Good morning. Welcome. Zen comes to us through stories, mostly. It's a little bit unusual of a spiritual tradition in that most of the ancient teachings of Zen are in the form of stories or sayings or

[01:10]

dialogues that kind of hint at the liberating teaching, usually without saying it too directly. That's our family style. So we have to keep these old stories alive, I feel like. to keep Zen alive in its unique form. And we need to make up new stories as we go. So I thought it would be nice to bring up one of our old ancestors named Yun Men. Cloud gate.

[02:13]

Gateway to the clouds. Gateway through the clouds. What's his name? Right here. Welcome. Yunmen lived in the 9th and 10th century in old China. And before I bring up the main story for today, just to get a sense of where Yunmen was coming from, here's an early story. about Yunmen when he was visiting different teachers and traveling around and practicing.

[03:18]

He came to the teacher Mu Zhou and apparently Mu Zhou had this method, this practice method with which he met. Everyone who came to see him and inquire about Dharma, they would basically come to his doku-san room where he'd meet with the teacher. And he would open the door and grab them immediately in the doorway, grab them and say, speak, speak. because he wanted people to express themselves spontaneously and freely and without thinking too much about it.

[04:21]

Open the door. Speak, speak! And almost everyone who came was... startled, even though they knew it was coming because he always did this. Still, they didn't know what to say, so he'd kind of like just push them away and shut the door. Apparently he even did this with newcomers. And so, Yun-men, young Yun-men came to Mu-jo and Came to meet him, and Mu Zhou opened his door and grabbed him, said, speak, speak. Pushed him away and shut the door. And that happened several times. But, of course, Yin Man had come to practice with Mu Zhou, so we can't just go on like this. I have to find a way to get around this difficult situation.

[05:36]

So he came up with an idea. Mojo opened the door. Yun-man, before Mojo could grab him, Yun-man kind of pushed him aside and jumped into the room. Now he was in the room. At least he's in the room. Now there's some potential for something new to happen. But as you might imagine, even inside the room, Mu Jo grabbed him and said, speak, speak. And Yun Min might have even been ready with the response. But as soon as he... Mu Jo, it was too late already. Mu Jo, at this time, he couldn't just push him a little. He had to sort of like wrestle with him a little bit to get him out the door. So there was some tussle going on and kind of... pushed him, and Yunnan was trying to stay in the rooms to have a conversation, but Mujo would have none of it.

[06:42]

So he finally, mostly had pushed him out the door and shut the door, but one of Yunnan's legs was still in the doorway when the door was slammed. And as the ancient story goes, he slammed it hard enough that it broke his leg. And of course Yunnan screamed out in pain and at that moment realized great awakening sometimes it's like that i can imagine he was so present at that point he wasn't expecting this and it was a dynamic situation there was no past and future And the intensity of the pain overwhelmed his scheming mind.

[07:45]

He was relieved of anything other than what was happening. So these days Zen is not quite so rough. For better or worse. And these days there maybe aren't so many great awakenings. So there's a price to pay for everything. So that's just maybe set the stage for a lot of Yun-men's later pithy sayings, always about the present. Today's story is case 87 in the Blue Cliff Record collection of Koran stories. It's really just a statement of Yun-man.

[08:56]

He said, medicine and disease subdue each other. The entire earth is medicine. What is your true self? Simple saying that with a lot packed in and kind of mysterious, something one can take home and sit with. Medicine and disease subdue each other, or we could translate it as they treat each other, or they cure each other, they quell each other, they subdue each other.

[09:58]

The entire earth is medicine. What is or where is yourself, your true self? We might expect the symmetry of the saying to be something like medicine and disease subdue each other. The whole earth is medicine. What is disease? That would be a nice symmetrical kind of saying. Throws in the self into the mix. So he could be speaking about literal medicine and disease. But often the Dharma is

[11:01]

likened to medicine. It's often said that the Buddha is the supreme doctor and the Dharma is the supreme medicine that the doctor prescribes to heal suffering and pain and dis-ease. And the Sangha is the supreme nurse. The nurse is kind of like, helps the patient to take the medicine. Let's say the doctor prescribes it, and the nurse says, you really gotta take your medicine, and I'll help you take it by sitting zazen with you. The sangha helps us like this. We help each other to receive and ingest the Dharma medicine.

