So I actually spoke about this Kahn a couple weeks ago, but it's still working me, so I'm going to continue to talk about it. So the Kahn is called Medicine, All the Earth is Medicine, and it has an introduction. A clear-eyed person has no nest. Sometimes on the summit of a solitary peak, weeds grow in profusion. Sometimes they're naked and free in the bustling marketplace. Suddenly they appear as an angry titan with three heads and six arms. Suddenly, as sun-faced or moon-faced Buddha, they release the light of all-embracing mercy. In a single atom, they manifest all physical forms. To save people according to their type, they mix with mud and water. If suddenly they release an opening upwards, not even the Buddha's eye can see them. Even if a thousand sages appear, they too would have to fall back 3,000 miles.

[01:02]

Is there anyone with the same attainment and the same realization? To test this, I cite this old case. Listen. They always start with that. Listen. Pay attention. Yun Man, teaching his community, said, medicine and disease subdue each other. The whole earth is medicine. Where do you find yourself? Another translation says, medicine and disease cure each other. Two weeks ago, we spent some time talking about what is medicine, what is disease, and how their interaction might act to change them both. And we talked about medicine could be poison, and poison could be medicine, and disease could be good, or disease could be the same thing could be disease, and the same thing could be not disease. And we talked about defining disease as dis-ease, lack of ease or lack of balance.

[02:06]

So I've been wondering a lot about how we create disease in ourselves and others. One way is how we think about and talk about things, how we can label something as disease or disability or dysfunction. And how we talk about it really makes it a disease or not a disease sometimes. You know, for example, something simple like, my back hurts. My back hurts. So I can go take some Advil and do some breathing and do some stretches and get on with it. Or I can say, I'm an arthritic. And oh, how awful, how awful to be getting older and suffering such discomfort. So I can have the same circumstance and create something different from the same circumstance. It seems that often when we see something or someone that we see as separate or different from ourselves, and if that difference feels uncomfortable, we use labeling to separate it from ourselves.

[03:20]

So it's more about discriminating mind and discrimination. So I looked up discrimination. I started thinking about discriminating mind as the source of disease or dis-ease. The dictionary definition says that discrimination comes from the Latin word discriminare, to divide or set apart as being different, to mark as different, to separate from another by discerning differences, to distinguish, to recognize or perceive, difference, or treat, or consider, or make a distinction in favor of or against a person or a thing based on a group or class or category to which the person belongs rather than on individual merit. So it's really about dualistic thinking. Someone or something that's separate from me. For example, I see a person who looks different from the norm or acts different from the norm.

[04:24]

I might respond with an action of a body, speech, or mind. I could walk away or avert my gaze. A lot of people with disabilities or people of different ethnic groups feel that people don't look at them. They can't look at them. They look away. I could call a name or I could say something insensitive or brand somebody with a label. I could also just feel quietly inside resentment like, those blue parking spaces, why do those certain people get them and I have no place to park and it took me an hour to find a parking space. So the act of discriminating can generate fear or anger or hatred or desire. If there's something out there that I define as different or not me, it might be something that I want, and then I generate desire or attachment. And the karmic effect of all this, it seems to me, of these emotions and actions, is to create disease.

[05:27]

to create dis-ease in me as the discriminator and to create disease in the person feeling that discrimination or that setting apart that I'm doing. And pretty soon, there's fear and distrust and hatred or attachment or desire on both sides. And only through some kind of dialogue or understanding can both be cured, can both give up that separation and come together. And that's why currently we see a lot of efforts towards interfaith dialogue or nonviolent communication or curricula for cultural competency, which is really a medicine that cures separateness. It's a way to deal with distinctions and separateness. I have a son who in the first grade was diagnosed as very severely learning disabled. He had trouble understanding letters and numbers and symbols.

[06:29]

So he had trouble with both reading and math. He was a wonderful child. He was filled with energy and enthusiasm. He would love to build or fix things. He made wonderful drawings. He had a great memory. Because he couldn't read, if he knew he had to do reading in class, he would memorize what he had to read so that he could pretend that he was reading. And he was a gifted athlete. But after his diagnosis and being treated as learning disabled in school, he had a lot of suffering. And when he was in high school, he started to reflect on that suffering, and he wrote this poem called, Blind Society. Six years old, only knowing tears are painful. The special ed corner was destructively shameful. The name itself made us feel unable. As we were practically branded right in the cradle, assimilation and expectation poured from grandma's label.

