Good morning. This morning I'm going to present a koan from the bluecliff record. Case number 76. This translator has titled it, Tonka's Have You Had Your Dinner? Tonka was very famous for his outrageous behavior. He lived in the 9th century in China and he's famous for burning the Buddha statue because he was cold.

[01:13]

It was a very snowy night and he was traveling and he came to this temple. And there was no firewood or anything, and he just didn't want to freeze to death, so he took the Buddha statue off the altar and lit a fire to keep warm. And I guess the head monk came by and said, what are you doing? He says, well, that's outrageous, that's blasphemous. And Thangka said, well, I'm looking for the relics of the Buddha, the bones of the Buddha. And the head monk said, there are no relics in that statue, there are no bones in that statue. And Thangka said, well then it's just a piece of wood, right? Someone commented that this was at a time when people were worshipping statues, and he was kind of iconoclastic, but people are still worshipping statues in various parts of the world, and some people have a big problem with that, some people don't.

[02:43]

To go into this would be more than I want to talk about today, but I just want to introduce Thangka, who is the teacher in this case. Thangka lived to be 90, I think, something like that, and he said, And when he was ready to die, he said, well, I'm going now. And he brought his students in and put on his traveling, the monk's traveling clothes with his hat and all this. And then he took one step and died. That's the story. So Engo introduced this case. In his introduction, he says, it is as small as a particle of flour.

[03:50]

It's as cold as ice and frost. It fills the universe, transcending light and darkness. Its depths cannot be fathomed. Its summit is beyond reach. Holding fast and letting go are all contained within it. where is your absolute freedom transcending all restrictions? So where is your absolute freedom transcending all restrictions? And this is somewhat characteristic of Thangka and kind of the point of this case. So here's the main subject. Thangka asked a monk, Where are you from?" The monk replied, from the foot of the mountain. Thangka said, have you had your dinner? There's a number of koans that have this same kind of question.

[04:51]

Have you eaten? Have you had your dinner? And the monk said, I have, yes. And Thangka said, is he open-eyed? Is he open-eyed? the one who brings food to a fellow like you and lets you eat it?" I was a big put-down. The monk could not make a reply. Later, much later, like a hundred years later, there were two teachers, Chokei and Hofuku, who were also very prominent teachers, and they were discussing this. So Chokei asked Hofuku, to give food to others is surely worthy. How could he fail to be open-eyed, the one that gave him the food? And Hofuku said, both giver and receiver are blind.

[05:54]

Chokei said, are you still blind, even though you exhaust every means? Hofuku said, how can you call me blind? That's the case. So Setso has a verse and the verse kind of follows the case. He says, exhaust every means and you will not be blind. You hold the cow's head to let it graze. The four sevens and two threes, the following band, have handed down the Dharma treasure. raising dust and trouble to make men or people drown on dry land. So that's kind of a little enigmatic, but we'll unravel that. So going back to the introduction, it is small, it is big, it is this, it is that.

[07:02]

So it, of course, is our fundamental nature, a very good term to use, because it has no special shape or form, but you can describe anything as it. You can mark, you can point to anything as it. And everything will be it, even though it has no special shape or form, but all the shapes and forms are it. So it is. as small as a particle of flour, as cold as ice and frost, it fills the universe, transcending light and darkness. So, transcending light and darkness, we tend to think of light and darkness as opposites, but going beyond light and darkness as opposites, there is light in darkness and darknesses in light.

[08:07]

there's no way that it does not reach, that's the point. So its summit is beyond reach. So holding fast and letting go are all contained within it. In other words, I don't know if holding fast and letting go in this case is the right translation, it's more like we're going up or going down. Going up is like actually it's like holding fast, it's like letting go of comparative values, it's Sazen, and letting go is like descending or acting out in the world, in the realm of comparative values. So, it's like value and virtue.

[09:15]

So, where is your absolute freedom transcending all restrictions? In other words, it is you and you are it. So, what is it that binds you? Where do you find your freedom? It's really a good question. If you are Buddha nature, where is your restriction? So, in one sense, you are simply unlimited. Your nature is totally unlimited. And in another sense, your nature and because of this body-mind you have limitations. But within your limitations, where do you find your freedom? And within your freedom, what are your limitations? So here's the main subject.

[10:24]

Thangka asked the monk, where are you from? This is a kind of probing question for a Zen master, and especially in these days, in the Tang Dynasty in China, when a student would come to a teacher, everything that the student and teacher in an interview, even a casual one, the teacher will throw out a hook. Where is this person coming from? What does he understand? what is his nature, what is he like? So, Thangka throws out a hook and in a very casual way he says, where are you from? Well, where are you from? Who are you really? My name is da-da-da, is that who you are? And I do this and that when I go to work, is that who you are?

