Good morning. So, good morning. This is the beginning of our spring practice period, the first we began last Saturday. Can everyone hear okay in the back? Are you too loud back there? We're just right. Great. Well, we're just right. It's been a just right beginning. for our practice period and we'll continue with Kids Bendo this morning. So one of the things that happens in practice period is that there's a head student, which is who's sitting here before you. I'm Andrea Thatch. And the head student is given a question or a problem to work on during the practice period. So for Kids Bendo, I wanted to ask the children for a little bit of help. with the question that's been given to me to see if you can give me a head start.

[01:01]

I have a talk to do in a few minutes, and I need your help for it. So one of the questions that I have is about what's ordinary? So I wonder if there are things that you do that are kind of ordinary in your lives. David? Ordinary is basically normal, so basically for a kid, normal is just basically to wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, go to school, and eat school, go home, and eat dinner, as is their, you know, today. Complete and ordinary day. What were you going to say? Some people aren't very... some things aren't very ordinary. That's why I couldn't say it. I won't say anything more.

[02:01]

Well, what makes something not so ordinary? When you aren't used to it, and then you see someone doing it, it's not very ordinary to you, but it might be ordinary to someone else. That's really helpful. What else, David? Crazy people? What's that? Crazy people? Crazy people. What makes someone crazy? They just do stuff that are crazy, like jump off a cliff for no reason. That sounds pretty crazy. Well, I have a poem to read, and it's a poem that Bennett and Henry may know because their mommy, Catherine, sent it to me.

[03:05]

But you may have something to add because you know it, or you may have something to add because you've never heard it before. It'll be new and interesting to you. It's from The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown. And a little kitten came to the island with some people on a picnic. The kitten prowled around the island and saw that it was all surrounded by water. What a little land, said the kitten. The little island is as little as big as big. Can you imagine that? As little as big as big? Yes. So are you, said the island. Now how can that be? How can a kitten be as little, as little, and as big, as big? Um, is this a brain teaser?

[04:07]

I think it is. And the kitten, Mira? I was just thinking that it could be big to an ant or something. Uh-huh. It can be big to an ant. Did you say, as little, as, as, as little, as little, as, as big as big, or as big, as big as big? As big as big. As little, as little, as big as big. Maybe you'll explain it to us all. So the island says, so are you. Maybe I'm a little island too, says the kitten. A little fur island in the air. We'll see. That would make them even smaller little islands, wouldn't it? That's this small. That's small. And the little kitten jumped in the air.

[05:18]

This is just what you are, said the little island. I'm a part of the big world, too, said the little kitten. My feet are on it. So am I, said the little island. Can the little island be part of the big world, too, do you think? Yes. Yeah, how's that? Well, it's on the world. How do you know that it's on the world? Because I don't know, it's just floating in the water. So it's attached to the bigger world, even though we don't see it. Yeah. It is a big world. It is its own big world, isn't it? Yeah. And so, well, you know the secret then, but I'll go ahead and finish the poem. The water's all around you and it cuts you off from the land, says the kitten.

[06:21]

And the island says, just ask any fish. So the kitten reached deep down inside the ocean, pulled out a fish and said to it, ask for me this or I'll eat you up. How can an island be a part of the land? Come with me, said the fish. Come down to the dark places of the sea and I'll show you. But the kitten said, I can't swim. Then show me another way or I'll eat you up, said the kitten. Then you must take it on faith, said the fish. Now what does that mean, to take it on faith? What's that? When you kiss someone? Yeah. What else? Have you ever taken it on faith?

[07:24]

To believe something without actually having seen it or experienced it for yourself? Probably. To believe what I tell you about what you don't know, says the fish, that's what you do. And so the fish told the kitten how all land is one land under the sea. And the kitten's eyes were shining with the secret of it all. And because he loved secrets, he believed. He let the fish go. And so can you. all right okay thank you very much for coming Well, now for the other story.

[08:49]

So, as I've said, the shuso traditionally gets a question to work on for the practice period. And the question I've been given is case 19 of the mumonkan, which is nonsense, ordinary mind is the way, And if any of you know me, you'll know that this has nothing to do at all with me. Or maybe none of us here in this room. As I introduce the koan, I want to set the stage a little bit and tell you about the protagonists of the story, who are both stars of the pantheon of koan lore. Nan Sen is the teacher, and he is Wei Nan's great-grandson. Wei Nan is our sixth ancestor. And he has many koans in the Mumonkan, the one of which we're probably most familiar with is Nansen Katsukaten 2.

