Good morning. Yesterday I spoke about the seven factors of realization or enlightenment or whatever you want to call it. These seven qualities which are taken together are some of the main factors contributing to our practice realization. Mindfulness was the first one, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about mindfulness.

[01:08]

Thich Nhat Hanh says, I am not mindful. What is mindful I don't make myself mindful. What makes me mindful is everything that is not considered my mind. Just like the table is all made of... there's really... we see something that we call the table, but actually the table is made of all components which are not stable. the sun, and the weather, the stars, the rain, the trees, the ground, the workmen, and so forth, the carpenters, the saw, all of these components which are not the table, but actually the table exists dependent on all these causes.

[02:23]

So, when we talk about mindfulness, there's something that makes us mindful. So, in Master Tozan Ryokai's dharma, it's very interesting hearing about how Tozan discovered this. Master Tozan, of course, is the patriarch of our Soto school in China. So, comment on this little story, Tozan. So when Tang San was a young man, Guishan, I mean, Dongshan, is his Chinese name, Dongshan was a young man, young boy, he had a Buddhist teacher, and when he was reciting the Heart Sutra, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no body, no mind, he said, but I have a nose, I have a body, I have a mind.

[03:59]

He said, what does that mean? And the teacher said, well, I can't tell you. You have to go find a better teacher than me. So he went out to find a teacher. So he, the master set out on pilgrimage when he was 21 maybe, and going first to visit Nantsen, he arrived when preparations were underway for Matsu's memorial banquet. I'm going to skip that part. It's not relevant here. Next, the master made a visit to Guishan, Hisa, and said to him, I have recently heard that the national teacher Zhong of Nanchuan said to him, I have recently heard that the national teacher Chong of Nanyang maintains the doctrine that non-sentient beings expound the Dharma.

[05:18]

I have not yet comprehended the subtleness of his teaching, non-sentient beings expounding the Dharma. Guixiang said, Can you, Acharya, remember the details of what he said?" Yes, I can," said the Master. The Master hears Dushan. Then, why don't you try to repeat it for me?" Goishan said. The Master began. A monk asked Huichong, what sort of thing is the mind of the ancient Buddhists? The national teacher replied, it's wall and tile rubble. Well, wall and tile rubble, isn't that something non-sentient? asked the monk. It is, replied the national teacher, the monk said, and yet a

[06:24]

replied the National Teacher. The monk asked, then why haven't I heard it? The National Teacher said, you yourself haven't heard it, but that can hinder those who are able to hear it. What sort of person acquires such hearing? asked the monk. All the sages have acquired such hearing, replied the national teacher. The monk asked, can you hear it, Ho-Shong? Ho-Shong means teacher. No, I can't, replied the national teacher. The monk said, if you haven't heard it, how do you know that non-sensual beings have found the Dharma? The national teachers said, fortunately, I haven't heard it.

[07:32]

If I had, I would be the same as the sages, and you, therefore, would not hear the Dharma that I teach. This reminds me of one time I went to talk to Suzuki Roshi, and I said something like, I was thinking of my shortcomings. I said, I have so many shortcomings and yet I'm working with these people. And he said, thank goodness you have these shortcomings because if you didn't you wouldn't be able to teach them. You would be like a sage and you wouldn't be able to teach them. So, in that case, ordinary people would have no part in it, said the monk.

[08:42]

I teach for ordinary people, not sages, replied the national teacher. What happens after ordinary people hear you? asked the monk. Then they are no longer ordinary people, said the national teacher. to which sutra does it say that non-sentient beings expound the dharma? Clearly you shouldn't suggest that it's not part of the sutras. Haven't you seen it in the Avatamsaka Sutra? It says the earth expounds the dharma, living beings expound it throughout the three times. Everything expounds it. The master thus completed his narration. Guishan said, that teaching also exists here. However, one seldom encounters someone capable of understanding it. So then, Dongshan said, I still don't understand clearly.

[09:44]

Would the master please comment? So Guishan raised his fly whisk, saying, do you understand? No, I don't. Please, Oshan, explain," replied Dongshan. Guishan said, it can never be explained to you by means of the mouth of one born of mother and father. Dongshan asked, does the master have any contemporaries on the way who might clarify this problem for me? And so he says, from here, at Yuxian of Linjilin, where you will find some leaked caves. So he's telling you of this place where you find the leaked caves. Living in those caves is a man of the way, Yunyan. Yunyan became Dongshan's teacher. If you are able to push aside the grass and gaze into the wind, a great statement.

