This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Mary, and I'm a resident here. And Allison gets to attend to me this evening. So my name is Mary. I'm a resident here. I've lived here for a few years. And I know that, well, I imagine that for some of you, you're not so familiar with this Buddha Hall. And I imagine there are a few of you that are very familiar with this Buddha Hall. So welcome to all of you at whatever stage you think you are. Thank you. I wanted to say that I was thinking of doing this without notes, and then one of the things that I have done since I've been Shuso is I write things on pieces of paper, I fold them and put them in my robes, and when I take them out, I think of Steve Stuckey, because he often had a few notes,

[01:33]

He often folded the notes in half and slipped them in his robes. And I think that action of doing that, I flash on being his chisha. And it kind of makes me, it connects me. It brings joy. It's a little bit You know, Steve died in 2013. And so sometimes we have things that connect us to the people that we've learned from. And just sitting up here doing that allowed me to remember Steve. Tonight I thought I'd talk a little bit about koans. And this is a little bit presumptuous because Shundo is going to be starting a class on koans.

[02:36]

And so it feels both connecting to that possibility of his classes and also a bit imposterous. Because I have always had an extremely difficult time around the idea of koans. I read them, my mind goes completely blank. And then I read the commentary, and then usually there's sort of more blankness. And I think, well, not this time. But there's something about them. People talk about them, and Dharma talks a lot. They come up. They just keep coming up. And through my years at Zen Center, I have... not fail to notice that people talk about koans a lot. And so there is one koan that I've been kind of edging around for a time, and I thought I'd talk about it tonight.

[03:45]

I've read a little bit about the point of koans, you know, and some people think that they're riddles that have to kind of be sorted out They're definitely teaching stories. But I read this sentence that Robert Attikin wrote in his introduction to the gateless barrier, and this one sentence has helped me a lot. Koans are the clearest possible expression of perennial facts which students grasp with focused meditation and guidance. So I'm going to read that again. koans are the clearest possible expression of perennial facts which students grasp with focused meditation and guidance. So I think, for me anyway, what my experience is starting to show is that a teaching story isn't really a koan if you read it and the first time you read it you think, oh, I know what that means.

[04:58]

I think if it's in your mind and if it moves around, you think about it, you talk a little bit about it, it moves a little bit more, then there's something about that particular thing that makes it a koan. And this idea of kind of being a distillation of an idea that's very important to us is something that appeals to me. That it's not an easy thing necessarily. And it's not a hard thing. It takes a little bit of work. It takes a little bit of chewing. It takes a little bit of support from teachers and sangha members. There's something very communal about the idea of exploring a koan that appeals to me.

[06:02]

So in light of that, I'm going to talk tonight about case seven in the Muman Khan, the gateless barrier. So it's short, as often koans are. A monk said to Chaocho, I have just entered this monastery. Please teach me Chow Chow said, have you eaten your rice kruel? The monk said, yes, I have. Chow Chow said, wash your bowl. So, I'm a relatively practical person, I would say. This idea of somebody saying to me, have you eaten? Me saying, yeah. And then that person saying, well, wash your bowl. I can kind of get what's going on there a little bit, I think.

[07:08]

But I wanted to pull this apart a little bit. So there's this first statement, which a monk said, I have just entered this monastery, please teach me. So in many respects... Even this statement opens up this whole world. You have this person that's completely new to a monastery, and he goes to the master of the monastery. He asks a very direct question. He says, I'm new here, and teach me. So that in itself is not a small thing. how often do we go into a new environment and be willing to talk to the head person and ask them a direct question, a welcoming question? So this monk feels he's prepared to learn. He's inviting teaching.

[08:14]

In terms of learning the Dharma, there's some metaphor that I... I wanted to share because it stuck with me over the years. And if we think of ourselves and the way we learn in terms of a vessel, there are different learning styles. So there's this idea of an upside-down vessel. And that is when your mind doesn't allow... It's not paying attention. to anything that's being taught to you. There's no way for stuff to enter into that vessel because it's upside down. And sometimes when we're learning new things, we think we're sitting there in a classroom or in a Dharma talk. We think that we're learning, but actually we're not even paying attention to what's going on. So that's this first type of vessel, an upside down vessel. The second vessel is

[09:20]

is a cracked vessel. So this, you can imagine, is a vessel where you pour in water to an empty vessel, and it just comes out the side, or out the hole in the bottom, or out the crack in the side. And you can all imagine, I suppose, that you've been in a situation where teachings come into your mind, they go in one ear, and they go out the other. So you're not remembering anything that's being said. And that's a cracked vessel. The third type is a vessel which is smeared with poison. So whatever teachings you're hearing, they get contaminated by the listener's own prejudices, their own agenda, their own clinging mind. So things are going in, but they're mixed with the poison of the vessel. And so they become not pure, available teachings.

