I know a good many of you, but not everyone. So my name is Mel, and I'm the abbot of Zen Center, one of the abbots of Zen Center. And this morning I want to tell you a little story. In this story there was an old man, and the old man was getting ready to die. He was so old. So he laid down in bed and he called his three sons to him. He had three sons, three grown-up sons, and he said to them, he said, when I die, all these fields are yours. He was a farmer. He said, all these fields are yours. He said, take care of them, don't give them away, don't sell them or let anything happen to them because, he says, these fields have been in our family for years and years and they're very valuable.

[01:24]

And he said, Also, in the field, in these fields, there's a hidden treasure. He said, and when I die, you should dig up the fields and find the treasure. So, a little while, the old man died and his sons said, well, let's go to it. So, they got out their shovels and they dug and dug in big fields and all they had in those days was shovels. So they dug and they dug and they dug and they dug up the whole thing, but they didn't find the treasure. So they looked at each other and they said, well he said it was here, so let's try once more. So okay, they dug and they dug and dug and they turned the whole thing over again.

[02:30]

It took them a long time. And when they got to the end, they said, we dug this up again and there was no treasure. We didn't find the treasure. They said, but the old man, you know, he wouldn't lie to us. So, they said, we'll try it one more time. So, they dug up the field again, turned the whole thing over and no pot of gold, no leprechauns. So, they said, well, it's planting time. And we got the fields all dug up, let's plant the seeds. So they planted the seeds in the field. And at the end of the spring, the fields were just blooming with all these vegetables and crops, and it was the best harvest they'd ever had.

[03:42]

And also flowers, millions of flowers. And they took it all to town and made this enormous profit from the fields. They were really happy, you know. And one of them turned to the other and he said, you suppose this is what the old man meant by finding the treasure? And the other two turned to him and said, I wouldn't be surprised. I think this is what the old man meant when he said there is a treasure hidden in a field. So what do you think about this story? What do you think is the moral of this story? That's good, don't always expect something, but what about when you do something? Agreeing with what people say?

[04:50]

Well, yeah, you could say so. What else? What do you think this story really says to us? Yeah, watch what you're doing. That's good. What else? Planting is the treasure, yeah. Yeah, that's good too. Those are all good. What else? All those kind of go together and they kind of sum up to something, all those answers. Nature is a treasure? Yeah, right. Nature is a treasure. Your own nature. is a treasure, yeah.

[05:53]

Right, there are different kinds of treasure, right. And maybe just doing the work is the treasure. Nope. But that's what you said, you said not expecting something, right? That's good. Don't trust anyone over 30. Don't trust the old grass. The old grass? Well, what would you trust then if you don't trust the old grass? So those are very good answers. I think you understood very well. I would say the treasure is in doing something.

[07:05]

What's the most important thing in your life? What? Being alive. Right. And what makes being alive interesting? people, what else? Ducks, yeah, but the thing that you would say in your own heart, what is the thing that's most interesting about life? I'll say it, having fun. So there's one thing that's the same thing but it's different for kids and grown-ups.

[08:07]

For kids it's called fun and for grown-ups it's called satisfaction. When you're a kid, you like to have fun. That's the kid's job, is to have fun. And when you've grown up, that's not what your mom thinks, I know. But your mom isn't always right. She's right most of the time. But when you grow up, fun becomes satisfaction. So, you're looking for satisfaction when you grow up and you're looking for fun when you're a kid. Same thing, but one is when you grow up, you get mature and fun turns into satisfaction.

[09:17]

And satisfaction comes from enjoying what you do. So even though we have hard jobs or we're old, we like our jobs, even though they're hard, because there's satisfaction. I think that's where our treasure lies, in knowing how to be satisfied. Don't you think so? Anyway, that's my story for today and thanks for your listening and answering my questions. I feel satisfied. Did you have fun? Okay, bye.

[10:22]

So I want to continue with the story. Master Mumon says to his monks, he says, between heaven and earth, within the universe, there is one treasure. It is hidden in the mountain form. You take the lantern entering the Buddha hall, and take the temple gate, placing it above the lantern. It's a little confusing. In the introduction to this koan, Master Ngo says, with untaught wisdom he engages in the subtle action of inaction. With unsolicited compassion he becomes your true friend.

[12:09]

With a single word he kills you and saves you. In one move he lets you go and holds you fast. Tell me, who is it that comes in this way?" And then he says, see the following, which I just read, the main subject. Uman said to the assembled monks, between heaven and earth within the universe there is one treasure It is hidden in the mountain form. You take the lantern, entering the Buddha hall, and take the temple gate, placing it above the lantern." Getting back to the introduction, he says, with untaught wisdom he engages in the subtle action of inaction. Untaught wisdom is like your own intrinsic prajna. It also means your understanding without a teacher, literally, means understanding without use of a teacher.

