In surpassed and trading and perfect karma, it is rarely met with even a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to listen to, you remember and accept Morning. It's a chilly summer morning here in Berkeley. It's good to see everyone in the Zendo and it's nice to see you out there in Radioland. So lately, I've been reading a really excellent

[01:24]

about the history of Zen, written by, it's called The Circle of the Way, by Barbara O'Brien. And it's really refreshing to be reminded of Zen history, starting in India, but really focusing a lot on China and Japan. And particularly for me, and I know many of us love this, the lines of Zen in the Tang Dynasty, what's sometimes called the Golden Age of Zen. And to read these stories again, ones I was inspired by deeply in kind of my early years of practice and then continuing to inspire me.

[02:31]

So this week, as I was reading through Barbara O'Brien's book, I came across a short section on Matsu Daoyi, who was founder of one of the primary lineages of Tang Dynasty, Zen, the Hangzhou school. And in within a couple of generations, his lineage includes Baijiang and also Linji or Rinzai. And so that's one of the one of the great threads of Zen tradition. So when I get around to it, I want to talk about two famous koans that were part of the record of Matsu.

[03:41]

And these koans are like the sky over our old tradition. But just first a little background. So unusually Matsu's Dharma name was taken from his family name, Ma, in Sichuan province in 1709. And according to the transmission of the lamp, Matsu Tzu means master, basically. So Master Ma was a student of Guairang, who was one of the principal disciples of the sixth ancestor. He's in our lineage. Well, he's not in our lineage, in our lineage from the sixth ancestor. One of his other is the kind of the source of what we call the Soto tradition or the Kaodong tradition, which would be Qingyuan, Qingyuan Jinji.

[04:57]

But Chingyuan and Nanyue were in the same direct, in the same... They were both students of, well, they were both reportedly students of Mene, the sixth ancestor. Whether Nanyue actually met him is not exactly clear. But you may know this famous story of... Master Ma's first encounter with Nanyue. I think it's been told many times here. So Reverend Ma was sitting Zazen in the courtyard and Reverend Wairong saw him and sat down on a rock facing him and started polishing a tile And Master Ma asked, what are you doing?

[05:59]

And Wairong said, I'm polishing a tile to make a mirror. Master Ma said, how can you make a mirror by rubbing a tile? And Wairong said, if I can't make a mirror by rubbing a tile, how can you make a Buddha by sitting in meditation? Usually, that's where we end the story. Actually, there's more. Master Ma asks Wairang, what should I be doing? And Wairang, in this really typical Zen mode of answering a question with another question, says to Mansu, well, When the ox cart stops, do you beat the cart or do you beat the ox? Matsu will see him not knowing what to do.

[07:07]

And Mairam adds, are you sitting in meditation or are you sitting in meditation in order to be a Buddha? If you do that, you will kill the Buddha. And with that, the young monk Ma, a glimpse of liberation, and he said it felt like just as if he had tasted ghee, which ghee is clarified butter, and I guess anyway, I think that was meant to be a statement of appreciation. So the transmission of the lamp describes Matsu. It says, his appearance was remarkable.

[08:08]

He strode along like a bull and glared about him like a tiger. So I'm just gonna wait a moment. His appearance was remarkable. He strode around along like a bull and glared about him like a tiger. If he stretched out his tongue, over his nose. That's a long tongue. And on the soles of his feet, the veins on the soles of his feet took the shape of two circular marks.

[09:22]

Dr. Ma began the tradition that we have. He was known for his stranger words and extraordinary actions. And so with him, we have the beginning of a kind of wild and seemingly transgressive mode of teaching and blows and words and expressions that really jolt us out of our ordinary perception. There's another story, famous story that we share with you. Once, Master Ma was walking with his disciple, Baijang, and they saw a flock of wild geese.