[12:12]

And what's the illness? What's the disease? Dis-ease. We're not always at ease, discontent. We're not always content. This is Buddha's first noble truth. And then the Buddha offers a path, a medicinal path of practice to find true ease. and contentment. We could say many things about what the disease is and what the medicine is sometimes.

[13:24]

In the commentary of this story, the commentator says, well, Buddha gives medicine in accord with disease If people are grasping at the true existence of things, the Buddha teaches the non-existence of things. And if people are grasping at the non-existence of things, the Buddha teaches the apparent existence of things. So it's always offered in accord with the sickness of the patient. But maybe to put it more simply, we might say that one of our main diseases is getting caught up and lost in the past and the future.

[14:34]

We do often get lost in regret about the past or wanting the past back again and worry and fear about the future or wanting the future to come quicker. I think a lot of our dis-ease is like this. We're lost in the past and the future. We're lost in then, the past then, or the future then. And one of the great simple medicines the Buddhas offer

[15:38]

is now. Now is a great medicine for the disease of then, isn't it? Now. Big now. Big, all-inclusive now. The now that's always now. The now that nobody can really escape from except by thinking that they've escaped it. Could we even go so far as to say this big now is an unchanging now? The Buddha taught that everything is impermanent, constantly in a state of flux and change.

[16:46]

If that's so, then this now must not be a thing, a changing thing, more like the ever-present stillness, spacious, now-ness. What a refuge that's offered to us in this life. So simple, so inescapable, so liberating to really surrender to now and even include the past and future in this timeless, unchanging now. Right now, there's nothing missing and nothing extra.

[18:02]

the slightest thought of then, suddenly there's a lot extra and a lot missing, it seems. Medicine and disease subdue each other. So we might say that the medicine of now subdues the disease of then. But then, you might even call it an illusion. The illusion of then is quite powerful. So that we're just resting in now-ness. And then arrives. Then takes over again. Seems to subdue now.

[19:11]

The disease seems to overwhelm and subdue the now. At least it seems to. That's our problem. What's the medicine again? Powerful medicine called now. Oh, yes. I feel better already. Yes. This one breath. Now. But what happens next? Next, just subdued. Now, once again. One example of medicine and disease subdue each other over and over again. Truth and falsehood subdue each other.

[20:14]

Awakening and delusion subdue each other. Also in the commentary on this koan, there's a story. Sounds like an ancient story about Manjushri, the bodhisattva of great wisdom, who sits on the altar in the center of this hall. Manjushri. And Sudhana. Sudhana is this young pilgrim who likes traveling around and visiting lots of different bodhisattvas. And he has many colorful encounters in the pages of the Flower Ornament Sutra.

[21:29]

But strangely, this story doesn't appear in the Flower Ornament Sutra. It sounds like it might, but it's maybe in the unwritten pages. this long, flowery sutra, but it's quoted by Uren Wu, the commentator on this koan. One day, Manjushri asked Sudhana to pick medicinal herbs, saying, if you find something that's not medicine, please bring it to me. So, Sudhana said, went out in the fields looking for something that's not medicine to bring to the bodhisattva of perfect wisdom. But he couldn't find anything after looking for a while. All these fields of flowers and herbs seemed that everything was medicine.

[22:38]

He came back to Manjushi and said, well, there's nothing that's not medicine. And Manjushi then said, well, then in that case, please gather something that is medicine. That should be easy. And so Sudena just reached down right where he was and plucked a blade of grass and gave it to Manjushi. And Manjushi... held up the blade of grass and said, this medicine can kill people and it can also bring people to life. Everywhere is medicine, all these blades of grass. It's medicine that can bring people to life but can also kill people.

[23:41]

Medicine can be poison and poison can be medicine. Just like the medicine of emptiness can really cure grasping at existence but then If we take too much of it, we can overdose on emptiness and it becomes toxic and poison. If it's taken too extreme as another extreme like existence. So it seems like As Yun-men said, the whole earth is medicine. And that's what Sudden also discovered.

