in case 59 now of the book of serenity and i i wanted to again say something about something kind of unique about the zen tradition kind of unique maybe not you know completely but you might say unique, about the Zen tradition within the Buddhist tradition, which I've mentioned before, and also Linda mentioned it in one of her talks. If you look in the scriptures of the Buddha, you find many of them start out with the scene of the discourse being described.

[01:01]

They tell you often where the Buddha was, who was there, and sometimes a little bit about some little background on how he got there, something like that. And then sometimes a particular person comes forward and talks to the Buddha, asks the Buddha a question, or the Buddha asks somebody a question. and there's a little interchange. And then sometimes the Buddha then launches into an extensive discourse. And then sometimes that same person who started the conversation at the end of the discourse has a big insight and says so, and the Buddha recognizes their insight. And so there's scriptures like that. And recently in the Sesshin we had in April here, I brought up a scripture which followed this pattern, but at the beginning of the scripture there was a very intimate description of the Buddha wandering about.

[02:09]

The description wasn't intimate about his wandering about, but there was an intimate description of something that happened to Buddha while he was wandering. sometimes the Buddha just went off by himself, pretty much by himself, I mean, all alone. After he was, like, teaching and had a big group, he sometimes would go off on a private mission, a solitary mission. And he would sometimes then leave his assembled monks, both junior and intermediate, in the care of senior monks, like Shariputra and Maha... Magalyana or something like that. And they would take care of quite a large number of monks. Buddha would go off by himself. Which, in a way, that image might surprise some of you. It kind of surprises me just to imagine the Buddha just wandering about, you know. Unattended, after he was already teaching large groups of people and well-known.

[03:10]

And... So... In this story, he was traveling around by himself and he was looking for a place to stay one night, so he came to a house of a potter and asked the potter if he could stay there. and stay in his workshop. Didn't ask to stay in his house, and the pilot said, well, it's fine with me, except somebody else is already staying there. And... So the Buddha went and asked that person if he could stay there. And the person said, fine. Plenty of room here, you can stay here. And... And they stayed in that workshop that night and both of them sat up a good share of the night in meditation. And the Buddha observed the meditation practice of this person who he was sharing the workshop with.

[04:16]

And he thought the person was a very good meditator and had, you know, good posture and very kind of diligent meditator. So he thought, well, maybe I could ask this guy some questions. So in the morning, he asked the person under whom he was studying. And the man told him that he was studying under the Buddha Shakyamuni. And this guy, the man's name was Pukasati. And the Buddha said, have you ever met the Buddha, your teacher? He said, no, I haven't met him. He said, would you know what he'd look like if you met him? He said, no, I wouldn't. He said, oh. Then the Buddha thought to himself, maybe I could teach this guy some Dharma.

[05:18]

Since he wants to be my student, maybe I'll teach him. So then he said to the guy, please listen and I'll teach you Dharma. And the the meditator, Pukasati, said, OK, I'm listening. And then the Buddha gave this discourse. And towards the end of the discourse, before the Buddha was done, Pukasati had an enlightenment experience, not full-scale, but two-thirds of the way to full-scale. he achieved the, no, three-fourths of the way. He attained the third stage of, you know, in terms of the stages of insight, the third stage out of four. And also, but at that time he also understood who was talking. When the Buddha finally finished talking, he said, you know, please excuse me, I understand now who you are and

[06:23]

And I'm so happy because my teacher has come to me and I can hear the Dharma directly from the person under whom I've been practicing without knowing. And he also, in this sutra, he says another important... So the discourse is quite an important discourse, a very interesting discourse, which we talked about in Sati. And then at the end there he says something which is very important. And he says, I'm sorry to have treated you rather informally and casually, not disrespectfully, but rather casually. I'm sorry to have treated my teacher, my master, somewhat casually. And the Buddha said, yes, that was... The Buddha didn't say, oh no, it's okay, you can treat me just like any old Joe. The Buddha said, no, that was kind of a mistake, but to recognize the mistake as a mistake... is an advancement in Dharma.

[07:26]

And that's a very important phrase in Buddhist teaching, to recognize a mistake as a mistake. And, you know, in that chapter, I think it's called The Marrow of Zen, Suzuki Roshi speaks of this thing where she says he calls one continuous mistake But strictly speaking, it doesn't so much mean continuous mistake. It means, although that's part of what Dogen's comment on it, it really means that it's recognizing a mistake as a mistake. And it also means, another way to read it is, having made a mistake, making the best of it. And the best thing you can do with a mistake is recognize it for what it is and learn from it. So in this scripture the Buddha points out that even though he made that little mistake, whatever size mistake it was, to recognize it as such moves forward. And also he had this insight. I bring this up because this is an example of the traditional Buddhist scriptures where there is an encounter, a friendly and intimate encounter between the Buddha and a person.

