WORDS CANNOT REACH THIS SITTING. It is just thus. It is not fabricated, yet it is not without speech. WORDS CAN'T REACH IT, BUT IT CAN SINK. IT CAN MANIFEST IN WORDS, WITHOUT BEING TOUCHED BY WORDS.

[01:02]

IT CAN USE HUMAN ACTIVITY, AND YET HUMAN ACTIVITY CAN'T REACH IT. JUST SITTING ACTUALLY IS REACHING YOUR ACTIVITY. IT IS JUST THUS, AND COMPLETELY UNHINDERED, AND MANIFESTING THROUGHOUT YOUR LIFE, AND YET YOUR LIFE CAN'T REACH IT. IT REACHES MY WORDS, BUT MY WORDS DON'T REACH IT. I REALLY MUST SAY HOW GRATEFUL I AM FOR ANOTHER DAY OF RAIN. I THINK MANY PEOPLE'S FOND HOPE WAS THAT THIS SESHIN WOULD BE BLESSED WITH RAIN.

[02:06]

SO WE'VE ALREADY HAD THREE DAYS OF SESHIN AND THREE DAYS OF RAIN. IF IT STOPS, WE'RE STILL SO GRATEFUL. JUST GRATEFUL. WORDS CANNOT REACH THIS GRATITUDE EITHER. IT'S JUST GRATITUDE. You remember what Bodhidharma taught his disciple, Taiso Heka? Wake up. Can anyone speak his teaching? Outside, no involvements.

[03:11]

Inside, no sign or puffing of the mind. With your mind like a wall, that's really great. Did you say no sign or puffing? Puffing would be good too. No sign or puffing. And then, wake up practice, and what did he say, finally? Finally. Anybody? No involvements outside. What? No involvements outside. Yeah, a little bit different. That's close. Yes? Yeah, well, so he said, yes.

[04:18]

That's later in the story. Save that one. I have already ended all involvements. And then what did the Master say? Huh? What? Yeah, does this fall into nihilism? And what did Heka say? No. Huh? Not yet, not yet. He said no. And then Bodhidharma said, how can you prove this? And then he said, Stay together now, you two guys, you got it close there. I'm listening. And there's one more part.

[05:27]

Words cannot reach it. Words cannot reach it. Therefore, I'm always clearly aware. Therefore, words cannot reach it. Clearly aware of just this sitting. Just this sitting. Because of that radiant clarity, words never reach it. As soon as a word, you're aware of your sitting, you're aware of this body sitting, as soon as a word comes in here, that's what you're aware of. That's your sitting. Your awareness never lets anything erode anything else. When something happens, you clearly observe it. If a word comes trotting over here, no word can trot over here, because as soon as anything else happens, that's what happens. And your awareness is of that. It's like one of those video games, you know. What is it? I've got one, what's it called?

[06:33]

Anyway. Video games, you know, you're exactly... And no other little monster can come over here and jump on this one, okay? As soon as another thing happens, got that one, got that one, got that one. Your mind always gets right to it. Nothing can touch anything else. The only thing that can touch a thing is the thing itself. The only thing that can hinder anything is the thing itself. So it's when you're aware of your body, when you're clearly aware of your sitting, it's just that. Anything else happens, it's just that. This is the one thing that all Buddhas are always aware of. There's nothing else happening. That's why nothing can touch it.

[07:38]

But it, that way, touches everything. So that's an important teaching dialogue, two teaching dialogues between Bodhidharma and Taiso Heikha. There I think you can see what Sazen is, what just sitting practice is. There's another story about them which I want to mention. And it is the story where Heikha comes to the Master and says, I think he says something like, maybe he doesn't say this, but he says something like,

[08:39]

My mind is agitated. Please pacify my mind. And Bodhidharma says, Bring me your mind and I'll pacify it. So, Heikha tries to bring the mind to the teacher. And finally he comes and says, I can't find it. I looked, but I couldn't find it. And Bodhidharma said, I have pacified your mind. Now this story then, I just want to run ahead four generations. The next generation, Heikha's disciple was named Tsong San. Tsong San came to Heikha.

