The great ancestor, Nanyue Huairang, went to visit another great ancestor named Dajian Huaineng, who is called the sixth ancestor of Zen. And when he arrived, the sixth ancestor said, Where from? And Huairang said, From Mount Song. And the ancestor said, What is it that thus comes? Huairang said, To say it's this would miss the point.

[01:13]

The ancestor said, Well, then, is there no practice and verification? Huairang said, I don't say there's no practice and verification. I just say that it cannot be defiled. The ancestor said, This non-defilement is guarded by all the Buddhas. You are thus, I am thus, too. As all things come forth, we might ask, What is it that thus comes?

[02:33]

To talk about it or point at it misses the point. It's not that there's no caring for this. It's not that there's no conducting or living this and confirmation of this, but simply that it must not be defiled. These are great Buddhist teachers meeting here in this story, and the essence of their life is compassion. They are totally dedicated to the welfare of all beings. This is their aspiration, this is their dedication.

[03:46]

Their main concern is not to defile it by pointing at it. There are many forms of what we call Mahayana Buddhism or the Buddhism which is concerned with the salvation of all beings. The Zen school is one of these types of Buddhism, and sometimes people say that Zen is a very pure form of the kind of Buddhism which is dedicated to saving all beings. The funny thing about that is that when I say Zen is a pure form, I always feel funny saying that. I mean, I don't always feel funny about it because I don't say it very often, but it feels funny for me to say that about Zen because in some ways what attracted me to Zen was that

[04:48]

it had no signs of purity. When some Zen teachers are asked, what is Buddha, they say, a piece of shit, or a tree in the courtyard, or what's the price of rice in New Lincoln. So, to me, it seems like Zen was not a very puristic form of Buddhism. It has no signs of being pure. That's why it's so pure, is that you never, I shouldn't say you never, but the spirit of Zen is not to have any signs of purity or impurity. Just as simply thus, without talking about it or pointing at it, I'd like to talk a little

[06:11]

bit more about how to protect your compassionate heart from the defilement, including the defilement of the signs of purity. One of the names, or one of the alternative names, for our meditation practice is called is the ocean seal concentration. That's not intended as a pun. A seal in this case means a seal like a circle or a stamp that's placed on something, a ring

[07:19]

or a circle, that kind of seal, not the mammal. In this type of concentration practice, Dogen Zenji says that while swimming on the surface of the ocean, you should also simultaneously be walking on the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. While swimming on the surface of the ocean, you also walk on the bottom of the ocean.

[08:32]

Now ordinarily, of course, swimming on the top of the ocean, on the surface of the ocean, you cannot imagine that your feet are touching the bottom of the ocean, especially if you're doing ordinary style swimming like the crawl or the side stroke or something, your body actually is sort of usually parallel to the ground, to the surface of the water, right? So how are your feet going to reach down to the bottom of the ocean, especially a deep ocean? You're not even trying to get them down there, right? You could sort of do, what do you call it, what do they call it, a treading water, then your feet are hanging down always, right? But that's only going to reach down about maybe six feet at the most, or seven or eight if you're really tall. That's not going to get to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean, right?

[09:38]

And that's not the way to get to the bottom. The way to get to the bottom, how do you get to the bottom? How can you walk in the bottom? Well, I don't know exactly how you walk in the bottom, but I do know that part of what must happen is that on the surface of the water, you have to really put your whole effort into swimming on top of the water. And if you're doing the side stroke, you have to do the side stroke, not another stroke. You have to be wholehearted about the stroke or style of swimming that you're doing. That's what I think. At the same time, accompanying the total effort to swim the way you're swimming on the surface,

[10:41]

you're walking on the bottom of the ocean. Here's another story about this. One day, another ancestor of ours named Yun Yan was sweeping the ground, sweeping the ground with a broom, and his brother came up to him and said, his brother Da Wu came up to him and said, you're busy, aren't you? And Yun Yan said, you should know that there's one who's not busy. And then the one who was sweeping, Yun Yan, said, well, does that mean there's two moons? And... no, no, I mixed it up, sorry. Yun Yan was sweeping and Da Wu came over and said, you're busy, aren't you?