[08:39]

They have this nice encounter. Then the Buddha gives a nice teaching And then the man or the woman, both men and women have these stories, and both men and women have enlightenment experiences in the scriptures. And then at the end there is this further interchange whereupon the Buddha understands what the person has realized and recognizes it as accurate awakening. And what a lot of people after that did is they studied mostly the most of this discussion on Buddhist teachings and Buddhist commentaries is about the discourses and not so much discussion of those stories. And also in later writings, most of the writings were more like discourses and Not so much emphasis on recording stories which were like the ones in the Buddhist scriptures of the teacher and the student interacting in a close and enlightening way.

[09:45]

But in China, they started to record the interactions between the student and the teacher. And in some cases the student would meet the teacher and give a discourse and the student would have an insight. But in many cases the teacher and the student would meet and the discourse would be very, very short. Or the student would already have read a discourse and bringing a question about a discourse. The Buddha has already given the discourses, the student would have read them and come to the teacher already having a discourse in mind and bring up some small point and the teacher and the student would interact very briefly And sometimes they would have the same kind of experience that the Buddha and his students thousands of years before or a thousand years before had. But just the whole story is just this interaction and there's not much teaching in terms of like a paragraph or several pages of discourse. And they started to record these interactions

[10:49]

And this accumulation of literature started to develop, this literature started to accumulate, which was mostly these short interactions. There was a background to these interactions, but the interactions then became the main study. Again, people might have grown up in a Buddhist culture, so they grew up with a background of the Buddhist teachings. then they come to zen and they would both have these kind of interactions plus study these kind of interactions so the cons are if you look at them they're not like that of the student coming getting a long discourse and having an insight during the discourse or at the end of the discourse a student comes and meets the teacher and very in a very brief time the the meditation instruction and the teaching is given and sometimes a student wakes up just with a sentence or two, or a paragraph or two, or two or three or four interchanges. So it's a kind of unique quality of this teaching, which you don't find in other schools, where the actual main body of the literature is student-teacher interactions, short student-teacher interactions.

[12:00]

So case 59 is an example, and case 60 is even a shorter interaction. But this is a short interaction, which we studied last time, and In that case, we considered how that interaction might have been an instruction, what the dead snake was about, and how to live our life as though well, maybe almost everything we meet is this kind of dead snake, which, if we bump into it, we lose our life. In other words, there's this opportunity here, and if we stumble into it, we lose our life. But also, if we try to escape, we lose our life.

[13:07]

So only by meeting it in a balanced way can we live and wake up So those who are, those who, in the setup in this case, those who want to directly practice, they will be confronted by some situation which then they can blow. In some ways, if you're not even trying to practice, in some ways you've already blown it, so, you know, other situations just fall in line with that. But if you're really sincere and diligent in your practice, then you'll be offered opportunities to make mistakes. And the mistakes will be, in some sense, two varieties. One is bumping into things because you're not attentive and paying attention to them. And the other is trying to run away from things because you don't want to be attentive. So we talked about that. And we talked about that actually for two classes.

[14:11]

And That's the interaction between the student and teacher that's the source of this koan. And also I mentioned the theme of, or the dynamic of, feeling the urgency of the opportunity of the moment. Feeling the urgent opportunity of the moment, or feeling urgently the opportunity of the moment. And then not hurrying. So this is a great opportunity, but if we hurry, we're going to miss it. Of course, if we hang back, we'll miss it too. If we're too loose or too tight, we'll miss this opportunity. There should be urgency. Urgency is appropriate. But not rushing, because it's so wonderful, this opportunity. This wonderful opportunity that this koan is talking about, it's so wonderful that we urgently...

[15:14]

want to receive the benefits of this opportunity and work with it. But if we rush, we miss it. So because it's urgent, we don't rush. That's a little review of last time. Now, I'd like to ask if anybody has anything they'd like to say or report about how this practice has been going for them. Any questions? Yes. Yes. I recently had the experience of meeting this snake, and I felt as if I was meeting it kind of with a club, you know, and here the snake was already dead, and I was, you know, and I felt like, I mean, it was more than dropping it to her, it was just, it was... You were unkind to the opportunity? I was.