[10:26]

Matsu said, what's that? And Baijang said, wild geese. Matsu said, where have they gone? And Baijang said, they've flown away. At this point, grabbed his disciples' nose and twisted it with all of his force. This made Baijong scream with pain. And Matsu merely remarked, so you thought they had flown away, eh? Where have they ever gone? So that was his mode of teaching, one of his modes of teaching. The other koan that we have of Master Ma that we all know is on his deathbed. When he asked how he was, he gave the famous response, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha.

[11:32]

So, as I said, his lineage continues through Bai Zhang and and then Linji becomes what we have as the Linji or Rinzai school. So here are the two koans and they are koans case 30 and 33 in the Mumankan or the Wumankan. And the first case is this. This very mind is Buddha. The student Dami asked Matsu Buddha. Matsu said, this very mind is Buddha. That's the whole case. Women's comment is if you can grasp the point directly, you wear Buddha's robes.

[12:44]

His words take Buddha's role. That is, you yourself are Buddha. Dhamme, however, misled quite a few people into trusting a broken scale. Don't you know you should rinse out your mouth for three days when you utter the name Buddha? If you are genuine, you'll run away holding your ears upon just hearing the words, this very mind is Buddha. So be careful how you conceptualize. We should be careful about how we think of these expressions. Mumman's verses is really beautiful. The blue sky and bright day. And as I say this, sun is coming out the blue sky the bright day no more searching around what is buddha you ask hiding the loot you declare your innocence that's the first case the second case just a few passages later soon few

[14:14]

Poans later in the Momokan is case 33. Matsu, what is Buddha? Matsu said, not mind, not Buddha. Okay. From there, you actually have ingredients to cook up the entire history of Zen from those two, from those two cohorts. And Mumman's comment is, if you can see through this clearly, your Zen training is complete. Mumman's verse, again, really eloquent, says, If you meet a swordsman, present a sword.

[15:18]

Don't offer a poem unless you meet a poet. When speaking, say one third of it. Don't give the whole thing at once. So there's a follow-up story. There's a couple follow-ups to these. So long after Dame asked his question of Matsu, he moved out and became a very well known teacher. And he had many disciples and his reputation and fame was Matsu. And Matsu sent a monk, one of his students, to investigate the authority of Matsu. Dhammei's understanding. And this monk had been given the koan, not mind and not Buddha.

[16:24]

And he was given that to test Dhammei. So when this young monk arrived at Dhammei's hermitage, Dhammei asked him, where did you come from, Reverend monk? And the monk said, I came from the great master Ma. What kind of Buddhism is he teaching these days? The monk said, of late, Master Ma's Buddhism has really completely changed. Well, how did it change? Former Master Ma always said, this very mind is Buddha itself. But now he says, it is neither the mind nor Buddha. Tame bit his lip and said, this old scoundrel is just trying to confuse me.

[17:26]

He may teach neither mind nor Buddha. I still say mind is Buddha. And the young one returned to Matsu, reported his exchange, and Matsu left. Oh, the plum is ripe. Da is plum. Da of dame, which is like the ba plum. So in the record of Matsu, another monk asked Matsu, why do you teach that mind is no other than Buddha? And Matsu said, in order to make a child stop its crying. And when the crying is stopped, what would you say?

[18:28]

Neither mine nor Buddha. What teaching would you give to one who is not in those two groups? Matsu said, I will say. It's not a thing. If you unexpectedly meet a person who is right in the middle of it, what would you do? Finally, he asked the monk. Manzu said, I will let him realize the great way. So I think like Sojin Roshi, Matsu was constantly encouraging to see the other side of the page, not to be caught on either koan as a definitive statement, rather to see

[19:42]

in each responding directly to the person and to the circumstances in front of him. And as I said, I think our whole tradition unfolds from this. These two seemingly contradictory propositions about the nature. These are central to our ancient dialogue within the Zen tradition. And I think the question in front of us is, how are they pivotal for our lives? How do we use them? And more to the point, actually, always the question is, how shall I live? What will I do? Day by day, we're encouraged here to meet our true minds.

