This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. It's essentially a 12th century Chan monk by the name of Hongzhi Dan. jing joe um known as in japanese often as tendo shogaku because he was actually an abbot at tantang tendo monastery where dougan studied right and he's he's tremendously famous he he was sort of one of the great proponents of the silent illumination school and and you know highly scholarly and so on and he compiled this collection of koans and um it would have languished except that about a hundred you know not a hundred but maybe 75 years later or something like that um uh this guy named wansong uh shinchu came along who's generally just um referred to in japanese as bansho um and decided to

[01:25]

make a book out of it and put commentaries on them and so on and so forth. The interesting thing is it was published in about 1224, right when Dogen was traveling in China, which is kind of intriguing. It was probably kind of like a bestseller when Dogen was wandering around China picking up the picking up the Zen teachings, and, you know, who knows, he was, he, you know, probably, you know, like, he probably printed hundreds of copies. And, and so, who knows if it was a, an influence on, on Dogen or not, but he did also on his departure from China, compiled a set of 100 koans and then spent the entire rest of his career commenting on them.

[02:32]

So interesting, intriguing point. So case five goes like this. There's a... earlier sort of Tang Dynasty Chan teacher by the name of Ching Yuan, and a monk once asked him a question that if he translated it essentially boils down to what's the whole point of Buddhism? It's something like, you know, the actual text is something like, what's the, what's the great meaning of Buddha Dharma? But interestingly, Clary translated it as, you know, what's the, what's the great meaning of Buddhism? And in some ways he's saying like, you know, tell me the, you know, you know, skip everything.

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Just tell me this, the main point, please. Right. And, and she wants us, price of rice in Luling, which, as I understand it, there's a couple of different towns or villages called Luling, and my understanding is that this one is a sort of larger one that went on to become a modern-day town, but it used to be called Luling, basically. So it's a very short koan and to the point, right? And like all good koans, it says at least three things at once, right? And there's a whole kind of trope in the commentary of literature around koans that say that they have three

[04:49]

The really skillful teachers, in particular Yen Men, who's kind of the star of the Blue Cliff Records, can say three things at once. And they're usually categorized as the phrase that follows the waves, the phrase that covers heaven and earth, and the phrase that cuts off the myriad streams. And a little bit more... or a little bit less cryptic, right? Generally speaking, I think the phrase that follows the waves mostly has to do with the conduct and kind of interaction and mirroring that takes place in the context of an exchange like most koans are, right? The phrase that covers heaven and earth is usually associated with the sort of co-op conceptual and poetic content of the of the discussion or con you know of or statements right and the phrase that cuts off the myriad streams is like how it sounds it's like okay enough talk basically and then enough thinking to just and

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You know, some schools emphasize one more than the other. The Rinzai school seems to lean pretty hard into the phrase that cuts off the Myriad Stream's interpretation. But if you read Dogen's commentaries on koans, and in particular his koans, he brings out a lot of poetic and conceptual content. you know, explains and interprets and so on, and they're both good, right? And talks about how the teachers who engaged in these exchanges were helpful, right? So my sense is that Qin Yuan also delivered three answers at once.

[07:17]

The first answer, you know, I mean, if you look at the exchange, what's the great meaning of Buddhism, right? Like the clearly, well, you know, so I, I see this guy, great guy. He studied here, and then he went to Japan, and he spent a lot of time studying in Japan. And he lived on Taiji for a while. And when I was at Tassahara, he would send me letters, I think, because he was kind of hungry for exchange with people in the States. And they would say things like, there's three meters of snow outside my cabinet. I mean, he was, he was really kind of living the life.

[08:19]

Right. And when he, when he came back, we were talking about it and he said, you know, I had this unbelievably romanticized idea about, about going to Japan and living the temple life. Right. And you can kind of see a little bit of, of, you know, that, that, romanticizing in the question of the student, of the monk. He's like, I'm living in this monastery now with this famous Chan teacher. I'm going to ask him this question, and he's going to really explain the whole thing to me, and then everything is going to be great. And so one interpretation, one lens through which you can look at at the answer is just cutting off myriad streams. It's like, okay, drop all that stuff. Here's a piece of flavorless talk that totally sidesteps and shuts down your question, right?

