I don't remember if anybody asked me, but I might have been requested to give a kind of title for this retreat. Did you ask me for a title? So the title I gave was Non-Abiding, Riding the Waves. And the origin of this title was A story I could tell about that is that a few months ago at Green Dragon Zen Temple, we were studying a koan. It was a koan about non-abiding. And we were studying what non-abiding is in Zen practice, what's meant by that. And one of the people in the class came up and said, that he really wanted to understand this non-abiding in his daily life and this person is a lawyer and he's also a surfer and about a month or two after that interaction he he received the Bodhisattva precepts and

[01:29]

The name I gave him was Non-Abiding, Riding the Waves. I really liked that name for him and I thought it was also a good name for all of us and for Zen practice in general. So that's why, that's the origins of this. So I'd like to talk to you about Non-Abiding and Riding the Waves. In Zen temples in Asia and now in the West, one of the central objects of devotion is to the founder of the Buddhist tradition, Shakyamuni Buddha.

[02:33]

So if you go into Zen temples, you might find a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha. I think this might be a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha here, but it also might be a statue of Amida Buddha. Do you know, Charles, what it's supposed to be? It could be Shakyamuni, it could be Amida, I'm not sure which. There's various Buddhas. But in Zen temples, often it's Shakyamuni Buddha. And sometimes on the altar there's a statue of Shakti Muni Buddha, and then on Shakti Muni Buddha's right, I think, our left, but I'm not sure, is seated a bodhisattva named Manjushri. And on his left, our right, is seated Samantabhadra Bodhisattva.

[03:34]

These two Bodhisattvas. Manjya Sri literally means pleasant splendor. Pleasant splendor. A splendiferous pleasantness. And samantabhadra means universal goodness or universal skillfulness. But it's interesting to me that the Chinese way of transliterating manjishri is They use Chinese characters to translate, actually not to translate, but to transliterate Manjushri. So they try to make a sound in Chinese that sounds like the Sanskrit Manjushri.

[04:37]

And what they chose is characters which are pronounced Wanju. Saying Wanju is a way of saying Manju. They say Wanju. Wanju Pusa is their way of saying Manjushri Bodhisattva. And the character is one Jew. One means literature, particularly classical literature. And Jew means to kill. So I don't know exactly what they were thinking about when they chose these words, but this is the spirit. of the Bodhisattva Manjushri so Manjushri usually we say symbolizes perfect wisdom and Samantabhadra symbolizes unlimited skillfulness unlimited appropriate responding so perfect wisdom and unlimited skillfulness these two aspects of Buddha

[05:53]

But by that transliteration of perfect wisdom, we're told that it might mean that we kill the classic literature. Manjusha often carries a sword. And sometimes they say it's to cut through delusions. For this weekend, I would say it's to cut through abiding. It's to cut through clinging. And in China, especially educated people had a great veneration for the classic literature, for the tradition, the great tradition of China. They had the tendency to abide in it. Manjushri is, don't abide in the tradition. Don't abide in the classic teachings. Don't abide in precedent.

[07:05]

And yet a big part of Zen is everything we do, we relate to precedence, to the behavior of the ancestors. But the way we relate to it is we honor We love our ancestors so much that we don't dwell in them. If you don't love your ancestors a lot, you probably shouldn't copy them exactly. Because that's a way to express your partial devotion. But if you love them completely, you have to be different. Only by being different from your ancestors can you repay their kindness. So if we really love the Buddha and the great ancestors of the Buddhist tradition, the way we express that is by not abiding in them, not dwelling in them, not clinging to them.

[08:23]

If you don't honor them, if you don't love them, then it'd probably be good to learn how to honor them and how to love them. So you'd have to study them and find out about them so that you could let go of them. That's the side of practice that Manjushri symbolizes. That's the side of perfect wisdom. Once you're not dwelling, then you can ride the waves. then you can then your skillfulness will be unbounded unhindered but the practice is not just perfect wisdom it's not just becoming free of all hindrance and precedent and being perfectly in accordance with reality it is also acting is also responding to all beings in this skillful way.

[09:33]

In the history of Chinese Zen Buddhism, one of the, I guess, in a sense, in some sense, the most prototypic Zen teacher is what we call the sixth ancestor. And part of the reason why we appreciate the Sixth Ancestor so much is that the Sixth Ancestor was not educated by Chinese standards. He could speak Chinese but he couldn't read it. And he was not even a middle-class person. He was a co-workman. He sold firewood to support his mother. And he wasn't a monk, he didn't live in a monastery.