[20:55]

And we do this by deepening and extending our capacity to recognize uncertainty, to recognize ambiguity. rather than to land on some absolute principle, absolute principle of mind, the principle of no mind, no Buddha, but to be able to allow them to arise in a way that expresses the messiness of life. So what is this mind that they're talking about here? Joshu's famous expression, ordinary mind is the way, actually is a direct from Matsu who said this many times.

[22:09]

I think that Suzuki Roshi's beginner's mind as well as big mind are also expressions of what mind was pointing to in both of these gods. We take these Zen expressions for granted nowadays. We hear them as just part of the regular language of Zen that we're familiar with, but they were really radical. And really, they still are. And at the same time, they're ordinary. In the sense that our lives are ordinary, that the example of our late teacher was profoundly ordinary.

[23:15]

And for me, ordinary is a precious way to be. I can't remember because I can't remember if this robe that I'm wearing is one of Sochan's or one of mine. We both had robes made of the similar material. robes that have been patched many times. And I think this is our, you know, this is our model. There's someone once said they're, they're brocade robe monks and they're patrol monks. And I think that our family is patrol monks, very clean, very ordinary. And the rope does the job. It covers the being, which is all it needs to do.

[24:22]

And as shiny as it is, it wouldn't do any better job covering us. So that's a sense of what ordinary is. So whether you see you are enlightened or not is really not the point of what Matsu is getting at. He doesn't denigrate it. But, you know, he says, are you, you know, are you sitting zazen or are you sitting zazen to become a Buddha? And in our tradition, we have this model of Dogen's expression of practice realization.

[25:24]

Enlightenment is there. It's indwelling. Original mind is indwelling. And in fact, we can do nothing. There's nothing we can think, there's nothing we can do that doesn't operate. At the same time, we may or may not realize it. It says, if you want directly to know the way, then know that ordinary mind is the way. What is ordinary mind? It means no intentional creation and action, no right or wrong, no grasping or no ending or permanent, no profane or sacred.

[26:28]

This is really, this is hard to get our minds around. And I think many people have been mistaken to take this. a position that is quite apart from morality. But I think that the message that we're getting from Matsu and all these ancestors is that if we are practicing ordinary way, then we are in line with the moral nature of the universe. That when it says no intentional creation and action, Laurie and I were talking about this.

[27:41]

I think what he's, that is, can you find a way to live or even a moment to live where you're not concocting something, where you're not fabricating something, you know, or you don't. So it's not like you have no. It's like when a thought arises, this is the mind of Zaza. When the thought arises, can you just let that thought be there and not, Concoct, not make an entire story out of it. And then with that story. So ordinary to me means means unadorned. It means plain. It also means what what our friend Santi Caro

[28:49]

spoke when he spoke of the of the of Sheila, of the precepts, ordinary, what he said is that the meaning of that is of a natural normalness. So you just let this natural normalness arise. Can you do that without? And take your ego. out of the way and just operate in ordinary. The other sense of it to me is that it implies the proper order of our lives. It means that things have a place, things have a way of unfolding.

[29:53]

Can we allow that to happen without interfering with it? In fact, can we stand back for a moment and observe it? And what can I learn from the ordinary way that things are unfolding? What can I learn from the way, in Dogat's expression, Enlightenment is unfolding. Enlightenment unfolds in this ordinary way. I think one of the experiences that we often have with Sojin, and I found it with other teachers that I admire, is A kind of relaxation, a kind of ease of meeting the world and curiosity.

[30:55]

So this ordinary mind is curious, well, what's happening? What's happening here? Instead of imposing my system of thought or my habits, Can I just watch what's going on with curiosity? In between the last two sentences, I heard geese honking outside. Where have they gone? So... It's not that we should be disdainful of our activities, our activities of mind, our activities of body.

