Yesterday I introduced the first case of the Book of Serenity, the teaching of thusness, which has been intimately communicated by Buddhism ancestors, which you now have. This teaching of thusness is what the enlightening beings are always taking care of. It is the teaching which helps them realize their vow to benefit all beings.

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It is the teaching which protects them in their enlightening work from becoming obsessive and compulsive. It protects the enlightening being from what we call burnout. is the primary teaching of the Mahayana schools of Buddhism. The fundamental ground of things just as they are or as suchness. In the first case

[02:07]

of the World Honored One, ascending the seat is an endless ocean, which I cannot cover. But there's a little bit more that I'd like to look at with you. The World Honored One ascended the seat, and then what happened? Manjushri made an announcement.

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But before Manjushri made an announcement, what do you suppose happened when the World Honored One ascended the seat? The ocean was born? What? The ocean was. Any other comments? About what? Nothing? Anyone care to describe this nothing? What? What was the World Honored One doing? He was sitting. Yes? What? Adjusting his robes. Was he talking? Was he quiet?

[04:14]

Was he sitting still? Very still? He was just being as it is. Was that enough for him? So then our dear friend Manjushri, why did he have to say anything? For us. Compassion, yeah. For us, he did what wasn't necessary. Kind of like Jesus getting crucified. No, no, not like Jesus getting crucified. It's more like Judas. It's more like Judas. There he is. Get him. But without Judas, they couldn't have got him. They couldn't have done his thing. So Manjushri is very kind to take the role.

[05:19]

And then after Manjushri says this wonderful thing for our benefit, then what does the World Honored One do? Gets down from the seat. So what happened to dustness then? What? It continued. Someone said, when the world on one got down, he'll deal another day. Hmm? I just wish to stall this. Shakyamuni Buddha was kind enough not to say anything, so later on we can say quite a bit.

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One of his disciples said about this event, the unique breeze of reality, can you see it? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle, incorporating the patterns of spring into the ancient brocade. But nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaping. This case is also presented in the Blue Cliff record.

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It's case 92 there. And in that collection also, Manjushri is criticized for what he did. And the compiler makes a poem and mentions that If there had been a certain kind of a person present, they wouldn't have had to do what Manjushri did. And this kind of person is called Saindhava. This word is a Sanskrit word which means something which can adapt to various circumstances. So if the Buddha is eating, Sandhava brings salt.

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If the Buddha is finished eating, Sandhava brings a bowl of water. While Sandhava can also bring just a bowl, if that's what the Buddha needs. And when the Buddha is done eating, wants to go for a little ride, Sandiva brings a horse. So, if such a person were there at that time, they could have done just what was necessary. How do we practice suchness without delay?

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It is the practice of direct experience. The practice of direct experience is already going on. And it's going on in locations. It's going on at the location of every living being. The realm of direct experience is unmediated by concepts. It cannot be known. It is inconceivable. Therefore the practice of suchness is inconceivable.

[12:50]

What is our responsibility in the conceivable realm? It is to follow through on the experience which we know, which is mediated by concepts entirely, to follow through on these experiences completely. Suchness is unmediated and is innocent of concepts but it also includes all concepts. The ocean of all concepts, the totality of all conceptualization, is unmediated by conceptualization. So in the realm of knowing,

[14:03]

to plunge into your moment-by-moment concepts without any resistance allows the realization of thusness. The next case of the Book of Serenity is called Bodhidharma's emptiness. Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great teacher Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma said, empty, there is no holy. The emperor said, who are you facing me?

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Bodhidharma said, don't know. The emperor didn't understand. Bodhidharma subsequently crossed the Yangtze River and came to Shaolin and faced the wall for nine years. Here too, silent sitting is demonstrated. Bodhidharma was able to sit without anyone commenting, without anyone pointing at what he was doing. He practiced wall gazing.

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And wall gazing does not mean looking at a wall. Wall gazing is the gazing that the wall is doing. Bodhidharma entered a cave, faced the wall in a cave. Someone gave me a Native American teaching.

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about various cards, animal cards that one can draw. One of the cards is called the bear. The bear card represents the bear going into the cave and hibernating. Hibernus. Hibernus means what? Do you know what it means? What does hibernia mean in Spanish? In Latin it means winter. Hibernius means winter quarters. Bodhidharma went into winter quarters and so it's kind of appropriate now that we have a winter retreat here where you can go into a cave and digest your blubber which you accumulated through your experience over the summer.

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Chew on this experience, this accumulated experience. Chew it. But actually in hibernation you don't have to chew. You just hold still with your mouth closed and your tongue on the roof of your mouth and your body digests your experience by itself. And then at the end of that process At the end of that winter, you have springtime. Hakuen Zenji's disciple Tōrei wrote the poem, Wall Gazing. In the back, a spring flower opens. Total exertion of what's in front of you.