[16:15]

Uh-huh. And I thought later on, I thought, well, it was already dead. But it felt as if I had to still go after it in some way. What was your intention at that time? At the time of raising the... Well, just before it, could you say what your intention was at that time? What were you trying to do? Did you check your intention? Observe your intention at that time, your motivation? I wasn't too observant until later. Looking back, could you have some sense of what your intention was? Yes. And it seemed, it felt like I mistook the opportunity and my impulse was to relieve frustration instead of to really take in that situation as it was and take in the whole thing.

[17:26]

To relieve frustration rather than take in the frustration. Well, take in the entire situation. I was focusing on a small part of it. Uh-huh. I'm rephrasing it, to relieve the frustration rather than create a vision of the situation which would contain the frustration, which is the practice of patience. See, when you run into frustration, pain and frustration, to create a perspective that has the capacity for the experience. The Sanskrit word for patience means capacity. At root of it means capacity. So when you run into difficulty, can you view the difficulty, sort of bigger than the difficulty, but anyway, in some context in which you can contain it, not which you can contain it, a context which does contain it, or a view or a perspective which does contain it.

[18:29]

That's a way also not to hurry. Not to hurry away from it or hurry to do something about it. Now, should you hurry to create the context? Well, I would say no, don't hurry to create the context, but you could create the context quickly. You can be quick without hurrying. What I mean by hurrying is you get ahead of yourself. You can move your arm or hand or speak quickly if you're abreast of the times. If you're not getting ahead of yourself, then it's not rushing. But if you speak before you're there to attend your speaking, then you're rushing. If you move your hand before you're aware of your intention to move it, then you're rushing. So a lot of times, of course, we rush. We move our hand before we notice the movement of the hand. So that's kind of rushed. And sometimes people start moving slowly to tune into their body. But if you start moving slowly, and you're there, and again, you move slowly and you're there, once you get with it, then, again, like I often use in this class, jumping rope, you start jumping rope slowly, and there, of course, you have to time yourself with the rope, otherwise you're going to get hit.

[20:03]

But then you can speed up. You can put yourself there with the rope, It gets smoother and smoother up to a point. Then you start tripping, don't you, at a certain point? Well, if they keep speeding up at a certain point, you start to maybe reach the limit of your awareness of what you're doing, and then you just trip. But maybe it is possible to get so that you can keep abreast of the times. You can really speed your way up if you can become that skillful. Anything else on working with the first part of the koan, the story and the snake and all that that you'd like to report? Has the dead snake been in your life this week?

[21:13]

Nothing else to say? Yes? It had some practical advantages this week. I had, professionally, I've been getting feedback that I'm pushing too hard. And then I came to class last week and got the answer perfect. So I practiced the whole word. And I've been able to take those same circumstances and transform it into trying to achieve that point. I'm not pushing it. I'm not pulling away. Just being the same intention and explaining my point of view. And I'm happy. And I think the point you just brought up about having a broader point of view, kind of including it, I felt that I was operating on a larger scale with those interactions a piece of what I was doing, not the whole thing.

[22:35]

I would say larger than that. Yes? I had several situations where when I thought of the story and the example, I came forward and met the situation more. I actually was saying things to people I didn't know very well. When you thought of the story, you were able to come forward and meet the situation well? Yeah. I asked myself, you know, am I holding myself back from meeting this particular dead snake? And several times I thought that I was, and then I... came forward and met the dead snake. So I found it helped me express myself more.

[23:39]

And once again, what was the dead snake in the glossary? What you have to relate to. What you have to relate to. What you have to relate to? It represents what you have to relate to me. Wasn't there something about emptiness? A subdued self or dwelling in nothingness. A subdued self or dwelling in nothingness. Do I? Yes, I do. How many do we need? How many copies do we need? How many copies are needed? Okay, so what's a subdued self?

[24:45]

Let's say the dead snake's a subdued self. What's a subdued self? Does anybody have any subdued selves in their life? Anybody met some subdued selves this week? I, uh, during the week, I kind of experienced it, like, in a literal way, working on the farm, I saw a lot of snakes, and my reaction to them was kind of, uh, well, you know, sometimes I have this urge, and I look at a snake, and I see a snake, and I have this little childish urge to, like, go and pick it up. And I noticed that several times this week. You know, you're right there by it and you just go, wow, that would be really neat to pick up this snake. What kind of snake was it? Gardener snakes and some gopher snakes. Garter snake? Yeah, garter snake. I call them gardeners because they paint up gardens. And it was actually funny because I don't know whether it was coincidental or not, maybe not, but But the question I was going to ask last week was if shame was a good indicator of running away from or pushing thought.