[11:44]

And then the one who was sweeping said, you should know that although I'm sweeping, there's one who's not busy. And there's one who's not sweeping. And then Da Wu said, oh, does that mean that there's two moons? And Yun Yan raised his broom and said, which moon is this? And Da Wu walked off. Is it clear why I brought this story up? Do you understand? Do you understand? Well, I would just simply say that sweeping the ground is swimming on the surface, and

[12:47]

while swimming on the surface or while sweeping the ground, there's one who's not busy. The one who's not busy touches the bottom of the ocean, just like, as you might imagine, the bottom of the ocean, there's no waves. The bottom of the ocean is not busy, in a sense. Maybe, actually, it's really busy down there, I don't know. Maybe there's more fish down at the bottom than anyplace else, but I don't think there's... there's hardly any fish down at the bottom, I think. What do you think? Yeah, it's... the pressure's a little heavy for almost anything to live. There are, I think, some fish who can live almost at the bottom of the ocean, but basically there's not much going on, not in the deepest part of the ocean. So while you're busy in your life, you should know that there's one who's not busy.

[13:51]

While you're anxious in your life, also remember that there's one who's not anxious. So the practice we're proposing is a practice of being on the surface and being anxious, of being nervous, of being happy or being sad, being worried, being not worried, whatever, simultaneously remembering that there's one who's walking on the bottom of the ocean, completely calm and not anxious. But this one is not busy, this one's really not busy. So, in other words, it's not even busy enough to be into knowing that it's busy, or even into knowing that it's not busy. It's so peaceful that it doesn't even think about being peaceful. It's so unanxious that it doesn't even have the anxiety of being appreciating that it's not anxious.

[14:59]

It's really not busy at all. It doesn't have the slightest bit of activity. Now, not only is that the case, but then the other one says, does that mean there's two moons? Does that mean there's a busy one and an unbusy one? And yin-yang raises his broom and says, which moon is this? Is this the busy one or the unbusy one? Is this the surface of the ocean or the bottom of the ocean? Is this swimming on the surface or is this walking on the bottom? You can say what you want. This is your last chance.

[16:02]

Until now. If you say, I'll tell you, if you say this is the surface, that's fine. You can say that. And that comment, where is that coming from, the surface or the bottom? I don't know. You can also say it's the bottom. Where is that coming from? Is it coming from the surface? Sounds like it's pretty active to be talking like that, to say, oh, there's a stick that's on the surface. OK, I'll say it's on the surface. Sounds pretty busy, doesn't it? But maybe that comment's coming from the unbusy one. Just like last night I said, do you think bodhidharma, the way he was acting, was infinite compassion? Somebody said no. Somebody else said yes. Where is that coming from? I don't know. You can say yes. You don't know where it comes from.

[17:07]

Who knows? And maybe the one who said yes was the one who isn't even busy enough to know anything and just talks big. There are two parts of our life. There's a busy part and an unbusy part. The unbusy part is really innocent. It's really simple. It's in the dark and it's happy. And it's happy in a way that's not happy because of something. It's happy because everything's touching, everything, in the dark.

