This series of meetings has been titled, Stories of Friendship, Stories of Perfect Wisdom, something like that. Did you hear about that? And I'm also offering a series in Berkeley which I think is called perfect wisdom and good friendship or something like that? Is that right? So I would say here and I would, tomorrow night I'll say it over in Berkeley. What I mean by good friendship is the friendship of Buddhas kind of friendship Buddhas practice.

[01:03]

And they practice friendship with all beings. Good friendship is the kind of relationship in which living beings and Buddhas can give up their ideas about friendship. and also give up their ideas about everything else. The kind of friendship a Buddha's practiced is a friendship which helps all beings stop grasping their ideas. It doesn't get rid of ideas, it just teaches how not to abide in them. We do have ideas of friendship, most of us, like we think, this is my friend, And this is friendliness.

[02:04]

We sometimes say, that person's very friendly. So if we're practicing good friendship, if we're living in good friendship, when we see somebody and we think, that person's very friendly, we can let go of that idea. And it isn't that we switch to that person's unfriendly and hold on to that one. We also let go of the idea, this person is not friendly. So that's basically Buddhism, or the Buddha way. Somebody mentioned to me a few days ago, she said that she read a New York Times article, and it was about I think maybe it was about, she said it was about Jack Kornfield or about mindfulness. And one of the people who was quoted in the article said, mindfulness is great, but

[03:12]

the baggage of Buddhism is, I don't know, the person told me that he said the baggage of Buddhism is terrible, especially the stuff about the ancestors. Which he didn't say, but the stuff about the ancestors is, the stuff about the ancestors is the Buddha way. So the stuff about the ancestors is the Zen school. We, of course, we practice mindfulness, but we practice mindfulness in the context of our friendship with the ancestors, friendship. We practice the friendship of the ancestors, which is the friendship of the Buddhas, which, etc., which is the friendship of perfect wisdom. And I thought, when this person was telling me that, I thought, In this particular school, I'll just say this and I'll come back to it and I'll say it again.

[04:29]

In this school, we have a lot of bathwater in which the baby is cared for. The baby is, you could say, mindfulness. In the Zen school we think mindfulness is really great and we practice it. But the mindfulness is not something that people come up with on their own. They come up with it in a friendship. Like we say, from the first time you meet a master without engaging in various things, just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind. from the first time you meet a master. Just wholeheartedly said, in other words, just practice perfect mindfulness. And when you practice perfect mindfulness, body and mind will drop away and they will be released from suffering.

[05:35]

the bathwater is the relationship, is the friendship. And the friendship, people got to be careful not to throw the friendship up in which this mindfulness occurs. What's the mindfulness? It's the dropping off of all your ideas of life That's the baby. And it comes in the bath water. The dropping off is completely pure. The bath water could possibly have all kinds of filth in it. The bath water of the friendship deals with all of our attachments and it deals with everything that's let go of.

[06:43]

But some people, you know, would like to approach mindfulness without being aware that it's approached through friendship. And they can do that and then maybe later they'll find out something about friendship. So in the Zen school we have the context of friendship and also we have the context of stories about friendship. But again, the stories, the point of the stories about friendship are to let go of all stories. And as I mentioned also, last year when we started the fall class on Zen stories, I mentioned that

[07:56]

that part of the function of the stories in the Zen school are to hold the Sangha together that takes care of the stories. The purpose of the stories is to let go of all stories. But when you're in the process of letting go of going all stories, in the process of realizing the release of all stories, which is perfect wisdom, that process has a lot of turbulence and hostility involved. As a result, if people are actually working together to help each other let go of stories, they experience in that process sometimes an intense turbulence or hostility around what they're holding on to and fear of what would happen if they let go.

[09:20]

And also perhaps a great wish to get a hold of the jewel of perfect wisdom, to get a hold of not holding on to anything. And in situations like that, people sometimes want to go away from the situation. So I used the example of an article that my daughter sent to me about this family I think it was a family psychologist. And he's talking about his family at the table and how they're trying to have the dinner table and how they're trying to eat together. But the parents would like the children to actually listen to the parents a little bit or actually pay attention to their food and eat their food. And the children want to play video games and text and stuff at the table. and the parents ask them to put down their electronic toys, and the children don't want to, and then the parents and the children get into an intense interaction, and then he said pretty soon everyone's left the table.