[31:58]

I'm going to read something from Dogen. When Matsu said, mind is Buddha, Dogen would say something, Dogen could elaborate on that a bit. Dogen says, in our house, body and mind together attain the way. As long as you try to figure out Buddha Dharma just with your mind, you can never attain it, even for myriad eons or thousands of lifetimes. There you go.

[33:07]

It is attained by letting go of the mind abandoning views and interpretations. To see form and clarify the mind, to hear sound and come to realization is attainment with the body. The body is not apart from the mind. The functioning of your senses, the functioning of your limbs, the functioning of your heart, And your aura, body, mind, to be in a line with them is the ordinary. In Shogo Genso Zazenshin, I'm compressing this a bit, Dogen writes, the essential function of Buddha and the functioning essence of every ancestor is knowing without touching things, illuminating without facing objects.

[34:40]

without making an object of your thoughts, without making an object of your feelings and thereby being caught by them. And at the end of this section, he says, the water is clear to the bottom. A fish is swimming slowly. The sky is infinitely vast. A bird is flying far, far away. So where are those geese right now? The fish swims in the water. It doesn't necessarily see the water. Water is just the medium in which it's operating. The bird flies in the sky, and the sky is just the medium in which it is operating. question for us is, what is the water, what is the sky for ourselves, for the existence of our being?

[36:01]

What is the medium in which we are? In a sense, I think that's what Matsu is asking, what is You know, he's raising the question for us, what is mind? And then he's also warning us, don't be caught on it. I just want to go back, just I love this, this dialogue. You know, why would you teach, student asks him, monk asks him, why do you teach that mind is no other than Buddha? in order to make a child stop its crying. So, you know, for a child to understand that whatever it needs is within it, it's within its and for

[37:10]

If the crying, when the crying stops, one says, what would you say? Neither mind nor Buddha. When the crying stops, you have to fixate on the Buddha as an object. So, you know, it's so easy for us to fall into one side or the other. And I think with these two koans, Master Ma, really encouraging us to see it from both sides. This is our capacity that we grow here in this practice, just to be able to include everything and to recognize that our usual logic doesn't apply to it all. Water is clear to the bottom.

[38:22]

A fish is slowly, slowly. The sky is infinitely vast. A bird is flying far, far away. So I think I'm going to stop there and leave ample time for us to talk, hear what you're what this calls for for you to hear what is mine for you. So I'm gonna stop and there's, let me just, I don't know what happened to the chat function on this, but I can look at the participants. Anyway. You're welcome to, I'm going to turn it over to Mary Beth, who will remind me if I'm missing someone, and then also you may have something that you want to ask or share here in the Zendo.

[39:37]

Let's start here, if there's something on your mind. Mary. I don't know if this is one question or two, but how does this teaching fit in with the understanding that the universe is one's mind and the mind is the universe? And what is, maybe this is the same question, what is the definition? Well, the definition of mind is for you to figure out. Remember he said, only give one third of it. You know, so there are definitions of mind. And the thing about the fluidity of our mind, which is remarkable, is that it can be very precise, you know, really focused on a point, or it can be vested in its switches

[40:49]

The nature of it is to me is this kind of amazing flexibility. And the challenge is, can we bring that flexibility to our moment to moment activity? You know, it's one thing to be flexible to be sitting here in this spacious environment. And. In an instant, one hears the geese. And in the next moment, I'm returning to this text that I have in front of me. There's a kind of remarkable fluidity, but that's only part of it. I was recently reading something that posed the question, does consciousness continue without the body or mind?

[41:55]

a brain, and does it exist without manifestation of the physical? And it made me think of an eclectic group of professors at UCLA. You have to speak up a little. I'm not sure. Can people online hear? So there's an eclectic group of The CLA who have been meeting to discuss mind and the definition I came up with is the flow of information and energy, which doesn't connect it necessarily to this brain. That's true. I haven't read that and I don't know what their discourse is. Even information seems to me an objectification.