[11:28]

Who are you? Where do you really come from? Or where are you coming from? So this is a leading question. What is your condition? So he says, from the foot of the mountain. Well, that could be taken in several ways. Foot of the mountain, or just a certain place, or what is the mountain? Maybe it's something deeper. So then Thangka throws out another little hook and he says, have you had your dinner? Well, in Zen parlance it means, what is your understanding? Have you really digested your Zen? Have you really digested this? Are you really full? And the monk said, yes, I have had it.

[12:29]

I've had my dinner. And this is where Thangka says, is he open-eyed who brings food to a fellow like you and lets you eat it? It's a big slap in the face. Who would feed somebody like you? So, you know, Arhat, Meaning of an arhat, of course, were Buddhist disciples who had realization. And the meaning of arhat is one who is worthy of an offering, because Buddhist monks couldn't feed themselves and they had to be fed through begging. So once a day they would go out and beg their food. and so people would give them offerings. So this is, in Japan it's called Takohatsu, so one who is worthy of an offering.

[13:37]

So he's saying, who would give someone like you an offering of food? So the monk couldn't make a reply. What did Thangka see in the monk was some arrogance. It was not a good reply. And so Thangka was cutting the monk down to size. But he saw that this was a good monk. Not like, this is not, this is a bad guy. It's leveling. the monk down to where he really belongs. So, later on, 100 years later, Choke and Fuku were having this conversation, and Choke asked Fuku, �To give food to others is surely worthy.

[14:50]

How could you fail to be open-eyed?� What's wrong with giving him food? It's a charitable act, it's a wonderful thing to do." And Hofuku said, both giver and receiver are blind. And then Shokai says, are you still blind even though you exhaust every means? And Hofuku said, how can you call me blind? So here we have a kind of dialogue which was turning the meaning of words inside out, so it becomes very confusing and you have to kind of sort out what's going on, because blind

[15:50]

in its ultimate meaning for Zen understanding, means it's opposite. So there are five kinds of blindness. The five kinds of blindness are One is the blindness of the general run of ignorant people. This is our usual blindness, like you can't see what's really going on, you only see the superficiality of things. It's the blindness which is not really going deeply to see what's behind things, or what is the source of things, or it's simply skimming the surface. order to get your understanding, so it's kind of blindness based on ignorance.

[16:59]

Ignorance meaning not knowing or not seeing correctly, and it's like seeing only in a what's called one-eyed way, but with this one eye doesn't mean the eye in the middle of the forehead, it means the left eye or the right eye, so only seeing one side of things. There's a saying, a board-carrying fellow. A board-carrying fellow is someone who carries a board on one shoulder like a carpenter, and he can only see over here, but he can't see over here because of the board. This is kind of like the general ignorance, blindness. And then there's the evil blindness of the heretic. I don't know if that's evil, but it's the blindness of the heretic.

[18:00]

It's the person who doesn't ... a person who perverts or sees upside-down Buddha's teaching, who doesn't see the teaching correctly or who advocates the teaching from a one-sided point of view, actually. Siddhaki Roshi used to say, that if you just follow the precepts blindly, by rote, that's a heretical way, without really using discernment to understand them or to find your way with them. And then the third one is the true blindness of the enlightened student.

[19:06]

The worldly eye of such a person has become blind In other words, someone who has experienced enlightenment and who stays in the realm of enlightenment. In other words, who doesn't see, who rises above worldly values. That's a kind of blindness which is half blind, and half not blind. It's open eye to reality, but a closed eye to how to implement it in the world, how to act in the world. So this is a kind of two sides of blindness in the one person, one whose blindness sees correctly, but whose blindness, on the other hand,

[20:12]

doesn't see correctly and is really blind. And then there's the blindness of those who stick to their realization and make much of being enlightened. This is called Zen sickness. Zen sickness of one who sticks to enlightenment and then thinks and uses it to enhance their own ego. So this is really being blind. So their ignorance cancels out their true blindness. And then there's the transcendent or genuine blindness that is the condition of Buddhas. This appears when one outgrows ordinary blindness, that is, when one achieves maturity in Zen So this is a kind of blindness which is non-dualistic, the blindness of a Buddha which sees things exactly as it is.