[13:28]

And so this understanding without use of a teacher is everyone's own intrinsic ability. Whether you have a teacher or don't have a teacher, what you get is without a teacher. It doesn't mean you shouldn't have a teacher. Some people say, well, Shakyamuni Buddha didn't have a teacher, so why should I have a teacher? People say this sometimes. But Shakyamuni Buddha had many, many teachers, actually. and he used up all the best teachers of his time. He studied with them and went beyond them and found his own true understanding, but not without the aid of teachers, by any means.

[14:33]

And in the end, every one of us has to go beyond our teacher This is the nature of teaching and the nature of learning. And a teacher should be able to help the student to go beyond the teacher. So in Zen there's a saying that if you don't go beyond your teacher then your understanding isn't your own. So he says, with untaught wisdom he engages in the subtle action of inaction. This subtle action of inaction, in Taoism it's called wu-wei, and it means something like non-doing.

[15:40]

In Soto Zen it's called mokka-sho. Mokka-sho means, from a Buddhist point of view, non-doing. Non-doing doesn't mean not to do something, but it means to go with things, to not obstruct doing, to not stand in the way of that which does. or it means activity without egocentricity. So you can say that a human being is the link between heaven and earth. When you become the link between heaven and earth, where heaven and earth meet, or where form and emptiness meet, as one piece, then this is called body-mind dropping off, and it's also called non-doing, or moksho zen.

[17:04]

Sometimes it's used as a derogatory term for Soto Zen, but because people think of Soto Zen as and interpret non-doing as just sitting quietly without doing anything. But that's not the meaning of moksha. It means dynamic activity without doing. The koan of Zazen, you know, is think not thinking. What's think not thinking? Non-thinking. But it doesn't mean that there are no thoughts. It means thinking thinks, doing does. When the thought and the activity have no gap, this is not thinking.

[18:21]

when your activity has no ego, this is called non-doing. In other words, when we're not standing outside of activity, this is oneness, duality. when we are completely doing then it's not non-doing. So this is a kind of language that expresses but doesn't explain. So he says, with untaught wisdom he engages in the subtle action of inaction.

[19:30]

He's talking about Muman, Master Muman. With unsolicited compassion he becomes your true friend, means that because of who Muman is, he's Avalokitesvara, he's the embodiment of compassion. because he's not separate from each one of us and he just responds to our condition. This is the mark of a teacher. An enlightened teacher has no particular idea but just responds to your condition. without any special thought when you appear, he just helps you.

[20:35]

That's his only desire in life, and he just does it naturally. with a single word he kills you and saves you. Kills you means, you know, with a single word, when the student is really ready then with a single word the teacher can say something and cut through completely to the essence of the student, which kills the student and then the student springs back to life. So killing means letting go of ego and then true personality springs to life.

[21:43]

But we have to be able to trust ourselves. This is one of the problems that we have and people have in practice, is the problem of being able to trust ourself when we step off into the unknown, to trust that we're taken care of. So it's important to have great faith in practice and that comes through confidence in what we're doing. You can't just have it. You have to have a little confidence, and confidence is an aspect of faith. And then when you step off, you feel that you're taken care of. So he says, with a single word he kills you and saves you.

[22:55]

So the teacher can take everything away, but with compassion. So sometimes the teacher takes everything from you and you're left with nothing. Sometimes the teacher gives everything to you and you feel very full. But this teacher has to be skillful enough to know when to take away and when to give. In one move he lets you go and holds you fast. Tell me, who is it that comes in this way? Main subject. This is Master Umban, one of the most famous teachers in the Tang Dynasty. He said to the assembled monks, between heaven and earth, between the universe, within the universe, there is one treasure.

[24:00]

What is that one treasure? Between heaven and earth, within the universe, hidden in this mountain form. It is hidden in the mountain form. So this is the mountain form. His body-mind is the mountain form. And within this mountain form there is one treasure. That was a really good story that I've told to the kids. That's Aesop's Zen. Hidden in them, you know, they're digging in the earth. but actually they're digging into their own hidden treasure. There's nothing there. What's in the earth is what's in ... they're digging into their own true nature. It's a great metaphor for practice. In order to find this treasure, you can't look for the treasure.

[25:07]

are expedient means, the Lotus Sutra is full of expedient means. The father in the Lotus Sutra is always leading the children on with little fairy stories to encourage them, but when they finally reach the end of their understanding they realize that it's just expedient means. And the answers of the kids were very good, they weren't all complete, but each one of the kids had a different aspect of the story, and they were all pointing at the same thing. So he says, you take the lantern entering the Buddha hall,

[26:10]

and take the temple gate, placing it above the lantern. Lantern, you know, in China in the old days they used to have little paper lanterns and when the monks went into the Buddha hall they would take these little paper lanterns in order to read the sutras. And temple gate, the metaphor of temple gate means the gate of liberation, the various gates of liberation. So, taking the lantern into the Buddha Hall, you know, when you go to the Buddha Hall, you take your own lantern, your own light. In another koan, Muhammad says, everyone has his own light, but when you try to see it, it's dark and dim, black like lacquer. So in order to find our light we have to take our light with us in order to look for our light.

