We have a nice cool morning this morning. So my talk today will be about the autumn. In case number 27 of the Blue Cliff Record, it's called Master Uman's Golden Breeze or Golden Wind. As we know, Master Uman was a very famous, well-known Zen master who

[01:04]

was considered maybe one of the most talented teachers in China. So Master Engo introduces the case and he says, And he answers ten. He's talking about Uman. One question and he answers ten. One corner and the other three are made clear. Seeing the hare, he lets go the hawk. Using the wind, he makes fire. Now, not sparing the eyebrows. No. Now, not sparing the eyebrows. No. Not sparing the eyebrows may be put aside for a while.

[02:13]

That's a very funny sentence. Not sparing the eyebrows may be put aside for a while. How about you're entering the tiger's cave? I'll explain that later. See the following. The main subject. A monk asked a monk, What will it be when the trees wither and the leaves fall? Umang said, you embody the golden breeze. And then Setjo has a verse. And he says, significant the question, pregnant the answer too. The three phrases are satisfied. The arrow penetrates the universe. The wind blows across the plain. Soft rain clouds the sky. Don't you see the master of Shorin Temple, not yet returning, wall gazing, meditating quietly now on Uchi Peak?

[03:20]

So, Master Ngo's introduction, he says, one question and he answers ten. He's talking about Master U Mon's ability. Master U Mon was famous for being able to respond to a question and giving much more back than the question seemed to deserve. And he was also well known for having three elements in every answer. These three elements were always contained in every response. But I'll talk about that a little later. But suffice it to say that one question in the answers ten means that he gives more than he receives. One corner and the other three are made clear. You know, if you have a piece of cloth, you notice the priests are always going like this.

[04:44]

They don't face it. Because it's one piece of cloth. And if you're going to fix this, then it pulls the cloth in some other part. So whatever piece of cloth you're adjusting, you always have to take into consideration the other three corners. And that's like our life. Our life is just like a piece of cloth. It's all one piece, even though we tend to think of it as separate entities. We tend to think of our life sometimes as little pieces. But these little pieces are all one piece. So when you do something over here, it affects something over here. And the whole world is like that. I remember I had a student from Mexico one time. He said, in Mexico, he says, when the United States blinks its eyes, Mexicans feel it as a blow in their head.

[05:59]

So he says, one question and he answers 10. one corner and the other three are made clear. Seeing the hare, he lets go of the hawk. In other words, if you have a hawk and are hunting with it, as soon as you see the hare, you let go of the hawk. In other words, you're very sharp. This talks about being very sharp and responding immediately to circumstances. And using the wind, he makes fire. That means he utilizes whatever comes his way. If it's windy, instead of letting the wind blow out the fire, you use the wind in such a way that it creates a fire. So this is called being skillful. Being quick and being skillful. But he says, now, not sparing the eyebrows may be put aside for a while.

[07:06]

There's a saying in Zen that if you talk too much, your eyebrows fall off. This is the danger of a teacher. The teacher's trap is to get involved in talking too much and having the eyebrows fall off. So he says, Now, not sparing the eyebrows may be put aside. Not sparing. If you spare the eyebrows, that means you don't talk too much. But putting that aside. How about you're entering the tiger's cave? There's an old saying. If you want the tiger's cup, you have to enter the tiger's cave. This is a metaphor. Sometimes I'll say this and somebody will start asking about, we shouldn't want tiger's cubs.

[08:16]

And this is a very famous saying, entering the tiger's cave, if you want the tiger's cub, you have to enter the tiger's cave. If you want something valuable, you have to entered the dangerous place. If you want something worthwhile, you have to risk something in order to get what you want. If you study Zen seriously, you have to be able to let go of everything else. And so this is very important in this particular case. So he's saying, Not sparing the eyebrows may be put aside for a while. Not sparing the eyebrows may be put aside for a while. What about entering the tiger's cave? So, see the following.

[09:24]

So this is about entering the tiger's cave. In other words, how you actually enter reality. The tiger's cave is like reality. or essence of mind. So that's a big long introduction for this little case. The main subject. A monk asked Master Uman, what will it be when the trees wither and the leaves fall? This is like the season of fall. when the trees let go of their leaves. Trees don't really wither, but they let go of the leaves and they become bare. Wither here means bare. But in a sense, it could mean wither because it's not really talking about trees.