[25:52]

And I actually felt like kind of shamed when I realized how I was treating this snake. Like when I realized that that's a way that I could treat this snake. And when you talk about having a subdued self, I sometimes think of shame and holding yourself in or holding yourself... kind of like holding your posture in a way that's uncomfortable or something it's like holding yourself in that way can make almost makes me feel shameful you know when i realize that i haven't been holding myself in a manner you know it's fine right it feels ashamed when you're not holding your when you don't have appropriate posture yeah yeah yeah so you feel ashamed when you don't respect living beings So that's what I think of as the subdued self. So the subdued self is kind of like having that quality of not having correct posture or not...

[26:54]

It's kind of like being squelched. The correct posture is kind of, there's some part of you that's like holding it down. Well, what I was thinking of as a subdued self, a subdued self, what I was thinking of as a subdued self, is a subdued self is when you meet someone and you don't think that's you. You feel... You know, you look at someone and you feel yourself is subdued in that person. In other words, you think that person is not you. That make sense? The one that I could think like that? So when I meet people, it is possible that what I meet is a subdued self. In other words, I meet a person and I think, oh, I don't exactly think it, but I kind of feel like that's not me. And that's okay, the snake's okay, it's just that now you have to meet the snake properly.

[28:03]

And if you don't have an upright attitude towards this being, who you think is not you, this can be a big problem. But if you meet this being who you think is not you, respectfully, you can work with this. And I should say, you can work with it, I would say, if you meet this being in whom you see a subdued version of yourself, in other words, not yourself, if you meet it with the proper posture, you are working with it. And the proper relationship can be realized by having the proper response to, in a sense, a kind of misunderstanding of what's going on. So you have a proper posture in the face of a misunderstanding. And then you can possibly realize, oh, this is just my subdued self.

[29:05]

Actually, if my self would wake up, I would realize this person really is my self. And you can realize that if you meet the subdued self in a balanced way and just respectfully meet the subdued self, meet this person who you think isn't you. So pushing them around isn't appropriate and running away from them isn't appropriate because in both cases it's you. Now, how is this related to dwelling in emptiness? It's another way you could view the snake. If you're dwelling in emptiness, you're emphasizing maybe too much the, what do you call it, the insubstantiality of the meeting of the object or of the self. This imbalance or this misunderstanding of what's going on can happen. But even so, if you stay upright with that,

[30:08]

and study it from that balanced position, you can snap out of that. So you can snap out of this subdued self, you can snap out of this misunderstanding by being upright with it and realizing, oh, this is a misunderstanding. This is not, not me. Everything you meet is not, not you. Also, everything you meet is not you. Okay? there's interdependence there, but this interdependence you don't like then kind of gets sunk in the insubstantiality that's implied by the relationship. So the snake is like what appears in our life as a manifestation of our lack of understanding, which we can meet properly and snap out of our misunderstanding. So there's all these helpful, there's all these dead snakes, or there's these helpful manifestations to manifest our lack of understanding, which if then we meet it as such, we can become free of our misunderstanding.

[31:26]

Without knocking it out of the, without getting rid of our misunderstanding or running away from our misunderstanding, we can meet it and study it. Yes, Todd? Yes. How do you, so knowing that this person you're meeting is you. It's not quite that they're you, it's that they're... Not you and you at the same time. Yeah. So, how do you then, but you're not in that awareness, and yet you feel that it's true, and you want that awareness. Yes. This is sort of yearning for emptiness, but... Yearning for emptiness? No, yearning for realization of emptiness. Okay. Understanding emptiness. You want to understand emptiness, yes? So how do you meet the situation, did you say? How do you not get caught in wanting that realization at the same time that you're aware of being present?

[32:28]

How do you avoid getting caught by that yearning? Yes. At the same time that you're aware of not being present. At the same time you're aware of what not being present? The realization. Is this making sense? Yeah, no, it does, but that's kind of the same thing. Yearning for it is very much the same as feeling like you don't have it, right? Yeah. So how do you deal with feeling like you don't have it? and meet it uprightly. Don't run away from that feeling and don't try to get rid of it. Don't push it around. Respect it. Respect that feeling. It's a perfectly good feeling wanting to understand emptiness or wanting to realize the insubstantiality of things is a perfectly... I mean, that's... Many bodhisattvas want to do that. But you don't want to get caught by that wanting. So how do you get... How do you not get caught by that wanting? You... be upright with the wanting, you'd be upright with the perhaps accurate evaluation that you don't yet understand the meaning of emptiness, but you would like to because you've heard that that would be very helpful.

