that little girl by the pond. She came home, very happy there, quiet and still.

[24:12]

Perhaps the most important element for engaging our precious lives as spiritual practice is the ability to ask questions in the first place, and the ability to seek out and maintain connection with a cadre of traveling companions, just as Dorothy did. It only takes three to make a sangha. Any more than that, and you're going to need a project manager. So in the teaching story of Matsu's black and white, the Sangha consists of these three monks and their project manager, also known as the teacher. And so here's that story once again. The monk asked great master Matsu, apart from the four propositions and beyond the hundred negations, please directly point out the meaning of living Buddhism. Can you see how ready he's looking for something outside of himself? Point out the meaning for me. Show me where it is. Help me find the way. The great master says, I'm just so tired out today, and I can't explain it for you, so go ask Master Zizong, your Dharma brother.

[25:22]

It's like the scarecrow. Well, you go that way. Or you could go that way. Or you could go either way. Really okay. So the monk asks Zizong, and Zizong says, why didn't you ask the teacher? And the monk says, well, he told me to ask you. Zisang said, well, I have a headache today, and I can't explain for you, so why don't you go ask Brother Hai? That way. So he goes to ask Hai. And then Hai says, when I come this far, after all, I don't understand. Silent and still. The monk related this back to the great master. The real wizard is still hiding behind a curtain. Mazu says, Zang's head is white and Hai's head is black. And that's the end of the story. So I have a hunch that this monk was already pretty stressed out to begin with.

[26:26]

And I can imagine also that he might think that he was losing his mind. But then where could his mind have gone? How could he lose it? And where was he going to go to find it? In the Surangama Samadhi Sutra, the Buddha and his attendant Ananda are discussing this very question of how to locate the mind. Ananda asks the Buddha, is it inside the body? Is it outside the body? Or somewhere in between? Ultimately, the Buddha says, the mind is not located anywhere at all. and neither is anything else. In fact, you know, if we think about it, the question of inside or outside doesn't make any sense when applied to reality. Are we inside of reality? Are we outside of reality? Or are we nowhere at all?

[27:28]

Well, that doesn't make any sense either. And yet location just like time, are examples of mind-made constructions we humans have created out of our own vivid imaginations and a clever use of language. It's over there. It's not now. So we are wizards behind the curtain, conjuring a rather horrid image of ourselves designed to scare away wild animals and robots and ravenous crows and undocumented immigrants. And meanwhile, it's our own fear of not being welcomed, of not being wanted, of being sent away, that drives us to build walls around our bodies and around our homes, which is the very opposite of freedom. So referring again to this teaching story, Matsu's Black and White, In this story, black signifies non-differentiation, or the ultimate truth, in which all things are experienced as equal.

[28:35]

In other words, there are no separate things. Reality is whole. It's always whole, complete. And everything and everyone is in. All in. Everybody can play. That's a rule. White signifies differentiation or relative truth, poetically referring to the 10,000 things, the 10,000 things swirling around, flying all over the place, out of which we humans are continuously creating imaginary hierarchies of value, preference, and opinion, also known as greed, hate, and delusion. I like coffee. I don't like tea. I like you. I don't like him. On and on and on. So as you heard in the story, it begins with this monk asking his teacher for some clarification of some big philosophical teachings of Buddhism.

[29:39]

He's starting with some kind of abstract conceptual question. And I find it interesting that in the commentary to this story, it says that this monk... didn't have a sanguine nature, meaning he wasn't very optimistic or cheerful. But he saw things through from start to finish. So he's kind of stubborn. He wasn't going to be put off getting an answer to his question. Humorless and stubborn kind of guy, and undoubtedly in a lot of pain. So it may be that the seriousness with which this monk was approaching his studies his teacher and his friends, is the reason they were playing with him in the Zen version of hide-and-go-seek, hoping that he would wake up from this intellectualizing, from his self-concern, and enter into the joy of living itself on that very day, at that very moment. Wake up. Wake up, sleepyhead.

[30:42]

Which, in my understanding, is the very point of Buddhist teaching in the first place, to bring joy humankind so here again is the question that he asked to master Matsu apart from the four propositions in case you're wondering here they are existence non-existence both existence and non-existence and either existence nor non-existence and beyond the hundred negations which I won't tell you please directly point out the meaning of living Buddhism. Please, teacher. Please help me. He's not saying so, but you can feel the pain in this question. Please help me. So I think this monk, despite his great effort at practice and study, his sincerity, is not feeling truly alive. So the great master says to him, you know, I'm so tired out, I can't explain.

[31:43]

Go ask Zizong. So this name Zong in Zizang, refers to the treasury of the teachings. Go ask Zizang himself. He's a masterful scholar. He can point out the teachings for you. Study the teachings. It will help you. So the monk asks the scholarly question in Zizang about the 100 negations. And Zizang says, why don't you ask the teacher? And the monk, who is also referred to The monk who didn't open his eyes, not yet anyway. He says, but the teacher told me to come ask you. So Zizong says, yeah, but I have a headache today. The scholar has a headache. I can't explain for you. Go ask Brother Hai. So Hai in the commentary refers to the practice of meditation which goes into the ocean. So Hai is a meditation master.