[21:28]

and Hofoku were talking. Choke asked Hofoku, to give food to others is surely worthy. How could he fail to be open-eyed? And Hofoku said, both giver and receiver are blind. So in the true blindness, there's no giving, no receiver, and nothing given. Or to put it more succinctly, the emptiness of the giver, the emptiness of the receiver, and the emptiness of the gift. So there isn't even any particular sense of giving or receiving, except in the most fundamental way. So when one does takuhatsu, like in Japan if you were a monk and you go begging, you wear your hat down very close so that ... and you're looking down so that you don't see who's giving you the offering.

[22:51]

And the person who's offering is not doing ... is simply offering. There's no ... and then the monk chants Agatha as a response which brings the three of the receiver, the giver, and the gift into the oneness of the three actually. So there's benefit for both the receiver and the giver, but it's not that the one who receives appreciates the gift of the giver, and the giver appreciates the gift of the receiver, so that both receiving and giving have the same value, or the same virtue, and there's no comparing, no comparison.

[24:03]

No one says, �Thank you,' or anything like that. and simply the emptiness, we say in Neel Chant, of the three wheels. A little funny kind of Chinese expression. The emptiness of the three wheels, giver, receiver, and gift. So, both giver and receiver are blind. This is true blindness. And then Chokei said, are you still blind even though you exhaust every means? So exhausting every means means when you really do something totally, whether it's good or bad, whether it's right or wrong, I mean, whether you can achieve what you want to achieve or not, you do your best.

[25:09]

This is actually enlightenment in your practice. When you totally give yourself to practice and your achievement does not come up to your expectation, it doesn't make any difference, because your enlightenment is not So then Ho-Fuku says, how can you call me blind? In other words, which blind does he mean? This is what makes this a koan.

[26:13]

Which blind is he talking about? How can you call me blind? What blind are you calling me? Or, not me, but this. So then, Setcho's, in his verse, he says, exhaust every means and you will not be blind. In other words, if you really are sincerely putting yourself using yourself up in your effort, you will not be blind. You hold the cow's head to let it graze. There's a story about a farmer who had a dead cow and he was offering the dead, holding the head of the dead cow down

[27:17]

so that the cow would eat the grass. And so this is considered kind of kindness. Even though the dead cow is not going to eat the grass, the farmer's compassion is going beyond the result. It's not the result that's important here, but how one does something. So then he says, the four sevens, the two threes, then the following band, meaning all the patriarchs, all the ancestors, have handed down the Dharma treasure, raising dust and trouble to make people drown on dry land. So in other words, all these ancestors, you know, handing this stuff down and they're just making a lot of trouble for everybody, you know, like making people, you know, influencing the people to sit zazen and torture themselves on the cushion and give up things and, you know, and raising dust, you know, and trouble to make people drown on dry land.

[28:41]

So drowning on dry land is like dropping body and mind, letting go of self-centeredness. So Do you have any questions? Have you eaten yet? I'm still trying. Does it taste good? It always tastes good, even when it tastes bad. Well, this is the meal chant that was recently, in the last couple of years, translated from the Chinese, which is used at Zen Center, and it mentions three wheels.

[30:12]

Not the one we normally use? No, we use the old-fashioned one. And so I like a lot of the language of the one we use better than the Chinese, which is, you know, but everybody's accepted it, but us. Could you say what it is? Well, I don't have it memorized. It's basically the same chant, but it's the Chinese version. whereas the chant that we use is more the Japanese version. And so I don't know why people want to use the Chinese version particularly. I don't think it's any better than the Japanese version. As a matter of fact, I think a lot of our English version, we used to chant the Japanese, and then there was a translation underneath it. And then I think that

[31:16]

some of the students of Suzuki Roshi, together with him, translated the present one. And I like a lot of the things that we're used to chanting that have meaning for us, like the natural order of mind. I really like that phrase, you know, and a lot of things are taken out and changed. I think people wanted a more accurate scholarly version, but things change, you know? And I think for us, to use language that is more meaningful to us, more natural to us, I like better than using something that may be more accurate in another language. But it doesn't feel so good.

[32:21]

It doesn't feel like our language, the way we would express something. So, I think that using our expressions to mean the same thing is better. I mean, not better, but more likable. I don't know if it's better, but it's easier, yeah. You know, I think at least we've discovered that there's a kind of common greeting in Yes. I don't know if it does, yeah. Well, that's right, you know, and it's a common thing that you would say to somebody when they come to your place, and that's right, I think it probably does, because, so it has a kind of double meaning, anyway, all this stuff has a double meaning. So the teacher is trying to mine the mind of the student to see if he gets the other meaning, you know, what is the real meaning of it.

