Good morning. Familiar situation here. When I remember that I was going to also give a talk today, I thought, well, I certainly, I'm not going to talk about the first case. And then my experience was that it wasn't under my control. So I'm going to talk about it again in a more informal way. in a more personal way. And there are some people here who perhaps didn't hear the lectures You didn't hear it, so I'll read it quickly through once again.

[01:04]

The name of the case is, The Highest Meaning of the Holy Truths. Ngo's pointer is, When you see smoke on the other side of a mountain, you already know there's a fire. And when you see horns on the other side of a fence, right away you know there's an ox there. To understand three when one is raised, to judge precisely at a glance, this is the everyday food and drink of a patch-robed monk. Getting to where she cuts off the myriad streams, she is free to arise in the East and sink in the West, to go against or to go with in any and all directions, free to give or take away. But say, at just such a time, whose actions are these? Look into Chaitu's trailing vines. The Case Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths?

[02:15]

Bodhidharma said, empty without holiness. The emperor said, Who is facing me? Bodhidharma replied, I don't know. The emperor did not understand. After this, Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze River and came to the kingdom of Wei. Later, the emperor brought this up to Master Chi and asked him about it. Master Chi said, does your majesty know who this man is? The emperor said, I don't know. Master Chi said, he is the Mahasattva Avalokiteshvara transmitting the Buddha mind seal. The emperor felt regretful, so he wanted to send an emissary to go to invite Bodhidharma to return. Master Chi told him, your majesty, don't say you will send someone to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him, he still wouldn't return.

[03:19]

So this morning I wanted to talk more about my personal experience of this case in this period of being a shuso. that the pointer, the description of the bodhisattva who is just able to go against or go with in any direction, free to give, free to take, that the bodhisattva who has cut off all hindrances, That is our position when we are just in alignment with the Buddhas. When we are just in tune with reality.

[04:26]

That's how we are. And of course, that's how we want to be. And, of course, we're always falling out. We're always making mis-stakes, mis-takes. We know the way. We have this aesthetic sense of what the way is. Mozart pleases us. And when we are on the way, when we see the way, when we have glimmerings of it, we are very appreciative and we know in a very deep way that we've come home. And we're in alignment, but we have mistakes of the way. And my experience so far as Shuso has been very deeply wound up with this process of alignment and mistakes.

[05:36]

misalignment, mistake. It occurred to me during the sesshin that being a shuso is kind of like being a pancake cook for the gang. A decision is made that somebody needs to cook pancakes and a name is given, you know. Meili is a pretty good pancake cook. And when one hears that one is going to be pancake cook, it's a mixed feeling. Part of one would prefer not, and part of one sees a little opportunity here and is grateful for that. And then one realizes that many other people have been pancake cooks and, you know, that's kind of the course. But then one begins to want to do a good job.

[06:42]

Do one's best to acquire some merit. And really do, sort of cook the best pancakes. and one goes in and one does one's best, but somehow your own sense of a project never quite matches what's happening. And so you make pancakes and some of them turn out, you think, all right, and some of them are miserable, back and forth and back and forth and you keep doing your best. It's never quite what you think it's going to be. Katagiri Roshi says that emptiness is what gives us our ability to see things as they really are. So one is always making plans for the pancakes and making efforts.

[07:51]

making one's little goals, and then the situation tumbles it into a different arrangement. And you get little feedbacks. You think, oh, that was awful. And you have ample opportunity to indulge in that particular outflow. And then you begin to get feedback, well, you know, it wasn't so bad. You know, one person can think that a pancake which another thinks is soggy in the middle is just juicy and nice. The mistakes that one thinks one made are not necessarily the mistakes that other people see. So we're always together in this process of falling out, coming back, and falling out, coming back. And I certainly found during Sesshin that my job was not to get caught up and preoccupied in how I was doing.

[09:07]

You know, how easy it is to separate oneself off. The cook is different from the pancake and the cook is different from the eaters and object and self. Very, very easy. Very automatic. So, that was very good food for pretty intense Zazen. Just about a year ago, I was at a meeting and played a game called Trust, where people gave me the opportunity to play a game called Trust. And that game is that one person stands up, say that's the ground and this is a raised area and then people crouch with their hands here and the person stands and then falls backward the length, you fall backward the length of your body into the hands of people.

[10:13]

who were raised like this, ready to catch you. And it's quite a big fall and I think there were like eight or nine people and I learned afterwards that they didn't find it was easy. And it took, so I was standing with my back to them and it took two or three false starts. It was very hard just to let go and to be caught. Very difficult. And of course, very wonderful when I did, to feel those hands just receiving and taking the weight and restoring me to my feet in a very gentle way. And that was very much my experience of Zazen during this last week, was that fall from

[11:14]

the preoccupations of what was going on and my role, the obsession with oneself, just letting that go and letting that fall off and coming back to this wonderful sense of posture and safety. and balance and wholeness. It's said that Zazen is just facing emptiness or facing eternity or facing God without any sense of mystery. It's just bare facing. There's nothing more comforting and more restful than that.

[12:15]

And Mel had given us the instruction of, at the beginning of the session, that all we really needed to do was to keep coming back to posture. Just whenever mind wandered, whenever there was a little space of awareness, just come back to posture. and that just keep watching where there's tension and wherever there was tension notice it and let go and that process itself would be very centering. And that's extremely simple advice. And it's advice that just works over and over again. So again, it's like using the tension spots in one's body as mistakes. It's those little moments of awarenesses of when we're off or tight. that through those awarenesses of tightnesses we find our center.