[09:43]

Heikha was a teacher in Bodhidharma's lineage and a priest, a Buddhist priest. Tsong San was a lay person. He came to him and said, he was sick. He was a leper. So this leprous lay person comes to the great teacher, who by the way, by that time, only had one arm. And he said, I'm diseased. Please absolve my sins. Heikha said, bring me your sins and I will absolve them. Tsong San was silent for a long time.

[10:51]

We don't know how long a long time is. Finally, he came to Heikha and said, I can't find my sins. Heikha said, I have absolved your sins. Tsong San became Heikha's disciple. And then later, the fourth ancestor came to him and said, I beseech you, I beg you. Please, in your great compassion, show me a way to liberation. Tsong San said, who is binding you? The future fourth ancestor said, no one is binding me.

[12:01]

Tsong San said, then why do you seek liberation? At these words, he was greatly awakened. So you can see these stories, very similar technique. In each case, the technique is, reverse the mind and look to find out what kind of blockage is there, what kind of clinging is happening. If you look, you'll never find any. Clinging is really not real. It's not really happening. If you try to prove it, you'll fail. But if you don't look, if you don't try to prove that there is such a thing as clinging, if you don't try to find it, and if you don't fail at finding it,

[13:05]

you can still assume that it's there. Or even if you don't assume it's there, you can still feel the enslaving quality, the enslaving effect of the subtle unconscious assumption that it's there. I really, in some sense, don't want to bring up the story, the very famous, almost trite story, of the second ancestor meeting his teacher. And yet, I don't want to bring up the story of the second ancestor meeting his teacher. I think your simple, childlike mind can appreciate it. And that's the mind I mostly want to talk to. So, I'd like to bring up the story of this person who became the first Chinese ancestor.

[14:12]

Bodhidharma, of course, was Indian. So, the second ancestor, Huika, he was a Chinese person. And before he was born, before his father and mother had any children, his father was wondering why they didn't have any children. Chinese people are into having children, usually. It's considered one of the main things you should do, have children, have offspring. So, they didn't have any, so the father wondered, why not, and prayed constantly for a child. And at one night, while he was praying for a child, the room filled with light. And then his wife became pregnant,

[15:20]

and they had a little boy. And this little boy, everyone felt, actually, was a very radiant child. And so, they named him Light. As he grew up, he was very fond of studying the Confucian classics, and he also liked to wander in the mountains of China. But he lamented, because he felt that he still had not found the true teaching. He became ordained as a Buddhist monk, and studied the Prajnaparamita literature, the Wisdom Beyond Wisdom literature. And while studying it, he studied a lot. While studying, he experienced a satisfaction,

[16:25]

a transcendent satisfaction, a satisfaction beyond hearing and seeing, you might say. After that, he, not wanting to outdo his future master, he sat for eight years, calmly, blissfully. And then, a spirit appeared to him, a radiant light appeared to him, and this radiant light had words. It was a talking light. And it said something like, Why stop here?

[17:28]

You haven't gone far enough. Go south. After that, he developed a real intense headache, as though his head had been kind of punctured with a spike. He went and talked to his teacher, and his teacher examined his skull, and found that, in fact, it was a little bit like a meteorite had hit him, because there had been these five bumps on his head, at one of the clefts there. The teacher, a lot of Chinese people are into breeding skulls, and the teacher said that this was auspicious, and that the spirit that talked to him was probably right,

[18:33]

that he probably should go south. And he thought that perhaps the teacher that he was being sent to was the great master Bodhidharma, who was staying at Shaolin, sitting like a wall. So he went south to Bodhidharma, he went to Shaolin, and he went to the temple, and went up to the teacher's room, cave room, and the teacher wouldn't see him, wouldn't accept him. So he just stood outside, waiting. And so, of course, it started snowing that night, and it was cold snow, gradually reaching a height of his waistline.

