as you may have noticed, during this session we have been gathering the mind of Buddha. We have been embracing and sustaining the mind of Buddha. And celebrating the the practice of embracing and sustaining the mind of the Buddhas. We've been celebrating the great function of the practice of embracing and sustaining the mind of the Buddhas. This practice is also called Zazen.

[01:13]

And we've been studying a poem by a Chinese monk named Hongzhi, Tiantong Hongzhi. His poem about Zazen, his poem about the point of Zazen. the great function of seated meditation, which he says is the pivotal activity of all Buddhas and the active pivot of all the ancestors. And I mentioned again that we have a text written by our founder in Japan called Fukunzazengi, which is the Universal Encouragements for Seated Meditation.

[02:16]

Actually, it's the Universal Encouragements for the Ceremony of Seated Meditation. And in there he recalls the story of Yaoshan sitting and the monk asking him what kind of thinking he's doing. And so he tells that dialogue. What kind of thinking are you doing? Thinking, not thinking. Thinking, not thinking. Thinking, not thinking. How is that beyond thinking? And then after saying that, Dogen says, this is the pivotal, the translation we have is, this is the essential art of Zazen. But again, that character there which is translated as essential is the character pivot.

[03:21]

This is the pivotal art of Zazen. This story tells the art of the pivot. the pivotal art, the art of pivoting of Zazen. And then later he says that the bringing about of awakening by a staff or a shout, these various stories of awakening in the Zen tradition, he quotes like eight of them. And he says they're all brought, they're all by means of the pivotal opportunity or the pivotal activity. And then again he says in our translation, you, you who are hearing this teaching are maintaining the essential work, are the essential working of the Buddha way. And again, it says also, another more literal, not literal, another translation would be, you are maintaining the pivotal working of the Buddha way.

[04:33]

How? By wholeheartedly sitting. Someone recently said to me, should I be doing something different? Or one could also say, and people do this, should I be doing things differently? Should I be doing something different or should I be doing things differently? And I said, no need to do anything different from what you're already doing. There's only a need to do what you're doing wholeheartedly. There's only the need to do what you're doing exhaustively and thoroughly.

[05:43]

If you are doing something, and you do it thoroughly, you will then move on to do something else. But it's not the something else that's the point. It's the doing what you're doing that's the point. When you do what you're doing, the pivot is there and you go beyond it to the next activity, which also doesn't need to be any different from what the next activity is and never will be. It'll always be what the next activity is. And again, at that time, you don't need to do something other than that. You need to do that completely in order to realize the pivotality of reality, in order to realize the vigorously jumping fish of that moment. And if you are completely still,

[06:47]

with what you're doing, you naturally transcend it and move on to the next thing, which hopefully you'll practice the same with. As I said earlier, whatever you're doing right now, I didn't actually say this, whatever you're doing right now, The Buddhas are just like you, right now. They're not doing something other than what you're doing. Whatever other people are doing, the Buddhas are just like them. They're not doing something different from what they're doing. The Buddhas are doing what you're doing, just like you're doing it. And you're doing what the Buddhas are doing, just like they're doing it. It's just that the Buddhas for sure are doing it completely.

[07:55]

And how about you? Also I mentioned before that this pivotal activity is knowing without touching things. Remember that? This pivotal activity is knowing without touching things, and not touching things is this knowing of the Buddha's pivotal function.

[09:01]

Remember that part? This knowing, also I mentioned, is not consciousness. It's not karmic consciousness. What is it? It is the wholeheartedness of a moment of karmic consciousness. So again, this knowing is not, I'm here knowing that over there. That's touching things. It's not that. But it is the wholeheartedness of that. And the wholeheartedness is the pivotality of that moment of consciousness.

[10:07]

It is the non-abiding of being in that position completely. and it is thereby the liberation of that karmic consciousness. By realizing the nature of the karmic consciousness is that it's already liberated. And it's liberated in the position it's in. So the Buddha says, all events, all consciousnesses, all perceptions, all feelings, all emotions, are ultimately liberated and have no abode." And then Dogen comments, This is so, but there's also each event is abiding in its Dharma position.