[24:44]

We can't find anything that's not medicine. If we look at it, the supreme medicine of now, we can then examine all the moment-to-moment experiences of our life. Not the timeless, eternal now, but moment-to-moment changing experiences of our life. For example, this one. It's just a moment of sitting in a zendo. And this moment, depending on our mood and our thought of the moment, it can be poison. It can seem to basically, poison is what blocks reality.

[25:49]

It can be the poison that obscures the ease of nowness. For example, our momentary experience could be like I wish I could understand what this talk is about. Maybe someday I'll be able to understand these strains and stories. But not today. We might feel like that. That thought is happening right now, but it might start feeling poisonous. It might start feeling, give us some indigestion. We don't feel so content thinking about the future when we finally understand these end stories. But it's actually, it's a moment, a momentary sliver of eternal now.

[26:51]

So it's complete. But some of these slivers can seem to block, obscure the reality of now. But then another momentary experience is could be the thought arising. I don't actually really understand these Zen stories, but I don't really care that much. I just, I like coming to Green Gulch in the fog, and people sometimes, you know, say weird things in this room, but I kind of like weird. Some places you go, they never talk weird. And then it's kind of boring. I love weird myself. That might have been part of why I got into Zen.

[27:54]

I like lots of different other Buddhist traditions and other spiritual traditions. But I think Zen might be the weirdest. I love that about it. Keep gringos weird. Bumper stickers should be issued. In a past Dharma talk, I said something like, similar to some other bumper stickers, don't believe anything you think bumper stickers should be issued.

[28:59]

And the kind, you know, created them. They're kind of small. A mini bumper sticker. It says, don't believe anything you think. Thank you for issuing them. It's part of the Eno's job is to issue bumper stickers. It's a complex role. So where were we? Oh, yes. We're here now. Almost getting lost in the last time I talk. Yes. So any moment can be, can feel like the poison blocks the reality of now. Or that very same moment, that very same thought could be a gateway into now.

[30:06]

It could block. obscure reality, or it could reveal reality. It's the hair's breadth difference. Maybe actually no difference. But we feel like we're not content when our thoughts of the moment, when our experience of the moment seems to obscure... Nowness, I think, is often what we feel not content, when nowness seems to be blocked. And any moment can reveal nowness. In fact, of course, every moment is revealing nowness, but it can seem to block it. Poison is truly medicine, but medicine can be poison. And medicine and disease, subdue each other.

[31:07]

The entire earth is medicine, which we might hear is everything that we can pick up, every blade of grass, every zafu, every person, as well as every thought and every feeling and every experience actually is medicine, even men's sense. Then he asks, what is yourself? Where is yourself? So it brings to mind another medicine story from the old sutras in the great Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

[32:20]

The Buddha tells a parable. about a village where many people are getting sick. All villages, people get sick. So they were looking for a doctor that could come into the village. And so maybe like the mayor of the village found a doctor and... Weren't there like in the old days kind of like traveling medicine show or traveling doctors that had all these like jars of medicine? Maybe something in like the 1800s, 1700s?

[33:25]

I think old American phenomena, maybe other places too, like trying out new medicines. And probably a lot of them weren't really medicines. But they have to make a living. And so the medicine men would come to town. So a doctor came, and he's like, I got the best medicine around, and I'll cure everybody with this medicine. He was very excited to cure everyone in the village. And in the parable, there was this special kind of milk medicine, milk of magnesia, milk-based medicine of some kind. And in the parable, it was the teaching,

[34:25]

this doctor was a spiritual teacher and the medicine was the teaching of true self. The Atman. Because at the time of the sutra, of course, in ancient India, many people were teaching the true self. Discovering your true self as the supreme medicine for all elements. So I think that's what this this parable is pointing to. So the doctor came and prescribed the milk medicine called true self. And maybe a few people took it and felt better. But a lot of people, especially over time, as they, this doctor's like, I only got this one medicine because it's so good. Everybody should take it for everything. It's a cure all. But it actually wasn't really working that well.

[35:26]

Not everybody got cured to the point where almost nobody was getting cured. So the mayor started wondering about this doctor who only prescribed true self. Maybe we need some more diverse forms of medicine. So he started looking for other doctors. And he asked this doctor to, why don't you go on sabbatical for a while and take a vacation? And we have another doctor that can step in for a while. So the new doctor came. And in the parable, the new doctor is the Buddha. And of course, the Buddha doesn't just have one medicine, as Ilana Wu says. Commentary here. Buddha gives medicine in accord with the disease. He's got many different medicines for each individual ailment.