[09:59]

Joshu is his best-known disciple, and Joshu actually is the star of many of Zen koans. I think he has more in the Mumonkan than anyone else does. And we best know him for the question that resonates through all of these koans, which Does a dog have Buddha nature? The rule that we all work with. So, this is the case. Namsan's ordinary mind is the Tao. I'm reading Robert Aitken's translation. Joshu asked Namsan, what is the Tao? Namsan said, ordinary mind is the Tao. Zhou Xiu says, should I try to direct myself towards it? Nan Sen said, if you try to direct yourself, you betray your own practice. How can I know the Tao if I don't direct myself towards it?

[11:04]

The Tao is not subject to knowing and not knowing. Knowing is delusion, not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine Tao, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation? With these words, Zhou Xu had sudden realization. Wu Man's comment, questioned by Zhou Xu, nonsense, lost no time in showing the smashed tile and the melted ice where no explanation is possible. Though Zhou Xu had realization, he could confirm it only after another 30 years of practice. So, to set the stage here, Zhou Xu, at the time of this koan, was probably somewhere between 15 or 18. He was a young monk, obviously intelligent and very talented, and had a great, bright aspiration for practice.

[12:10]

He had some idea of realization and he really wanted to solidify it. So he's coming to his teacher asking for some instruction. How do I do it now? I'm going to spend our time this morning just on the first couple of lines. What is the Tao? Ordinary mind is the Tao. The topic of the koan is about the way. I think we all have some sense of what that is. It's the reason that we came here. It's a feeling or an aspiration to come to practice. It's the gateway to truth or meaning, to find that expression of freedom in our own ordinary lives. I particularly like Aiken's choice of using Dao in the translation instead of the Wei. In Chinese characters, the Dao has two meanings. In Japanese, they're michi or dou.

[13:14]

Michi means, they both mean the way, but michi is the way of everyday life. It's the method or means. It's the way of the thief, the factory worker, the businessman, the president. It's the way of dogs, mosquitoes, and salamanders, of pebbles, tiles, mountains, and rivers. is the everyday, ordinary, the relative of everything. The Tao is the absolute. The Chinese took the Sanskrit word for Dharma and made it Tao. Tao is the Sambhogakaya or the manifestation of Buddha activity. We're familiar with it as the way of study, as in the as in the study of tea, inchado, the study of flowers, kado, the study of calligraphy or archery or martial arts. We know it as a kind of concentration of the mind or body, the kind of discipline that allows us to cultivate a precognitive awareness of doing things, so that our activity

[14:26]

with whatever the material we're performing, with the arts in our body and our mind are all one, there's no separation. Lao Tse Tung would say, or Lao Tse would say it was the way the universe works. For Lao the way was nameless, or perhaps we could say this is namelessness, and Zen, the activity of all parts working together in harmony. So this is the study that Zhou Xu is looking to undertake. We're also talking about mind. I wanted to say a little bit about that, although we talk about it a lot, just because sometimes I find it can be confusing. What is this mind here? Sometimes when I first heard this, I thought about my brain inside my cranium and all of this activity. And in fact, the mind is the five skandhas and the ego consciousness. It's monist, it's the small, we sometimes refer to it as small mind, or our personal perceptions and ways of interacting in a discriminatory world.

[15:42]

We also talk about big mind, that mind which we might say is the alaya consciousness, the cosmic consciousness of Jung, that's our interconnected understanding. I find sometimes that distinction between small and big mind not so helpful because it seems like we need to get from one to get to the other to be doing something in practice. And actually small and big mind completely interpenetrate one with the other. You can't have one without the other. Small mind is completely contained within big mind. Big mind is completely contained within small mind. I also find it useful to look at the character Shin, the Japanese or Chinese character, which means both heart and mind. Mind, I think of as how we enter the world in a cognitive or conceptual way.

[16:44]

Heart, I think of as the way in which we enter from feelings and emotions. And although they can be as discriminatory as our thoughts can be, they also come often from a precognitive place, a place that's closer to intuition. I'm not sure that intuition quite gets at it either. Intuition still seems somewhat personal. The dictionary definition is the sense of something not knowable or deducible. It's from the Middle English insight, which maybe is a little bit closer. That sense of insight is something that just comes to you perhaps from outside of yourself. It's the instinct of knowing what to do. So Zhou Xu is looking for some direction and his teacher shows him a curve by telling him that ordinary mind is the way, that he's got the answer right there in front of him.