[11:12]

So it's not like you go away from abiding to realize non-abiding. You are abiding where you are now, and when you do that completely, you realize the liberation of no abiding in the position you're abiding. Abiding and non-abiding are in a pivotal relationship. There's a case which I bring up a hundred, a thousand, a million times. It's a case about karmic consciousness. And

[12:16]

There's a conversation in this story. This story is a conversation between two monks in China. And one's taking the role of teacher, one's taking the role of successor. And the teacher says to the successor, all living beings just have karmic consciousness, boundless and unclear, with no fundamental to rely on. How would you test that? And the successor says, if someone comes, I say, hey you. If he turns his head, I say, what is it? If he hesitates, I say, all sentient beings just have karmic consciousness, boundless and unclear, with no fundamental to rely on.

[13:27]

And the teacher says, good. When a karmic consciousness comes, I say, hey you, if the head of the karmic consciousness turns, There's the pivot. There's the non-abiding. There's the vigorously jumping fish. But I'll test one more time. Give him another chance. Hey you! If he hesitates, then this is just karmic consciousness. unfulfilled, or call it uninflated. That's a tricky word. Anyway, unfulfilled karmic consciousness. And the tester can see, oh, there seems to be hesitation there.

[14:33]

He could test it again and there might be a recovery. But in one case, it's karmic consciousness. The other case, it is the vigorously jumping fish of karmic consciousness, which realizes that the pivotality of reality. And then there's another story right underneath that story as a comment. Again, two Chinese monks are talking. One's a famous teacher, the other is an unnamed student. The student says to the teacher, in the Avatamsaka Sutra it says that the fundamental affliction of ignorance is itself the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas.

[15:37]

That's what the monk brings up to the teacher. And the monk says, this seems really difficult and abstruse to the extreme. And the teacher says, oh, really? Oh, I don't see that. And the teacher says, watch. Nearby there was a boy sweeping. And the teacher said to the boy, hey, you. And the boy turned his head. And the teacher said to the student, is this not the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas? Then the teacher said to the boy, what is Buddha? And the boy hesitated. And the teacher whispered to the student, is this not the fundamental affliction of ignorance?

[16:44]

When you say to somebody, a living being, a karmic consciousness, you say, hey you, and the head turns with no hesitation, that is the head pivoting. That is the karmic consciousness pivoting. That pivoting of that karmic consciousness, that is, you could say, what Buddhas know. They know how to turn their head when called. totally be in this position, and then totally be in this position. There's nothing more to it than that. That's the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. Then the next one, what is Buddha? He hesitates. That's affliction, the hesitation. The pivot gets stuck. I'm stuck in being a good boy, being a good girl, having a smart answer.

[17:59]

I can't turn my head, I can't talk, because I've got to see something bright. That's the affliction of ignorance. That's the affliction of not knowing how to be fully a person This is only a five-day sesshin, and I just did an eight-day sesshin in Sweden, and it went by really fast. And so I thought, this sesshin's going to be not much time, only five days.

[19:04]

So yesterday, we got this gift, and the day got stretched. And today's going to get stretched, too. So don't worry. we're gonna have enough time." She asked me what I mean by that. What I mean by that I will now demonstrate. If you have a chance, watch carefully. So I was recently sitting in that little room there Or, you know, right outside there. I was sitting in the room with the window open, talking to somebody, and she was talking to me. I mean, I wasn't talking to her, she was talking to me. And I was trying to listen with ears of compassion.

[20:06]

happily making that effort. And she was talking and she said, I'm having trouble talking because I'm getting distracted by the chanting that's going on in the Zendo. She said, I love the chanting. I want to listen to it. I didn't say, go ahead. But she did. She stopped and listened to it and she was so happy to listen to it. Then she started talking and the chanting and also the chanting were distracting her again. They're also, at the same time that you guys were chanting, the crows were, I don't know what they were doing. I don't know if they were saying, shut up, or if they were saying, I don't know. But they were definitely squawking with you. They were right outside squawking with you while you were chanting. Did you hear them? No. I was in this nice position of listening so I could listen to you chanting and the crows squawking and my friends saying, I love the chanting, it's distracting me from talking.