[10:50]

Then you will find him worthy of your respect, said Guishan. Just what sort of man is he, asked Gumsha. Guishan replied. Once he said to this old monk, what should I do if I wish to follow the master? This old monk replied, you must immediately cut off your defilements. Ah, he said, then will I come up to the master's expectations? This old monk replied, you will get absolutely no answer as long as I do. It's a little complex, but I think you get the gist of it. Dongshan accordingly took up the leave of Guishan and proceeded directly to Yunyun's, making reference to his previous encounter with Guishan. He immediately asked, what sort of person was able to hear the Dharma expounded by non-Sentient Beings? Yunyun said, non-Sentient Beings are able to hear it. Can you hear it, Ho-Shang?" asked Nung-Shan.

[11:54]

Yun-Yin replied, If I could hear it, then you would not be able to hear the Dharma that I teach. Why can't I hear it? asked Nung-Shan. Yun-Yin raised the fly-whisk, said, Can you hear it yet? Nung-Shan said, No, I can't. Yun-Yin said, You can't even hear it when I expound the Dharma. How do you expect to hear when a non-sentient being expounds on dharma? It's very interesting. One colon after another about non-sentient beings. We tend to think that we live in a subjective world over against an objective world. This is the root of our problem. that everything is an object for us. And over and over, the teachers are always saying, no subject and no object.

[13:01]

The subject makes the object, the object makes the subject. But in a non-discriminating understanding, there is no such thing as sentient and insentient. What is insentient? And when we eat something, when we eat a noodle or a cucumber, the cucumber or the noodle looks like a non-sentient being. Because why? It doesn't have the same components or what we think of as life force. But when we eat the cucumber or the noodle, as Suzuki Roshi always says, it transforms as we eat it.

[14:18]

And its chemical nature becomes part of our being, part of our personal being, part of our personality. When we breathe air, is air a sentient being? But all the qualities of oxygen and the elements of the air is what creates our body. So where's the division between sentient and insentient? We're totally dependent on insentients because we're insentient as well. We think we're sentient and everything else is insentient. But actually, everything else is sentient and insentient. And we are also insentient and sentient. So, he's talking about where is the division. I can't tell you where the division is. We get to a point where, don't ask me, you find out for yourself.

[15:26]

I have the idea that sentience is awareness and I don't see the blurry distinction between that... I mean, can you blur that for me so it's not so obvious? Because to me it's plain and simple that even my thoughts are insentient but there is something that's aware and that's all that's sentient. Right. So we talk about Consciousness. That's being sentient. Consciousness is being sentient. But we measure consciousness. We measure consciousness through our own idea. We measure consciousness from the point of view of human being. So this is a wider way of understanding which It gets beyond simply the human point of view. So you can't know that something else is not sentient?

[16:36]

You can't know that something, all you know is you're aware of your own sentience? By comparison with your own sentience. Other things are insentient. Huh? Don't even know that. Yeah, we don't even know that. So the difference between sentience and insentience, it's in our mind, right? It's just in our thoughts. Well, it's the way we think. But it's, you know, there's something else. Beyond that kind of, you know, scientific value, understanding, there's a bigger understanding. that when our mind expands to include everything.

[17:37]

So ordinarily, and there are big arguments about this in Buddhism, you know, what is sentient and what is insentient. But for Mahayana thinkers, the whole universe is one sentient being. And since we don't know the limits of consciousness, really, we know very little about consciousness, actually, what its limitations are, except for our experience. So, Doshan said, In what sutra is it taught that non-sentient beings expound the Dharma? Yunyun replied, haven't you seen it in the Amitabha Sutra? It says, water, birds, tree, groves, all without exception, recite the Buddha's name, recite the Dharma.

