Good morning. Well, can people hear me all right? Okay. Well, here we are. And here we are. I'm going to talk about showing up as practice and showing up as letting go of the striving self. And this is, it's not going to be too dissimilar to things I talked about maybe last time. And actually, in service of showing up for myself, I'll just tell you how Sashene's going for me.

[01:10]

It's been hard. Harder than most Sashenes. It seems like every multiple day Sashene I sit, I always have one day or two days where I'm really peevish. I feel really disconnected. And it's usually like the second or third day, but this time it was the first day. And it was all day. And I sit there, and I'm just thinking, man, I could be out for a walk with my dog on the way to getting a chocolate milkshake. That sounds pretty good compared to this. And when I first started sitting, like I said, this comes up almost every time, at least every time there's a multiple day session.

[02:12]

I used to try, what is wrong with me? Why can't I just get the program and let go, Greg. Just let go, will you? But that never works, you know. But every time, something happens. Something shifts. One time it was cleaning the gutters at work period, on those really high gutters. And I don't think it was cleaning the gutters. I think it was the, I did it with Malcolm, and it was the connection that happened when we were doing it. And then I think on the first day of sashin, It was maybe after open period or after tea. I was standing over there and I looked across and I saw two people and one person had a note in their pocket and they dropped it and the person behind them picked it up and handed it over that person's shoulder.

[03:22]

And then there was some, not a word was exchanged, but there was this interaction between these two people who I know. I know most everyone here and I watched the interaction and I just felt like I could feel the interaction from across the room because I knew these people and I cared about them and I could even kind of guess what they, I was probably wrong, but guess what they were thinking about the exchange. And it, I don't know what it was. I felt completely connected at that moment. And my peafishness went away. So I think for me, it's often about disconnection connection. And so maybe I'll talk about that a bit more too. Oh, I don't have a, Peter, do you have your clock?

[04:23]

Can you tell me when it's like quarter till? Thanks. So I'm going to talk about the fifth case in the Mumenkang, which is Kyogen Upatri. Maybe most of you or many of you know this case. And I'm going to try to talk about it in terms of of these ideas of showing up and showing up as a way of dropping body and mind or dropping the striving self. So first I'll read the case and I'll read the verses. I don't know if I'll get to talking about the verses, but maybe. Wait, I can use this one. Kyogen said, it is like a man up in a tree hanging from a branch with his mouth.

[05:27]

His hands grasp no bow, his feet rest on no limb. Someone appears under the tree and asks him, why did Bodhidharma come from the West? If he doesn't answer, he fails to respond to his responsibility. If he does, he loses his life. What does he do? What do you do? So that's the case. Here's Mumon's comment. Even if your eloquence flows like a river, it is of no avail. Though you can expound the whole of Buddhist literature, it is of no use. If you solve this problem, you will give life to the way that has been dead until this moment and destroy the way that has been alive up to now. Otherwise, you must wait for Maitreya and ask him. And then the verse. Kyogen is truly thoughtless. His vice and poison are endless.

[06:29]

He stops up the mouths of monks and devil's eyes sprout from their bodies. Okay, first the case. So you're hanging from a tree, clamping down on the branch with your teeth. And someone comes up and asks you, why did Bodhi and Amma come from the West? So obviously we have a dilemma. And on the surface, I think there are many layers that I can sort of think about it. You know, clearly, we have something about clinging and letting go, right? The first time I read the Koan, I really thought about it in terms of living and dying. The case says, in order to respond, you have to die.

[07:43]

But truthfully, we have to die anyway. You can stay clamped to that tree forever. No, you can't. The tree's going to die. You're going to die. You could get hit by lightning. It doesn't matter. We're already dead. So then it's a choice of dying in response in waking up or not, maybe, in clinging or not clinging, maybe that's what it's about. Sojin, at Choson, someone asked him a question about dying, and I don't remember what the question was, but he said, Zazen is dying. And we hear it all the time. Every moment, we die, and we're reborn into the next moment. So every moment is like being in the tree. We're going to die every moment and we're going to die ultimately no matter what.