[10:29]

And then he reflected on what holds families together? families really care about each other, but the parents really care that the children eat their food and grow up to be healthy people. And the children really do care that the parents leave them alone and give them whatever they want when they want it. And they really care that things go the way they want them to go, especially with their parents. And the parents want things to go the way they want to go, especially with their children. And it's not that we don't want things to go well. It's just that we're trying to find a way to let go of our concerns so that things will go well. But when you get into it, it's very difficult to stay together. And this guy says, what holds the families together? And he came up with the answer. Like Yan Min, he came up with the answer, strong family stories.

[11:34]

Stories hold the perfect wisdom, friendship. They're part of the bathwater. And the stories are often about ancestors. They're like the stories about, people want me to tell stories about my ancestors, like they want me to tell stories about Suzuki Roshi, and some people want me to tell stories about Richard Baker Roshi, and some people want me to tell stories about my ancestors. And then some people want me to tell stories about way far and distant ancestors. And I'm happy to do so. I'm just full of joy at the prospect of devoting my life to telling stories of the ancestors. The stories of the ancestors inspire me to let go of my idea of friendship so that whatever you give me, regardless of how it looks, I can let go.

[12:57]

I have a chance. I'm inspired to let go of my idea about what you just gave me. because the ancestors gave each other stuff. And sometimes the ancestors had trouble seeing the gift that one gave to the other as friendship, because they were still holding on, consciously or unconsciously, to their idea of good teacher, good friend, good teaching. I don't know what my relationship with my ancestors, I don't know what my relationship with my ancestors is or are.

[14:10]

But I have stories about them. I do not have the actual relationship, I'm in it. I have stories about it, but these stories are not my relationship. But I'm using these stories to encourage myself to continue to contemplate this friendship. And that reminds me that this morning one of the people here read a little commentary on the Heart Citra. And she read a commentary on the Heart Citra that she wrote this morning. And I said, if you come to class tonight would you read your commentary? And she did come. So I now invite her to come up here please and sit here and face the music and read your commentary.

[15:20]

on the Heart Sutra. This is Reverend Ono. Seeing that all our stories, all our perceptions, all our ways of trying to establish meaning are empty, we see that all our relationships and friendships are empty of any substantial own being. Realizing this, being empty of our relationships, we learn fearlessness. The gift of fearlessness can blossom when we understand that the form of friendship is empty and that the emptiness of friendship is its form and that there is just friendship and emptiness. Pretty good, huh?

[16:24]

Hallelujah. Amen. Amen. Can you see these names here? Abunkai. What's the bun of bunkai? What's the bun? Is it this one? Well, is it written in characters? Yeah. Is that the character?

[17:26]

Is that the bun? Yeah. So his name, bunkai's name, and then the kai is the kai ocean? Yeah. So the bun of bunkai is the bun or the way of the name of this great ancestor. Yunman Weiyun. So it just happens, oh, excuse me, it just happens we studied, in the first class we studied, I don't know, maybe it wasn't the first class, first class maybe we studied Suzuki Roshi and me. We studied the ancestor stories of Suzuki Roshi, did we? And then we started studying the Blue Cliff Record and started with Deshan, which is case number Four? Four. And then Shui Fung, case number five. And now we're in case number six, which is about Yen Men.

[18:28]

And this is a succession, ancestral succession. Lung Tan De Shan Shui Fung Yen Men. In Japanese, Ryu Tan ryu tan, pok san, sepo um man. In Chinese, lung tan, de shan, shui feng, yun man, wei yan. Dragon pond, virtue mountain, snowy peak, gate of clouds. So tonight we open the door on the ancestral story of Yun Man.

[19:33]

Yun Man, the compiler of the book Blue Cliff Record, his name is Sui To. And Sui Do is a descender of Yun Men. So in this book, the most stories in this book are about Yun Men. So if you like, I could tell you some stories about Yun Men and his friends. Want me to? I think Yen Man was born in the year 864. And I don't think that.

[20:38]

I think I've heard that. And I think he supposedly died in 949. If you add that up, you get that he lived 85 years. Is that correct? He was born after a great political upheaval which suppressed monastic Buddhism. I've heard that several hundred thousand monks and nuns were forced to disrobe and return to lay life. and 4,600 monasteries were destroyed, and 40,000 smaller shrines were destroyed in the years 845 to 847, or something like that.