[36:31]

All good doctors are like that. They try to diagnose the particular disease of each person. So this Buddha doctor had many different medicines. And when he saw what was going on, people all taking this milk medicine, one of the first things that he did was basically ban the milk medicine. Ban the teaching of true self in this village. People are mostly just getting sick from it. We don't really need that. Instead, let's have a lot of other teachings, a lot of other medicinal teachings. For example, one of the main teachings was the teaching. of not-self, the Buddha offered. People that had a lot of disease when they're grasping their body as their true self, he offered them the medicine. This body is not your true self.

[37:34]

For those who grasp their thoughts and feelings as their true identity, he'd offer the not-self medicine to them. It's not really who you are, and they were cured. And there were other medicines Buddha offered too, like impermanence and remembering that conditioned experiences are not ultimately satisfying and many other medicines. Kindness and compassion and patience and many, many medicines that new doctor offered. And then one day, the mare himself was quite sick. And the Buddha was prescribing different medicines, but none of them were really working. And finally, this doctor, the Buddha doctor said, actually, you might be surprised, but today I'm going to prescribe for you the milk medicine, the one that we banned.

[38:47]

the FDA does not approve this milk medicine. But for your particular sickness right now, it's the perfect medicine. And the mayor said, I don't think so. We saw what happened. It just made everybody sick. Yes, but for your particular sickness, It might be just the right thing. You trust me with all my past prescriptions, right? Yes, yes, okay, I'll try it. So, of course, the mayor took the milk medicine of true self and was cured with the teaching of true self. And maybe partly why he was cured is because he'd been taking the not-self medicine for a long time already. In other words, he took the medicine that this body is not myself.

[39:56]

These feelings and thoughts are not myself. All these conditioned experiences are not myself. He got really grounded in that teaching. So then he could get, well, there is a reality of true self. It's not that stuff that was cured by these non-milk medicines. It's a new... In fact, this true self is just another name for now. Now. Big now. Big all-inclusive now that includes past and future and is independent of past and future. So they all lived happily ever after.

[41:03]

But that's an example of how a medicine can subdue the disease. The medicine of true self can subdue the disease of feeling separate. But it also can turn into poison, and the very medicine can then turn into a disease of grasping some kind of self. If we grasp this now in any way, like, I got it. This is now. Now I see. This is it. This is it. It's already a little too much. It's ungraspable. So if the medicine is grasped, then that disease of grasping then subdues the medicine.

[42:08]

I think that this parable points this out. Medicine and disease subdue each other. The entire earth is medicine. Every experience. is potentially medicine. What is your true self? The entire earth is medicine. We can understand this. Everything in our experience, there's nothing we can find anywhere within or without that's not medicine. So where's our self? There's no room for anything like it. some other self in addition to the whole universe as medicine. Hakuin Zenji, a great Japanese Zen teacher commenting on this case, said, disease is illusion.

[43:15]

Medicine is awakening. When awakening is realized, everything is just one mind with no duality between disease and medicine. When the entire earth is medicine, there is nothing you can point to as yourself and nothing anywhere that is not yourself. Summing it up. So, we got to hear an old story from the ancestor Yun Min.

[44:17]

Keep it alive in the world a little longer. And it's a kind of statement that's Short but dynamic enough that you could take it home or you could even make it into a bumper sticker. It says, disease, medicine and disease subdue each other. The entire earth is medicine. Where are you? What's your true self? Do you have any questions about this or anything you'd like to bring up? Especially if there's the slightest bit of dis-ease anywhere in the room. Now is the time for the medicine.

[45:23]

Because we can turn, we can turn anything into medicine. The bumper sticker that kills and the bumper sticker that gives life. The bumper sticker can kill and the bumper sticker can give life. Do you feel like you have any kind of like a takeaway that could be like some use in a lifetime? Yes. Thank you, Kokyu. I feel inspired by your words to... It feels like some transformation required to turn the toxin...