[17:46]

But what is this ordinary? Now, our usual way of thinking of ordinary is that it's something that's commonly encountered, that it's usual, that it's of no exceptional ability, degree, or quality. Another definition is that it's inferior or second-rate. Some might say that it's dull and boring. Ordinary comes from the Latin root ordino or ordin, which means the order of things, the usual ordinary course of events, the usual way in which things occur. I also think that ordinary can mean unembellished, nothing special or unadorned. as when you see someone who has nothing extra that they're carrying with them, no sense of self-consciousness, and they're not so preoccupied with themselves.

[18:55]

They seem so very ordinary. There's nothing extra going on. Extraordinary, though, is what I think most of us wish to be. Extraordinary means beyond what is usual or ordinary, highly exceptional or remarkable, It comes from the Latin meaning outside, like in outside the usual order of things. So extraordinary is any way in which our minds or thoughts see themselves as something special, whether that's superior or inferior, whether it's aren't I great or woe is me. It's all part of the same extraordinary. It's outside of the natural order of things. And if it's not too much of a jump, you might even say it's outside of our natural place in the order of things. And yet, in our individuality, we are extraordinary.

[20:00]

And our own divine light, as Surya would say, shines in a way in which we are our own uniqueness. So how do we resolve this conundrum? I know a lot about it being extraordinary, at least I've tried to. I've always tried to be good and I've always been embarrassed at the slip by slip of humanness is showing and I've tried to do my best to cover up. Coming in a culture that's about competitiveness, those karmic seeds have really taken root. And whether it was getting straight A's and being on the honor roll or going to an Ivy League school and having an respectable career. A lot of my life was about trying to be extraordinary. Even the time when I wasn't, when I didn't make the A softball team in high school, the degree of sadness and distress I had about it was quite extraordinary.

[21:03]

And so I noticed that there still is a An incessant, annoying buzz of internal dialogue that goes in my head, like the drone of the static on TV after the stations have closed down for the night. Does that still happen? All the stations go to bed and there's nothing but static. Well, sometimes the internal dialogue is just like that. Did my boss see I did all of those extra charts today and I worked on that extra patient and so you notice how hard I worked on this. On and on that painful self-consciousness is going. That desire to be extraordinary is just a kind of preference. It's a kind of preference in the field of liking and disliking.

[22:07]

And it's that preference which separates us all from everyone else. It's that which keeps us from being a part of the natural order of things. From the Genjo Koan, Jogen says, flowers fall even though we love them. Weeds grow even though we dislike them. Conveying oneself towards all that Conveying oneself towards all things is to carry out practice enlightenment, excuse me. Conveying oneself towards all things to carry out practice enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out practice enlightenment through the self is realization. So those who greatly realize delusion are Buddhas. So flowers fall even though we love them. They don't care whether we love them or not. They're going to come bloom. Their petals are going to fall. They're going to fade away.

[23:09]

We don't care whether we love them or not. They're going to grow despite us. And it doesn't matter whether I'm indifferent to them or not. That too is just another way of creating myself separate from them. I still exist. they still exist in relationship to me. It still misses the point that if I see myself as relative to other things, then it's being based upon my preferences. My preferences and ideas are always something that are applied over or covering up what I'm really seeing. And I'm missing the dynamic nature between all things. The Xin Xin Ming, which is one of the foundational poems of our liturgy, the poem that's called Trust in Line or Faith in Line, there's a pivotal line in it that goes, if you want to move in the one way, do not dislike the world of senses and ideas.

[24:17]

Indeed, to accept them entirely is identical with enlightenment. Do not dislike the world of senses and ideas. Indeed, to accept them entirely is identical with enlightenment. So to accept all that which happens without any ideas about it, to set aside one's preferences, is to allow things to come forward and to give the opening that allows clarity to see things as they really are. Some years, a few years ago, I was hiking in Colorado. I was up at Fair Play, Colorado, and I happened to be there in October, which was hunting season. And I've been a vegetarian for 30 years, and I'm particularly moved by the suffering of animals, so I wasn't so thrilled that I had wound up there during the hunting season. But I dutifully bought my little red hat, so I wasn't likely to fall prey to the bow and arrow shooters that were

[25:21]

were in the woods, and I decided to go on a hike anyway. And as I started hiking in the woods, I started to hear gunshots. And I had an immediate rush of emotion, a rush of emotion of some fear for myself, how close were these, some anger, some ideas about who these hunters were, in Redneck, Colorado, and some idea about the deer whose lives were about to be lost. And so I decided like a good Zen student that I would start chanting in Me Chu Ku, Kana Ngeo, for protecting life. And so I hiked along chanting and I found that as the gunshots went off, my fear levels went higher and my sense of distress was greater. And I really focused for a minute and I realized that I didn't actually have any idea what was going on.