[21:47]

So he was born 15, 20 years after that, and at that time Buddhism was starting to come up, especially in places away from the political center, starting to come up. And he lived sort of in a small town. He was born in a small town about 30 miles southwest of what we can all call Shanghai. they say that when he was an adolescent he felt the the wish to become a monk, a Buddhist monk. And I guess he was allowed to do so.

[22:48]

And he went to practice at a monastery in his own town, even though it was a small town. It had a monastery. And in the monastery, there was a specialist in monastic discipline. So he went there when he was 13 or 14. They say adolescence. twelve, thirteen, fourteen. He went there and he trained with a specialist in monastic discipline whose name was Je Chung. And he studied with him, I guess, for about, practiced with him for about seven years. And then he went to another town some distance away and received, when he was 20, after seven years, he went and received full monastic precept ordination. Then he returned to his first teacher, Jia Chong, and concentrated even further on studying the literature on the monastic precepts.

[23:59]

So there's the monastic precepts. Like we had 16 bodhisattva precepts. We have a literature about these 16 bodhisattva precepts. And so the book, Being Upright, is part of the literature on our bodhisattva precepts. And that book is derived from other literature on the bodhisattva precepts. So I translated a work which is a literary work on the 16 precepts. So we have in this tradition also a literature on the 16 Bodhisattva precepts which Dogen transmitted. So back in China there was a literature on the 250 precepts that the Chinese monks practiced. He studied those. And he studied them for not clear how long, but approximately five more years he stayed with his first teacher. I'm just guessing.

[25:01]

And then I don't know exactly the conditions. I don't have a story for it. And I'm not going to make one up right now. But he left his teacher and he went in search of another teacher who he heard about. And that teacher's name is Mujo Dao. Mujo Dao. Daozong. For those of you who are somewhat familiar with some of the other stories we've talked about, there was another founder of another school of Zen called Linji or Rinzai. And Linji studied with your guy, Wang Bo.

[26:04]

So Wang Bo, who the Shusou talked about last week, Wang Bo was a great teacher, and his main disciple was Linji, who was the founder of the Linji school, the most prolific of all the schools in Zen in China. And when Linji was studying with Wang Bo, the head monk, the Shusou, of Wangbo's monastery when Linji was there, the head monk was Muzhou Daozong. And he was the guy who said to Linji, have you gone to see the teacher yet? And Linji said, no, I'm fine. I don't need to. He didn't say, I'm enlightened. I don't need to see the teacher. Just, I'm fine. And Mujo said, well, it'd be good for you to go see him. And then she did go see him, and things have worked out really well from there on.

[27:12]

But I set that side of the story, that story aside, and that aside story, okay, for now, because that will take the rest of the class. And I want to introduce you to Yun Min. I want to introduce you to The Gate of the Clouds. And so Yen Yen, one E. His name actually at this point in his life was Wei Yan. This is his monk's name. This is his name when he became a teacher because he lived in this area. And his monastery was called this place. But at this point, the monk is named Wei Yun. And so Wei Yun goes looking for Mu Zhou. And he finds him. Now, Mu Zhou is like from two generations before him.

[28:15]

So he's really quite old. And he had pretty much retired by that time. He had left monastic life and went home to take care of his mother and made a living making and selling sandals. So one of his names is Sandal Chun. His family name, I guess, was Chun. But so he lived kind of like reclusively and was taking care of his mother from this reclusive life. He still was taking care of his mother. And the future Yun Men found him, went to him. And in the early stories, it just said that he went to visit him and apparently visited him a number of times until we come to this story. So Wei Yin goes to visit Muzhou and knocks on the door and Muzhou says, Who is it?

[29:34]

And Wei Yin says, It is me, Wei Yin. And Muzhou says, Why do you keep coming? And Wei Yan says, I'm not yet clear about myself. And Mu Zhou says, completely useless stuff. And Wei Yan wakes up. and becomes clear about what he wasn't clear about. So the key thing in his life was not this, this, this, this and this and that and that. The problem was himself being clear about who he was.

[30:41]

And he stayed with, so I guess after his awakening, although Mujo continued to teach him in this rather brief commentarial form, like, who's there and why did you come? Maybe every time he came, he would say, why did you come? And every time, maybe he would say something. But he stayed with him for a while, apparently. We don't know how long. At what point? Want to hear the whole story again? Here it goes. Knock, knock. Who's there? It's me, Wei Ying. Why do you keep coming? I'm not yet clear about myself. Completely useless stuff. Useless. Useless stuff. Yes. And wake up.