[18:46]

So reflecting on this, Dongshan composed the following verse. How amazing! Hard to comprehend that non-sensing beings expound the Dharma. It simply cannot be heard with the ear, but when sound is heard with the eye, then it is understood. So, you know, We live in this world where everything is preaching the Dharma. Everything in the world is preaching the Dharma. And sometimes we listen, and sometimes we don't. Yes? Well, would some other kind of examples be like, you're walking along and you

[19:49]

has always been there when you were perhaps talking at attention. That's right. Or you look at a sunset and you feel inspired. That's right. So the root is giving us a message of wake up. Everything is telling us to wake up. Everything in the world is informing us to wake up. It's all chattering all the time. The bird has We think, well, the bird's just tweeting, right? But the bird has language. We think that human beings have language and that other beings don't. Of course, birds are sentient in the usual sense. But everything is giving us a message if we hear it. Of course, if you're schizophrenic, you'll think that everybody's talking to you. That's different. this nice bell here.

[20:57]

And so the bell has a voice. The bell speaks, but it speaks the language of the Dharma. You have to know how to make sound of the bell without hitting it. how you allow the bell to sing, how you invite the bell to sing without hitting it. Like, if you invited someone to sing, you wouldn't hit them on the head, would you? You would say, how do I get you to sing? This is the koan of the bell. The voice is there, but Your relationship with the bell makes it a bell.

[21:57]

It's not a bell, it's just a piece of bronze constructed in a certain way, very carefully actually. A well-made bell is quite something, which that is. And then you have this object in your hand. As soon as the object is in your hand, it's no longer an object. We call it a striker or a coaxer or whatever you want to call it. And then how those two meet with you as the intermediary is what creates the sound. So the bell is a vehicle for your understanding. And your understanding is what is expressed as the voice of the bell, through the voice of the bell.

[23:02]

What does it mean that your eyes are hearing the bell? It means that your whole body, mind, is totally the bell. There's no separation. When that's struck in the proper manner, Then there's no separation between the striker, the bell, and yourself. It's like, we used to carry the kiyosaku, the stick, and then we ask for the stick, and then whack! And in that whack, there's no striker, I mean, there's no stick, there's no striker, there's no person being hit. Everything disappears into one. So this is what we mean by merging, being one with your activity. That's called Samadhi. Samadhi is being totally one with your activity, no separation. Even though we look at the parts and say there's this part, that part, and that part, it's all one piece.

[24:09]

So, when an athlete, a skier skis down a mountain, and does his acrobatics or whatever, there's just one piece. There's the skis, the person, and so forth, but there's just one total activity, and there's no subject or object. So we tend to see things objectively, as objects, but there are no objects except what we Except when we create the separation. But if there were no objects, we wouldn't talk about subject and object. But the point is, everything is helping us. That's the point.

[25:12]

Whatever we... Everything is telling us what to do. I had some tongues on the table, and Alexandra said, we were talking about this, she said, well, what's this? This is telling you what to do. Because it's there. and you put your attention there, it told you something. Otherwise, you would never have picked it up. It told you... It didn't speak in our language. It spoke. It presented itself. It was present. And we said, what is that? And it told us how to pick it up. Everything is telling us how to manage it. And so whatever it is we pick up is also telling us what to do.

[26:25]

If I pick up this book, it's telling me, I'm not picking it up with my teeth, you know. It's saying, well, pick this up. And I know it's a book, and I'm creating the book, but the book is also creating me. So it's inter-creation. And mindfulness means that this is waking me up because it's telling me how to take care of it. When I carry this, it's telling me how to handle it. If I do like this, I'm making it into an object. It's not an object. I never hold this as an object. telling me what to do all the time when I'm holding it. Sometimes it's relaxed, sometimes it's formal, but I'm always aware of how I handle this because it's creating, it's reminding me of the Dharma all the time.

[27:34]

So everything is reminding us of the Dharma if we allow it to. That's the point. The point is, everything is preaching the Dharma. How could it not be? If all beings are good in nature, how can they not be preaching the Dharma? So we think of a foreign world sometimes, but I remember when Rosenbaum, if I may, had a stroke in the Himalayas, and that strepa had to bring him down. And he said, I quote you, the mountains didn't care at all. His very mouth just didn't care. But nevertheless, there was something about the mountains that reminds you that gave him some presence of dharma.

[28:37]

They spoke. They spoke the dharma. Yeah. Alan had a hand up. Well, it seems to me what you're speaking about also is relationship. We actually did, I did carry the stick today. And in the moment of striking, everything disappears. But in order to do that, everything has to be in perfect alignment. And what occurs to me is, it's interesting, the problem that Debshan had was understanding about insentient beings, speaking the Dharma, It seems to me that the problem that a lot of us have is dealing with those pesky sentient beings, who your student doesn't talk back as loudly as an obstreperous student, or an unruly child, or a nation that you're

[29:44]

Right, but still, if we relate to each person as Buddha, to see into their Buddha nature, then each one that we encounter is helping to bring forth the Dharma. In relationship. Suzuki Roshi said, when you see a master who actually embodies the Dharma, you are transformed. There's some transformation that takes place in you automatically. It's like when Shakyamuni We revisited the five aesthetics we practiced with.