[21:22]

It was a wonderful, amazing symphony this morning. And I heard you guys say, Hanyatara Dayosho, And I thought, oh, Hanyatara. Yeah, I hope they hear that name. They're saying Prajnatara. You said Prajnatara's name this morning. Hanyatara Dayosho. And then I thought about Prajnatara breathing in and breathing out. When Prajnatara's breathing in he doesn't need to do anything else besides breathe in. When she breathes out, she doesn't need to be doing something other than breathing out.

[22:25]

Can you imagine that? That when a great teacher's inhaling, she doesn't need to be doing something, like she doesn't need to be exhaling at that time. She doesn't need to be doing anything but what she's doing. And Prajnatara was totally on board with that. He was reciting the scripture of breathing in and not abiding in body or mind while breathing in. And totally breathing out, which is the same as not abiding in body and mind while breathing out. This is the scripture he chants, he recites, the scripture of totally doing what you're doing, so totally that you do not abide in body or mind. So we have this nice practice, nice, we have this magnificent practice here where we say Prajnatara Daya Osho and we get to remember her practice of

[23:29]

totally abiding in what you're doing. That's the teacher's practice. That's what's being transmitted to us. Do what you're doing so completely that you don't abide, and then you move on to the next opportunity. prajñātara dāyāyosho bodhāyadarūma dāyāyosho And I recited, and then Tiantong Hongzhi, the poet of our poem for this session, he also wrote a poem for Prajnatara's practice, which I gave you one line of. Do you want to hear the rest? This is a translation. This is not the original Chinese. Here's one translation.

[24:31]

A cloud rhino. Do you know what a cloud rhino is? It's a — who doesn't know? A whole bunch of people over there don't know. A cloud rhino is a cloud in the shape of a rhino. In China, as far as I know, they do not have any — they didn't used to have any rhinos. But by the time of these Zen stories, the Chinese people knew about rhinos. And I think they really liked rhinos. There's a lot of Zen stories about rhinos, and here's one. A cloud rhino gazes at the moon. You know what the moon is? A luminous cloud rhino gazes at the moon, gobbling up its radiance.

[25:47]

See the pivot between the moon and the rhino? It doesn't say that the moon's looking at the rhino, gobbling up its, reflecting its radiance. The moon reflects the sun, the rhino reflects the moon, the miner reflects the sun. This is a wholehearted rhino moon. Then it says, a wooden horse romps in the springtime, swift and unbridled. This is the way a bodhisattva breathes. Under the eyebrows, a pair of cool blue eyes. Prajnatara, I guess, had blue eyes.

[27:03]

And Bodhidharma supposedly did too. The clear mind produces vast eons. The heroic effort smashes the double enclosure. In the subtle round mouth of the pivot, the spiritual work turns. Hanshan forgot the way home or forgot the road by which he came. Siddha led him back by the hand. Do you want a commentary on Han Shang? Well, Han Shang can be translated into English as Cold Mountain. And he was a Chinese, I think, Tang Dynasty poet.

[28:10]

And he was a... I don't know what he was, but anyway, he was a wonderful poet who wandered mountains And he had a friend who was a monk whose name was Shiddha, who was, yeah, a monk. And they hung out together dancing madly in the mountains. But I think Shiddha was kind of like sort of a homing pigeon type of monk. So even though he was running in the mountains spouting poetry madly, he always found his way back to the monastery. Anyway, one day Hanshan was out there and couldn't figure out how to get back home, and Siddha found him and took his hand and led him back home.

[29:15]

This is their relationship, and it's an allusion to breathing. Breathing. The exhale is like Hanshan. Poetic inspiration into poetic expiration and not knowing where we are. And the inhalation takes the hand and brings it home. And then another. This is the loving relationship of Hanshan and Sheda and inhale, actually exhale and inhale. which our poet is celebrating by the poem, by the story of Prajnatara, and by his acupuncture needle of Zazen. Once again, I propose to you that, I mean, I share with you what I've heard, which is that the knowing of this pivotal activity of Buddha's is not karmic consciousness.