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Total giving everything to body and breath. Being so involved in the conceptual realm, in the realm of knowledge, that there's nothing left over. the realm of direct experience unfolds and illuminates the realm of indirect conceptual experience. Bodhidharma didn't teach his main disciple, Huay Ka, much. about all he taught was outside, have no involvements with objects.

[21:20]

Inside, no coughing or sighing in the mind. If you can practice like this, if you can just keep doing this, if you can achieve continuity, you'll have no doubts." Later, Huayka came back to Bodhidharma and said, "'I have no further involvements.' Bodhidharma said, Doesn't that fall into nihilism? Kweka said, no. Bodhidharma said, prove it.

[22:26]

Kweka said, I'm always clearly observing and words can never reach it. Clearly observing, as Manjushri instructed, completely resigned to the moment-by-moment conceptual experience before you, with no resistance, holding back nothing for another time or a better practice. Also, not overdoing it. Embracing the ocean of concepts, no word can reach that awareness.

[23:32]

Embracing the tiger, no other tiger will attack you. Buddha Dhamma said, when Huayka said, I have no further involvements, He said, doesn't that fall into nihilism? If you say you have no further involvements, if you are engaged in your experience and you have the idea in addition to your experience about this, if you make that embracing, that total engagement into a thing, called totally engaging and having no involvements, and you make it into nihilism. But to take a step and to take another step, to exhale and be completely with the exhale, there's not any additional idea of I'm completely involved in the exhale.

[24:47]

If there is some idea, like I have no involvements, you turn it into a thing. You turn no involvements into a thing, and Bodhidharma says, isn't that nihilism? And you can't say no. But as you take a step, no word reaches that step. There's just a step, and no word reaches it. That's no involvement. In other words, it's complete involvement with nothing more. It's total embracement, total engagement with the word body, the word breath, and no further involvement. Totally resigned, always totally resigned to the realm of conceptual knowledge, to the conceivable world. and the inconceivable liberation manifests.

[25:54]

Just like Yangshan, sweeping. He was sweeping. And for a long time he had this problem consciousness, this little bit of extra words, this brilliant mind that couldn't settle into sweeping. And then there was a sound of pebble and bamboo meeting. And the problem consciousness The word was the sound and that was it. The tracks, the steps of the ancients are like snowflakes falling on a blazing furnace.

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Each snowflake is completely different from the other snowflakes, extremely detailed and therefore unique. And that unique, that very particular snowflake touches the furnace and that's it. That's suchness for today and you don't get another one like that again. We need to be present enough to see the snowflake and watch it fall and watch it touch the furnace. So we sit still. And I imagine for myself and for you, you might think,

[28:22]

Well, it's kind of hard to watch these snowflakes because of all the stuff that's happening while I'm sitting. I understand the furnace. I understand the heat of sitting, of the pain, but how am I going to be still enough in the midst of all that, see exactly the fine details to examine minutely this snowflake and also to see it touch the surface of the furnace. Shouldn't we go to some cooler area? Can't I sit in an easy chair and watch the show? It seems to me that only in the middle of that heat is this kind of realization going to happen. I think my first or second Sashin, I went to see Suzuki Roshi and I told him, if I sit this way, I'm pretty calm.

[29:40]

I can follow my breath and stay pretty still. If I sit this other way, I'm in pain and I'm screaming inside. So should I sit in the way where I can be more calm?" And he said, why don't you keep sitting this other way, this way of where there was a lot of screaming. Now I thought the screaming would be distracting me from seeing the snowflake. Doesn't that seem likely? How can you see the snowflake when you're screaming? But I propose that the snowflake is the screaming. I wanted a more mellow moan or perhaps a more quiet song.

[30:44]

But that wasn't the suchness at that time. Actually, there was silence there, too, in between the screams. And the funny thing is about these screams is that they're very sharp. They're like snowflakes in that each one is very clear and distinct. Without me making them that way, I didn't have to fashion them to be sharp. They came very clear. I would wish that they were perhaps more dull and vague, but they weren't. They were sharp throbs. I thought they were distracting me from something. I thought I was supposed to be concentrating on something else. But actually I was quite concentrated on that. So the funny thing is that the beginners in some ways have it easier. Now I wonder, people wonder, do sessions get easier?

[31:54]

I don't know. I don't know if the pain is different after quite a few years than it is at the beginning. It seems anyway easier to sit still with it and have more confidence that you'll survive because you've survived it before. But I don't know if it's really less pain. I don't know. No way to tell. We have no control group. So sometimes the sutras, like the Avatamsaka Sutra says, you want to know the realm of awakening, which of course can't be known. Make your mind clear and empty like space so that it is unhindered wherever it goes.

[33:03]

But again, you don't really make your mind clear and empty. What do you do? How do you observe your breath and your posture? How do you observe your feelings and your emotions in such a way that the mind is clear and empty? I just said it. You watch the experiences. You experience the experiences. And if there's any direction around them, if there's any wishes around them, if there's any signs around them, if there's any concepts around them, you don't let those concepts infect your experience.

