This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. We have facts for the grown-ups' stories. Yeah. So here's a story. This is the 86th story of the collection of 300 Zen stories collected by Dogen. Here's the story. Monastic Zun was at the assembly of Yao Shan and was the head altar attendant While he was bathing Buddha images, Yaoshan asked him, have you bathed this one or have you bathed that one?

[01:12]

And Zun said, please hand that one to me. Yaoshan stopped. What can we say about this simple story? Taking care of things with love, or anyway, we hope with love, is a really big part of Zen practice. As probably everybody here knows, in traditional Japanese Zen temples, monks spend a lot more time cleaning and polishing than they do meditating. They barely have time to meditate. In other words, they are concerned much more with what we might call trivial things than they are with what we might call profound or important things. A lot of people hire others to clean their houses so that they can occupy themselves with more important matters.

[02:24]

But actually Zen practice is more about trivial matters than profound matters. And this might be the main point of Zen practice. That there are no trivial or important matters. Maybe this would be the definition of Zen liberation. To be liberated from trivial and important matters. picking things up and putting them away, cleaning away the dirt, wiping counters, sweeping floors. Usually we consider this trivial maintenance work. Seeing into the nature of ourselves and becoming a Buddha, usually we think of that as profound spiritual work. But already if we're thinking like that, we're caught. already entangled in a knot of desire and confusion.

[03:31]

And yet we take those kinds of thoughts for granted. Why would we think like that? There's really no good reason for it when you consider for a moment. Here at Green Gulch, we have accumulated over the years of wonderful statues and beautiful altars. And there's always a cadre of people taking care of the altars, which means changing flowers, dusting, polishing, trimming candles, replenishing incense, sifting incense bowls. It's a beautiful work, a privilege. At our group in Everyday Zen, here in the Bay Area, we don't have... So we're all the time hauling altars around to the different places where we practice. So I think probably we don't take care of altars as well as we could if we had a temple and we could really make a nice altar and take care of it like we do here.

[04:43]

But still, even for us, there's setting up and taking down, packing things carefully, trying to be as careful as we can about it. I think probably here, as I remember, we don't actually bathe the statues. We dust them, maybe. We don't bathe them. You'd need a museum expert to clean these statues up. You wouldn't want to mess them up with some water. But at Tassajara, there's a cloth with a character on it for Manjushri, and the head monk on the days off used to take that scroll, and they still do it probably, and bathe the Manjushri in the bath on four and nine days, which are the days off.

[05:50]

Anyway, in this story, the monastic is bathing the Buddhas, And the abbot, Yaoshan, comes along and says to him, So which Buddha are you bathing here? Are you bathing the statue or are you bathing yourself? Which one are you bathing? It's a good question. And of course this is the secret. One is always bathing oneself. Or you're always bathing someone else when you think you're bathing yourself. When you carefully bathe the Buddha statue, you are actually bathing yourself, liberating your own mind and heart from your smallness. And when you think about it, isn't that the secret of love? That's what makes love so great. That's why it's so important to us, because it liberates us from our smallness.

[06:52]

It is so confining, really, being just the little person that we are. It's so vulnerable and so limited, really. It's impossible. We can't just be that. And we aren't just that. We've never been just that. And when we think we're just that, it is so difficult. love expands us. We become large without measure. But love isn't just a feeling. Love is an activity. We take care of what we love. And what we take care of, we will love. And it will take care of us. So is it a great

[07:56]

privilege and a great practice to take care of something. As I say, when we take care of something, it takes care of us. Zen practice is a very busy life, right? Those of us who live around here know, always busy, always doing something, one thing after another. Just like everywhere else. Life is like that, right? It's always one thing after another. No breaks. you get a break at the end. Otherwise, no breaks. I mean, it's something, isn't it? No end. Every moment, something else is arising. Every single moment. It doesn't skip a beat. Every single moment, something's arising, something's calling to us, and we're responding. And just as we respond, nearly complete, the moment is gone and there's another one coming.

[09:07]

And that's what's happening. That's what's always been happening. That's what always will be happening. And then on top of this endless, ongoing, mysterious, maybe completely unknown or unknowable process, We place many, many designations and elaborations. And then we project our feeling onto those many, many designations and elaborations. And we end up saying, well, this is me and that's you. We end up saying, there is the big world over there and here is myself inside here. We end up saying, here are the things I like. Here are the things I don't like. Here's what makes me feel good. Here's what makes me feel bad. And all these ideas are, of course, very important.

[10:17]

And we can never separate them from a moment of time arising and passing away. They will be there, these ideas. But it is not necessary for us to be caught by these ideas or entirely compelled by them. Maybe eventually we can figure out how to live a moment just as it is with whatever of our good or bad or foolish or wise notions might be hovering around it. It's all perfectly okay. We should all be free to feel good and free to feel bad. When you think about it, why would we always want to feel good and not feel bad? What's so great about feeling good? Feeling bad also is great.