[30:41]

And then I suggest to you that what this knowing is, it is the total exertion, the wholehearted living of ordinary karmic consciousness to the point where the karmic consciousness becomes turning the head when called, raising the hand when asked if there's any questions, lowering it when your arm gets tired. These kinds of activities done wholeheartedly are the knowing of this pivotal activity. Not separate from karmic consciousness, the full exertion of karmic consciousness. The heroic effort of karmic consciousness. And another thing that came up in relationship to the, should I be doing something else, is what we call the, they're often called the ten ox-herding pictures of Zen, which describe various stages bodhisattvas go through.

[32:18]

And actually they're originally, I think, actually ten verses that pictures were drawn to go with them. And these pictures or these verses are about various stages. And the first stage is being totally lost and confused and scared and anxious and so on. That's the first stage. And so someone might be in the first stage and say, should I be doing something different other than being confused, lost, anxious? And I would say no. But I support you to be completely in the position you're in now

[33:27]

If you can be still with whatever position you're in, with whatever stage of practice you're at, if you're still with that and don't try to get anyplace else, you naturally move to the next stage. You can't help but move on. If you try, if you're not still here and try to go to the next stage without being here, you stay here. Until you, what do you call it, Serve your term. Wholeheartedly, you have served your term and you must move on. And when you get there, remember to do the same there and you will move on and on and on. I brought a little souvenir that I found.

[34:41]

And it says, it has a date on it. I think it's a date. It says 2-12-78. And it says Green Dragon Temple. Lecture note. And it says SR. That's an abbreviation for Suzuki Hiroshi. Our Zazen practice is just to be ourself without expecting anything, even in the smallest time. I laugh because I was going to offer this as an auction item. Suzuki Roshi had passed away at the time of that note, so it was me writing a note of something I remember he said, and I wrote it down.

[35:57]

Does that seem like nothing different from what I've been saying? Have the people in this session encouraged your zazen practice? Have you encouraged theirs? You hope you have. Has she encouraged your practice? You're a success. Yeah, it does seem to me like you all have encouraged each other to practice Zazen. And as I said, Suzuki Roshi said, that's the job of a Zen priest.

[37:21]

So thanks for helping the Zen priests out. You're doing the job of encouraging Zazen. Yes? I don't get what's so great about turning your head when someone says, hey, it would be more interesting if you didn't turn your head. So you don't get what's so great about turning your head. Nobody gets what's great about it. What's great about it is something that nobody can get. Even if all the Buddhas in ten directions tried to get how great it is, they would not be able to. What's great about turning your head when somebody calls is that it is the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. But you can't get that. You can't get how great that is.

[38:23]

It just is the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. Would not turning your head also be the immutable nature of all Buddhas? If it was wholehearted, yes. So what's the point? The point is the pivotal activity of all Buddhas. If you don't turn your head, is that the pivotal activity of all Buddhas? Yes. Okay, no problem. But if I didn't, it would also be. But didn't you just say if I didn't turn my head, it would also be? No, I thought I said if you didn't turn your head. I said yes to that one, but I'm asking, would it also be the pivotal activity if I didn't turn? Everything you do is the pivotal activity of all Buddhas because everything you do is non-abiding. Your nature is your nature. What you actually are up to is what Buddhas are up to, except they're a little bit more up to it than you are.

[39:27]

If you hold your head still and it's wholehearted, that pivots with turning your head. If you turn your head wholeheartedly, that pivots with not turning your head. So if the monk had, if the boy or the monk, if you say, hey you, you say hey you to somebody and they go like this, or like this, are like this. They pass the test. Then they get another one. What is it? Then they hesitate. They miss the boat. They miss the train. They miss the plane. They're out to lunch. But if you're there, young lady, completely and don't turn your head, then you realize not turning your head.

[40:48]

But if you hesitate and you miss out, then that's called missing out. So that's what he said. Then I say, what is it? If he hesitates, I say, karmic consciousness. If I say, hey you, and he's like a mountain, or a tear rolls down her cheek, originating in her eye, and rolls around on her chin, and pivots around, and then leaps out to the cloud rhino, But if the tear gets stuck in the eye and it's being held back, then I say karmic consciousness. So anything that you do will be. But if you try to be somebody else, look for some other way to be, and you don't use that opportunity, then you miss that one too.