[10:26]

It's talking about your mind, essence of mind. are our reality. And so, U Mon said, you embody the golden breeze. Each season in China, each season has a quality. The quality of fall is gold. And so this golden breeze, instead of the monk saying, what's the state of your mind, which is too direct, of course, he's saying, what about when the leaves fall in the fall, and the trees wither? What about that? So Master Ulaan matches his question perfectly.

[11:33]

and says, the whole body exposed to the golden breeze. So he's talking about state of mind or state of being. Whole body exposed. When all the superficial things of our life are let go of, Just like when, in the fall, when the leaves come down, the trunk of the tree is exposed. The whole tree is exposed, actually. The tree and the branches are all exposed and rather bare. And so you see something about the reality of tree. When the leaves are all out, that's wonderful and beautiful, but there's something hidden. and in the busyness and acquisitiveness and superficiality of our lives, there's something hidden.

[12:40]

Master Uma also said, within this mountain form, there's a wonderful jewel hidden within this mountain form. Master Uman has this kind of way of speaking. So, this kind of allusion is to essence of mind, it's pretty easy to understand this koan. And if you were to take this koan as a koan, it would mean, how do you embody this? You'd have to study, how do I embody this in my life?

[13:47]

Because this is the koan of each one of us. It's also the koan of the inevitability of losing everything. What happens when you lose everything, either all at once or little by little, as you go from youth to little age to old age and death? How do you present yourself? How do you see yourself? How do you see yourself and your surroundings? How do you relate to your surroundings? Many, many people, when they become old, as you become older, everyone else gets younger.

[14:50]

You know, you really begin to understand that you're older when you see your psychiatrist looks like he's 18. So at some point, as you get older, everybody looks like a kid. You can't believe that these children So the whole body is exposed in the golden wind. And actually, as one becomes older, one becomes more exposed. You notice there are old people who just say whatever they feel like saying.

[16:04]

That's one of the characteristics, often, of older people, because somehow they can't sustain their hiddenness anymore. They can't remain hidden or concealed, and they have to expose themselves. And also, when they become older, people start taking care of them. And when somebody starts taking care of you, you become more exposed. They wash your behind and feed you and so forth. So one has to become more and more exposed. It's good if we can become exposed when we're young. Then we don't have so much trouble when we become older. But exposed also means If you become, when one becomes old, as I said, everybody else becomes younger, and if you don't know how to keep up with life, you become more and more isolated and lonely.

[17:23]

So there are millions of lonely old people because there's no one for them to connect with. All their friends start dying off. They're left with loneliness. So, how do we stay connected with the universe? So that we're always one with things. How did we become one with fall? How do we become one with spring? It's easy to become one with spring. Spring, the sun comes out and it gets warmer and everything's growing. It's easy. Life springs up. But as the sun starts to disappear and it gets colder in the fall,

[18:30]

That's when most old people die in Japan. Chrysanthemums represent death. If you give somebody chrysanthemums, they don't like it. Because somehow they're associated with that. They last a long time. But they're associated with fall and with dying. So it's like going into the darkness. How do we go into that dark or stillness or sparseness, hibernation maybe, where eventually in the winter, if it's, of course here it doesn't snow, but where growth is covered.

[19:34]

Growth is at a standstill. So, you know, Master Mulan says in one of his poems to another koan, he says, winter, spring, summer, fall. If useless things do not clutter your mind, you have the best days of your life. So this saying is rather related to this koan. If useless things do not clutter your mind in any season, How do you become exposed to every season? How do you expose yourself to fall?

[20:43]

How do you expose yourself to winter, spring, summer? How do you expose yourself to someone in the grocery store? How do you expose yourself on the street? How do you expose yourself to your neighbor? How do you expose yourself to the world or the universe without the trappings? So the monk takes a vow to let go of everything. That's the monk's vow, to let go of everything and just be completely exposed. And that takes a whole lifetime to actually put into practice, to be completely honest, open and exposed, even if we have faults.

[21:53]

When the leaves fall, we see our faults. We see our shortcomings. We see who we actually are. And to be able to accept what we see and what's really there is true practice. And to be able to practice with who we really are and what we have is what our practice aims for. So if we say there is a goal, if there is such a thing as a goal in practice, this is the goal. To let go of the leaves. and let the tree stand there as it is with all its gnarled, twisted, and straight branches and trunk and roots.