[26:25]

I didn't know who these hunters were. I didn't know anything about them or their motivations. I didn't know about the conditions of the deer or the deer population or why the hunting was happening. And I certainly had a pretty good idea that I had a lot of my own emotion that was mixed up in my reactions to what was happening. And all of a sudden everything popped clear and my level of fear dropped and I just saw that things were unfolding as they were. That I didn't know, that I was just a part of the unfolding of things that was happening there. And the Makahanya Harmita came to my mind and I happily hiked down the trails holding everyone in that spirit. Dogen likens an enlightened person in delusion as a shattered mirror. The shattered mirror is us in our delusions, that part of us which can't see clearly because we have our karmic seeds, because we have our conditioning, because we are who we are.

[27:34]

But each piece of that mirror sees accurately and clearly reflecting the world when we're in enlightenment. those who greatly realize delusion or Buddhism. Dogen would say that delusion and enlightenment completely contain each other. That one is not possible without the other. And so ordinary mind becomes ordinary as it takes its rightful place in the natural order of the unfolding of things. The ordinariness is the universality of being human. Like every other human being who wishes love, respect, safety, and connection, all those basic needs that drive us to create and latch on to a sense of ourselves are those very things that allow us to penetrate through and see each other, to see all things as no separate than ourselves. This ordinariness is the experience of ourselves in the natural order of things, a part of the

[28:37]

So with that, I think we have a few minutes for questions. Thank you very much. I wonder if you could go back to the kitten and fish and restate the definition of faith the fish gives, and then I'd like to know if you take anything on what you take on that kind of faith. You want me to read? Yeah, just because there are lots of ways to understand faith, but that particular one is... So, yeah. So, what did the fish say? The fish says, then you must take it on faith what I tell you.

[29:47]

What's that?" says the cat. Faith to believe what I tell you about what you don't know. Faith to believe what I don't tell you, what I tell you about what you don't know. So, Add, would you ask your question again? So, what do you take on faith that somebody tells you even though you don't know it? Who is the somebody that tells me? A fish. A big fish? It's a little bit hard for me to relate the child story definition of being told because the way in which faith comes to me is the way in which big mind, if you will, or that inner voice that comes out of experience tells me, lets me know something.

[30:57]

And it's something that I have enough experience or enough physical relationship to that I know it. but I might not actually be able to describe it in a way that makes sense to anyone. Is that getting at what you're asking? I'm not sure. I guess I would like to hear something a little more simple and to the point. I'm not sure that I can. Yeah. Yeah. Bring water back. I will. So Mark's question raises for me the question of what is faith?

[32:14]

And my first definition of faith, from who knows where it came from, was this kind of definition that you gave when the children were here, and that never ever worked for me. It's just like, well, then I just don't have that, if that's what faith is. And then somehow working with it in the context of practice and talking with friends of mine who practice deeply, we came to another definition of faith, which was much closer to the definition which you just gave, Tamar, which is, there has to be some resonance with my own experience. And yet, it's not like knowledge, then it wouldn't be. We're not talking about intellectual knowledge and knowing something, but there has to be, you hear, and it reminds me of when I would hear a teaching which I had never heard before, but which resonated with me, but yet perhaps which I didn't fully understand, the full implications of that. So I understood your answer, even if If it didn't work for you, I understood it, actually. So I just wanted to share that. The question of what is faith is actually a very vibrant question. And I think there's maybe different people who understand it differently.