[13:29]

So the other wonderful thing that happens during a session is our feeling altogether of intimacy. When I was a teenager, my mother had a picture of me, and at one point I wanted the picture, I wanted to do something with it, give it to somebody or something, so I just took the picture. And she said, well, what happened to the picture? And I said, well, I took it. And she said, but the picture was mine. No, I said, the picture was of me. It was mine. Teenagers are notoriously able just to rip up the social fabric or treat it as they want to treat it. But this sense of we are, of course we are independent, and we also belong to each other.

[14:47]

So the Shuso may imagine that she's separate, she's independent. and in a certain way she is, but her comfort is her belonging with everybody else, being one bloom in the field of flowers. So, In a sesshin we have this very nice feeling of little by little coming together and being one field. And ritual gives us the rituals that we do together, the services every day, and finally the shosan ceremony. give us a chance to be very intimate with each other in a special way.

[15:57]

We had, the services we had in the morning, almost every service was dedicated to somebody who either had died or was in trouble and needed help. And when we offer a service, when we offer a service to somebody we have a very special connection at that moment with the person that we're offering it to we're very intimate with the person that we're offering it to just as we are intimate with each other as we engage in the ritual, the rituals The ritual makes us whole, makes us one body. So I think that's about all I have to say. I just want to end by reading the last lines.

[17:02]

Well, or reading all of Chetou's verse. The holy truths are empty. How can you discern the point? Who is facing me? Again he said, I don't know. Henceforth he secretly crossed the river. How could he avoid the growth of a thicket of brambles? Though everyone in the whole country goes after him, he will not return. Wu goes on and on, vainly reflecting back. Give up recollection. What limit is there to the pure wind circling the earth? Master Chetou looked around to the right and left and said, is there any patriarch here? He answered himself, there is. Call him here to wash this old monk's feet. I think that's a beautiful ending to this whole question of holiness.

[18:07]

That that we are all, in fact, just serving each other and being served washing each other's feet and that that is the holy activity and that is what makes us all whole and that is such a comfort again and again. So, maybe, I hope Other people have thoughts about what their Sachine was or anything that was just brought up. Just a tiny question. What does it mean to understand three when one is raised? Oh, if you have a corner of a paper.

[19:12]

Yeah. You understand the other three corners. Yeah. Rebecca. I find I'm still in Ellen's question. Sarah, and I have trouble with this great, I have, well, all through session, I kept thinking, you know, I don't have any faith in anything. But then the question was, well, what don't you have faith in? So, you know, I don't know. But I don't have faith in, I finally figured out, It keeps coming to me. I don't have any faith in this great ball of merit.

[20:16]

Somehow it seems like an escape. Could you say again what Alan's question was? And that we sit here with our own suffering and in a way generating it by just the painful nature of sitting cross-legged for so long.

[21:18]

And basically, does this help? Or how does it help? Well, I was really glad that you asked that question because it's a question that I certainly sit with and wrestle with, have a lot of trouble with. All I can say is what I've realized for myself that And it's just simple and obvious, and I have to keep remembering it again and again, that if I don't really get practice in coming back to my center and what feels like, from there, everybody's center, that I get, in varying degrees, crazy and obsessed.

[22:34]

And I don't think that my activities in that obsessed kind of state are particularly helpful. And where the great ball of merit, where that comes in, As somebody said, it's not the content of the prayer or the efficacy of the prayer, but just as you pray, the position that prayer puts you in that matters, for me at least. So it's not that I'm depending on the merit out there, but when I really am centered and very present in the problem of suffering.

[23:40]

I'm in a better position to act. And I'm encouraged. That I get encouragement. From what? I don't know. But encouragement arises. Don't you feel that? Yes. I can add a little bit. It's been my experience that those of us that are sitting really don't have a choice, because when we try to stop, it doesn't work for us. It's really a kind of intellectual thing we throw around, like should we or shouldn't we, or there are other things to do. I think it's best if we feel Yeah, right.

[25:21]

I was just going to... Yeah. Yeah. Because I think that one can act and sit at the same time. Right. Yeah. Alan? Did you have a question?

[26:49]

Yeah. It's hard to speak, really. You said something about when you sit, when you don't sit, you start to feel crazy, or you realize that you're crazy. And I think what's happened to me with just the part of the Zazen I did, and the rest of the sitting, I've been doing for the last few years is I'm starting to wake up from a lag of craziness and maybe a glimpses of sanity. And I... After Zazen on Saturday, I went home and I wept all night over an incident that had happened with my mother maybe 15 years ago. It was an instance where I felt I had been cruel And she's dead now and there's no way of going back and rectifying this.

[27:51]

And living with that is very hard. What does one do? Yeah. Well, that's getting yourself, realigning yourself. I mean, it's repentance is what you're doing. is living through it, allowing it to come, avowing it, you know, what we do in the ceremony, all my ancient twisted karma I now fully avow, and putting yourself and her in a different relationship. But there's no way I can connect with her because she's dead. I can never say this to her. Yeah, well, and if she's dead, what is all this emotion? She's dead in so far that she can't hear the fact that I love her, in spite of all the fuck-ups that we had between the hospital... Are you sure of that?

[28:57]

I think that's what you have to really... Are you sure? No. I think that's what you have to find out. And, uh, it's been a big problem for me. So, finally, uh, with some, uh, small prodding, uh, put their picture on the altar with, uh, a candle and an incense burner. Uh, and, uh, every day, I, uh, I offer them, uh,

[29:59]

I make a small offering to them and I talk to them a little and ask them to help me in my life and offer to help them however I can. It's a wonderful commentary on the koan, Dead or Alive, that both of you just gave.

[31:35]

Grace is behind the pillar. There's a kind of game that has squares on it that move around because there's one open space. The question about the service brought an image of that to my mind, that if we really are all interconnected, that an open space allows the movement of suffering from others, so-called others, through that space. Aren't you supposed to look at me now and say, it's time?

[32:30]

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