[27:18]

Buddha wisdom is expressed in many different ways, so seeking mind is the mind we seek for is manifested by the mind we seek for. So, when you take the lantern entering the Buddha hall and the temple gate, placing it above the lantern, placing the gate of liberation in front of you. In other words, just doing the work is itself the thing you're looking for. In the morning, we go into the zendo with the lantern.

[28:30]

When we come out of the zendo, we carry the temple gate with us into our daily activity, back and forth, back and forth. One of my favorite talks of Suzuki Roshi, I'll read it to you, he says, I think that most of us study Buddhism like something which was already given to us. We think that what we should do is preserve the Buddha's teaching like putting food in and that to study Buddhism is to take the food out of the refrigerator whenever you want it. This is like, you know, if we wanted to study Buddhism, we studied the Buddhist texts, and the precepts, and the Eightfold Path, and blah, blah, blah.

[29:41]

And it's all preserved for us, and we just pick it up and use it. like putting something in a drawer and taking it out again, or putting it on a bookshelf and taking it off again, when we want to know what Buddhism is. Instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce food from the field, from the garden, should put the emphasis on the ground. If you look at the empty garden you won't see anything, but if you take care of the seed it will come up. The joy of Buddhism is the joy of taking care of the garden, and our effort is to see something come out of the ground. That is why we put the emphasis on emptiness. Emptiness is the garden where you cannot see anything, but which is actually the mother of everything, from which everything will come.

[30:43]

All of us have Buddha nature, and the teachings which grow from Buddha nature are the same. So actually the teaching of different schools of Buddhism did not differ so much, but the attitude towards the teaching is different. When you think that the teaching is already given to you, then naturally your effort will be to apply the teaching to this common world. For instance, Theravadan students apply the teaching of the 12 links of causation to our actual life and how we were born and how we die, but the Mahayana Understanding is that the original purpose of this teaching, when Buddha told it, was to explain the interdependency of different beings. Buddha tried to save us by destroying our common sense. Usually as human beings, we are not interested in the nothingness of the ground. Our tendency is to be interested in something which is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest,

[31:48]

The most important thing is to make rich soil and to cultivate it well. The Buddha's teaching is not about the food itself, but about how it is grown and how to take care of it. Buddha was not interested in a special given deity, in something which is already there. He was interested in the ground from which the various gardens will appear. For him, everything was a holy thing. Buddha said, if people are good, then a good Buddha will appear. This is a very interesting remark. Buddha did not think of himself as some special person. He tried to be like the most common person, wearing a robe, going begging with a bowl. He thought, I have many students because the students are very good, not because of me. Buddha was great because his understanding of emptiness and his understanding of people was good. Because he understood people, he loved people, and he enjoyed helping them. Because he had that kind of spirit, he could be a Buddha. So our practice in Zen Center is based on this kind of understanding of Suzuki Roshan.

[33:10]

Just taking care of the empty ground, and sometimes you wonder, what am I doing? What's going on there? Because usually we expect to see something. We want something, some tangible result. We want some wonderful flowers or some good vegetables, something that we can see, some fruit of our activity. But practice is just to take care of the ground, bare ground. And then, at some point, we have a surprise. And we realize that something has happened, but it's not what we expected.

[34:19]

And as long as we expect something to happen, will always be disappointed, because it won't happen the way we expect it to happen. So, as a Zen student, we just dig, just keep turning over the earth, without any expectation, even two or three times. It seems like a lot, but And then someday we get enlightened and we say, oh, that's what it was. That's what he was talking about. But we don't know what that is. But we have to have satisfaction every step of the way. If we don't have satisfaction every step of the way, then why not?

[35:32]

If we don't have satisfaction every step of the way, it's because we haven't died yet. we're still the old person, same old person, waiting for something wonderful to happen. And as long as we're the same old person waiting for something wonderful to happen, we can't see what's happening under our feet. And that's the truth. And you don't have to believe this old man. So I encourage you all to question, why am I not getting satisfaction from my practice? And if you ask me, I'll tell you the same thing I just said.

[36:42]

So it's important to come up against a stone wall in our practice. And that stone wall is, we don't know what it is, but it's ourself. And then to be able to go through the stone wall is the next step. It's not difficult, it's just that we have to be ready to do that. So please enjoy your practice. Have fun.

[37:45]

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