[11:18]

Feeling bad, being humiliated, failing miserably, being sick. being confused about things. That's all right, right? It's not so bad. Why would we not like those things so much? What's wrong with all that stuff? Why not appreciate all that just as much? So I've been, you know, plodding along in my Zen training for many years now. And if it's done me any good, this is the good that it's done me. I'm willing to go forward into this moment of life. Which maybe I'll like. And maybe I won't. Maybe it'll be a smashing success, maybe a terrible failure. But honestly, I don't mind that much.

[12:26]

I'm willing. To live this moment as I find it. I have a choice. Right? What's my choice? That's why they say in Zen, every day is a good day. That's what they mean. So here I'm going on making all these explanations. Because you came expecting a lecture. A lecture must be given. They asked me to give it. I'm giving it. So I go on like this, but the story is a lot simpler, isn't it? Yaoshan asked him, have you bathed this one or have you bathed that one? And Zen said, please hand that one to me. Yaoshan stopped. You know, as time goes on, I'm more and more impressed with our little Zen stories.

[13:28]

I really like them. They don't include these lengthy discussions like the one I'm going on about. They're short. They're dynamic. They're interactive. To the point. Zen just says, please hand me that Buddha. I'm going to bathe the Buddha now. I don't have time for lengthy discussions. Please hand it over. I understand fully that this Buddha statue is myself. I understand fully that this Buddha statue is yourself. I understand fully that this Buddha statue is neither me nor you nor itself. And all of that is perfectly fine and not worth wasting time on. What is important is that I bathe this statue that's in front of me now because that's my job and my purpose in this moment. So please hand me the Buddha.

[14:30]

and you can fill in the rest. Yaoshan stopped. That's the end of the story. That's the punchline. Yaoshan stopped. So it would appear that here's a story in which the student is teaching the teacher. As we all know in Zen practice, the teacher is not always the teacher. Sometimes it's necessary for the teacher to be the teacher, but sometimes the student is the teacher. That's how you can actually detect a real Zen teacher. She usually isn't a teacher. Usually she's a student. Anyway, she looks around and she cannot find a single thing called a Zen teacher.

[15:32]

Because in reality, there is no teacher, there is no teaching. There's just this simple act of responding as honestly as possible to what is in front of you in this moment. The teacher is the person who's willing to accept this moment and live it completely, come what may. matter whether she likes it or doesn't like it or thinks it's good thinks it's bad doesn't matter she always says yes to this moment because there's no other way so she lets go she says yes and also she's willing to share herself completely in this moment because she understands But that's what a moment is, right? A moment is exactly a space in which everything is shared and everything is always sharing.

[16:38]

So to say yes to any moment is to say yes to sharing this moment. So Yaoshan can stop. He can completely stop and participate in washing a Buddha. A true Zen teacher, he can let go and begin over again and again and again and again, not leaving anything out. So how do we learn to live like this? Well, the first thing is we can't do it. And there would be no use at all in making up yet another elaborate conceptual framework that we might call Zen or Zen life or Zen practice or Zen principles.

[17:43]

That's just another painful setup. Maybe we might think a nicer setup or a better setup. But no, I don't think so. I think in the end there is no nicer or better setup. You know, a setup is just painful. So to be honest, you know, we can't do it. We can't do Zen practice. It is truly an impossible undertaking. And what makes the most sense is to completely give it up. That was first. But second. Yes. we can make a big effort to pay attention. Anybody who's ever been to a Zen monastery will have heard, just do the schedule. Just do the schedule. Just eat and then wash your bowls. And when you're the altar attendant, wash the Buddha.

[18:47]

And when you're the teacher, give the Dharma talk according to the schedule. Fill in the appropriate amount of time with some words. Bow. Leave the room and forget about it. If you're a mother, take care of your child. If you're a doctor, take care of your patient. And don't make a fuss. Mostly, what this means is to pay attention to all the ways that all of us have created to distract ourselves from the beauty and the immense tragedy of this moment. Buddha said all conditioned existence is suffering. Not just sometimes when things are rough, all the time. So yes, we have to be strong to recognize this.

[19:53]

There's a lot of suffering. So there has to be a lot of compassion. Every moment is a moment of suffering and a moment of compassion if only we can bring ourselves fully to it. That's the truth. So therefore, it's no mystery why we're trying to distract ourselves all the time. It's a bit much. So when we practice Zen, we... commit ourselves to giving up our distractions. And we even go so far as to make a vow to attend to this moment and to live it fully, even including the suffering. We have to include the suffering. So theoretically, we could just do this.

[21:06]

Why don't we just do it? And I notice now there are a number of spiritual teachers who teach just that. No meditation, no cultivation of any kind. Just pay attention, practice with your life. And theoretically, this is a really good idea. One wouldn't need anything more. theoretically but actually for some poor souls like myself maybe some of you we need some remedial work so even though theoretically it's completely unnecessary we have to practice Zazen we have to sit here and breathe pay attention in minute detail to the suffering of this moment as every moment arises and passes away and we notice we can't stop it.