[08:53]

Something else I think about in terms of this dying into every moment is that we can't go back. We can never go back. I mean, we can make a decision to do something, like go to school or take a job, and we can change our mind and make another decision. And that might seem like going back, but it's not really. We're always going forward, we're always in the next moment, dying and being reborn into the next moment. So one other obvious way of seeing the koan is clamping on to the branch is clinging to the self, clinging to our gaining idea.

[10:07]

And of course, letting go is an opening into the unknown. It's stepping off the hundred foot pole. It's saying, I don't know who I am. I don't know. The tree could be our problem. Sojin often talks about how our problem is what we have and we should practice with it. But sometimes we cling to our problems. So maybe the tree is a way that we cling to our problems. Maybe the tree is enlightenment and letting go is delusion.

[11:15]

Maybe it's the opposite of what we think. And that when we cling to the tree, that could be the way that we cling to emptiness or abide in emptiness. And the koan is telling us, live. respond to what's happening. So I think it's important that what is being asked to be responded to is another person in this koan, is someone. is interdependence, it's relationship or connection. It could be anyone coming up to us and asking us a question.

[12:21]

They're asking us to be present. In my first Saturday talk a few weeks ago, I said that we should look at everyone as our teacher in the sense that we should be open to everyone teaching us who they are at every moment, and by extension, teaching us who we are. And the other side of that is that every moment we can be a teacher in the same way by expressing who we are at every moment.

[13:41]

That is being present. One other way for me to look at the koan is not to decide about clinging or letting go, but just to be in that place, that double bind. And this is the place, actually, we wake up every moment. Our life. What are we going to do? Sojin often says every moment is a test to see what you're gonna do. That sounds like another way of expressing this koan. And so why did Bodhidharma come from the West? Maybe the answer is that's what he ended up doing by being present at every moment.

[14:45]

His expression of being in that tree was his living out of this koan. His speaking of the dharma, his being present. Every one of us is doing the same thing. By Being present by showing up in the moment, we express exactly who we are. And we preach the Dharma. And we are just like Bodhidharma coming from the West. So I'm going to talk about some background to this koan as far as some of the history of Kyogen.

[15:58]

And I'm sure most of you are familiar with this as well. Kyogen was a student of Isan in the 9th century, around the time of Lin Chi. And apparently he was a very studious Zen student. He studied the sutras and he knew the literature and the dharma as conveyed in that way thoroughly. He was a scholar. But at some point, Isan challenged him and said, You are clever enough to give 10 answers to single question and hundreds of answers to 10 questions. However, sagacity does not help you in studying Zen. In fact, it stands in the way of your enlightenment. Now I am going to ask you about what you have learned from your reading or from your study of the sutras.

[17:02]

I'm not going to ask you. Instead, tell me this. What is your real self, the self that existed before you came out of your mother's womb? At this question, Kyogen was stupefied and did not know what to say. He racked his brains and offered all sorts of answers, but Isan brushed them aside. At last, Kyogen said, I beg you, please explain it to me. And Isan replied, what I say belongs to my own understanding. How can that benefit your mind's eye? We're all in our own tree. And that moment that we wake up and the tree is our moment. Keoghan went through all his books and the notes he had made. I could just tell you about this. So that night, Keoghan was didn't know what to do, he didn't know what to respond. He read through all his sutras, he read through all his books, and he looked for the mother's face or something, and he tried to figure out how to answer his teacher, and he couldn't come up with anything.

[18:17]

And so he decided that he could no longer study Buddhism, and he burned all his sutras, he burned all his books, And he asked his teacher whether he could go be a caretaker at a tomb of another teacher, Nang Yang, obviously dead, instead of continuing to study. And his teacher encouraged him to do that. And so for some period of time, years I guess, that's what Kyogen did. He did soji, and he kept care of this burial place. And then at some point, he was sweeping, and a pebble flew up, hit the bamboo, thok. And he had his, he had his enlightenment experience. But, you know, it's easy to think about this story and focus on the thok.