[33:32]

Of course, naturally it's customary to ask, you know, if you've eaten, but he's talking to it in a different level, right? impact is that it has to double meaning. Everything that's been said has a double meaning. The thing about the mountain, where do you come from or the bottom of the mountain? Well, let's see, what does he mean by that? And so I give him another question. So he flunked the second question. He had the benefit of the doubt on the first question, but he flunked the second question. What did you say? I find the whole concept of sight, blindness, really, my mind can barely grasp what you're saying.

[34:36]

But the difference between blindness number three and number four, I believe it was, and enlightenment being a blindness, that was four, and the one before that, I seem to blend in. They're both... Well, three was in between. Blind in one eye and not blind in the other. But this is like blind, meaning seeing in one eye, and blind, meaning not seeing, in the other eye. So it wasn't really ... the enlightenment wasn't complete, even though it had ... this is dualistic enlightenment, whereas the last one is non-dualistic enlightenment. non-discriminating enlightenment. That's true blindness, which is true seeing.

[36:03]

True seeing. Yes. This is like, in order to, this is, if you understand the koan Mu, it's no. But it also means It's opposite. It's not true, no, that, yes. I know, that's why it's a koan. It's interesting that seeing it, it's two senses seeing it taste, talking about, they were a hundred years later anyway. Oh yeah, they were discussing it. So this is important. The meaning is in its oneness of opposites.

[37:09]

Otherwise it's not a koan. So the dualistic enlightenment is that where you see a situation So this is enlightenment, which is the opposite of delusion. When we think about enlightenment, usually we think, well, it's the opposite of delusion, right? And so there's that enlightenment, but it's enlightenment which means being able to see, to realize emptiness. Emptiness is emptiness, or form is emptiness. Form is emptiness is enlightenment. So it's not so hard to be enlightened. But to understand that emptiness is form, and that form is emptiness, is great enlightenment.

[38:21]

So the third one is to understand that form is emptiness, but not to understand that emptiness is form, that all forms are ... in other words, you can't live ... fish don't live, it cannot survive in pure water. You have to come back into the world of form. There has to be stuff floating in the water in order for survival. You can't live in a pure ... Actually, purity is non-duality. So, but the opposite of purity is impurity, right? But that's still a dualistic purity, it's not a real, not true purity, it's a dualistic purity.

[39:27]

So, the purity is only found within the impure. So that's like being able to discern activities The emptiness of activity, within activity. This is the emptiness of the giver, the receiver, and the gift. That's the emptiness within activity. In other words, no self in it. But in order to have no self in it, there has to be an it. which is the activity, so nirvana and samsara are not separate. You have to find the purity within the impurity, and the more you keep separating out, the further astray you go.

[40:37]

I think that's where you began, right? Oh, the very beginning, you mean the introduction? Which I think kind of... Oh, yeah. You can click it all into... Right, right. Holding it fast and letting go, right? Which means... indicates emptiness in form. In this case, holding fast and letting go are all contained within it. Where is your absolute freedom transcending all restrictions? So, what are restrictions? Restrictions are those things that confront you, called daily life. Where do you find your freedom within your daily life? Where do you find the emptiness within the form, within your activity?

[41:52]

Where do you find your freedom within the activity? So instead of letting go of all activity and finding freedom over here, you have to find the freedom within the problem. This is why we say the problem is your practice. If you try to get rid of your problem, you know, you just have another problem. It's like if you stop inhaling, you know, you just have another problem. So, one problem follows another. And as my old teacher used to say, you should feel very grateful for the problem you have now. You might get a bigger one. So there's no escape. In order to escape, you have to go into.

[43:01]

You can't escape by running away. You can only escape by going into it. Isn't a problem just the way I'm perceiving the situation? Well, yes. Problems are in the mind. Self-created. Which doesn't mean that you don't have a problem. But we can make a problem out of our problem. When you're creating problem, yes. When you're creating your own bondage, we always have a problem, there will always be a problem, but we create our own bondage around the problem. So, how do you find your freedom, right, within the problem?

[44:08]

Not in the same way. I don't see it's not a problem anymore. It's still a problem, but you have some freedom from the problem, within the problem, free to turn around. And many of these koans are about the monk challenging the teacher and the teacher has the space to turn around. the space to, it's called space to turn around, in other words, to not be caught. So, the problem, the practice is, how do you not get caught by things? And the student learns how to do that from the teacher, not from the teacher. Hopefully the teacher can do that. At least, you know, that's who the teacher's effort is. So even though it's maybe not be a hundred percent, you know, still the effort is the thing.

[45:15]

As he said, the effort is the thing.

[45:18]

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