[10:26]

So that's when a vessel is contaminated with poison. Another type is a vessel that's already too full. So you think that you know everything about something. Ideas are being poured in. There's no room for anything. and those ideas come out the side, out the top. They flow. They just keep flowing. So really, you think that you're willing to accept teachings, but there's no room. So then, when we have a vessel that's right side up, it's sound, it has no cracks or holes, it's not too full, There's no poison. This is called beginner's mind. This is when the shape of our mind allows for information to come in.

[11:30]

And when the monk said, please teach me, what he's actually saying to the master is, I am ready. I'm up for this. I want to understand what dharma is. Here we go. And in that brief exchange, the master then is trusting the student, is trusting that he's ready, that he's not going to be wasting his time. And that moment, I think, is a very important thing, not just in terms of dharma, but in those moments when you're talking with family, when you're talking to your spouse, when you're talking to your kids? Are you there? Are you available? Are you ready for this? And I think this is my experience.

[12:32]

One of the things that sitting meditation prepares us for is that one moment to be ready, to be able to say, please teach me. So then we go to the next part of the koan. Chao Cho says, have you eaten your rice gruel? So in monasteries in Japan, I'm told, rice gruel is like the breakfast. You have a few pickles, it's the standard fare. So in this sentence, Chao Cho is saying to the monk, Are you in order? Do you stand with yourself? How do you stand with the world? It's a very straightforward question, you know.

[13:36]

Have you eaten your rice gruel? But again, the depth of the question is, the monk says, I'm ready. And the teacher says, are you ready? Can you confirm here that this is a moment, this is an important moment? And I think these questions for me are very significant, so I'll repeat them again. Are you in order? Do you stand with yourself? how do you stand in the world? And I think these are asked in many different ways, of course. The way these are worded here appealed to me because I think often much of our trouble comes from the idea, am I good enough?

[14:40]

And I think these kind of questions get at that. They get us to ask ourselves, Where are you with this? Who are you? What do you want? And in the busyness of our life, this, I think, is getting harder and harder to get to, these questions, these type of questions. I remember one time I was shopping with my sister, one of my sisters, who experienced schizophrenia. And for her, making decisions, identifying decisions was very difficult.

[15:45]

Being able to answer these questions... was always the most complicated thing for her. She never actually knew who she was or what she was or where she was. And because we spoke, I understood that I could do those things and she couldn't do those things. And I appreciate that for some people, this is extremely difficult. So I think asking ourselves, like, how am I, is a really complicated question, actually. Like, it's just sort of like a koan. It's super easy, and it's super complicated. So the teacher then, with, have you eaten your rice gruel, is saying, are you ready?

[16:49]

When I was 30, I decided that I would... I was a little younger than that. When I was in my late 20s, I guess. I decided I would like to work as a carpenter. And I didn't know anything about carpentry. I was a university student and I was teaching at the university. And... I made a decision that I needed to do something physical, and so I made a decision to get a job as a carpenter. I found a company that I wanted to work for, and I started kind of a campaign of harassment. So I would go knock on the door, and I put in an application. I would go visit them. I think one time I... took cookies in.

[17:54]

And I, you know, they were like, well, you don't know anything about it, and the age you are, and mostly it's young men, you know. So I just kept going to the door, and they, after a few months, they were like, oh, for goodness sake. And one of the owners, Jamie, had a job... that he was trying to finish at his own house. He was putting the formwork for a concrete sidewalk. So he said, go to my house, here's the address, finish the formwork. Test. It was a test. I didn't know what I was doing. So I said, okay. I went to his house, and I figured it out. It was unconventional, to say the very least. But he came home. At the end of the day, he looked it over, and he was like, okay, we're going to pour tomorrow.

[18:59]

And I helped with that, and then they gave me a job. So this idea of being ready, you know, it's like, what are you up for? When I decided I wanted to be a carpenter, I was all in. I was in for the four years of the apprenticeship training. I was in to be the person for the first year that crawled underneath the nasty basement to find out why the plumbing was leaking and then to call the plumber. Because I had this idea that it was something that was worthwhile for me. I wasn't fooling around at that point. And so it allowed me to commit to this thing. It allowed me to say, teach me. I'm ready. I'm ready. So when the monk said to the question, have you eaten your breakfast?

[20:07]

Yes, I have. This is like me saying, okay, here we go. going to do this work. I don't know anything about this, but this is what I've decided upon. All my eggs were in that basket. And then Chow Chow says, washable. And this is the part, this like, have you eaten washable? Have you eaten washable. This is the thing that has washed through me over the years. This is the koan that sticks with me. Because for a practical person, eat, clean up your mess. Work at your desk, clean up your mess. Get into a traffic accident, deal with it. Do this thing, something else happens.