[33:17]

But I much more resonate with the second definition that you gave. Thank you, Eric. I was particularly struck at one point when you said, I believe you said, the desire to be extraordinary is just a preference. And that just really got me thinking. And that got me thinking about how, since coming to Zen practice, I feel like, in some ways, that practice is sometimes replaced with a different practice, a desire to be ordinary, a desire to be comfortable with ordinary lives. Because that would be, you know, a more Zen way to embrace the world. And obviously, those are both really dualistic ways of looking at it. But I was amazed you could speak a little bit I think I agree exactly with what you're saying, whether the preference is about being someone special or being someone who's invisible or just worn into the wood and not noticeable, it's still a preference as long as you have some idea of yourself in it.

[34:29]

as long as you're wanting to be someone, when it doesn't matter who you are, you just accept what your place is, what your natural place is, and you fall into that place without any effort, then you are you, actually. There's nothing added extra to you. Does that answer your question? I think we're all very deeply connected to each other and I think we're all unique individuals both. Uh-huh, that's big. Does that answer tomorrow's question? It seems like there's a lot of investigation and science in that also, that we accept that the people we respect can investigate things that we've never been able to personally, and that that's a whole issue of faith that we deal with constantly.

[35:38]

Not just our own experience, but intuitively deciding who else's experience we can take on faith. And the intuitively deciding, where does that, it's your intuition, it's out of your own experience, your own resonance with that, that you gravitate to that. Yes? Yes. But then they decide next week that the earth, the sun really does evolve around the earth, and you know, human beings have a long history of taking on big things that aren't true. Well, there's taking on faith. I think that's an interesting question when we talk about the kind of faith where the voice comes from the outside. Someone's telling us and we take it on that external faith. That's quite different than taking it on your own faith, which might be observing and watching the sun rise and set and the curvatures of the earth that might give you your own sense of it.

[36:46]

So there's taking it on faith and the idea of opinions, which isn't really what we're talking about here when we talk about taking it on faith. Jake? Relating to Tamara's question, it came to me your experience near a fair play, where you were very upset, angry, fearful. And then there was a jolt. Where did that come from? Was that faith? I wouldn't have put it in the realm of faith. I would have put it in the realm... Oh, that's an interesting question. I would have put it in the realm of recognizing that I had a lot of opinions about things and being willing to penetrate through them, being willing to drop them away and not know. So, is really not knowing more than the faith, I would say.

[37:49]

Yeah. But have you had an experience like that, that you would call faith, Jake, in asking that question? I think maybe so. Another time. Okay. Who else? Katie? It seems like you can have faith in Could you say that faith is a reflection of your experience of reality, and that may be that you don't know, or it may be something that you know, but not cognitively, so therefore it appears as not knowing? I'd say very much so. It's about the non-cognitive knowing. It's the beyond thinking. Knowing, yes, very much so. Good time for more Q&A.

[38:54]

So I think Lisa has had her hand up for a while. I'm struck by the connection to the Leelanthi readings that our group was doing on Wednesday evening together. I struggle with the idea of accepting what your teacher says so that the image of being the immobile one on top of a hundred foot pole and to go on in the path requires letting go and letting go of your life. And that there's some way for us Also, in my personal life, I think I would relate it to what it was like the first time I had to swim across the deep end of the pool. And the teacher said, take it on faith. I know you can do this. You're still in the shallow. Now you can do it. And I was totally convinced.

[39:59]

No. I'm going to lose my life by doing that. And then came the revolution. It's a wonderful example and I think they're both about letting go of some idea of ourselves and doing it. Dropping, stepping off the hundred foot pole really means letting go of all your attachments. Going and swimming in the deep end has to do with being willing to drop your idea that you can't do that or you might drown and just believe maybe you can do it. That's right. Well, there. I don't know your name. Don, thank you. You have some thoughts about the word mystery or mystery. I'm not going to say. Well, I think of mystery. Maybe you do. And asking that question, mystery is a

[41:01]

is related to faith, I think, is the great unknowable, unknown, and yet we trust in that, somehow in that mystery that everything fits together in its rightful way. That's how I relate to it. Is that what you had in mind when you were asking the question? Well, it's around, it's in the, it's in the lexicon around what we're talking about, what you're talking about. To me, it's an act of faith, in a sense, to sense that which is beyond understanding, and therefore mysterious. Beyond understanding. I wish there are other words to describe it. It's lovely, yes. And I think you're anticipating the rest of the koan and your comments, too.

[42:10]

So thank you for that. I think I see other hands, and I'm sorry, I think we're over time if I'm getting my signals straight, so maybe we can talk over the tea tables. Okay, thank you very much.

[42:43]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