[31:47]

He woke up. Completely useless stuff, wake up. As I've mentioned to some other people, usually if you look at Zen stories, the early ones are simpler. And then as time goes on, they get in some ways more interesting because they add in lovely little details. So this is the early version of the story of the meeting of this very important bodhisattva and his second teacher. His first teacher, he learned a lot about monastic detail. He learned a lot about Odiyoki. And he studied the Odiyoki literature. Then he went to see somebody who taught, who wasn't living in a monastery, who was just living in probably a little hut, taking care of his mother.

[32:53]

And this person teaches in a more simple way. Who is there? Why do you come? Useless stuff. This kind of comment. And people feel that if you look at Yunmen's style that developed later when he was a teacher, he also taught that way. So this teacher, Muzhou, and this is not spelled the way you might expect. The mu is spelled like you might think. But the jo isn't spelled like this. It's spelled like this. Mujo. This is a very important person because his style of helping people strongly influenced this person and this person influenced millions of people.

[34:02]

And that's the Zen's brief, very brief comments. And the story tonight, the story in the Blue Cliff Records, they're also short. Like one that I often quote is, Yan Mun said when he was a teacher, he said, like this, he's with all the monks and he says, what was the Buddha's teaching for his whole lifetime. He asked the monks that, and then he answered an appropriate statement. It's an example of his very brief teaching, which I've found so helpful. Buddhism is, Buddha's teaching is just And the Chinese actually says, meeting one, teach.

[35:06]

Or meeting each, teach. That was the Buddha's way of teaching. Meeting each person, he would teach according to what was appropriate at that moment. There's no fixed teaching the Buddha has. So, He went to meet Moojo, and he studied with Moojo for a while, and then maybe around 30 years of age. No, excuse me. He studied with Moojo, and with Moojo he is awakened. This is the beginning of his, the phase of his practice where he's now enlightened. So he studied 13 years with his first teacher and Moojo, And then at 30 years old, no, he studies 17 years, I would say, from 13 to 30. And then at 30 years old, he becomes an awakened practitioner,

[36:11]

By the way, I forgot to mention that before he met Moojo, he was in his 20s, he was already teaching monastic discipline, giving classes and lectures on monastic discipline in his 20s. Then when he's about 30, he awakens with this great teacher. And now at 30, he enters into his post-enlightenment training. So here's an example which is the normal bodhisattva training. So we train until we wake up and enter into understanding what Ana talked about, that emptiness, that friendship is emptiness and emptiness is friendship. And then after that, there's further training. It isn't that we wake up and then we're not training anymore. We train more.

[37:14]

So he trained 17 more years after. So he trained for 34 years. And then at 47, he starts teaching. So now we come into the post-awakening phase of his training. And the next person he goes to visit is Shrey Fung, Set Po. You remember Set Po? He was last week, right? Set Po? Set Po means snowy peak. And Set Po was traveling with his Dharma brother, Yan To, right? and they got caught in a snowstorm on Elephant Bone Mountain. Remember? Do you remember? Elephant Bone Mountain. And on Elephant Bone Mountain, by the way, there's a peak on Elephant Bone Mountain called

[38:19]

Shrey Fung. So he went there with his Dharma brother and he woke up on Elephant Bone Mountain with the help of his Dharma brother and then he stayed there for the rest of his life and taught. And he became named Shrey Fung because he lived in that section of Elephant Bone Mountain and Yun Man left Muzhou and went to the most famous Zen teacher in the South at that time, Shui Fung. In the North, the most famous teacher was Zhaozhou. They said, in the North, Zhaozhou. In the South, Shui Fung. And he was in the South, so he went to see Shui Fung. There's more than one story of the first meeting, but the earliest story is simpler.

[39:22]

Another example is simple. So the early story is, as soon as he arrived at Shreya Phong, as soon as he arrived at Snowy Peak, he already was demonstrating amazing ability in practice. They don't say what, they just say that even before he climbed up the mountain, as he was approaching the mountain and the teacher, even before he climbed up the mountain he was already demonstrating this awakening which he had. And then it says, after climbing the mountain And meeting Shreya Fong, as he was about to do his three prostrations, before he did them, Shreya Fong said, how did we come to this?

[40:26]

Or another translation is, how did you get into this state? Following this? Is that okay? So, how okay is it? How okay? Is it okay enough for you to tell me what I just said? Yeah. Okay, let's hear it. You just said that A young man went to Svaypol and because of his awakening he was already on the way up the mountain.