[07:32]

Its clear values make children's dignity unstable. I failed spelling every year. Math never made it in the ear. Dyslexic from the start, fear rampaged my heart. Would I ever learn the reading part? Even a special little guy has no choice but to try as years fly by. Then we hit junior high. Being labeled as disabled, our self-esteem was mangled. The doctors say some must take a pill to sit still. For normal work in the mill, Capitol Hill gets its fill from my will to earn a bill. This value Grandma could not instill, for my faith in our system has gone ill, and those old values we must kill. So all this turmoil in him that was created by the label, by the distinctions, he became ill, not from not being able to read, but from the way the system treated him. And this resulted in a very rocky adolescence and early adulthood, but somehow it all came together for him, and he ended up at a UC campus.

[08:46]

where there was a special program for, a mentoring program for learning disabled kids. The students in the university who were learning disabled would mentor kids in middle school who were learning disabled. And this was not a tutoring program. It was a hang out with your buddy program. So it wasn't labeled as a learning disabled. It was labeled as a kind of friend, buddy program. And in the course of that, there were support groups for the kids at the university who were mentoring the kids in the middle school. And in those support groups, and I've seen video, somebody did a documentary, so I've actually seen a video of the support group, the kids really talked about, they got to talk about the pain and the labeling and their illness and their disease with that. But they also talked about how special learning disabled kids were, how creative they were, what other things they could do.

[09:51]

So the group ended up being a medicine for these kids. And pretty soon, the group didn't talk about being disabled or having a learning disability. The group talked about, what are we going to do for fun this week with the kids? So this really is an example of kind of a discrimination in the realm of conventional reality. But the context of this koan is one where a Zen master is speaking to his disciples, monks with years of Buddhist practice. So he's pointing us to something I mentioned last time called Zen sickness, being stuck I see where I am. Okay. Being kind of stuck places where those of us who try and study non-duality find ourselves.

[10:52]

And this really talks about getting stuck in really understanding the core concepts of Mahayana Buddhism, of emptiness, of impermanence and interdependence of all phenomenon. I came across a poem by Dogen that he wrote, I guess, close to the end of his life. And it says, for 10 years, I've eaten the rice of Ehe Monastery. For 10 years, I've lain in bed ill. Now I must leave these deep mountains to seek a cure in the world of mortals. The Buddha of suchness points my way to the Buddha of healing. In Zen practice, a student enters a path of practice that may or may not lead to realization or enlightenment, depending upon karmic obstructions or effectiveness of teachers or experiences along the way. And some students continue to have strong preferences, like they only like to sit Zazen, or they like to come around and hang out with the Sangha.

[12:03]

Some really love reading and studying the Dharma as an intellectual exercise. And some may move along the path of understanding and then they get stuck. In other words, they discriminate about parts of practice. Which part of the practice is best? And they pick so they can pick and choose some aspect of practice, ignoring others. Some of us might have an enlightenment experience and then cling to that enlightenment experience and try to get it back. We think we've arrived somewhere, we got really proud of where we've gone, and now we're holding on to that level. Tozan Myōkai, a Japanese master who lived in the 9th century and is considered the founder of Soto Zen, the sect of Soto Zen Buddhism, described what he called the five ranks along the path to nirvana. I debated a lot about whether to talk about this or not. You can imagine, some of you.

[13:05]

But I'm talking about it not so much to really tell you I really understand these five ranks, but to actually bear with me a while. I'll take you through kind of my own process. then you'll know why I actually decided to include this in the talk. Anyway, he describes five ranks, and they have to do with our understanding of the real, the ultimate reality, the emptiness of everything, the impermanence and interdependence of everything, versus the conventional reality, which he calls the apparent reality, the reality of delusion. So the first rank is apparent within real. In that rank, the focus is on the real and not on the apparent, the ultimate reality versus the conventional. The second rank is called the real within the apparent, where the focus is on the conventional reality and less on the ultimate reality. And the third rank is coming from within the real, where the interchange between real and apparent has been achieved.

[14:08]

The fourth and fifth ranks are really, the fourth rank is called Arrival at Mutual Integration, and that's a stage considered a stage for a master of Zen practice where intuition, where the master understands through intuition, understands the suffering of beings through intuition and can help to to assuage the suffering. And the third is unity, and that is really reaching nirvana where there's nothing left. So I obviously looked at these because the Cohen referred me to these and said, this has something to do with this Cohen. So I decided to start pursuing this with great vigor. So here I am in my office, books surrounding me, I have Enlightenment Unfolded, and Moon and a Dew Drop, and Dogen's other writings, and a folder on the Genjo Koan, and the Blue Cliff Records, and they're all surrounding me.