[42:56]

You know, in order for something to be information, it has to be in some kind of categories. Anyway, I think in Buddhism, when Suzuki was talking about big mind, and I think when Matsu is speaking of mind, he's thinking of something beyond our understanding. you know, beyond bound, you're speaking of something that's boundless. Yeah. 2D. I was wondering what your take is on how this connects to, I imagine it is a Venn diagram. There's a circle and we call it, and then there's another circle impossibility like our seemingly impossible vow to save all beings and then the possibility deeply meeting in this moment so rather than calling it an intersection of those two sort of seeing them as circles

[44:17]

How would that connect to these teachings that you're bringing forth today? Because the rubber hits the road. What's possible in this moment is a benefit, and how does that connect to the impossibility, say, of vow? I would rather characterize vow as Boundless rather than impossible. If you say it's impossible, you know, to say it's impossible is already imposing your... And I think that the thrust of these koans is to push you beyond that. And to communicate that we have naturally within us

[45:20]

the capacity to go beyond what we think is possible. I was thinking of it more in terms of, you know, the song, the impossible dream. Because I think part of this is, you know, it's great to say boundlessness, but sometimes to me, just an ordinary conversation, a lot of this stuff can seem trapped. And the feeling tone of singing or hearing to dream the impossible dream kind of gets me in a different space where I can feel both of those things alive. It's possible and impossible in a way that somehow that word . You're right. So those are very highly conceptual words. And this is why Some of these old teachings were really constantly trying to put beyond our conceptualization.

[46:27]

And, of course, you know, in this case, we're only dealing with words. In other cases, you know, Bai Zhang had his nose twisted, which, you know, that was a physical act. But we can't describe that. But. I think all of our teachers are encouraging us to understand, to feel directly there's more and that we are connected to it. And it's hard. It's hard because sometimes, I mean, I felt this last night. there's a certain struggle that I have with this material as well. I can understand it intellectually, but at the moment that I'm trying to understand it intellectually, I may be unlikely to be feeling the truth of it.

[47:47]

And I'm sure that there are people in this room at the moment who are doubting their capacity. They're not doubting the meaning of the words. They may be, you may be doubting as I do my actually embody this or experience it directly. And our teachers just keep saying, you can do this. And in fact, You are doing it whether you notice it or not. You're relying on the mind. You're relying on the whole universe, the coming together, those countless causes and conditions that are creating this moment, this thought, this movement of my hand, etc. It seems impossible. I just want to see if there's anyone online.

[48:48]

Not seeing any hands there, but I would encourage you if you're online, please feel free to ask while you're contemplating that. Hiko. While you were talking, I was casting back to my earliest thing with a Chan Buddhist monk. who was a Shaolin Kung Fu teacher. And he did not teach application. That is to say he didn't teach, and he refused to teach the application, like this is to hurt somebody or pull them or push them, but to train the body. And he also, in spite of, and finally he gave in to us, we wanted to do the Heart Sutra. He refused and refused, and finally he allowed us to chant that in prayer. nobody could understand. And there was a little translation, but he didn't discuss it.

[49:50]

And as I'm sitting here thinking about conceptualizing an interaction with the world and devising a response or a way of dealing with it, I'm thinking this is our conceptualization, this is our trap. And so I thought of that teacher again, I was like, Well, why wouldn't he do that? We lived in New York City. He wanted us to be completely ready in flexibility, in power, in confidence, so that we could see and be present for without fear. And in that, his refusal to teach us anything but our body work, that's what was coming up as you were talking. The body work brought us into a stage of readiness without we weren't trying to become buddhas and yet we were all talking about buddhism and chan and these sorts of things in our discussions yet his teaching was to be in the move do it hard do it again and and again that was all he really taught us that strikes you the way it does me as preparing the body

[51:11]

and as our form practice often does for us here, preparing our physical being to be in the space where we can give one answer or the other and respond appropriately. Yeah, I mean, this is what Dogen goes into exhaustively in Body and Mind, Study of the Way. And we, our first methodology here is we know this is a physical practice and you know the forms are physical and the it's like we practice that and then bit by bit we can integrate the great in a conscious way the mental aspects but the mental aspects are there all alone because they're not they're inseparable from the body.