[09:30]

And there are other cons that are kind of like this. There's a, you know, Yunnan was once asked a similar question and he just said, I'm not totally clear on whether he was just hungry or feeling like he needed a carbo hit or something like that. But anyway. But if you look a little deeper, there's actually some... something lurking under the surface there. Like the, if you look at the expression, the price of rice in, in the Ling, I don't really, I don't know this to be true, but there are, there are, there are phrases in English that have very much the same flavor, right? Literally, since we're talking about food here and they almost all have to do with food.

[10:32]

Interestingly enough, like out here growing up, where I grew up, when you're having a conversation with somebody and they say something that feels irrelevant and maybe overly abstract or highfalutin or something like that, you say, what does that have to do with the price of eggs? And maybe that's because I lived in Petaluma, which used to be the chicken capital of the world. But that's what you'd say. And I've since heard that In the Midwest, people say, what does that have to do with the price of corn? And there's even an older version that's from the UK that resonates kind of oddly with the story at hand, which is, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? And almost always what the price of some food item thing...

[11:35]

is intended to focus the discussion back on the concrete, the everyday, and the sort of brass tacks, right? And so here you have this guy going, whoa, great meaning of Buddhism. And Ching Yuan brings up the price of rice in Lu Ling. But you'll note that he... He kind of flips it on its head because he doesn't say, what does that have to do with the price of rice and luling? He says, the great meaning of Buddhism is the price of rice and luling. So he's saying, yeah, let's talk about the everyday, let's talk about the brass tacks. But the great meaning of Buddhism is the brass tacks. And it's worth thinking into that a little bit more. If you're to look at Buddhism and the teachings of the Buddha as a multi-decade exposition on...

[13:01]

of a solution to a particular problem, right? It's worth asking what the problem is. And the way the Buddhist teachings are typically expounded, people say that the problem was stated in his first talk, right? The one where he expounds the Four Noble Truths, right? And so in some ways, The problem statement in that formulation is life is suffering, or in life there is suffering, depending on how you translate it. And that that suffering arises from grasping an aversion or attachment and so on. And that's okay, but it's already one level of abstraction up from what the real problem is. And the real problem is this. people make a horrible mess of things all the time.

[14:05]

Right. And, and, and if that wasn't clear by the time of the Buddha or wasn't clear by the time they were writing down this stuff in the song dynasty, it's really clear now. I mean, we are so making a mess of things. And, and that, that, that messiness, that constantly, you know, well, acting out of, well, you could say that the way that aligns with the first and second noble truths is that, humans make a mess of things and they they make a mess of things largely out of their dissatisfaction and suffering right um and their their desire to avoid that suffering and dissatisfaction and their desire to um uh avoid it either by by grasping after things that that um

[15:28]

to offer relief or avoiding things that they think are going to cause them suffering. So the two things align. But the main problem is that people are just constantly screwing it up. And more to the point, they're screwing it up by exercising the capacities that make them human, by exercising their agency and capacity for planning and their capacity for large-scale, multilayered sociality and rich, complex, and highly symbolicated language. And the two ways in which that most frequently arises is it either arises out of ignorance, their inability to see what's going on, or out of a kind of willful ignorance that arises out of their grasping interversion.

[17:01]

So, you know, Buddhism, if you wanted to, you know, like if the monk asked me what's the point of Buddhism, I'd say that's the point. And that the teaching of the Buddhist lifetime is a... vast array of of examples discourses lists you know um rubrics and so on whereby our tendency to to mess everything up is um ameliorated or even kind of suppressed alleviated gotten rid of um and there's a bunch of them right and and they and you know obviously not all these things not all of these things were said by the buddha but they were said in some ways in the in the buddha's name there's the you know 12-fold chain of causation but there's also the brahma viharas and there's also the

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the paramitas, and so on and so forth. But the one I wanted to talk about in this context is the metasuta. And the great thing about the metasuta, I've realized, is that it really is incredibly straightforward. It says, this is what you should do. And then it says, it has three major components. It says... It talks about conduct. It says, be strenuous, upright, and sincere. That's good. And then a few other things. Without pride, easily contented and joyous. Don't be ambitious. Don't chase riches. Don't even do it for your family. Amazing. So that's one component is the conduct component.

