August 15th, 1993. A Sunday morning in the domain of Buddha ancestors, an extraordinary day. The Buddha spreads her drenched patch robe over the valley of the green dragon.

[01:07]

to protect gently those who have assembled for a seven-day retreat. Seven days of vowing to hear the true Dharma and to maintain the Buddhadharma. Seven days of practicing virtue by putting their very self into every action.

[02:16]

Having the courage to enter the realm where mind and nature do their dance. and thus to discover the wound in our heart from which all woe comes. And patiently settling with this wound, it is healed. In this way, the pain of the assembly has turned into 64 pearls.

[03:41]

Over and over, A middle-aged Zen priest brings up an ancient precedent that exactly one thousand fifty years before, the great Zen student, Cloud Gate, asked another assembly, What level of activity is this? Answering on their behalf, he demonstrates today.

[05:10]

The Dharma rain falls on North Mountain. Breathing in, drink the Dharma rain. Breathing out, spray it on all sentient beings. Then 100 years later, or 950 years ago, Cloud Gates, great-grandson, celebrates this question.

[06:35]

South Mountain rain, South Mountain clouds, North Mountain rain. 28 and 6. See it right before them. The 28 Indian ancestors saw this realm. The six Chinese ancestors saw it too, but not with the fleshy eye, but more endeared with the eye of spirit, the eye of spirit which is in your guts

[07:48]

Right now, looking at the wound in your heart. In Korea, they've already gone up to the hall. In China, they haven't yet beaten the drum. Suffering in happiness, happiness in suffering. Who says that gold is no better than shit?

[09:03]

The ancients couldn't stop repeating themselves. So again, Tien Tung celebrates Cloud Gate's question. The unique path of spiritual light has never been concealed from the first. transcending subject and object, it's so and yet nothing's so. Going beyond emotional assessments, it's proper and yet nothing's proper. The pollen

[10:46]

of the flowers in the mountains. In the house of bees becomes honey. The nutrients of the wild grasses in the stomach of the musk deer becomes perfume. according to kind, sometimes a three-foot statue of the Buddha, sometimes a sixteen-foot pillar. Clearly, whatever you contact is abundantly evident.

[11:50]

Whatever you touch is brilliantly magnificent. The middle-aged 20th century priest says, please eat and chew thoroughly. At the exact moment that Tien Tung sings this song, 300 miles away, Oh, that's wrong. Not at the same time. At the same time as Sui Du, 300 miles away, our ancestor, Tung An, asked Liang Shan, what is the business under this patch robe?

[13:07]

Liang Shan couldn't answer, and Tung An said, to study the Buddha way and not reach this realm is most miserable. This valley monk says, if you don't reach this realm, you're a sitting duck. When the karmic dials are turned, you don't really have a chance unless you can witness the most satisfying of sights, the perfect union of that which is completely separate. the utter rend in complete unity.

[14:22]

This is the most satisfying vision. You won't thirst anymore once you see this. You will be at peace and no one will tempt you. Today, many texts come into my hand. This one is about what it's like when you don't reach this realm. It was brought all the way from New York by carrier pigeon.

[15:34]

With a little introduction. The introduction is, the owl of Minerva only flies at dusk. The owl of Athena only flies at dusk. Here's some dusk for you. When the young husband picked up his friend's pretty wife, in the taxi one block from her townhouse for their first lunch together in a hotel dining room with a room key in his pocket. Midtown traffic gridlocked.

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and was abruptly still for one moment before the Claxton's honking. A prophetic voice spoke in his mind's ear despite his pulses erotic thudding. Quote, the misery you undertake this afternoon will accompany you to the ends of your lives. She knew what she did when she agreed to this lunch. although she will not admit it.

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And you've constructed your playlet a thousand times. Cocktails, an omelet, wine, the revelation of a room key, The elevator rising as the organ elevates. The skin flushed. The door fumbled at. The handbag dropped. The first kiss with open mouths. Nakedness, swoon, thrust and catch. endorphins followed by endearments, a brief nap, another fit, restoration of clothes, arrangements for another encounter, the taxi back, the future deferred of kiss, goodbye, then by turns, tears, treachery, anger,

[19:15]

betrayal of marriages and houses destroyed. Small children abandoned and inconsolable, their four-square estates disestablished forever. Readable advocates. The wretchedness of passions outworn. Anguished nights, sleepless in a bare room. Whiskey, meth, cocaine, new love. Essayed in loneliness with miserable strangers. that comforts nothing but skin.

[20:18]

Hours with sons and daughters studious always to maintain distrust. The daily desire to die and the daily agony of the requirement to survive until Only the quarrel endures. The prophecy stopped. The traffic resumed. According to our ancestors, there's lots of different kinds of Buddhas.

[23:13]

They live different amounts of time. Some live just for one day and one night. These Buddhas are called moon-face Buddhas. Shakyamuni Buddha lived for 80 years. He's called Shakyamuni Buddha. Cloud Gate lived for 49 plus 36 years. You add it up. He's called the Cloud Gate Master.