[34:08]

You learn to be flexible, like that sandava, and see that there's this, a sound, and that's it. And when you experience a sound, there's no direction. There's no wish. There's no concept. There's no signpost. And if you see a wish, a direction, a concept, a signpost, those are just other experiences, which also nothing reaches. So you trust to give your whole life as you know it to each thing. This is called wall-gazing. This is called digesting your experience in the cave.

[35:18]

And when you have digested your experience completely, Then it's springtime and you come out of the cave and you're hungry and you're crabby. You may not think you should be crabby but you are. You are free from any concept of what a bodhisattva is supposed to act like. You're voraciously hungry. You go Everywhere, without being hindered. You can join hands with all beings and walk through birth and death with them. Because you have just been walking through birth and death by yourself. Each step has been a death. A death.

[36:28]

A death. And a birth. A birth. Albert. Oh, I'm sorry. I want to say a little bit more about hands and feet. I mentioned yesterday during Sashin I found very helpful during breaks to wash my hands and feet. It helps me extend the zazen into the breaks.

[37:38]

Now, I'm sorry if I'm acting a little silly, but again, after you wash your hands, not to mention your feet, but after you wash them and they're clean, when you go back to the zendo, you could kiss them if you wished before you put them together. Kiss them to get them ready to manifest suchness. Manifest suchness to let them be like snowflakes so that they can be set on top of the furnace. Let them be your tools to test impermanence. Now, kissing your feet is much more difficult, but it's very important to wash them, keep them clean. I remember Again, in the 60s, in hippie days, the hippies walked around sometimes in San Francisco without shoes on.

[38:48]

And they came to study Zen with the Zen teachers, Suzuki Roshi, right? With various ideas of what a Zen teacher was. And what did he teach them? Wash your feet. They were expecting not to meet their mother But there she was. Wash your feet. Because you're bringing your feet up close to your body, and particularly if you sit cross-legged, you're putting your feet in this area near your hands. This area is your feet and your hands have a lot of nerves in them. A lot of nerves. Your feet and your hands are like, you can feel all those little details. Tremendous intelligence in your feet and hands. So wash them. Take good care of them on the breaks. Bring these intelligence centers back to the sitting.

[39:51]

They pick up experience. Tremendous amount of experience happening. So take care. Devotion to sitting in that way is extended into your breaks and brought back from your breaks. So as you're coming to the zendo, you're already doing zazen. You're already walking the path. Washing your hands for the benefit of all beings. Washing your hands with the deep hope that all beings will have clean hands, will have supremely subtle hands, hands that can actually touch and hold the dharma.

[41:09]

and with these hands that embody your aspiration for all beings to have such wonderful hands that can actually realize the way of Buddha with these hands and plug these hands in to your body. Complete the circuit. And this is another little step or another little devotion of energy to bring your life down to the ground, down to a phenomenal experience. Unhindered, unmitigated, unmediated by any words. Just... Hands, just feet, just breath, just emotions.

[42:35]

With the confidence that these things are enough. Now someone said, well couldn't, wouldn't dirty hands be just enough? Yes, if your hands are filthy. Or your hands up in mid-air. Isn't that just as good a place to have them if you're totally present to the tips of your fingers? Definitely. If your life energy goes out there, into those hands, all the way out to the tips, filling the whole hands. Like just now, I felt a bracelet on my hand. That kind of thing. Just because I was talking to you about bringing my mind into my hand, I felt some unexpected thing out there in my hand. And now I feel, you know, that I'm talking to you about, now that my attention and all your attention is in my hand, I feel, I feel all the blood pulsing in my little fingers.

[43:47]

I'm very nervous. You know? Your hands, your body can be any place, any time, Zen can extend itself completely into everything. Washing the hands is a ritual of devotion to help us bring our life into our body and mind completely. But whatever you're doing could be it. She's wearing a bracelet that's five sizes too large. But she still says she doesn't love him. And she only knows

[44:52]

the winding path and the twisting road. She does not know the way of the immortals. Do you understand? You only know the way from here back to the zendo. Okay? You don't know the way of the immortals. You understand? Who is this one who only knows the way back to the zendo and not the way of the immortals? This is a practitioner of suchness. If you know the way of the immortals Well, what do I say? Most people that know the way of the immortals are just not realizing that they're dreaming of the way of the immortals.

[46:02]

But if you can just know the way from here to the zendo, that's the path of suchness. That's your life. Can you trust that each step of the way back there, each sensation that you experience, each experience that you experience is enough as it is without knowing the path or the way of the immortals? Can you have something more than that? After I, the lecture didn't start, I mean, the bell didn't end until five after 10.

[47:13]

And then by the time we did all the stuff, it was about 10 after 10. So I haven't been talking so long. We are in danger.

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