[19:34]

And then it has this kind of intention and aspiration component. So in order to support that conduct, you need to have a kind of frame of intention and aspiration. And the... And it says, here's what you should keep in mind, right? Here should be your frame. May all beings be happy. May they be safe. Doesn't matter what kind of beings they are, they should be happy. And then it's interesting, the author kind of strays back into conduct, but in a kind of aspirational way. It's like, not only should they be happy, but... Why shouldn't everyone essentially conduct themselves in this way? And in accordance with the precepts, not lying, not harboring ill will, et cetera, right?

[20:39]

Not harming. And those are good, right? And then sprinkled throughout... the description of this, both this way of being and this way of holding a frame, an aspirational frame, right? They talk about quality of mind, right? So it says, your mind should be boundless. What exactly does that mean? No mind is boundless. We're all bottled up in this body, right?

[21:47]

And the, you know, I remember the, my neuroscience teacher in grad school um you know kind of had a standard list of limitations like you you can't see x-rays you're not directly aware of the operations of your cerebellum and you know and sort of like that right um we we have a we have a very um very limited view of the universe, very limited contact with it that has to do with our exact position in the world and how we're constituted. But nonetheless, the suttasa is boundless mind, right?

[22:52]

So what could that possibly mean? I, my sense is that it's, that it's this, right? Um, we live in this, we live in this way and we could, you could argue about what the limits of mind are, right? Like I, you know, when I hear a car, does my mind extend out to the, you know, um, out to the car? Yeah, maybe. How, how boundless is that? Well, you know, a few hundred yards, right? That's good. When I pick up something from a friend in high school and carry it around with me, an idea or a thought or a phrase, and I carry it around with me for the rest of my life, how boundless is their mind, right? I'm pretty boundless. But nonetheless, not... But we make up so many boundaries, conditions, scales of length, scales of importance, and so on and so forth, and we live by them, right?

[24:04]

We attach to them and nurture them and polish them and fiddle with them and so on, ceaselessly, right? Comment on them. And I think that's the stuff that this is talking about, right? There's a phrase in the bodhisattva vow that says, Dharma gates are boundless, right? And if you look at the character that's being negated in the... Chinese version of the bodhisattva vow, it really is a character that means measurement, right? In other words, boundless is great, but what it's really saying is that it's saying immeasurable, both in the sense of immeasurably small, immeasurably large, immeasurably complex, et cetera, right?

[25:13]

So just to drop or hold lightly our tendency to do that in a way that's beneficial, right? And then it also says not holding to fixed views. Again, right? Can we live without views? No, of course not. Everybody has views. the word view is just a way of talking about something that's not only fundamental to human life, but fundamental to life. I mean, the basis of life is essentially memory and the transposition of information that's been accumulated in the past into the present in order to have an effect on the future.

[26:16]

That's... that's what life does and it has since it was being put together in hydrothermal vents you know was it three and a half billion years ago or something like that right um and the and when when we do that it um because it's doing in doing it we're doing it in the light of this of consciousness right um you know it's when because we're we're producing a mental formation in the light of consciousness as a result of perception, essentially, right? We think of it as a view. And, and again, we can't, we can't live without that. But, the Sitta says fixed views, right? And, and, What fixes our views?

[27:17]

Well, it's attachment to knowing, right? And it's the emotional underpinnings of those views which are often very powerful, right? It's easy to hold a view of a particular person, group of people, thing, whatever that's powerfully driven by... negative or positive emotion and then of various sorts and really it has a tremendous effect on our lives right and if you if you want an example of that playing out in a domain where none of this should have been a problem right look at history of science and maybe like particularly the history of geology or something like that it was such a wrangle like people had these ideas And they sounded good, and everyone was like, that's a great idea. It sounds so good. And then people would cling to it for hundreds of years, or easily, actually, yes, hundreds of years, in spite of this mountain, literally, of evidence to the contrary, right?