[15:14]

I am sick. I am really sick. So let me read you a couple of these just to give you a feel for what was going on with me. The first rank. The apparent within the real, the real of absolute samadhi. Holding fast, no cause and effect, no right and wrong, no mountains and rivers. A state of total empty solidity without sound and without odor, like a bottomless clear pool. It is as if at every fleck of cloud had been wiped from the sky. Too often the disciple, considering his attainment of this rank, is the disciple who has thought he's at the, has attained this rank, thinks he's at the end of the great matter and his discernment of the Buddha way complete, clings to the death that will not let go. Such is a man, such a man is called the evil spirit, keeps watch over the corpse in the coffin.

[16:21]

Even though he remains absorbed in this state for 30 or 40 years, extremely disappointing, He will never get out of the cave of self-complacency. Therefore, it is said, he whose activity does not leave this rank sinks into the poisonous sea. He is the man that Shakyamuni Buddha called the fool who gets realization in the rank of the real. As long as he remains in this hiding place of quietude, passivity, and vacantness, inside and outside are transparent and his understanding perfectly clear. And the moment this bright light comes into contact with differentiations, defiling conditions of turmoil and confusion, agitation and vexation, love and hate, he will find himself utterly helpless before them, and all the miseries of existence will press upon him. This reminds me, actually, of when I read this, all I could think of was coming out of a long sasheen, and having loved the sasheen, and having felt I was just floating there. and then getting home and getting cranky with my husband and, you know, driving my car and barely reading the stop signs.

[17:34]

The second rank exists in the realm of all kinds of ever-changing differentiation or positive samadhi. Letting go, ordinary activity of consciousness, cause and effect, right and wrong, all the myriad phenomenon, the old and the young, the honorable and the base, halls and pavilions, verandas and corridors. plants and trees, mountains and rivers. She regards this as her own original true and pure aspect. It is like looking into a bright mirror and seeing her own face. If she continues for a long time to observe everything everywhere with this radiant insight, all appearances of themselves become the jeweled mirror of his own house, or her own house. And she becomes the jeweled mirror of their houses as well. Dogen Zenji says, the experience of the manifold dharmas through using oneself is delusion. The experience of oneself through the coming of manifold dharmas is sartori, or the personal experience of enlightenment.

[18:37]

But if a student, having reached this state, were to be satisfied with it, then as before, she would be living in the deep pit of fixation in the lesser rank of bodhisattvahood. So I'm in this. I'm all in this. I'm in this soup. And then a little ping comes on my computer. right as I'm sitting with all this stuff around me, reading this with my intellect, with everything. And the email says, ethics question. So one of my roles here is to be the chair of the Ethics and Reconciliation Committee. And I couldn't pass by an email that said, an email that said, ethics question. So I opened the email. And it was someone from the Sangha who said, I'm sorry to disturb you, but I have a question. I met a person in the courtyard a couple of times who I really liked.

[19:41]

And I want to know, do you know if this person is a member of the Sangha? And if you do, I know you were talking to this person. Do you know if this person has a love interest? And do you have a phone number? Well, I was cured. I was cured. I mean, I just chuckled. All there was was a chuckle. That was all it was, just chuckle. I looked at all this stuff and I just laughed. And I replied to the email, thanks. This was a great email. What a great email. No, I don't think the person's part of the sangha.

[20:44]

I think the person might have a love interest, but I don't think it's too serious. And I don't have the phone number, but I might be able to get it for you. Instead of ethics chair, I could be the matchmaker, right? The yenta. Well, that was really terrific. So I was really cured. I don't know if I understand the ranks any better, but I really feel a lot more relaxed about it. It was like, come back here. Get out of that sitting in some abstract place trying to read your books and just get real. So that was a really interesting thing because a couple of days later, I ran into this person in the courtyard. And we just giggled together.

[21:49]

And so there was just giggling, you know? And that person's anxiety or disease from, like, feeling troubled by what to do or feeling self-conscious about asking me what they should do or even asking anything turned out to be relieved. So we were both feeling pretty good. Getting back to this, so what's the cure? Well, there's a cure. Anything can be a cure, and it can come from anywhere. That cure came by email out of the ether. But getting back to Well, really, it's really staying with the real, staying with the apparent and the real together, and just trying to stay in that place. And in that place, trying to see medicine, trying to see the cure, trying to see in a less dualistic fashion.

[22:58]

It also brought to me this thing of what does a bodhisattva do? When a bodhisattva just responds, there's just a response to whatever comes. So when something comes and there's dis-ease responding to that dis-ease in some kind of automatic, essential way. So I think, you know, basically, the colonist is really talking about trying to see everything, every experience, every object, every person as without separation, without distinction, without labeling, but meet but really about meeting, meeting everything without separation.