[19:36]

And he stood there, and he started to cry, and each tear froze, and he started to weaken, and then he thought of all the great Bodhisattvas, and the things that they did in order to attain emancipation for the sake of all beings. And he aroused himself to continue standing there. And he made it through the night. And Bodhidharma noticed this, oh, by the way, he changed his name to Spiritual Light, after that spirit visited him. So Bodhidharma noticed that he'd been standing there all night,

[20:40]

and he said to him, oh, and then he noticed him, and Bodhidharma finally said to him, you've been standing there in the snow for a long time. What are you seeking? You can imagine, if you were a teacher, and someone did that, you might ask them what they're there for, right? So, Huika said, his name wasn't Huika at that time, his name was Spiritual Light, Shongguan. His name was Guang, Light. As a child, he changed it to Shongguan, after that experience with that talking light. So Shongguan said, I only seek the teaching, the teacher, to open the gate of the elixir of great compassion to liberate all beings.

[21:44]

Then, kindly Bodhidharma said, the unexcelled marvelous way of all the enlightened ones involves ages of effort, carrying out that which is difficult to put into practice, and enduring the unendurable. How can you hope for a true religion of emptiness, with little virtue, little wisdom, shallow heart, and arrogant mind? It would be a waste of your effort. So saying, he paid no more attention to it. Spiritual Light, hearing these words, hearing these merciful encouragements, wept all the more,

[22:47]

and his determination to seek the way became even more keen. He took a sharp sword and cut off his left arm. Bodhidharma, seeing this, thought that maybe Bhakta would be worthy to receive the teaching, and said, When the Buddhas first sought the way, they forgot their bodies for the sake of the truth. Now you have cut off your arm in my presence. You are capable of seeking. Then he changed his name again, this time to Hoika, which means either you could say wisdom and capacity, or capable of wisdom. And he was allowed to associate with Bodhidharma.

[23:54]

And then he practiced eight years with Bodhidharma. Don't worry about this man, he lived a long time. Then they had these inner actions that you heard about, and finally Bodhidharma transmitted the robe of faith and the bowl to him, and died. And then Hoika had really one main disciple, and after he transmitted to his disciple, he left his disciple and he felt that he, after he transmitted that he somehow then had to repay the debt and went to sort of teaching in the streets of China. So he spent 30 more years teaching in the streets.

[24:56]

And the story goes that he taught everywhere, in wine shops, in butcher stalls, all people he taught. And he wound up one place, he was teaching in a marketplace in front of a temple. Inside that temple there was a priest, and that priest was teaching the Nirvana Sutra. And Hoika was outside the gate teaching whatever he was teaching. And little by little he started to attract large crowds. The priest became angry and slandered Hoika to an official who believed him, and Hoika was executed. He had kind of a hard time, but it didn't seem to scathe him, and he did manage to live 107 years, even so. So there he is, folks.

[26:02]

Our ancestor. That's wonderful. Can you believe what a nice ancestor we have there? Such a sweet guy. And also not a pushover either. So then you have Bodhidharma. What can you say about Bodhidharma? He had these big bulgy eyes, right? Kind of an intense guy. Very compassionate. Wouldn't want to waste anybody's time. If somebody comes to study with him and they're not really serious about practice, he wouldn't waste their time. But if he saw that somebody was really serious, he would help them, and he did help Hoika. Very nicely. And then Hoika is this armless guy, and then the next ancestor is a leper. So we have Bodhidharma, this guy missing an arm, and a leper, the first three. And I told you the story about...

[27:12]

I'll tell you the story again. We don't know what Sung San's name was before it was Sung San. Maybe he was kind of a... I don't know what he was. But anyway, we don't know his name before that. We don't know anything about him before he came to... to the ancestor. And then when he met him, they had this conversation of, I'm a leper, I'm diseased, please absolve my sins, and so on. And, I have absolved your sins. I have absolved your sins. Now you should live in accord with the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And the... Sung San says, Well, I can see you're a priest.

[28:15]

So I think I know what the Sangha is, what the community is. People like you. But what's a Buddha and a Dharma? And, so Sung San said, the Buddha is this mind. The Dharma, is this mind. And the Buddha and the Dharma are not two things. And the same for the community, for the Sangha. And then Sung San said, Today I have finally realized that the nature of sin is not inside, not outside, and not in between. The same is true of mind.