[22:19]

We can't control it. We can't even understand it. So we have to sit there and realize that again and again and again. And then we have to get up and bow and and listen to teachings and cook and clean and eat food and go to the toilet and go to sleep to the sound of the temple bell and wake up to the sound of the Han. It all helps us to understand, a little bit anyway, who we are and how we have to live. Little by little, somehow we have some small understanding of this. means little by little we stop. Little by little we realize we have to stop running away. Sorry about my throat.

[23:27]

Anyway, there's a famous story in the Polycanon about stopping. You probably heard this story. It's pretty famous. It's about There was a serial killer, you know, in the Pali Canon. Did you know that? Long before the many TV shows about serial killers, there was one in the Pali Canon. Anguli Mala was his name. The serial killer who became a monk. He had killed a lot of people. Actually, he was addicted to killing people. He couldn't stop. And he was really proud of it. He was addicted to the way people were scared of him whenever they even heard about him or saw him coming. They would be frightened and it made him feel good. One time he encountered the Buddha, so he decided that he would kill the Buddha. And the Buddha was walking along calmly, paying attention to his walking, paying attention to his steps, paying attention to the feeling of being on the earth.

[24:33]

which is the feeling that we always feel when we are walking. That is what walking is, right? It's being on the earth, moving, which is how we feel whenever we walk, but usually we don't notice this because our mind is occupied with where we think we're going or someplace else. But no, the Buddha always knows that he's walking when he's walking. So he is walking along like that, being in touch with the earth, I recently had a visit from our grandchildren and one of them is very little, can't walk yet. Little babies know about being in touch with the earth. Eventually, they forget it. When they begin to think there's somebody going somewhere, that's when they lose touch.

[25:36]

with the earth they start taking the earth for granted forgetting that it's there as if it were a thing that barely existed but not the Buddha the Buddha always knew when he was walking that he was walking always knew the feeling of the earth so anyway Buddha was walking along in this way and Anguli Mala saw him and approached him and began running to overtake the Buddha and stab him and cut off his head because this was Angulimala's great pleasure is to cut off people's heads and he wore them around his neck in a mala. So he had the idea that he would stab the Buddha and cut off his head. But the odd thing was that no matter how fast Angulimala ran he could never overtake the Buddha. Even though the Buddha never ran never changed his pace, was always walking calmly and peacefully along with his measured and dignified gait, and yet Angulimala kept going faster and [...] out of breath, and he couldn't catch up to him.

[26:50]

And finally, in his frustration and exasperation, he shouted to the Buddha, Stop! And the Buddha turned around and said to him, Angulimala, I stopped long ago. Now it's time for you to stop. From that moment on, Angulimala gave up his addiction to killing and being feared. And eventually he became a monastic. And as a monastic, he had a certain amount of suffering because of all he had done in the past. But this suffering taught him patience and forbearance. And eventually he became an arhat, a saint. So this one word, stop, might be the only word we need in the story.

[27:55]

Stop. On every moment, please do stop. stop running away stop hoping for something stop limiting yourself stop binding yourself stop worrying so much about yourself stop wanting so much for yourself just stop and pay attention to the shape of every moment of your life this is so so simple it is so so basic It's not something fancy. It's not even something desirable. Think about it. You know, we want so much more than this, don't we? And that's our problem. So, it's true what they say.

[29:03]

Zen practice really is for simple, Stupid people who don't have the imagination and can be satisfied with very little. Smarter people, more imaginative people should have better things to do. More complications to create, worlds to elaborate and define. So please go ahead and do all that. Maybe later on when you're old and feeble and there's not a whole lot more to do, you will find the time to take up Zen practice right now. You're probably too busy. So I close my talk with one of my favorite poems, which is a late poem by Robert Creeley called When I Think.

[30:05]

when I think of where I've come from or even try to measure any kind of distance those places all the various people and all the ways in which I remember them so that even the skin I touched or was myself fact of inside could see through like a hole in the wall or listen to it must have been to what was going on in there even if I was still too dumb to know anything, when I think of the miles and miles of roads, of meals, of telephone wires even, or even of water poured out in endless streams, down streaks of black sky, or the dirt roads washed clean, of myriad salty tears, and suddenly it's spring again, or it was, Even when I think again of all those I treated so poorly, names, places, they're waiting uselessly for me in the rain and I never came and was never really there at all, was moving so confusedly, so fast, so driven like a car along some empty highway, passing, passing other cars.

[31:38]

When I try to think of things, of what's happened of what a life is and was my life when I wonder what it meant the sad days passing the continuing echoing deaths all the painful belligerent news and the dog still waiting to be fed The closeness of you sleeping voices, presences of children, of our own grown children, the shining bright sun, the smell of the air just now. Each physical moment passing. Passing. It's what it always is or ever was just then. just there.

[32:40]

Thank you all very much for coming to Green Gulch and supporting Green Gulch. Somehow Green Gulch needs always tremendous amounts of support. I don't know why. That's how it goes. Please continue to support it as you have been and take care of yourselves. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:35]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.3