[21:12]

And in this position, as director, which I'm now doing, for every decision that's made, there are innumerable unintended consequences that happen. We make decisions, we change policies, and then a number of people are affected by that. So then, what do we do? Do we just say, tough? Do we go and say, okay, we'll try this in another way? Do we work with the situation? How well do we work with the situation? How open am I to working with the situation when I realize that it's not working out? This is like my day. And actually, it's like everybody's day. We think we're going to get up and have a great day. And then there's nobody that runs the wake-up bell. then we don't get up.

[22:17]

We get up late, you know. We get to the Zendo late. So, Kim and I were just talking before the talk, you know, and it's like, we have this idea that things should work out. And it's always surprising to us somehow that things don't work out. But what is the working out? So, This idea of just wash a bowl. I take that sort of as, okay, don't freak out. Don't make it a bigger situation than it is. Don't make it a smaller situation than it is. Wash a bowl. Again, I'm going to talk about being a carpenter for a minute.

[23:17]

So I signed on for this. It's a four-year program. So the first year I pretty well was, you just do unbelievably gross things for a long time. And mostly the point is to say yes. I have been told that in Japan, as an apprentice carpenter, the first year that you were an apprentice carpenter, you did not speak and you did not touch anything. You watched. So in the second year, when somebody gave you a broom or gave you a hand tool, you'd actually been paying attention enough to know what to do with that thing. Not like super complicated stuff, but just the basic things. You already had been training yourself. So this is how the apprenticeship works. First year, you're the person that... does a lot of shoveling and carrying stuff and setting up tools and running and fetching and that sort of stuff.

[24:21]

Second year, you get a little bit of responsibility. Like what? I don't know. And you worked your way up. Third year, more responsibility. Fourth year, you start having apprentices. First year apprentices, you start bossing them around a bit. And there is... There is this thing that we have in the trades, unfortunately, I think, is the idea that I was treated terribly, so I'm going to treat you terribly. And it happens a lot, actually. It was really always hard for me to witness first-year apprentices being treated terribly because their person had been treated terribly. So that wasn't so great for me. But the idea of showing people things, training them, giving them more responsibility, this is a very effective training way.

[25:26]

And of course you're relying on the person being willing to say, I'm ready. Here I am. I want to learn this thing. I'm really up for this. And that's, it's not so common. actually. We don't really have a society of willingness for some reason. We're often the full vessel where we think we know stuff and we're not ready. And then the other thing that... is really common, and I think this is also something that many of you will recognize who have been in teaching roles, is the idea that if you're a good teacher, you will pass on a few little tips or tricks, and then what is happening will become obvious. So this idea of mastery for many people is kind of an intellectual property.

[26:38]

rather than something that's practiced over and over and over and over. So when I was teaching people as a carpenter, after, let's say, 10 or 15 years of experience, I would be showing somebody who was a brand new apprentice something, and they would get super frustrated, and they would say, well, just show me the trick. And I would say, there isn't a trick. It's... You do this for 15 years, and then you have the hand-eye coordination, you have the background, you have the skills in order to do this thing. It's not this thing that you can get. I was working with this young man, and he said... when do I get to the point where I don't need to draw any lines to cut by? So, you know, you have a big piece of plywood and you're cutting shapes and stuff. And his understanding was that once you get good enough as a carpenter, you don't need lines.

[27:43]

You just can sort of eyeball stuff. I just found that so delightful because as a cook, as a tradesperson, as a manager in a company, You never can let go of the basics. They're always there. We're always working with the basics. You always need to follow guides, lines, measures. It doesn't go away. It doesn't get faster. It almost doesn't even get easier. It gets more routine. It becomes part of your bones. part of your blood. So then the monk says, or at the end of the koan it says, the monk understood. And when I first read this koan, I'm like, understood what?

[28:51]

But I think the monk has an idea that the master is saying, are you ready? And readiness is being ready today. It's being ready tomorrow. It's being ready in two minutes. It's always being ready. There's no way around it. And that it is possible, I think, in that particular context to say, yes, I understand. And then also to realize that that in two minutes you might lose that understanding. So there's a cycle, you know. Information comes at us. What kind of vessel are we? Can we identify? Can we say, I'm really tired, so actually today I'm an upturned cup.

[29:56]

Forget it. Can we be honest about that? Some days you're ready. The cup is perfect. And then in that moment you can say, here I am, I'm ready. This is the moment. And to be really joyful about that. To accept the moment. I think that's all I would like to say.