[18:07]

It's happy because everything's the same and you can't tell any difference between this and that. And nobody's home. There's not even that much activity. The other part of our life, there is difference and there's unhappiness and there's also happiness. But the happiness is because of difference and the unhappiness is because of difference, not because of sameness. These two parts of our life are our whole life. Now, one more story about this. And it's a story, well, yeah, it's a story. It's a story about this man in China who liked dragons. And he collected dragons of various kinds,

[19:18]

carved dragons, carved out of wood, out of coral, out of jade, out of lapis lazuli, and maybe some other kinds too, I don't remember exactly how many kinds he had, but he had lots of carved dragons. And then, one day, a dragon was flying, a real dragon was flying over his house and found out that this guy liked dragons so much so he went to visit. And he flew into the man's house and when the man saw him, the man fainted. In one sense, the story is saying that

[20:23]

if you ever saw the true dragon, a real dragon, you'd have trouble with what you might think. But another meaning, and a simultaneous meaning, which is true, I think, if you ever did see the real dragon, you might think, or at least you might give him a week in the knees. Or, I don't know what, something like that. Or your stomach might do a little flip. Or your palms might sweat. Or your eyes might bulge. And you'd probably have quite a reaction if you saw a real dragon. The real dragon means, I don't know what, the real version of what you're really interested in. What you're interested in, free of all your concepts of what it is,

[21:24]

imagine if it actually showed up. You might faint. But the other part of the story is that the reality that you're approximating by your efforts on the surface comes to meet your efforts on the surface. So you make some effort in life. You take care of your little life. And your big life, your life beyond the little world of words in which you're taking care of yourself, comes to meet you. And it meets you. And it meets you, but in a way, I would say, you know, let's say you had a couple of little dragons in your house,

[22:26]

little toy dragons that you had. I would say that probably all of the dragons flying overhead, all the time anyway, that unless you have a really good collection, and by a really good collection, I don't mean objectively a really good collection like somebody would say, well, this person has like four million carved dragons in the house, and that's a good collection. That isn't what I would mean by a good collection. I would mean by a good collection that you had the collection which was your total effort to collect dragons. Now, if you were just a little squirt, and you just started, you might only have one dragon, or maybe not even one. You might just only have the idea of it, just a sort of a figment of a dragon. That might be your dragon collection. But that might be all you could come up with at that time. Somebody else who had been collecting dragons for a long time might have many more. But somebody might have not, given how many dragons they could have collected,

[23:28]

they might not have had very many. And all of the dragons flying overhead, the dragon might not come down to visit, because it might feel like you really weren't that interested in dragons, because you have a half-hearted collection. Now, if you were really interested in collecting dragons, I mean, if you were really interested in collecting dragons, what do you think you'd have in your house? Dragon food. Dragon food. Yeah, dragon food. What else might you have in your house? Well, I propose to you that

[24:28]

if you really were interested in collecting dragons, you would just have dragons in your house. That's all you'd have. In other words, you'd be totally into dragons. I'm talking about really interested. That's pretty severe, and pretty pure, too. In other words, there's nothing else you'd be doing but collecting dragons. That's a dragon collector. And if you were really interested in collecting dragons, and that is Zen practice. Dogen Zenji says, don't praise or despise the carved dragon. Rather, become adept at carving dragons,

[25:35]

or the carved dragon. Don't go around your house saying, well, you know, my dragon collection is not that good. It's just not that good a dragon collection. And also don't walk around and say, you know, my dragon collection is really the best. It's really a great dragon collection. And not only that, but dragon collecting is really where it's at. Don't esteem yourself. Don't esteem your little dragon. And also don't despise it. Become adept at your dragon collection, at your dragon carving. He also says, don't esteem or despise the real dragon. Don't say, well, the real dragon is really where it's at,

[26:38]

because it's a real dragon. But also don't say, well, the real dragon is not actually that good because if I saw it, I'd faint. Rather, become adept at the real dragon. How do you become adept at the real dragon? Well, there's no real way you can do that, you know, by directly doing it. It actually comes to meet you in your efforts at what's close at hand, namely your body and mind. Your body and mind is your carved dragon. And to be totally into only your body and mind, I should say your body-mind, and not dabble in anything else but your body and mind.

[27:40]

Your body-mind. That's all you're concerned with, only that. That is also what it means to meet the real dragon. That's what it also means to walk in the bottom of the ocean. One of the things we call our practice in Zen is, in Japanese, it's called shikan taza. Shikan means, basically, just do it. Or, get on with it. Or, by all means, do it.