[41:57]

So I missed this one. And I say, oh, I missed it. But I could say, ooh, when I said I missed it, I didn't miss it. I was there. And so I wasn't there. And I wasn't there. And I was there. And I was thinking. And I was not thinking. But the story was not, the monk didn't turn his head and he said, that's karmic consciousness. The monk didn't turn his head. He said, what is it? And he hesitated. The boy did turn his head. That's the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. If the boy had taken his broom and thrown it at the teacher wholeheartedly, then the teacher would have said, is that not the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas? And also, did you see the way I caught the broom? Wasn't that the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas? Yeah, Dina?

[43:08]

What did you say? What is Buddha? Well, he already turned his head and that was fine. Then, now he's looking at the teacher and the teacher says, what is it? Yeah, well, I guess that's up to the teacher to say he did not want to respond that way. He did not want to hesitate. He thought he was looking for some other way to be than a boy who was wondering how to answer the question, what is Buddha? He was hesitating. And also then, after he hesitated, he wandered off in confusion. So the boy was not happy with his hesitation. He was miserable. He was afflicted. Now if the boy hesitated and said, that wasn't really hesitation, that was just a trick on you, teacher, then you can test that one.

[44:17]

But this is a story about we miss what we are by thinking we should be something other than this. We miss what's being given to us by thinking something else would be appropriate to be received. So that's the story. It's about somebody who missed the opportunity right after not missing it. So in both stories it's like people do sometimes come back with wholeheartedness, with non-abiding, with Buddha's immutable knowledge. They do sometimes. And then, okay, let's try it again. Okay, ready? And then they think, they can't do it. They hesitate. They get scared. They go someplace else. The story could have been different, though, and some stories are like that. They do okay, then they do it again, they do it okay, and then they lose it. Not really, but they feel like they did.

[45:19]

Yes? Karmic consciousness is full of expectations. What can we do with that? Well, what do you think I'm going to say? Or what do you think I would say if I hadn't given the baton to you? Generous. Yeah, be generous with the expectation. And when you're generous with expectation, what's the expectation? What happens to the expectation? Well, let me tell you. it is allowed to be itself. And if you can really be fully generous with an expectation, the expectation can be thoroughly itself. And then karmic consciousness is free of expecting anything.

[46:35]

So this instruction from Suzuki Roshi is an instruction to karmic consciousness to be yourself who's got current expectations without expecting anything. And to be somebody who's got expectations and be without expecting anything, then you have to be generous to your expectations to the point that your expectations become vigorously jumping fish. and they go from being expectations to Dharma teachers. But if we're not generous with our expectations, we can't appreciate their transcending vigor. They really are, expectations really are alive and well. But they also, if we don't appreciate them and if we don't love them, we don't realize that they're liberated from being expectations.

[47:41]

So karmic consciousness is full of expectations. And if we're generous to them, all the expectations leap beyond themselves. into the next karmic consciousness which has maybe another set of expectations, which again, if we let them be in the total exertion of expectation, is the realization that expectations are not expectations. That's what I would have said. But you got the part about the generosity. There needs to be generosity there. And there needs to be ethics. And there needs to be patience. And there needs to be diligence. And there needs to be relaxation and calm in order to let the expectation be completely itself. And when it's completely itself, it leaps. Yes, Dina.

[48:51]

Excuse me, could you come up closer? You're so far away. Thank you for coming closer, closer, closer. Thank you. Yeah, that's good. I feel like you're saying, hey you, what is Buddha, are the same questions. And because he thought that the question was two different things, he responded differently, but if he had not, it would have been immediately a little knowledge about Buddhas. You could say they're basically the same question. They're both questions. But in one case he responded without hesitation. In the other case, he hesitated. In one case, he didn't even think, I'm responding without hesitation. He just responded. Completely. He didn't like, sort of turn his head, didn't say, and the boy sort of turned his head. Just turned his head, period.

[49:57]

Completely turned his head. The other case, he hesitated. He thought, I guess I should be something other than what I am. So you could have reversed the question. You could have said, what is Buddha? And he could have turned his head. And then you could have said, hey you. Wait a minute, you shouldn't be asking me, hey you, after I answered the what is Buddha question well. And again, When somebody says, hey you, I mean when somebody says, hey Buddha, or when somebody says, hey Nina, or when somebody says, what is Buddha, and you turn your head, that's like really, that's totally cool. Like, what is Buddha? What is Buddha? Good. Now, hey you. And then you go . So these stories are like, the monk doesn't understand how the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas is itself, or actually it's the other way around, the fundamental affliction itself is the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas.