[23:01]

And when fall comes, just let the fall breeze blow through your branches. But this autumn breeze, golden breeze, also means essence. The essence of mind. Essence of life. Just expose it. So this essence also has three aspects.

[24:17]

We say dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya. Dharmakaya is our essence of mind. Sambhogakaya is our wisdom. And nirmanakaya is our transformation body. These are the three bodies of Buddha. essence body, wisdom body, and transformation body. And transformation body is better than saying incarnation. Sometimes people say incarnation body, which presupposes that there is such a thing as reincarnation. The transformation body, I think, is better, because everything is constantly transforming, and everything is constantly transforming everything else.

[25:26]

What we meet, we transform, and what we meet is transformed, or transforms us. So, all meeting is transformation. And this transformation goes on endlessly in ways that are impossible to understand. Right now, this transformation body is sitting giving a talk on transformation. But how this person will transform, no one knows. But it will. And it is. It's not like someday something will happen.

[26:33]

Something is always happening. Transformation is always happening. Incarnation is always happening. So then Master Setjo has a verse and he says, significant the question, pregnant the answer too. And then he says, the three phrases are satisfied. The arrow penetrates the universe. So the three phrases of Uman, as I said, Master Uman, whenever he would answer a question, I don't know if it was whenever he would answer a question, but his response to a question usually contained three aspects.

[27:41]

The first aspect is called heaven and earth meeting, or a box and a lid fitting perfectly. That means that when someone asked the question, that Uman's response met the question like a box and its lid fitting perfectly. The second aspect of his question was like a boat riding the waves, or like one wave coming after the other in sequence. So the boat riding the waves, or bobbing on the waves, is like responding to circumstances. In other words, whatever circumstance, you would meet the circumstance with spontaneity.

[28:54]

And the third is like cutting through the complications. In other words, his one phrase would just cut through all complications without explaining. So these three aspects were always contained in his responses. And when you study Master Umlan, you begin to see his ability, if you keep this in mind. answers, he says, it's not an answer, but it's more like an aside. At the end of one of his answers, he says, no matter how wonderful a thing is, it may be better to have said nothing at all.

[30:04]

No matter how wonderful a thing is, it may be better to have nothing at all. Which reminds me of Suzuki Roshi talking about one of his teachers. This teacher was very strict and very wonderful teacher, he said, and he loved to smoke. I think I've told you the story before. So one day he went up to the top of the mountain in the morning and it was kind of foggy and teacher sat down on a stump or a rock and pulled out his pipe, or whatever it was, maybe, I don't know if it was a cigarette or a pipe, but it was a smoking apparatus. And in perfect satisfaction, he lit up, you know. When you're a smoker, it's great, you know, you can get to the top of the mountain and

[31:13]

And what's there to do but light up? It's the thing you do between activities. As some people say, it's like the mortar between the bricks of your moments. And when you smoke in the fog, in the cool fog, You know, smoking is even more wonderful because there's something about the way the fog and the smoke mingle that's just wonderful. If you've ever... I did that for a long time. I stopped in 1973. But it was so wonderful when he sat up there smoking one with smoking, completely one with the atmosphere, completely one with the world. And he took a smoke, and it was so wonderful that he said, well, that's my last one.

[32:19]

And he stopped. So this kind of illustrates, you know, it's maybe better not to have anything. A good thing may not be better than nothing at all. Sometimes I think about that. If I'm going to have, you know, if I kind of crave something, then I think, well, I can either be satisfied by indulging in my craving, or I can be satisfied by not indulging in my craving. Either way, you can have satisfaction. But usually, you know, we think, well, if I don't do it, I'll just be more frustrated. But if you decide, well, let's see, I won't have it. And I'll have that satisfaction. So it can go either way. Satisfaction can go either way.

[33:21]

But I must say, when you have a craving, it's hard. But if you have a habit of trying the other side, it becomes easier. not doing is just as satisfying as doing. I'll have to try that more often. So, these are Oonbans, three phrases in one phrase. So the arrow penetrating the universe means it goes right to the heart of things. And the wind blows across the plain. The soft rain clouds the sky. This is very much like the talk I gave last time, last Saturday on knowing how to beat the drum, in a way.