[19:24]

But was Keoghan any less enlightened when he put all his books down? That to me was the practice. Practice is enlightenment. He completely responded to his being in that tree and the futility, let's say, of his striving self. And he decided to just be present. And you read the commentaries and they say, or some of them say that for those years he swept and he kept that coin in his head night and day. And maybe he did and maybe he didn't. I'm sure it was there. I think if we stay Open and present to being in the tree, our life teaches us.

[20:29]

We're learning and being taught all the time. And when something is ripe, when a delusion is ripe for letting go of, then it's ripe. And when it's not, maybe it will at another time. When he burned all his books, he was also recognizing that he can't go back. It took a lot of courage and a lot of honesty, those two things I talked about in my last talk, for him to do that. And maybe it doesn't matter that the thwack on the bamboo ever happened. He was already enlightened. We wanna be in the tree and we wanna fix it.

[21:39]

But we can't fix it. We can just be present. And maybe a fix will arise. I think about this, the biggest problem I've had in my life, maybe, that I can think about in this way is my relationship with my parents. And for those of you who came to my way-seeking mind talk, you know that I have a problematic relationship, I've had a problematic relationship with my parents. My growing up was not so happy. And I've spent at least 35 years trying to fix that relationship, trying to figure out how to make it work. And I never succeeded. And many of you know now that my mother is dealing with cancer.

[22:48]

And so I've seen her a lot over the last few months. And so I've had to re-engage this koan. And I realized that that like Yogin, I've changed. And I don't feel like I have to fix it so much anymore. And maybe the thwak is also my mother's diagnosis. That's helping. But I also think that I did try with the encouragement of practice to not try to solve it. I made a decision, like, I don't know, five, six years ago, that I couldn't. And I was just gonna try to accept it. And I found that being with my parents is a lot different now.

[23:54]

And being with my father, who's a very difficult man, And it's very painful because my father is in a very painful place and has been for as long as I can remember. So, Mooman's comment, even if your eloquence flows like a river, it is no avail. He's talking about study versus practice.

[24:55]

Thank you, Peter. But I think another way to read this is even your striving, is to no avail. Just be in the tree. If you solve this problem, you will give life to the way that has been dead until this moment and destroy the way that has been alive to now. I mean, I guess an obvious way of reading that is leaving the striving self behind and waking up to the no gaining self.

[26:01]

But it also seems to be another way of expressing that we have to do that every single moment. that we have to die and wake up, be reborn every single moment. Otherwise, you must wait for Maitreya and ask him, the future Buddha, We can wait to deal with this, I guess. But I think what Muman's saying is that we can't wait. We're in the tree every moment. It's up to us to show up or not to show up. I thought I'd read, there's this poem that I read not too long ago that's been kind of staying with me.

[27:25]

And I think it expresses a lot of, or some of these things, it expresses for me, the courage or the moment of what it's like to wake up in the tree and to fully accept what is happening and fully accept that you cannot go back and to be capable of burning all those books. It's dramatic to burn all those books, but we have to bring the same intention no matter what if we really want to wake up at every moment. And the poem for me also expresses that it can be painful.

[28:37]

Sometimes I think, well, like I was saying, why can't you just let go, Greg? And Linda asked at a talk, why was it so painful just to be present, to accept the teaching that we're here for? And I said, because it can be painful. And then I elaborated on that a bit. But I also realized I had this kind of idea that it wasn't natural, that somehow this resistance, I judged the resistance. But you know, why shouldn't we be afraid to let go of the self? Why shouldn't we be afraid to die. So we should be kind to ourselves.

[29:46]

It's terrifying. It can be. We're probably hardwired to cling to those very things. It'd be very useful characteristic to have in the wild, right? So anyway, here's the poem. It's called Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota, and it's by James Wright. Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, asleep on the black trunk, blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, the cowbells follow one another into the distances of the afternoon.