[30:55]

Immediately they recognized his attainment without him having to say anything. So there is that influence. But every argument we have with somebody or every disagreement or whatever is a teaching for us. and reminding us, well, where's the dharma? You know, not, where's my anger, where's my... but where's the dharma in this conversation? Where's the dharma in this disagreement? Where's the dharma in this anger? So, this is mindfulness. Mindfulness is always the question. Where's the dharma in this? You seem to be saying that we can hear all things preach the Dharma? Yes. Why did those teachers say they couldn't hear it?

[31:56]

That was a skillful means. Do you hear the Dharma? No, I don't hear it. When Belgin uses terms like that, he'll say, sentient beings have no buddha nature. Which is the same thing as saying all sentient beings have buddha nature. But if you say, I hear the dharma, or I don't hear the dharma, That may be more accurate than saying that I do hear the Dharma. Because what is it that hears the Dharma? First, I think saying, I don't hear the Dharma is the same as Thich Nhat Hanh saying, I'm not mindful.

[33:09]

I was going, I'm dying. And I was going, so? But what they really were saying was not, I don't care, but welcome. You know, I want them to care from my human point of view of this And they're basically saying... You won't find, yeah.

[34:29]

Is that Mary? Yes, I think so. What Alan said about it being relational with sentient beings reminded me of, I mean, what I would say is all relational, which I think is what you've been saying, Years and years ago there was a small bell here that was one of those really unforgiving bells. I was learning to be a Don and I would come and I would practice and it was really difficult and I couldn't get it to sound good. And I finally went to you and I said, I try and I try and I try and I cannot love that bell. And you looked at me and you said, you don't have to love it, just get to know it. I'll have to remember that one. I like to think it got better. Well, the bell got better. One nice thing about non-sense in beings is that they usually don't change their mind.

[35:55]

In terms of seeing the sound of the bell, it might help. In the 60s there was a psychology taking the same information, but putting it into its language. So, you know, if that bell had a higher sound, it would be smaller, or thinner, or something. So, things look the way they sound the way they I mean, if you touch the bell, it's got a certain feeling to it which is related to the sound it brings forth.

[37:03]

So, each of the senses is saying the same thing. And I think part of practice is going to that central place where all or none of the senses are contacting. the truth of that non-object? Well, I think, yeah, but I think metaphorically it's the same. It's beyond the usual channels of discrimination, because the eye discriminates one way, the ear discriminates another way, And touch discriminates in another way. And these are the discriminating... And consciousness discriminates. So this is like getting... It's more than just what comes through the eye.

[38:08]

Anyway, I think though that it's important to not get too hung up on the terms. And bringing life to life, because if everything around us is simply dead objects, and living in a world of dead objects, that's nuts. But we do. We treat everything as an object. It's not a subject. And the Indians, the American Indians, understood this very well, and we came and destroyed their civilization in the name of discrimination. They didn't own anything, more or less. Everything was, and they paid great respect to everything around them, and so they could live for thousands of years without destroying the earth.

[39:20]

Because they were part of, they saw themselves as, in truth, of how what part they played in the cosmic order. So I think that's the purpose of practice is to see what part we play in the cosmic order and how to understand it and not destroy it for our own ego satisfaction. If we keep in mind, actually, that the whole world of what we call objects, sentient beings, I remember one more thing.

[40:24]

I used to go with Little Bear, an Indian who has the horse ranch just below, just before you enter into Tassajara. And he was a wonderful guy. He still is. A huge man. But I used to go with him into Pine Valley on horseback. And he would do the Indian thing and I would do the Zen thing. And we'd do the sweat lodge. Build a sweat lodge. And then heat up the stones. All day, heating up the stones until they were totally red. red stones, and then they take a basket, and as each stone went into the sweat lodge, everybody said, welcome stone person. So, there's just this wonderful feeling of connection, of inclusion,

[41:31]

in our consciousness.

[41:37]

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