[10:59]

He just worked cutting wood and then he walked to the marketplace selling the wood. So we appreciate this, the origins, his humble origins, because it shows that Zen can be found anywhere. So he was one day selling firewood. in a marketplace in Canton, in southern China. Walking through the marketplace, you walk by, they had various booths, you know, in the marketplace. Like they had, you know, leechy nut booths. They had mushroom booths. They had fortune-telling booths. and they had kissing booths. And so he walked by a fortune-telling booth, and the fortune teller was chanting a Buddhist scripture, which we say in English, the Diamond Sutra, the Diamond Scripture.

[12:14]

And when the workman, his name was Workman Lu, the six ancestor's name was Mr. Lu, When Workman Liu heard this man chanting the Daima Sutra, when the man got to the part of the sutra, section 10c, where the sutra says, a bodhisattva should give rise or produce or enliven a mind which doesn't abide on anything. which doesn't dwell anywhere. When he heard that, he woke up. He saw. Is this amplification a little too high? It's okay?

[13:24]

Huh? Can you turn down a tiny bit? Maybe they'll take the ring out. How's that? A little less ringy? Okay, perfect, Charlie. So he heard that and he woke up. Did you wake up? So this scripture, and particularly this part of the scripture, is very important for the Zen tradition. Who here isn't familiar with what we mean by the word bodhisattva? Anybody not familiar with that term? You're not? Okay. So bodhisattva literally means enlightening being. Bodhi means enlightenment or awakening. And sattva means a being. Like you're a being. I'm a being.

[14:25]

but also just any kind of being whose essence is enlightenment is a bodhisattva. So bodhisattvas have the aspiration, they aspire to be Buddhas in order to help all life. Some people want to help all life, but they don't necessarily aspire to be a Buddha. So if you aspire to help everyone, you're not necessarily a bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas want to attain enlightenment also in order to be able to fully benefit beings. So the bodhisattva should produce a thought which abides nowhere. Pardon me? A bodhisattva should enliven a mind which abides nowhere, which abides on nothing.

[15:32]

Okay? So, enlivening the mind which dwells nowhere So that means you don't dwell in colors, in sights. You don't dwell in sounds. You don't dwell in delusion. You don't dwell in enlightenment. You don't dwell in essence. You don't dwell in function or activity. You don't dwell on anything. If you dwell on anything, like if you dwell on good, goodness appears.

[16:41]

If you dwell on evil, evil appears. And when evil appears or good appears, because you're dwelling in them, then they conceal the one mind. but when you don't dwell on anything you see that the entire world is one mind you see that the whole world is nothing but one mind and then entering that one mind you have unlimited skill to respond in a way that encourages others to enter the one mind and find unlimited skill.

[17:49]

To accomplish complete integration with beings and realize our common enlightenment. Are you having trouble hearing? Come closer, please. So for the last two days, I've actually been talking about this... this kind of manjishri practice, this practice of letting go of tradition, letting go of precedence,

[19:01]

So in Zen, some of us teach that all Buddhas and all living beings are just one mind. And there's nothing else. And if you want to enter and realize this, all you need to do is let go of your thoughts and to learn how to let go of your thoughts usually involves noticing where you're holding on to your thoughts so you can learn that today, you can notice if there's anything you're holding on to.

[20:18]

We can learn, we can find out if there's anything we're holding on to. And then if we are, if we face that without indulging in it, just face it, or rejecting it, just face it, That way of being with it is letting it go. And repeatedly doing that, we enter more and more into the mode of manjushri, of perfect wisdom. We enter more and more into the mode of not abiding. But of course, Number one, it's difficult to notice these things about yourself. It's difficult to notice that you're clinging, you might be embarrassed, and also you might notice that there's some discomfort around your clings. Because we're often clinging because we're afraid of what would happen if we don't cling.