[46:32]

environment you know things that are that feel like poisonous or harmful I feel the kind of intention and inspiration in your words to really take that in as medicine and turn that and let that nourish wisdom and compassion and I just wonder quite along with the inspiration to do so you know how to turn how to turn the thing that we're keeping away because it's poison, how to let that in as medicine and let that be medicine. So it's the wonder mechanism. Yeah. I think the basic method seems to be, in this case, a kind of getting more and more used to now-ness and appreciating the ever-produced present quality of now-ness, really like being able to access it more and more as a refuge, as a great healing, nurturing source of wellness.

[47:50]

And the nice thing about it is it's extremely ordinary, right? It's always here, just now. And that's zazen. We have zazen practice. It's a kind of method for just creating a very simple situation where we're not being asked to think about the past and future. That's what's nice about zazen. We still maybe often do, but we don't have to. It's a rare chance. We're settling into now. And then... trusting this now more and more than when the disease, we feel the disease arising, usually in the form of a thought, wouldn't you say, a thought or a feeling, to remember this is happening now, and it actually is now, and the complete now-ness of

[48:53]

of any thought or feeling starts to reveal some ease. Doesn't it seem like that? So we could say that's a kind of practical method, I think. It's almost so simple it doesn't sound like a method. And it's basically acknowledging that the dis-ease is our mind forgetting nowness. I think that principle is is really essential to this method. Yes. Thank you so much. Going back to the first story to kind of link into the now, there's kind of two things happening in our culture now. One is a lot of ways in which we put off suffering through filling our time with entertainment. a lot of push to have foods that are very rich and exciting.

[49:56]

And at the same time, there's a lot more of a push towards, now it is through that pain experience that you kind of talked about, cold plunge, the manosphere outings to suffer. And it seems like we're... pulled into two directions at the same time. I'm wondering, outside of living here, how do we kind of encounter both? Yes, that's a great question. Did you all hear the question? Yes, so first of all, bottom line is all these experiences are, of course, in reality now. The whole earth is medicine, right? But, practically speaking, yeah, it is a very interesting example I think you bring up, because in both cases, it's sort of like enjoying the present, but one is more of this really habitual kind of enjoyment.

[51:12]

It's sort of, that can be sort of deadening, maybe, some what we sometimes think of as, like you said, kind of distraction from the present in habitual activities, even though they're in the present. If they become too habitual, it seems like then we lose touch with the quality of nowness. So that's why I think, as you say, some people don't mind even some painful experiences because they're usually not habitual. Of course, they could be made habitual too. But maybe people feel like a fresh aliveness in something new, even if it's uncomfortable. And I think an example of that could be that Yunnan realized great awakening in this very painful and very non-habitual situation.

[52:12]

It was kind of habitual, and his teacher was kind of habitual. Mujo would always just do the same thing, grab people and speak. I think the speak, speak is like, now! Don't think, just express now. But he tried something new by pushing himself into the room, and then he wasn't planning on having his leg broken. But it kind of... really woke him up to now-ness. So, yeah. Pleasure and pain, either one could be habitual. Either one could be fresh and new. So it's not so much about that. I think it's more about the habitual patterns. Like we get into ruts to almost distract ourselves from the ordinary vibrancy of the present. Wouldn't you say? Yeah, the difference between these two approaches.

[53:17]

But, yeah, it could be a challenging practice, but right in the middle of habitual, like we're watching the same sitcom on TV or something again and again, and we're seeing it, we're just reruns, but it's like mildly entertaining again and again. I think sometimes people might feel it's a little bit deadening, but at that moment, We could remember Yunnan's teaching. Oh, yeah. I've seen it like five times already. This is when that person's about to give the punchline to that joke, and I already know the punchline. But even before it comes, wait a second. I'm sitting on a couch in a room, and it's a miracle that this screen can be talking. And the content is not so important. Maybe that's another principle here too. And another thought that Abbott's question is sometimes we get so lost in the content of the particular sliver of now that we forget the kind of spacious ease of the big now.

[54:37]

So that's why Zazen is... is less about the content, more about the space. Yes, so it's about time. It's time. Bumper stickers don't need to be issued. Because we all know it. But is time a tiny sliver? Or is it timeless or both? Medicine and disease subdue each other. The whole earth is medicine. What is your true self? Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive.

[55:41]

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.

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