[41:35]

Right. Because of his awakening he was already going up the mountain. And then what? And then, when he got to the top of the mountain, Shui Feng said, how have we got into this state? And then? I didn't hear anything after that. Did you hear anything after that? And then, as he was about to open up his thing, Shui Feng said, as he was about to open up his , Shui Feng said what you said. What was it again? How did we get to this state? Or how did we get to this state? Or how did we come to this? Before I answer the question, I just want to say, I don't know if he actually said, how did we come to this? Or if he said, how did it come to this?

[42:37]

I'm just going to check to see what I wrote down here. How could it come to this? How could it come to this? Okay, got that part? So what did Yunman, what was Yunman's response? This person of great ability. This is a very difficult one. It reminds me of another story about one of my ancestors named Marlon Brando. I studied with Marlon before I came to Suzuki Roshi. I started studying with him when I was 12. I was studying in a dark room. And there was this movie up on the screen, and the name of the movie was On the Waterfront.

[43:49]

Yeah. And then later I heard that when he was a student, he was in an acting class. And his acting teacher said, okay, guys, maybe they were sitting in bleachers or something. He says, get up in the bleachers and pretend as though you're in a chicken coop. You're all chickens in a chicken coop. And a bomb goes off outside. What would you do? And so Marlon Browner just sat there That's what he thought he would do as a chicken. He wouldn't move. All the other people went flying all over the room, screaming and all that. He said, well, I'm a chicken. I just sit there. The bomb goes off. That's a hint.

[44:56]

So what did Wei Wen do? It says he did not move a hair's breadth." That was his response to, how did it come to this? And he did not move. And then the story goes on and says, although he had cut through he still had horns. But he did not brag about his cutting through. And it says, in other words, although he had cut through, he still had horns, he was still training. And then he spent many seasons of cold and hot.

[46:05]

going to Shre Fong at dusk and dawn. Going to question Shre Fong at dusk and dawn to trim his horns. So even though we cut through, we keep training until it's time to go to the top of a solitary peak. And in his case, to speak briefly about the most important things. Mm-hmm. he had already had dharma transmission with Moojo and then he went and had further dharma transmission with Shreyafong.

[47:08]

He is not listed as the dharma successor of Moojo. He's listed as dharma successor of Shreyafong. Moojo was retired from official transmission work and yet he did awaken and transmit a style. But the actual official responsibility for a particular family style, he receives with Shui Fong. Didn't you, Joe, say to your men, go to Shui Fong? I wasn't there at the time, but I think he did. I think Mojo said, I'd like you to go visit the great Shui Fung.

[48:10]

And he did visit Shui Fung, and he was awakened with Shui Fung. further awakening beyond awakening. Then he left Shui Fung and went to visit another teacher. He went south from Shui Fung to the area of China where the sixth ancestor had his monastery. And near there, he visited another teacher whose name was Ru Min, romanized R-U-M-I-N, Ru Min. And this is in the south. and again this is a time of turbulence, so at this time various warlords are becoming, you know, consolidating their gains at the edge of the decaying political process of the Tang Dynasty.

[49:25]

The Tang Dynasty has just sort of fallen apart. And down in the south there's various warlords who gradually become powerful enough to declare themselves to be emperors. And around the Sixth Ancestor's temple there was a person who had just kind of established himself as supreme imperial majesty, Lu Chun. And so he went down in that area and he went to visit Rumin. And the early version says that he and Rumin hit it off, became friends quickly and became good friends. That's the early version. A later version is, these later versions, I really like some of these later versions. The later version is,

[50:26]

I didn't tell you the later version of him going to Shui Fung. Should I tell that one first before I tell? So going back to Shui Fung. So as I told you before, when he approached Shui Fung, even before climbing the mountain, his great capacity was also already clear. And so that's what the early version says. And later they kind of like elaborated how it was clear before he climbed the mountain. So here's the story. He's at the foot of the mountain in a village at the foot of the mountain. in a cavern in a canyon, he met a monk. And he said to the monk, are you going to climb Snowy Peak? And the monk said, yes, sir, I am. And he said, well, I have a job for you. I want you to go up the mountain, and I'd like you to go up to Shui Fung

[51:37]

And when he comes into the hall, go up to him and say to him, hey, old boy, why are you still wearing that block around your neck? In China, they put these things called canes, these blocks, these rectangular blocks. They put them around criminals' necks and locked them on. And it's called a cane in the pronunciation. C-A-N-G-U-E. Why are you wearing this block around your neck? He's supposed to say that to Shui Fung. And he did. The guy agreed, and he went up to Shui Fung and said that to him. And when he did, Shui Fung got off of his seat and came over to him and grabbed him. and said, speak, speak. And then Shui Fung said, that wasn't your, that wasn't, you didn't, that didn't come from you.