[29:17]

The Buddha and the teaching are not two either. Ahoyka considered him a suitable vessel for the truth, shaved his head and said, This is my jewel. So you should be called Sung San. Sung means priest or monk. Also community of monks. And San means treasure or jewel. This is my jewel monk. That's where he got his name. After he was ordained, his leprosy gradually healed. And, okay, so that's that. Now,

[30:20]

then we come to the fourth ancestor, Dao Xun, Dai Dao Xun. Dao Xun was his monk's name. It means faith, the way of faith. Dao, the path. Xun, faith. Steadfast in the path. Dai means great doctor. And, now this guy was not, this guy was ah, he was a little different from the first three ancestors. He turned Zen from being kind of an ascetic, well, from being very ascetic. His first three ancestors didn't have temples, really. They didn't really have, you know, they didn't have like a little Tenzo-ryo and stuff to serve people food. So you had to be really tough to hang on with these first three.

[31:25]

The fourth one actually established a place for people to live and so on. The first three really only had like one disciple. Some people say they had maybe ten or something, but the fourth one had hundreds and hundreds. With him, the movement really started to grow. And also, the first three were not so famous. He became quite famous. And I told you the story about when the fourth ancestor came to him and said, Please, in your great compassion, show me the way to liberation. Right? Remember that? What I'd like to say about this guy is that he lived to be 72 years old. And he concentrated his mind without sleeping,

[32:29]

never lying down for 60 years. So somehow from the time he was 12 until he died, he never slept or laid down. I don't know what this means exactly. It also said that he was always sitting without neglecting his duties in the monastery. In other words, I don't know what he was doing, but sweeping or cooking or making a fire or whatever. So I don't know exactly what they mean by sitting there. Maybe what they mean is what the sixth ancestor meant by sitting. What did the sixth ancestor mean by sitting? Remember? What's the definition of sitting? Do you remember? Having no objects of thought.

[33:30]

I'm not activating the mind in regard to objects. That was his definition of sitting. Maybe in that sense he sat 60 years. Because really it's kind of hard to sit for 60 years, right? Never sleep. Sung San taught him in the Lotus Sutra it says that there is just one thing. There are no second or third. Now, you can also say that the Lotus Sutra says there is just one vehicle. In other words, there's not three vehicles, there's just one vehicle. But also this vehicle is the thing that the Buddhas ride. All the Buddhas ride this one vehicle. They don't ride a second or third vehicle.

[34:36]

So you can just say there's just one thing that they all ride. This is what Sung San taught Dao Qun. Dao Qun So then comes the fifth ancestor. Teaching of Dao Qun, the fourth ancestor, I spent quite a bit of time talking about that

[35:40]

two practice periods ago, I think. And he taught actually a lot of people maybe you've heard say that Zen doesn't teach what he called mindfulness of Buddha. Like the Pure Land practice of mindfulness of Buddha. Namo Amida Buddha. Mindfulness particularly of Amitabha Buddha. Namo Amitabha Buddha. Namo means to what? Pay homage, right? Homage and mindfulness and aligning yourself with the Buddha of eternal life, Namo Amida Buddha. They say it over and over and it gets… as they say it over and over it turns into Namo Amitabha… Namo Amitabha…

[36:46]

Namo Amitabha…. They do it all, la han, and on, and on, and on, and on. That's their practice. And it seems to work. They produce a lot of great people by that practice. It's similar to the Nichiren school, where they say namo-myoho-renge-kyo, namo-myoho-renge-kyo, namo-myoho-renge-kyo. How do they do it there? They get probably faster there than they do it, namo-myoho-renge-kyo, and so on. That's the way of the Lotus Sutra. So people say that Zen people don't do that, but the fourth ancestor said to do that as a kind of warm-up for what's called the one-practice samadhi.