[24:08]

But sometimes it's really hard, it's really hard to do that. And so we're encouraged to investigate, spend some time investigating what comes. investigating what happens internally with our reactions, what happens when we put our full attention with whatever is there, accepting it as it is, seeing its impermanence, seeing the inconnectedness of that with ourselves. But sometimes we get stuck, and that's really the other thing that the koan's talking about, that we get stuck and we need help. In the Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha speaks of using expedient means to save all beings.

[25:13]

Because living beings have different natures, different desires, different actions and different ways of thinking and making distinctions, And because I want to enable them to put down good roots, I employ a variety of causes and conditions, simile, parables, and phrases, and preach different doctrines. So the Zen koans and stories that we've been studying really talk about, they really are illustrating the use of these expedient means. So it can be anything. It can be an email from somebody. It can be a flower. It can be a blade of grass. It can be a shit stick. It can be a finger or it can be a provocative question. So anything can be the phenomenon that wakes us up. If it leads us to awareness of no separation and no discrimination, and if the our I and the I of the teacher become one. And at this place of no separation, there's no disease and there's no medicine and we're cured.

[26:16]

The last line of the Koan ends with the question, where is the self? And this really is a kind of exhortation to study the self. that to look for the self as we are studying and as we are letting go and as we are trying to look at the emptiness, to look at where the self is in this. We all know Dogen's exhortation from the Genjokan, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and mind of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues forever. So the practice of studying the self is looking for the self in each thought, in each interaction, with each person or in each object.

[27:25]

This is practice and realization together. If a separate self can be discovered, then the student is still stuck in the sickness of the lower ranks, and hopefully a skillful bodhisattva will appear along the path, or you'll get an email. So with that, we can have some discussion. Peter. I feel a little confused, almost as though I want to put in a good word for discriminating. It seems like in the kitchen, we distinguish between nourishment and garbage. You know, we have spam and things we want to read. mind that makes those distinctions seems like it's going maybe in a beneficial direction, it's coming from a certain level of care. So I'm wondering, is discriminating mind medicine or disease?

[28:31]

Both. depending upon the situation, the causes and conditions, and the person's attitude and how they hold it. Because even if you discriminate and say there's a place for this and a place of that, there doesn't necessarily need to be judging or labeling or compost is bad and food is good because compost is also medicine. How do you make that discrimination without knowing what compost is and what nourishment is. I mean, I guess I'm questioning again, what's going on with the person? There has to be ... you go one way or the other. I don't know if you have to go one way or the other. We live in conventional reality, we make certain kinds of decisions every day to get through the day, but we can still hold the ultimate reality of it.

[29:40]

If we understand the ultimate reality of impermanence and interdependence then, and we can hold ultimate and conventional together at the same time, then there's no problem. through a certain care about everything that enabled me to make a choice that was beneficial. Yeah, in that context. Jimmy, don't you think that as chair of the ethics committee, you should be reminding people of their Sometimes people are suffering and they're lonely. Oh, everybody.

[30:46]

Robin. Sure. The whole thing or just the lines? The whole thing, okay. A clear-eyed person has no nest. Sometimes on the summit of a solitary peak, weeds grow in profusion. Sometimes they're naked and free in the bustling marketplace. Suddenly, they appear as an angry titan with three heads and six arms. Suddenly, as sun-faced or moon-faced Buddha, they release the light of all-embracing mercy. In a single atom, they manifest all physical forms to save people according to their type. They mix with mud and water and compost. If suddenly they release an opening upwards, not even the Buddha's eye can see them. Even if a thousand sages appear, they too would have to fall back 3,000 miles. Is there anyone with the same attainment and the same enlightenment? To test this old case, listen. Yun Man, teaching his community, said, medicine and disease subdue each other.

[31:49]

The whole earth is medicine. Where do you find yourself? Hi. Oh, yes. Fulani, is that you? Yeah, it is. Well, I had a health issue, and so I was going back and forth to the hospital. Anyway, I had surgery last week, and I just knew because I had a dream about six months ago. And in the dream, I said, you have cancer. And they hit me where I'm supposed to have cancer. I was sitting there for a week. I'm thinking, I'm going to live with it. I'm going to eat this. I'm going to court him. Anyway, so yesterday, the doctor finally got there and saw him. And I got in, and he said, it's not malignant. And I'm still in the same state of mind. I just wanted to say that.