[52:58]

That came from somebody else, didn't it? And he said, no, I got it. And then Shui Fung said, and then Shui Fung said, attendant, bring rope and a stick. And the guy said, okay, okay. It wasn't mine. It was from a guy down at the bottom of the hill named Wei Yun. And Shui Fung said, okay, guys, go welcome the new monk. And then he came up and they had the interchange. And then it says, and when they had that interchange, it was like two tallies fitting back together. So in Asia sometimes they would take a block of wood or something like that and break it and give one to one person and one to another person and then you could later prove you were a successor of that person by bringing your tally to meet the other tally and fit them together.

[54:08]

That was a later version. So the later version of this story is What story is that? The story of who meeting who? Yunmen meeting the guy in the south, right. The guy in the south named Rumin. Zen master Rumin who had a monastery. He went to Rumin. He heard he was a good guy. They met in the early story. They met and hit it off. In the later story, once upon a time there was a Zen master named Ru Min. And he had a lovely monastery in the southern part of China. And it was a Zen monastery. And usually at Zen monasteries they have a head monk. And so the monks in the monastery said, Master, why don't we have a head monk?

[55:13]

And Ru Min said, Well, because the head monk hasn't been born yet. And monks said, oh, okay. And then sometime later, Rumin announced to his assembly, the head monk has been born. And they said, oh, okay. And then, I guess about 13 years later, Rumin said, the head monk has entered a monastery. And then about 20 years later, Rumin said, the head monk is coming to visit us. And then Rumin said to the monks, the head monk is at the bottom of the hill. Go get him. And the head monk was Huay Yen.

[56:17]

He brought him to the temple and made head monk. The earlier version says they met, hit it off, and Wei Yun became head monk. Then, Rumin retired, and the new emperor made Wei Yun the teacher of that monastery that used to be Rumin's monastery. So that's some bathwater around the story of Yin-Man. We have one more class, so we'll have some time to work on this simple case. Number six. I really know the stories, but I'm just opening it.

[57:35]

Once upon a time, there was a monk, a teacher named Yun Men. And he said to his group, I don't ask you about before the 15th day. Can you say something about after the 15th day? And then his style was to answer the question himself. So he said, every day is a good day. One more time. I don't ask you about before the 15th day. Can you say a little about after the 15th day? Every day is a good day. So here's a story.

[58:51]

This is a story of his friendship to his group of students. This is one example of his teaching. I think I could say four possible ways to look at this. One is, before the 15th day, it's like before you're born. I'm not asking you about before you're born. After you're born, can you say something?"

[59:58]

And he says — this is speaking for himself, I guess — "'Since I've been born, every day is a good day.'" I'm not asking you about before there was karmic consciousness. But since karmic consciousness, how's it going? Do you have anything to say? Every day is a good day. Some other teachers have hearing from people how things are going since they were born. They actually ask him to go to the time before they were born and then say something from there. Yen Mun's saying, since you've been born, how's it going? For me, every day is a good day. What does that mean for him?

[61:04]

Every day is a good day. Everybody is your good friend. Everybody is not your idea of a good friend. Everybody is actually your good friend. Since I've been born, everybody is my good friend, and I've been a good friend to everybody. This is Yen Man talking. He took over the monastery from Rumin and the emperor of that area came to visit him one time and they also

[63:17]

hit it off. And that emperor became Yanmen's main supporter. And one time the emperor invited Yanmen to come to the palace. And give some teachings. And when the emperor asked him to give the teachings, Yan Men said, I would encourage your majesty to reflect on what he just said. And His Majesty could accept that instruction and appreciated it. And then one of his ministers said, I think the teacher is asking you to let him go home.

[64:27]

Let him leave the palace. And the emperor said, Master, teacher, you may go. And Yan Men said, Long live the emperor. I won't yell it as loud as he said it. Long live the emperor. Long live the emperor. And he went home. But even so, when he got there, because of the imperial support and his good friendship with the emperor, a lot of people came to visit the monastery. And it was a very busy place. And then he said to the emperor, could I move out into the mountains and not have so many guests coming to visit my practice place? And the emperor said, I'll miss you being out there in the mountains, but yes, you may go. So he went out to a quiet place.