[37:47]

He said, think of Buddha. But he said, to think of Buddha means to have no object of thought. All the time, think of Buddha means to have no object of thought. So actually, in Zen history, early Zen emphasized recollection or mindfulness of Buddha. Later Zen eliminated it, and then after that, another phase of Zen re-established it. And then they say that Zen deteriorated when they started doing this kind of practice. But actually, it's in the early and late, but it's both present and old. There's an expression in Chinese, if something good happens to a person, they say, he must have broken a lot of mokugyos.

[38:49]

In Zen, we say, he must have worn out a lot of zafus. But in the Pure Land, they say, he must have worn out a lot of mokugyos. That's what my mother-in-law says about me, to explain how I could have married her daughter. It's true. I'd rather not have been a Pure Land priest, but I can slip a few of those in there, I suppose. Maybe I was breaking mokugyos as a Zen priest. So now we have this fourth ancestor, Dai Daoxin. I'm kind of skipping over him, because he's kind of one of my favorites. If I get into him, it's going to be all over, and I kind of want to bring us up to maybe even Dunshan.

[39:55]

Dunshan. So Daoxin now, let's picture Daoxin, he's got this big community, 500 monks or so. And the mountain, the name of the mountain is Wangmei. No, yeah, Wangmei is the name of the mountain. And he was taking a walk one day, and he ran into this guy. This guy's name was a pine-planting wayfarer. He was a lay Buddhist wayfarer who went around planting pine trees. And he planted pine trees on this broken-head mountain. And so he saw the fourth ancestor and he said,

[41:02]

Can I hear about the truth of the way? And the ancestor said, You're already pretty old. If you hear about it, you won't be able to spread the teaching anyway. So if you can get back here, I'll teach you. Or if you can come back here, I'll wait for you. So he went looking for a place to be reborn. He went up to this girl who was washing clothes by the stream. And he started bugging her and he said, Can I take lodging? And she said, You better ask my parents. He said, If you'll agree, I'll stop bugging you and leave.

[42:04]

And she went, Okay. So he left. The girl was the youngest child in the family. Her name was Jo. When she returned home, she was pregnant. Her parents thought this was terrible and drove her out. With no place to go back to, the girl worked as a spinner in a town during the day and stayed in an inn at night. Finally she gave birth to a son. Considering him unlucky and the cause of her misfortune, she threw him into the river. But when he went against the stream, not even getting wet, she thought something was up, but still didn't accept it.

[43:05]

Spiritual beings protected him from harm for seven days. These spiritual beings were birds who covered him with their wings, and dogs that curled around him to guard him at night. His body was fresh and bright and his faculties were all complete. His mother, seeing this, considered it extraordinary and began to feed him. He grew up with his mother, and people called him the nameless child. A certain wise man said, This child has all but seven of the distinguishing marks of a Buddha. Buddhists have 32, he had 25. Later one day, he was walking along the road with his mother,

[44:09]

and he ran into the fourth ancestor, Daoshin. Daoshin noticed the 25 marks, and then here follows a conversation in Chinese, which is a little bit hard for me to translate into English. The Chinese word for name, for surname, is sheng. And then the character for nature, for your nature, is also sheng, the sound. Different character, but the sound in both cases for name and nature is sheng. So he sees this boy, this nameless boy, and says, What is your sheng? What is your name? And the boy says, the seven-year-old boy says, I have a sheng, but it's not an ordinary sheng.

[45:11]

I have a nature, but it's not ordinary nature. And the teacher says, What sheng is it? And he says, Fo sheng, which means Buddha nature. So having seen the 25 marks and having this conversation, Daoshin said to his mother, Could I have him? I think he's actually that guy asked to come back. And the mother said, Sure. I've been kind of a pain anyway for seven years now. Please. Go be the fifth ancestor. So he did. He went and he became Daoshin's attendant. And he was ordained as a monk at seven.