[30:49]

To my right, in a field of sunlight between two pines, the droppings of last year's horses blaze up into golden stones. I lean back as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life. Does anybody want to say anything? Have any questions? Marty. You talked about showing up and also about accepting the situation.

[32:00]

I want to know how you see those. Are they the same thing? I was particularly interested in your relationship with your parents. Did you just accept it? Or did you show up? Or is that the same thing? Well, I think it's actually accepting is sometimes helpful. The word is helpful. But I think that there's more to it here. Because sometimes, and maybe this is abiding in emptiness, we can be accepting in a passive kind of way. But I think What the koan is trying to point us to is a being present or an acceptance that is action as well. We can't describe what the action is, but there's a meeting.

[33:06]

It's like letting go of the tree. and answering the question. So with my parents, I guess I've accepted not wanting necessarily to change the relationship or to change them, but I still tell them what I think. And in fact, I'm much more honest than I have ever been with them when I was trying to fix things. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah. Okay. Doug and Linda. Do you feel that you're able to help your parents more now?

[34:17]

Yeah. I think that I wasn't being helpful trying to repair things. And I certainly wasn't, like I said, being honest with them. But I think that my honesty now is giving them me. And if I really want to be their son, that's what I should give them. Linda. That was a beautiful talk. And it's over.

[35:31]

I was thinking if I gave a talk like that, remembering all of the words I said and how good they were and how everything came out the way I was hoping and imagining what everybody would think and reliving it. That's wasting your life, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Assuming that I actually did feel that way, which I don't. Because it never feels that way. You know, what feels good is this, right? So, you know, tomorrow, this won't be there.

[36:45]

You won't be there. Elizabeth and Ken. Great, thank you for showing up. It feels like, well, my tree feels like the war. That's what really got me into practice. And it's why I'm sitting here on day three of my first five-day session. So, that's... Trees are okay. You know, I was delighting in the idea... Okay, I have to confess, I was an English literature major, so I don't like the idea of burning books ever. I think you've got your poem out of the book. Actually, I printed it off the internet.

[37:54]

I was just thinking about one of the last things that Suzuki Roshi did was chat with Dana Chadwick and encourage him to study. And I wonder if a little bit, maybe a little bit of that book learning that Rokim did may have also had a little bit of help in this enlightenment experience. I might be wrong. Absolutely. And I don't think the Koan is really about that, you know, thumbs up or thumbs down on book learning. I think it has more to do with, like I said, the striving. Thinking that we can attain. We have extremities, right? I'm sorry? We have extremities. So much. We're in the middle way, right? Oh, I see. Yes. Going on one side, too much on one side or the other.

[38:57]

That's right. Yeah. I am reading this koan, aren't I? It came from a book and it's part of our written heritage. Kent, yes? Exactly.

[40:10]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Sue and then Kate. We probably should quit after those two. Am I right, Peter? One minute after 11. Okay. Sue. Thank you. I was moved by your talk, by your presence. I started thinking about ladders. saying, as you take your teeth away from it, to the man who's asking you the question, well, let's have a conversation, but do you happen to have a ladder? But then you're already dead. So I think there's a middle way, as you mentioned, with intensity and, you know, sometimes in my life I cultivate the extreme and it's not very healthy.

[41:30]

Do you have something to say about that? Well, definitely don't cultivate the extremes. But the middle way, you know, there's moderation in the middle way and then there's the middle way, the center. And the center is right up in that tree. Can't wiggle out of that. Kate. Thank you so much for your talk and for your model of constancy. The poem in particular and the talk in general reminded me of two completely different things that were said by friends of mine, both of them non-Buddhists. And I'm wondering if you might or might not see that they relate in some way to what you said. The first one was a friend of mine who said that being born is like being pushed out of a plane.

[42:37]

You can either shout no the whole way down, or you can admire the scenery and wave to the people near you. a very smart woman, I know, who said, speculatively, what if at the end of my life it turned out that I had only been happy? Shucks. Okay. Beings are

[43:27]

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