[34:31]

How, when you walk, to really just walk, when you open the door to just open the door. When you sit down, just really sit down with the whole universe. When you stand up, stand up with the whole universe. This is called knowing how to beat the drum. And this is called exposing being exposed to the golden wind. So when the wind blows, just feel the breeze. When the rain comes down, just get wet.

[35:37]

I remember Suzuki Roshi saying, when it starts to rain and you're caught in the rain, don't run. Just walk quietly in the rain. If you run, you get much more wet than if you just walk. And if you walk, you'll be just wet enough. And then he says, don't see the master of Shorin Temple. That's Bodhidharma. Not yet returning. Wall gazing. Meditating quietly now on U.G. Peak. So he's using Bodhidharma as a kind of example. When he left Emperor Wu, he never came back. stayed in his place, found a good place to practice, and continued his practice.

[36:51]

If Emperor Wu wants to, he can follow him. But Bodhidharma He's not going to lose his eyebrows. Well, how do you feel?

[38:11]

Well, in the case of indulging in my desires, I feel, in a sense, fulfilled. And in the case of not indulging in my desires, I feel, in another sense, fulfilled. So in one case, in one sense, they're equal. And in another sense, they're not equal. They're different. There's no way to judge. And the only way to judge is when you get fat, and when you get cancer, and when you get sick. Then you'll be able to judge. Before that, they're equal. Yeah, the effect of your actions on the world, regardless of how it affects you.

[39:37]

Yeah, there are a lot of people that are quite oblivious to how they're affecting the world because of their own... indulging in their own satisfactions. Is that what you're saying? I'm not quite sure. Well, the inner turmoil often obscures one's blind as to the effect of one's contact. Yes, the inner trauma. I'm not sure why.

[40:45]

When we see what we're doing, when it's brought up to us, then we have an opportunity. And the leaves withering, the leaves falling, it's kind of like seeing things as it is, seeing ourself as we are. with our turmoil, all this stuff, you know. And at some point, letting go of all that. Letting go of all that need, desire. Think of how twisted we get through our need and desire and ancient karma. When you were speaking, you said something like, when our minds are not cluttered with useless things, we have the best days of our life.

[41:57]

What are useless things? That's the goal. What are useless things? You don't know? Well, worry and flurry. It's a useless thing. Desiring that which can't be had is a useless thing. Yeah. Exactly. What about our vows? Yeah, our vows. About what?

[42:58]

Our vows are like that. Vows, you can have. Anytime now, right? You can have your vow. Vows are fulfilling a vow. beyond our reach, but it gives us a way to reach. So it's not out of reach, it's just a little bit beyond reach, so that you keep stretching for it. So it has a possible aspect and an impossible aspect, but If we practice as if we're going to be virtuosos, you know, there's some people who practice as, you know, you want to be the best violinist, you know, or the best saxophone player, or the best this or that.

[44:09]

That's not what vows are. Vows are a guideline to help us negotiate through life. And of course they're very high. So if you play the piano, you want to practice to get as high as you can. But there's always somebody higher. There's always some little perfect thing. So perfection is a process. It's not an end. And at every stage, you're perfect. It doesn't mean that you're the best. It means that at every stage you are who you are according to your ability at that moment. So a vow, if you are really working with the vow, that's perfection. Not that you're fulfilled to the highest of the high.

[45:12]

Perfection is... Perfection includes imperfection. Within this imperfect activity, the imperfect way that I'm doing this activity is my perfection. It's not like running after a paper moon. or a comet in the sky, something that you can't fulfill. You can fulfill all the precepts according to your ability at the moment, which may mean that you don't think you're fulfilling them at all. But by being sincere and saying, even though I want to do this, I can't do it,

[46:17]

That's perfection. That's renunciation. Knowing that we can't do something perfectly and doing it to the best of our ability, that's our perfection. Otherwise, we can't find any confidence in our life. And so people are continually trying to make themselves perfect and never matching up to their idea of perfection. And so they're sacrificing this moment for some future ideal. Zen practice is to find your perfection in this imperfect moment's activity. The purity is within the impure.

[47:23]

Nirvana is found within your suffering. And so, when we see somebody who has a really difficult time, and yet there's a certain kind of noble quality about this person, They can never do things the way they want to. They can never do something right. But there's a certain wonderful quality about this person because through their difficulty, their effort shines through. We're all like that.

[48:07]

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