[28:43]

By all means, do it. By all means, do it. By every possible means, do it. And then taza means sit. But shikan can be applied to all things. Just carve dragons, just swim in the ocean, just breathe, just sit, just talk, just dance, just sing. And just means, just do it. It means there's no room for bringing to what you're doing anything extra. You cannot bring an idea of what sitting means to the sitting. That's not just sitting. That's sitting plus bringing an idea of sitting on top of sitting.

[29:46]

Just be helpful means you're just helpful. You do not know about anything brought to that helpfulness. No self is imported to your activity. Just do it. The word shikan, which means just do it, the word just in English has maybe more meanings than the shikan in Japanese does. But the word just in English is really a great word. I think maybe, although I can't say that the Chinese original had all these meanings, in fact, I feel that all these meanings apply to our effort in what we're doing. And the English word just encapsulates, I think, very nicely the spirit of practice.

[30:50]

The spirit of practice in terms of the surface, in terms of the close, small-scale world of concepts we live in. The word just, I think, meets the bill, so to speak. So here's some meanings for just. Okay? Just is an adjective and an adverb. As an adjective it means honorable and fair in one's dealings and actions. It means consistent with moral right, fair and equitable. It means properly due as in just desserts.

[31:54]

And that's a pun, right? Valid within the law, legitimate, suitable, fitting, sound, well-founded, a just appraisal, exact, accurate, a just measure, upright before the truth. As an adjective it means precisely, exactly, it means at the exact moment of, it means only a moment ago, it means by a narrow margin, barely,

[33:01]

it means but a little distance, it means merely or only, it means simply and certainly. I think all those meanings of just could apply to the way we swim on the surface. Did you hear them all? I think they're all true for the way you do anything in your life, on the surface of your life, in the superficial, phenomenal, things you're doing, whatever they are. Just think about those things. Just, and barely, and simple, simply, only, precisely, at this moment, and also just a moment ago, correctly,

[34:05]

honorably. In other words, to really honorably and righteously do something you really just do it. Oftentimes, I think, we think that to do something in an honorable or righteous way, you would do something and you bring to it an honorable or righteous way, right? Isn't that the way you do it? That's the usual way, isn't it? You import righteousness onto the activity. You have an activity and you do something to make it righteous. But what I'm proposing here is that that defiles the activity, that the way to make it really righteous and really honorable and really morally correct is not to do anything but the thing. .

[35:19]

Even to say, it's this, when you're doing something, even to say it's this, already misses the point. Even to talk about it misses the point. This undefiled way is protected by all Buddhas. . Do you understand? Does that make sense, tonight?

[36:45]

Okay. Good. Tonight's song, I don't know, it's not so commonly known as the other ones were. I don't even know who wrote this song. I think it was popular in the, I hear it was popular in the 60s, but I didn't know this at the time. And it goes something like this, I think. Listen, listen to my, no. Listen, listen to, no. Listen, listen to my heart's song. Listen, listen to my heart's song. I will never forget you. I will never forsake you. I will never forget you. Okay. Let's start over, okay? One, two, three. Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song. Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song.

[37:53]

I will never forget you. I will never forsake you. I will never forget you. I will never forsake you. Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song. Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song. I will never forget you. I will never forsake you. I will never forget you. I will never forsake you. Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song. Listen, listen, listen to my high song, I will never forget you, I will never forsake you, I will never forget you, I will never forsake you. I think there's a mystery in the feelings of my eyes, I think there's a mystery in the feelings of my eyes, I

[38:56]

can't help but wish that I were there for safety, I can't help but wish that I were there for safety. In the darkness, I allow to waken them. Illusions are inexhaustible, I allow to tend them.

[40:31]

Normal things are boundless, I allow to render them. Loyalty is unsurpassable, I allow to make comments.

[40:49]

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