[46:15]

And another one, there wasn't an hour of the day or the night when he wasn't sitting, this little boy. But this is not just a little boy. This is somebody who has some background. The practice of sitting is very strongly established by these first five ancestors. But again, sitting does not literally mean the posture of sitting, which the sixth ancestor will make very clear. Sitting means no objects of thought. Sitting means words can't reach it. Sitting means in the herd there will be just the herd. Another quality of this first part of the lineage,

[47:19]

as you can see, which Bodhidharma said, is that the Zen way, he said, is a special transmission outside the scriptures, directly pointing to the essence of mind. This essence of mind where outside there's no involvements, inside there's no coughing or sighing, just the suchness of mind. Outside the scriptures means you aren't reaching over to the scriptures to get it. It's between the teacher and the student. And that's just the way it was for Shakyamuni Buddha. Shakyamuni Buddha had no scriptures. The scriptures were being produced as necessary to give the instruction in the meditation. In that sense, Zen was a revision,

[48:24]

a radical return to the style of Shakyamuni Buddha. Not to use texts, but to respond directly to the person's question, to the person's needs, to liberate them through suchness, to liberate them through thusness. So these first five ancestors established the Zen style. And we come then finally to the sixth. And from the sixth, as you know, Zen then really blossoms in China. And within a hundred years after the sixth ancestor, really Buddhism is Zen in China. That's all there is,

[49:26]

except for pure land among the farms. So tomorrow I'd like to look a little bit at the teaching of the sixth ancestor and how he taught just sitting. Yes? Could you explain outflows and making and what they are in Zen? Could I explain outflows? Outflows and making and what they are in Zen. Well, for example, working on your posture, okay? Or working on your Zazen practice.

[50:31]

In working on your posture, all right, there must be just working on your posture. Working on your body. There is not even working on the body. There is just the body. It's sitting up straight. There's not trying to sit up straight. There's just sitting up straight. In other words, there's a feeling of total aloneness. There's no kind of practice that you're doing. If you are doing something to your posture, if you are straightening up your back, there's a theme there. Or there's a theme. I have a theme called straightening my back. Of course you should sit with a straight back.

[51:36]

Yes. That's the teaching from the first teachings of Buddha about how to meditate. Sit with a straight back. The trick is to sit with a straight back where there's no seam. If there's a seam between the meditator and the back, if the meditator is straightening the back, then some words are reaching the practice. Then there's some involvements around the object of the spine or the body. But if there's just the body sitting straight, thus, there's no seam, there's no theme, and there's no outflows. There's no way to improve it or depreciate it. It's just what it is. But as soon as you're doing something, as soon as you're making an effort or having a concern,

[52:38]

have a concern to straighten your back, have a project, have a theme, have an object to straighten your back, then words reach your practice. Then words erode you. And that's an outflow. And then you're just doing stuff, basically. You're not realizing the suchness of your mind. And that's clean. That's self-clean. All that stuff arises around that. So we're trying to just let the body be the body. In the body, there will be just the body. No person there straightening that body. No project of sitting this body. There's just the sitting body. This sitting body practice is not an object, is not a toy, is not a project. There's just the sitting body practice. That is no outflows. That is sitting in purity.

[53:40]

But purity, again, is not a thing that you put on top of your practice. Purity is when your practice has no qualities except the way it is. Moment by moment, the way your practice is. As such, that's its purity. You don't try to make it pure. It already is pure in itself. Its actual nature is pure exactly. You sit with no concerns. You have no concerns when you're sitting. Now, when you're training, when you're training to let the herd just be the herd, when you're training so that for you, in the herd there's just the herd, it's very tricky. You have trouble figuring out how do you let there just be the herd in the herd without trying to make it that way. Well, as long as you try to make it that way, that's not the way to do it. So you keep trying until you stop trying. You keep trying, I guess,

[54:47]

until you don't try anymore. It just is done. Of course, that's already the way it is. It's already the way that the herd is just the herd. We have to train at that until that's all that's happening. Until we arrive at that point, there's outflows. These are wholesome outflows. This isn't a bad thing to do, but it still is kind of leaking. And it's still kind of weakening. And as long as you have that attitude, you can't really fully utilize your whole life energy to benefit beings. You're still not unified. Like we were talking, the conceptual and the perceptual layers are not unified. There's still a scene. There's still a separation. There's still a separation.

[56:43]

There's still a separation. There's still a separation.

[58:28]

the Lord. I am so humble to be counted.

[58:32]

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