[32:51]

So you still have the disease? You're still holding on to the dis-ease. Because now it's like I don't have that, so. That's a disease. That's why we hold on to a lot of our troubles, because we don't know what else we would have if we weren't holding on to them. Kate? I just wanted to say that, I mean, it all ends up being all about us. Or less. Yeah, we're separating ourselves from... Because compost is food. Yeah.

[33:55]

Does it take medicine to create a person who no longer needs medicine? I don't think medicine creates anybody. I think medicine in this sense Anything is medicine, and anything's not medicine. So it's whether the person discriminates. If the person is no longer discriminating, then there is no medicine and no disease. You were asking, Carl, a long time. Yeah. My question is radiation. cares people, but it also afflicts people at the same time. Right. That's a good example of the fact that anything can be both. Anything can be medicine, and then it can be poison, or it can be harmful or beneficial.

[35:00]

So we can't hold on to one way of thinking about it. We have to be able to... Radiation itself, is there an intent from radiation? It's not a sentient being. No, it's not, no. It's an insentient being. But it doesn't, we're not looking to that as being, it being, it's, if it's not an aware being, an aware being is a bodhisattva. Yeah, kind of, yeah. Yeah. Did you want to say something? Oh, Linda, uh-oh. You pierced me with your discrimination. Yeah, about the discrimination, I sort of, going back to Peter's comment, that was my first thought, too, that discrimination, we don't want to make a bad guy out of discrimination.

[36:11]

That word, you know, in Indian philosophy, for discrimination is a word that is actually a high faculty that you actually need to have or you're in big trouble. I just wanted to say, if I can remember it. Maybe you need an email. I think this distinction between conventional and ultimate reality has led many people into delusion. But if you think discrimination is, there's some problem about discrimination, then you'll be in that first sickness where you just want to bliss out. It's possible to have so-called discrimination, in some sense, that Peter's talking about, without separation.

[37:20]

That's all. Right? Yes. Yes. That you can see, obviously, and certainly in conventional reality, there are differences, but that doesn't mean you're separate from those differences. You don't have to be separate from the reality. You don't have to be separate from whatever it is that you're noticing. You can notice things. And that's what I think it means, anyway. You can notice things, but you're not separate from them. So it's okay to... I mean, it's not that you're saying any kind of noticing or thinking about things in some way is... Yeah. Just the same. Just it. Yeah, just it. Okay, bye. No. Hi.

[38:22]

Hi. Hi. Going back to the reading, the first few lines, the nest and the peak and the profusion of plants, Can you help me discriminate this? Well, I talked about it last time, but I think that it's talking about how somebody who... Basically, it's as a clear-eyed person, so it's really about someone who has achieved a certain level of realization and actually isn't holding on to things and isn't... And so, when it says sometimes that the summit of a solitary peak, weeds grow, it really is about letting go. It's really about being free. Yeah, and you just find the circumstances you're in, and then you find yourself in other circumstances. Yeah. But you take that freedom from one place to the other. That's why it says going down in the marketplace, where it's bustling, you're still free and naked.

[39:27]

And nests are apparently hazardous? Oh, I don't know. I think it... I mean, I haven't... If I just react spontaneously about that, a nest is kind of some place you hold on to, you know, you hunker down in, as opposed to where you hide out, where, you know, you're protected, as opposed to being free and open out in the world in the marketplace. Okay. I'm worried about this clear-eyed person having attained something because I think any clear-eyed person is just, at that moment, a clear-eyed person. And it could be very low, 99% of the time, that they could just be clear-eyed. But then that drags me into those ranks, which are really bad now. Okay, I got that much, but then, yet, Right. There is attainment even though there's no attainment.

[40:31]

Yeah. So, can you explain that? I don't know whether I can explain it, but I think what, you know, when nothing's permanent, it's not a permanent nothing. We're not necessarily talking about a permanent state. So that does happen, unless you're maybe at the fifth rank. But for most of us, we are in and out of these things all the time. Just like we're around the Dharma Wheel all the time, you know, we're in and out of these places. But maybe, I mean, you're the head student. No, I think it says 30 or 40 years here. You know, I think we all have glimpses of things, but they're just, I mean, the message is not to even think about it.

[41:49]

Not to even think about that, really. Except these people who have time to sit and think about it. I didn't find it very useful. I think that's what I was talking about before. I don't think I found it really useful studying, wondering about what rank anybody was on. Letting go of the ranks really is what I did, and that's what felt a lot better to me and felt a lot more real. The ranks aren't anything to hold on to. They're just something interesting to, for me, they're just something interesting to look at without any attachment to them. Richard. When are you going to let go of your pawn? When it lets go of me. I think we're... It's our numberless

[42:55]

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