[32:43]

Zizong is a scholar and Hai is a meditator. And they're both very good at what they do. So the monk asks Hai, and Hai says, when I come this far in my meditation, after all, I don't understand. And so this answer comes from the ultimate truth, from the perspective of non-differentiation, that there are no separate things, reality itself beyond space and time. Just this is it. Just now. Just here. So the monk relates all of this back to the great master, and the master says, Zong's head is white, differentiation, scholarly studies, and Hai's head is black, meditation. Silence and stillness, all the way down. To which in my thinking, the teacher is pointing to the two essential methods for practice of the Buddha way.

[33:45]

Meditation, not thinking, meditation, and study, thinking. So these are like the runway lights that guide those big jets to a safe landing on the right spot. So it's through meditation and study and faith that we are Buddha. We enter Buddha's way. And which way is that? It's the middle way between the lights. Study and meditation. Think, not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. The middle way. Keep those wings moving, you know. You've got to land this thing. I don't know if you've ever seen that. I was on a Scandinavian airline flight to Norway. Very rare thing for me to travel, so it was quite amazing. And they had this choice on the little TV screen you've got to look at of the, there's a camera in the nose of the plane. You ever seen that? It's so scary.

[34:48]

Anyway, so I watched the takeoff, and then we're coming into Oslo, and it's kind of dark, and I turn on the camera, and there, like, way off in the distance is this little V of lights. And I thought to myself, you've got to be kidding. That's how they land these things? Sure enough, this plane's going like this, and it's... Yeah, anyway, we made it. It was... Which way? Right straight on. Follow the lights. So at that point in the story, Matsu might also have said to the monk, how about you? How's your head today? Which is a very good question for any of us to ask ourselves. Just what's going on? And then we may discover, once again, we're going around the same old tree in the same old forest. Around and around we go. Called our habits, habits of mind. But if we're lucky and we have good companions around, we can kind of keep checking in our navigational system to see if it's actually working, right?

[35:56]

And maybe try another thing. Try another way. Something you've never done before. But still this question remains, what are we trying to do or what are we hoping to find through these repeating patterns? What are you looking for? Maybe this time I'll find it. Maybe this time I'll get it. Maybe this time it's going to work. I think we're all looking for pretty much the same things, material well-being, some maybe love, looking for love. That's a good one. Sometimes it's the wrong time for that, or it's the wrong place, or it's the wrong person, and probably it's a little bit of all of those, right? But still we look. We keep hoping. Maybe this time. I was reading this kind of disturbing thing. and BuzzFeed about finding love and what works. You know, people have been together for 50 years or whatever.

[36:57]

And apparently what works is that you start off with the right partner. OK. I know that's not helpful. But anyway. So seeing and looking is not something new that we've come up with in the postmodern era. Throughout recorded human history, there have been seekers. Some are seeking for wisdom, others for God, some for diamonds or emerald cities, for oil or for gold. Regardless of the object of the search, from inside it's pretty much the same thing. Longing, desire, separation from the beloved, which is our true self. We're seeking outside of ourselves. So that's what the Buddha saw. At the completion of his own search for relief from suffering, he saw how the terrible pain of separation was coming from within his own mind, his own imagination. And somehow he had the good sense to sit down and carefully consider the source of his pain.

[38:03]

And then, as the story goes, although we're not sure exactly what happened or just how, he woke up in the light of the morning star. So in talking about this idea of way-seeking, I thought, you know, we have to really pay attention to the object of our search. What do we truly, truly want? We know it's not material things. We've tried that a lot. We keep trying that, but, you know, that new whatever, that new car, how long is it new? You know, my dad just talked about that first dent in the new car. Ah, the agony. So it's not the stuff. We can't do it with stuff. So what is our deepest wish? When I asked the students here this question in class recently, they answered many things. You know, they wanted community, an end to suffering, to belong. They wanted love. And then I suggested to them, perhaps they wanted to be enlightened.

[39:08]

That's an answer and an aspiration that most everyone's a little shy about naming. And yet it may be that all those other things that we're longing for will be right there in that moment when we come back to the very spot of earth where we have been all along. The spot of earth on which our bodies are sitting right now, on which we walk, and now and then on which we return to take a rest. And yet there's this cautionary note for those of you when you find that spot, if you do, Because the Buddha, even for a brief time, imagined that the relief from his own suffering was good enough. Fortunately for all of us, it wasn't too long before he also realized that the welfare of others was a higher value than his alone. And that's when he got up from the seat of enlightenment and found his way to the five ascetics who were to become his first disciples.

[40:15]

To enter into this practice of the Buddha way, it's essential that we locate within ourselves the highest good or the deepest concern. And for the Buddha, it was the cause and cure for suffering, initially his own suffering, but ultimately that of the entire world, out of which came his vow to live for the benefit of all beings. So by knowing what it is that we care about most, then, like in locating the North Star, we know where to direct our mind, our actions, and eventually, the course of our entire life. Ditsang asked Fayang, where are you going? Fayang said, around on pilgrimage. Ditsang said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage? Fayang said, I don't know. Ditsang said, Not knowing is nearest. I think it's important to note that both Ditsan and Fayang, like the Buddha, were very happy men.

[41:26]

Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:54]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.43