[65:33]

And there is where he could teach. And that's a situation where people started writing down what he said. And that's where he said, I'm not asking you about before the 15th day. Can you say something about after the 15th day? Every day is a good day. Do you see the mindfulness? What the mindfulness is? We have a little bit of time before we close down the shop for the night. Is there anything you'd like to say? I'm hoping to continue the stories about this person next week, to continue the story.

[66:39]

But I leave you with... even though you're not being asked about before the 15th, I'm not asking you about it, but I would recommend that you consider before the 15th. That you be mindful of the time before you were born. It's good to keep in mind. And then from there, consider what you've been doing since you were born. Look at those two and see about this, every day is a good day for you. Is every day a good day for you? And what do you mean by that? I remember one time Sikhi Roshi's wife, I don't know why she was giving me this little talk, but she said, every day is a good day, she said. And she said, that means every day is a good day to suffer.

[67:42]

I don't ask you about before you were born. And by the way, you weren't suffering then. But since you were born, how's it going? Every day is a good day to suffer. Most people think every day is a bad day to suffer. Now, did I say everybody? I take it back. Some people think every day is a bad day to suffer, or most days are a bad day to suffer. Most days are a good day not to suffer. But since you've been born, actually, Yuen Mun says every day is a good day for what? For liberation from suffering? That means it's a good day for suffering. Are we like full of enthusiasm for every day is a good day to suffer?

[68:56]

Yes. Pardon? Does he welcome every day? Does Wei Yun welcome? That's what he meant. That's what he meant. He meant every day is a good day to welcome. There's no days that aren't good days to welcome. That's what he's saying. Days full of suffering are good days to welcome. And if you have any doubts about this or questions about this, every day is a good day for you to have doubts and questions. And every day is a good day for me if you have doubts and questions.

[70:06]

And if you don't have doubts and questions, even though that sounds really terrible to me, it's a good day for me. I'm speaking for you-know-who, the big ancestor of young men. Even if we settle this matter tonight, we still have one more class. So I encourage us to consider this teaching, every day is a good day. which doesn't mean every day looks like a good day. It means whatever the day looks like, it's a good day to practice welcoming the day. And the source of this is the first 15 days, which we're not talking about right now.

[71:14]

The first 15 days, the time before you were born, is your resource for dealing with what's happened since in such a way that you can say, with the ancestor, you can say, every day is a good day and all I want to do, all I want to do is the appropriate response. whatever kind of happiness or suffering comes, I want to respond appropriately. And I'm not saying this day is not a day to respond to appropriately. This is a good day to respond appropriately. This is a good minute to respond to appropriately. And my responses also may not look that interesting.

[72:17]

But my responses that don't look too interesting are, it's a good day for you to work with them, and vise versa. it's a good day for me that I'm kind of, what's the word? I feel sort of oppressed by the time of the night. You know, it's like it's getting up close to 9 o'clock.

[73:29]

I feel like, really, I probably should knock it off. You think so? But I also feel like inviting you to spend the rest of the night telling me what's going on. But I know that that may not be appropriate response. But I think it is appropriate for me to tell you that I feel like you have lots of questions about this teaching. I feel like you do. And it would be good to talk about it the rest of the night. But I'm probably not going to. So maybe next week we can get together and you can bring your doubts about this teaching, if you happen to have any, which you might have. I don't know what's going on with you, but it would take all night to find out I know how you look. You look like you look.

[74:33]

But what does that mean? I don't know. Like Johnny says, yeah, I think we probably should stop. I don't know if he means that. Do you? I do. I don't know if he's attached to that. Are you? No. That's what I thought. How about you? How are you doing? I'm looking at that story, and it seems to me to be coming from both of his family traditions. Both? Which are the two? well I didn't hear that you said both and I said which are the two oh yeah I think so too and they're also coming from monastic discipline and they're also coming from where else could they be coming from oh

[75:47]

They're also coming from his friendship with the emperor and his friendship with Rumin. They're coming from there, too. But it's hard for you to see that, maybe, because you haven't heard much about the emperor. I have a video of his interactions with the emperor I could show you. He was an amazing person. Okay, ready? May our intention equally extend to every being.

[76:36]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_91.95