[21:29]

Does anybody ever have that feeling of how frightening it would be if you didn't cling to something? So although we're clinging because we're afraid, also our clinging makes us afraid. Clinging because we're afraid and our clinging perpetuates our fear and anxiety. So it's hard to notice the clinging because there's a lot of fear and anxiety around it. It's also embarrassing maybe, which is also rather uncomfortable to notice how clingy, how graspy, that you might be or how angry and rejecting you are of what's going on that's another form that's really clinging too to reject is clinging or to be or to reject yourself for clinging or to cling to yourself as being rejected all these are possible precedents dispositions But to imagine giving up our dispositions and giving up our precedents and just standing as an unprecedented living creature.

[22:36]

Unprecedented. And again, that doesn't mean you have no precedent, it just means you let go of it. So for the time being, you can hardly remember who you used to be. If somebody asks you, you can tell them probably, but you're afraid to get in that place because if you get in that place where you have let go of your precedents, of your history, If someone asked you, you might not know. What if they did ask? I might not know. Well, you will, I tell you. But you may be afraid to try it. And then if you do try it, and you find yourself in an unprecedented space, feeling a way that for all you know, you've never felt before, because you're not checking to see if you felt this before. So actually, another way of putting it is, you enter into a way of being where you're not checking on what's happening. But isn't that scary to be here without checking to see how you're doing? See now, am I still a woman?

[23:39]

Am I a Zen student? Am I a falcon? Am I a storm? Am I a song? Shouldn't you be checking to see which one of those you are and make sure it's the right one? Well, actually, the ancestors are suggesting enter into not checking on what's happening. Don't check your experience. Just experience. That's non-abiding. And that's perfect wisdom. But again, it's hard. And so probably you'll notice a lot of moments where that's not what's going on. But what's going on is checking. Checking. Checking. Grasping. Holding on to control. But again...

[24:45]

If you face that, if you meet that checking, if you meet that controlling, tempting to control, if you meet that grasping, in that meeting it, there can be non-abiding, even though this phenomena of grasping still seem to be arising. And no matter what you do, that's actually going on all the time. Earlier, Flint said something about, we're going to be busy this weekend. Did you hear him say that? Well, that was a prediction, and he's probably right. Because, you know, we're naturally busy. Even if we're sitting on our cushion very still, the mind's very busy. The heart's very busy. The digestion's very busy. We're busy creatures. We're cooking all day long. 98.6 approximately.

[25:47]

We're warm, busy beings. We are. This is natural. But when he said that, of course, I thought of Yes, we're going to be busy, but there's also somebody who's not busy. No matter how busy you are sitting on your cushion, no matter how busy you are eating lunch, no matter how busy you are, no matter how busy you are, no matter how busy you ever are, there's always somebody who's not busy. No matter how busy you are, grasping, checking, choosing, picking, preferring, rejecting, indulging, punishing, accepting, no matter how busy you are, there's always somebody who's not busy, who's there at the same time, all the time, always with you, wherever you go,

[26:55]

who is not checking, who is not rejecting, who is not clinging, who is just clearly aware, always with you. Buddha looks at you and sees both. Sees a busy one and sees a not busy one. Practicing non-abiding, you find a busy one. But in order to find the un-busy one, you have to be near the busy one. Because the un-busy one is not the slightest bit busy. The un-busy one's not busy enough to be the slightest bit different from the busy one. The busy one's into being different from the busy one. And the busy one's into being different from the un-busy one. And also the busy one's into being the same as the un-busy one. the busy ones, you name it. The unbusy one isn't able to do anything, isn't able to get away from the busy one.

[28:03]

So if you look someplace in the neighborhood of the unbusy one, or the busy one for the unbusy one, you won't find it. It's right there in the midst of the busyness. It's actually kind of in the middle of the busyness. I wouldn't say in the center, because the busyness doesn't really have a center. And the fact that the busyness doesn't really have a center is the unbusy one. The fact that this busyness is just kind of like something to let go of, basically. It's there to be relinquished. It's there as an opportunity to become skillful. and also as I said last night we have this ocean seal samadhi which means to embrace and sustain everything to take everything in to accept everything to care for everything so it means to embrace and sustain clinging

[29:24]

Rejection, fear, controlling, everything. But it is not controlling, it is not clinging, it is not rejecting. It is just to embrace and sustain, just to meet each thing with no mind. meet each thing with the practice of letting go of each thing you're devoted to each thing you meet each thing you embrace and sustain each thing and you let go of each thing as a way to meet each thing if you meet things and grasp them you'll get tired out if you meet things and let go of them you can continue It doesn't hire you to meet things with no mind.

[30:28]

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