[31:02]

And I hope that all of you have the lovely experience of reading this koan and understanding it in a way that suits you over and over and over. We have a few minutes, so if anybody would like to ask a question, I'm more than willing to give it a go. I heard you say that sitting Zazen helps with the cup situation. Helps you hold your cup in the way. How does that work? Yeah. I don't actually know how it works. But I know it works for me.

[32:02]

Um... And I think partly how it works for me is I now have the ability to trust that being there is a positive thing in my life. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm looking for a particular experience anymore. I'm not sure... You know, I was... Again, also saying to Kim earlier that last week during the half-day sitting that we did for the community retreat, I was so agitated. I just was having such a difficult time. And you know that line, like a tethered colt, a trapped rat? I think about that a lot sometimes. And yet, even though I feel this agitation while I'm sitting there,

[33:04]

there are times when even understanding that there I am sitting completely still and I'm so agitated is helpful for me. And I think part of that has to do with this idea that doing isn't always the best response. Or doing... I mean, I feel like Zazen is actually very, very active... So even that's tricky to say in the English language. Let's say the doing of zazen is really different from the Protestant ethic doing of never letting your hands be idle. So I don't believe the don't ever let my hands be idle thing anymore. But I also believe that there is something so sane about stopping this physical activity and sitting in that posture.

[34:10]

That's really helpful for me. Do you want to say anything about your experience? I hear the similarity between the 15 years of cutting wood and there being no trick in there. The years of sitting... Yeah. Yeah, I think for some people it's really hard to have the confidence that there isn't a trick. It's really hard. And we are striving, we are striving to get to a point where we feel like we're good at it or that we've mastered it, you know? And I think patience is very difficult for us because particularly now, I mean, Everything happens so quickly with the internet. Responses happen. So we're training ourselves to be like moment by, like junkies kind of, time junkies, response junkies.

[35:18]

And so again, I think this is one of the reasons why sitting Zazen is so sane because it's so counter to all the other pulls for us. And I think contrary to what many people hear about sitting meditation, it is extremely active. There's a lot happening in a form that looks sort of like what my form looks like right now. So even that idea is tricky for people. Like there's a lot of doing happening in the not doing. 15 years. Yes, please. Yeah, I think in this thing, this sentence that I read at the beginning, there are... Cohen's are the clearest possible expression of perennial facts which students grasp with focused meditation and guidance.

[36:33]

So... Just like what Jean said, I think this posture allows us to kind of shed the activity and busyness. I believe koan practice allows us to shed complicated ideas or the language around complicated ideas into a moment where we're just going, oh. And there isn't even language around that moment, I don't think. Does that get it a little bit? Thank you. Please, Jamie. I can say what one of my most... clear expressions of it was.

[37:35]

And again, it's an example from carpentry. I was in a job shack. I worked on many different jobs, many different companies, but in one particular job, after I'd been practicing for a number of years, there would be about, let's say, 20 of us, and the supervisor would assign jobs to us. So we would all be in the job shack, and Joe would go around and say, I'd like you to work I'd like you to work on the skylight. I'd like you to do this. I'd like you to do that. And what I noticed was that most of the guys would say, like, Joe would say, I'd like you to work on the skylights. I'd like them to be this high. So he'd kind of lay out what he wanted. And their immediate response would be, and they'd say it, well, that's stupid. He was the supervisor. And... And he was used to this. He'd say, well, I just want you to do it this way.

[38:36]

And they'd be like, well, I have a better way. And Joe was really patient. He'd say, no, actually, I'd kind of like you to do it this way. So every morning, with like 15 guys, there'd be this argument about who was going to do what, how they were going to do it, what was the best method to do it, who they were going to work with. It all happened pretty quickly, but it always happened. One morning, we were working on a... It was in Calgary. It was an old aviation hangar. We were putting some skylights on the top. It was a pretty big job. And Joe looked at me and he said, I want you to start working on those skylights. And I said, okay. The whole place went dead. LAUGHTER I mean dead, really, like resounding silence. Joe's jaw dropped.

[39:41]

And he kind of looked at me and he said, you got that? And I was like, okay. And he's, are you sure? And I'm like, yeah. And I mean... Not just him, but every single person couldn't believe what just happened. It's not like that happened every day, you know. But that, like, I was like, okay, I know what to do. I am experienced enough to do this. I have the tools. I have the support. You know, like, it was one of those moments where I was like, okay, here we go. And that's what I'm talking about. That moment where you're, instead of fighting about all the things you know and all the ideas you have and all the reasons why everybody else in the world is so messed up and you're the only one, you're taking direction from somebody and they're like, do this and you go, okay. And after you've practiced for a while and you do that, it is mind-blowing.

[40:48]

It really is. Try it out. So guess what? It's time. So thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:25]

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