[51:14]

So the hesitation actually is the same as the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. But are you wholeheartedly hesitating? And the answer is no. But you could like wholeheartedly hesitate and that would be like turning your head. Yeah, come on up if you want to. And if you don't, I'm not going to answer. Oh, it's Sam, coming to town. Can you please give a few more examples about how this hesitation manifests in your daily life, in your practical?

[52:16]

Yes, I will. I will do it for as long as you know me. But I'll just do one now, okay? Okay. When I was talking to that person and she was talking to me and then she heard this lovely chanting, she said the chanting was distracting her, even though she was enjoying listening to it. She thought she should be doing something other than listen to it, like keep talking. Then she was talking and she thought she should be doing something other than talking, namely listening. So she was hesitating talking and calling the chanting distracting, Then she was enjoying the chanting and considering her job to talk distracting. These are examples. But you can also go from talking completely, to listening completely, to talking completely, to listening completely. But it takes heroic effort to live like that, which is like live like a human being.

[53:24]

Like chanting, talking, Kros, Sam, whatever. And I'll keep asking for examples. I'll keep giving them. Okay? Yes, you're pretty close. Can one wholeheartedly... Did I understand you to say that one could wholeheartedly hesitate? Yeah. You can only wholeheartedly hesitate. You can't half-heartedly hesitate. You can't half-heartedly do anything. Because if you could half-heartedly do something, then you could abide in something. But you can't. You can only dream of half-heartedness. And dreaming of half-heartedness is called suffering. Suffering. It's affliction.

[54:26]

And that affliction itself, completely itself, is the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. The wholehearted hesitation is the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. The wholehearted hesitation is like turning your head when called. Wholeheartedly suffering? Wholeheartedly suffering, yes. That's what this is all about. It's about bodhisattva's wholeheartedly suffering. Wholeheartedly suffering is compassion. Compassion is not half-heartedly suffering. Compassion is like, there's suffering and I'm over here. Compassion is intimacy with suffering. not partly feeling it, feeling it, not feeling it more than it is or less than it is.

[55:32]

Feel it just like it is. That's wholehearted suffering. And wholehearted suffering does not abide in suffering. It is generous to suffering. So this practice is to help us be bodhisattvas so we aren't afraid of personal suffering. We aren't afraid of what will happen if we get close to the suffering people that we're supposed to be serving. No, because we do this work. We do this work of zazen so we can not be afraid of personal suffering, so we can be intimate with it, intimate with our own, intimate with our neighbors, not afraid. Of course we want to be of service to all beings and do acts of compassion,

[56:37]

No problem, except when it looks like we might get hurt if we did get near to that. Please come up. That's good, you can come closer, but that's good enough for me. Would you help me understand what you mean when you use the word abide, abiding, non-abiding?

[57:40]

You want me to help you understand what non-abiding means? Non-abiding means that you're fully present in what's going on to the extent that you're not clinging to it, that you're ready for not-it to also reveal itself. And not trying to get not-it to reveal itself, but because you're so wholeheartedly doing this, you're open to not-this. And when you see the not this with the this, then you see that you can't abide in this or not this. So again, the original story, wholeheartedly think so you realize thinking, not thinking. Not thinking, thinking. So I don't know about everybody, but some of us during this session have had some personal pain.

[59:14]

And some of us have had moments of wholeheartedly And that's the pivotal function of all Buddhas. And there's maybe been some moments where we've shrunk back from or tried to get ahead of our personal pain. There are moments like that. So then we just confess, okay, I'm trying to get away from this. Okay, all right, okay, now I'm here. I'm settling into this pain.

[60:26]

It's kind of hard. This pain's difficult. Not difficult, it's painful. What's difficult is to like completely be generous with it. And so I think we've had some moments of being generous with our pain and being generous with other people's pain. And in that way realizing Zazen, realizing the pivotal function of Buddhism. May our intention equally extend to every being and place.

[61:45]

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