[52:13]

So, if you're working on the body, you're working on the mind. Whereas, not necessarily vice versa. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate your mission. Thanks very much for a really helpful talk. I really appreciate it. So I wanted to touch a little different angle in something that you said, which was about the definition or an understanding of ordinary talk about the order. What came to my mind was the sense of ease that you described in Teachers that you respect. I think it's being pointed to here in birds flying in their element and fish swimming in their elements. And that is, order is about everything being in its proper place. Sojun would say that when you've settled in the way, you're neither too much or too little.

[53:18]

You're not too high nor too low, but you're in the proper place. And I do think that that's what's going to hear. And as you were talking, I had this connection of lineage that Lin Ji is the one who said, a true man of no rank. A true man is... in the proper place. He has no rank. He's just where he should be. Right. Could you say? Sure. The other piece is the sense of harmony that there is. When everything's in its proper place, it's all functioning as it should, so to speak. Yeah. Well, yeah, thank you. Yes, that's what it's getting at. And to take it another step forward, which may be too far, we have But in our various spiritual traditions, that is spiritual tradition, often they create an order, right?

[54:20]

So the soto order or the order, those are people who are following a certain way with a certain sense of agreement about how to do things, how they organize. That's what an order is. There's maybe some abstract quality to it, but it also is reflecting, you know, the natural order of groups of people, of groups of animals, et cetera. And so order has this larger. Yes, when everything is in its own place, you have the intersection. There may be a vertical dimension, if you will, this is a whole other talk, but the horizontal is really important.

[55:26]

The implication is we're all in this together. That's the order. And then there's one, I see one and then we'll probably have to end. Two things that I got from your talk is the shikantaza, like sitting, is not goal-oriented. And the second was no mind, no Buddha, or not mind, not Buddha, being... I lost my train of thought. Not mind, not Buddha. You know, not really clinging to anything. Meaning not clinging to the mind in some certain state or some indication. And not Buddha.

[56:30]

Meaning... No idea of what a Buddha is. Right. No conceptualization of the Buddha. Give me a third thing. Give you a third thing. Okay. Enter the marketplace with gift bestowings. What? With no idea of a Buddha. But I want to say, just to say, the idea that we have, you know, of no gaining idea, which we have embedded in our particulars and tradition, goes back, it goes back all the way to

[57:34]

And it's articulated very clearly in the sixth ancestor and then in his disciples. And as I'm thinking about it, I think that was what was radical, that that was not, I'm not sure I can identify that in the Buddhist tradition previous to that. So this is a through line. Wineng, Matsu, and all of the ancestors. So one more from, I see Stephanie Solar. You're muted or? I mute myself. There you go. I was thinking about what gets in the way of my living with uncertainty. And I have a fair amount of that going on now, given my recent move to Portland.

[58:43]

It looks so orderly, though. It looks on screen anyway. Maybe that's just the screensaver that you have. It's an Airbnb. It's not my home. Okay. And I've been making it mine for the last two weeks. Anyway, I noticed that when I have preferences, that it really gets in the way of me having, being able to embrace uncertainty, which seems to be quite ordinary. How do you work with differences? With difficulty? But I can generally see that they're preferences. And, you know, I see that they're preferences, and then I have to decide, okay, do I indulge that or not?

[59:49]

You know? And, you know, do I eat this? Do I watch this television program, et cetera? I have to engage all the best I can do. is to engage them with awareness and uh really ask myself if they are who's who's the boss of whom and uh i actually have to ask myself that and if i don't ask myself that And Lori will ask me, or one of my kids will ask me, or you will ask me. But preferences arise. Preferences are part of Buddha mind that's arising. We have these preferences. Who's running the show? And right now, I'm going to close the show.

[60:57]

So thank you all. Thank you.

[61:04]

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