[28:27]

We do that all the time, right? Except we don't... do it quite as badly usually as the 19th century geologists. But honestly, it's a thing, right? So again, the request is not to not have views. We'd have to essentially scoop out huge portions of our brain not to have views, and that would be bad. But to hold them in this way that doesn't fix them that does that isn't attached that allows them to be flexible and and to and to be met skillfully and comfortably right um and and then it says and well it's the the citizen says endowed with insight but in any case open to insight right um

[29:30]

which is to say open to a situation in which information comes in either from the world or from, from the outer world or from the inner world and, and meets your views, your conceptual frame and, and changes are made, right? To be open to that, to allow reality to meet your conceptual framework, right? Often those moments where that insight happens are startling, delightful, or terrifying. But to allow them and to appreciate what's just happened when you have a moment of insight. So that's the prescription that, among other things, is the prescription for the mind with which you support exemplary conduct.

[30:32]

and an exemplary aspirational frame for practice, right? And all of those things are practiced in Zazen, right? But in particular, the last one is, right? It's possible to... for example, engage in exemplary conduct in a thoroughly performative way, right? In a transactional way. I'm going to engage in exemplary conduct because I'm going to get something for it, right? And it's possible to cling so tightly to an aspirational framework that you don't realize

[31:34]

that you're missing the boat right and and that's why for example suzuki roshi says sit with no gaining idea right because um that aspirational framework can be a support and it can also be a hindrance right and and so to in order to to Clarify the relationship between those things. We practice a particular kind of mind, right? We bring forth a particular kind of mind while sitting, and then while standing and walking and lying down, but initially while sitting. And then, you know, the usual trajectory is... You start practicing, and then after a while, these things start to show up, right?

[32:39]

These mental events start to show up that show a little bit of what it's like, actually, to have a boundless mind or a mind that's open to insight, right? And initially, it seems pretty special, and it seems... The circumstances and procedures that you went through in order to have that moment are pretty special too. And so there's a lot of, oh my God, it's a little bit like being a baseball player and people say that baseball players are... are superstitious because if they go out and they do something good, they think, well, let's see, what kind of hat was I wearing? And how was I wearing my hat? And was the glove on my left hand laced up or loose?

[33:44]

And they kind of build this set of attributes of the ideal situation. We do that with practice too, believe me. I think we all do it. But over time, that stuff softens up. And what comes to the fore is just the everydayness of it. The moment-to-moment experience of continuous practice. And then it doesn't feel so special anymore. But it also... allows the the baseline of that mind to show up which is a mind of unconditioned appreciation and gratitude right um I have no idea what time it is.

[35:00]

Does anybody have an idea? Bortil? Thank you. Okay, I have four minutes to cover the last answer. And it's this, right? The other night I was talking about this with... with Yaz and I asked somebody, I asked the group, um, so what are the factors that govern the price of rice in Lulang? And somebody said the weather, which is exactly right. Right. And, and, and even better, um, the weather and, uh, the mood of the merchants and, and the diligence or non diligence of the farmers and, uh, um, the you know the the the breeding habits of various species of bugs and you know and the big bang right and and you know so there was this big bang and it made a bunch of particles and the particles eventually coalesced in various ways and became uh among other things carbon and it flew through the flew through space and it collected

[36:23]

And then there was this incredibly complicated process whereby life, living things, converted our world into a world that could grow rice. And so in the end, the price of rice in Lu Ling depends on everything, and everything depends on the price of rice in Lu Ling. It's a view into emptiness and interdependent co-arising. And we can sometimes glimpse, if we allow it, if we allow that insight to arise, the truth of that in ways that are surprising and delightful. So, I mean... so i have a story like that so you know about a year and a half ago i was hiking on mount tam and maybe i've already told this story but anyway um walking on the west side and there the trail on the west side kind of goes out on these ridges where it's quite bare and the views are really spectacular

[37:49]

And then goes back into these creek valleys and nips into these little tiny pocket-sized forests, right? And then comes out again like this. And at one point, I walked around a ridge and down into this forest. And it was a season when there was a lot of bird migration going on. And there was a moment where I walked into the forest and the forest was full of literally full stuffed full of these little tiny birds. Right. And they were all tripping to each other. And, and this thing happened where my, because of, because, well, when I was receptive and two, because it was such a remarkable sensory experience that my, brain lit up with a three-dimensional picture of the forest that I was standing in, right?

[38:52]

Because you could hear the shape of the forest in the... in the songs of the birds. the world reaches in and kind of grabs a hold. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

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May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

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