[24:20]

And some Buddhas live for 1800 years, and they're called Sun Face Buddhas. When the great master, who was called Horse Master, was about to die, the director of the monastery came to him and said, Master, how is your venerable health these days? And the great teacher said, Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. Do you have something better to watch? I don't.

[25:44]

And yet, sometimes I think I do. What a fool. Can I be tough on him? My teacher, your teacher, Shogaku Shinryu Daisho, had a pretty soft front. I used to watch him talk to little old ladies after service on Sunday. And I was always surprised how different he was with them than he was with me.

[26:53]

A jolly little elf. And one time I saw a picture of him talking to one of these little old ladies from the back, from his back. And from his back, he looked like an iron mountain. He was pretty strict with himself and very gentle with us. We asked him, Hiroshi, please be more strict with us. He said, well, if I was, you'd all run away. He was the type of teacher who decided to have some people around. Someday a teacher may come to Zen Center who doesn't care about that and we'll all leave

[28:00]

Maybe. Please be strictly yourself so nobody else has to. Give your teacher a break. Still, celebrating this story, Sway Du says, about this dying teacher? Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. What kind of people are the ancient emperors of China? For 20 years, I've suffered bitterly. How many times have I gone down into the green dragon cave for you? This distress deserves recounting.

[29:10]

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Still, clear-eyed, patch-robe monks, please don't take this lightly. Please enter. Please go down into the green dragon cave. There's medicine in the mouth of the dragon. Or actually, I understand it's under the chin of the dragon. And it's a pearl. Walk up to the dragon. It's waiting for you to take the pearl. Put it in your mouth and chew it up If this sounds like lofty talk, it's not.

[30:17]

It's talk about going down to the lowest place. The lowest place. The deepest distress. And the only way you're going to be able to stand to do that is to make yourself very comfortable. And the way to make yourself very comfortable is to not move. You get in the elevator called not moving and it goes right down into the cave and you'll be quite relaxed and you can just gently shuffle right over to the dragon and get your pearl. It's waiting for you to get it. This pearl's, you know, a burden for this dragon to hold. It wants to sit up straight. It wants a break. Go get it." And then, Ken Tung celebrates the same story, and what does he say?

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Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. Stars fall, thunder rolls. Brazilian sneeze. The mirror faces forms. The mirror faces forms without subjectivity. The pearl in the bowl rolls on itself. Don't you see Before the hammer, gold has already been refined hundreds of times. Under the scissors, silk has already lived in the loom for thousands of threads.

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You don't have to do any more work. You just need to have the courage to completely admit all the work you've ever done and the bitter consequences of that work. And today, another celebration of this realm, the priest, Dragon Cave, says, a round of memories, a hope in transference. In Bulgaria, after 40 years of slavery, in Mexico where the floor is mud when it rains and the spiders are big as your fist.

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Neither in thought that holds in quietness raw, painful experience, nor in the lurid, sharp occurrences of the senses neither in rain nor in snow, neither in hot, moist, sunny air, not holding to one, not holding to many, but in measure hopes suspended, suffuses everything with a glow as if it were being, as if It were just there, merely there. As if even saying this were gratuitous. And we were not obliged to see or speak.

[35:03]

Yet we did it. For the wonders of it and the foolishness in it smoke in the corporeal distance, trees in the intimacy of glad space. I wanted to have all of us go work in the mud in the fields today, to enact nirvana with a hole and weeds.

[36:19]

But I understand that you've already packed up and have no place to change into work clothes. So I don't know if we can do that. That's what I want to do. I'm sorry if it doesn't work out. And if we went down those fields, what I would hope would be that each of us would put our very self into every action of body, speech, and thought, moment after moment. And that we would each have the courage to enter the space of the ancestors to go through the brambles of pain to the quiet place where Buddhas and pillars merge and where we are finally safe and satisfied, untemptable.

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to engage in any one-sided actions. Now we're in this place. Or, if we're not, I think we're all just a hair's breadth away from it. I don't recommend holding on to this attainment. That's not the spirit of it. Let go of it and it will come back into your hand.

[38:49]

But in letting go, put your very self into the letting go so that you'll be there when it comes into your hand again. We must practice virtue. We must be brave. Otherwise, we're going to miss the show. I vow to practice virtue and courage with you I may forget and slip, but I'll never give up this vow. I have no choice anyway, and I don't want to. I am afraid I will slip. I don't take it lightly. but I'm not going to let these slips stop me from getting up in the place I fall and continuing to walk with all sentient beings.

[40:08]

I sincerely ask you to consider what your vow is and if you can find it Put it in the pot of the ancestors. Put it in the bathtub of the ancestors. Climb in and steep yourself in your vow. Let it enter every pore of your body. Let it go and watch it come back. The difficulty of doing this should not be taken lightly.

[41:22]

The success in doing this should be taken lightly. The obstacles of powerful habits should be respected and honored. We should not underestimate the enemies of our mind habits But it's okay to underestimate and take lightly our personal attainments. Not because they're not wonderful, because they are, but because we should let them go and go back into the mud with all sentient beings, which is where our attainments came from. I'm going to continue talking like this forever so now I can stop. If you want to do something interactive, we can do it after we chant.

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Now, a word from our sponsor.

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