[33:41]

But you don't let the fact that you've heard that something's helpful then knock you off in terms of establishing the kind of attitude which would open your eyes to exactly what you want to see. So it means that you would study everything, that you'd respect everything you meet. You wouldn't lean into certain things because you think they're so interesting and lean away from things because you think they're a waste of time. You would pay attention to interesting things and uninteresting things in the same mode. Therefore you wouldn't get caught by your evaluation of interesting and not interesting or valuable and not valuable. So it isn't like you treat important things disrespectfully just because they're important. You treat them with respect and you value them. But also things that you think are useless and meaningless, a waste of time, you treat them as though they weren't a waste of time.

[34:52]

They weren't meaningless. In other words, you're balanced and you don't get off balance just because something interesting or not interesting happens. And also something which is neither interesting nor not interesting happens, you don't throw yourself off balance because you're bored to entertain yourself. That way you'll have a good relationship with the dead snake. See, now it's 8.15. We've been going for half the class, and I'd like to pretty soon go to the next part of this case, but before we do that... Is looking for a shortcut a leaning into the wanting? Looking for a shortcut's a little bit of leaning, yeah. So, the monk already says I'm looking for a shortcut, so...

[35:56]

So the teacher puts a dead snake out there for him. So what this is all bringing up for me is that, like, practice. We're not trying to get enlightened. We're trying to act like we already are enlightened, because we are. And the more we practice, the more we're just manifesting enlightenment. You're saying practice is to act enlightened? To act as if one is enlightened, right. That's what it keeps sounding like. To act as if enlightened or to act enlightened? Well, I mean, just like how you're saying... To act like you would if you were enlightened? Exactly. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. And if you were enlightened and you noticed that you weren't, you would be enlightened to admit that you weren't. So... If you're enlightened and you had some delusion in the neighborhood, like, if some delusion was, like, vibrating around in your consciousness, like some kind of, like, belief in the inherent existence of your attitude, or, you know, if you notice some delusion like that, and if you were enlightened, you would say, oh, there's a delusion.

[37:15]

I mean, I have a delusion in my mind right now. My delusion is such and such. Or I have a fantasy. And this is, and so I notice this fantasy. That's, enlightened mind would notice the fantasy. Now you could say, isn't it possible to be so enlightened you don't have, even have any fantasies anymore? And yes, it is, that is possible to have, you know, to get to a certain place where you don't even like see any other people anymore. But to be that kind of enlightened would only be appropriate when that's what you're dealing with. It's like nobody else around. In the meantime, you're supposed to act as though you were enlightened or like you would act if you were enlightened under the circumstances of being the way you are now. See the difference? You don't act enlightened like you would if you were somebody else. You act like an enlightened person would act if they were in your shoes. So, if the Buddha was in your shoes, he would deal with your experience.

[38:20]

it wouldn't trade in your experience for some kind of experience where you couldn't even, like, come up with a subdued self, and no longer even thinking of other people as not yourself. But if the Buddha was in your shoes of thinking certain thoughts, the Buddha would handle those by just calling them what they were. And that would be the enlightened thing to do with them. That would be the enlightened way to relate to them. You know, you'd be patient with whatever was happening, but you would be working with what was happening with you. You wouldn't be trying to be working with something different from what you're happening because you think you should be working with something different because you never heard of a Buddha having to deal with the stuff you have to deal with. And it's true that actually at a certain point in development you don't have to deal with certain stuff anymore. But if the Buddha were dealing with that stuff the Buddha were confronted with this material that you're dealing with, the Buddha would handle it in a certain way, and that's the way you should handle it.

[39:23]

So we know how the Buddha would handle it, right? Whatever it is, if the Buddha were like supposed to come into your body, or into my mind, or into your mind, or into your feelings, we know how the, we pretty well know how the Buddha would respond to whatever it was, right? So like some kind of like low quality state of mind, what would the Buddha do with that? How would the Buddha relate to that? Hmm? Wow, a low-quality state of mind. Yeah, you might not say wow, but in English you say low-quality state of mind. Mindfulness of low-quality state of mind. That's it. Low-quality state of mind, low-quality state of mind. Yes? What gets in the way for me with opportunity is my fear. Mm-hmm. So... If there was fear, the Buddha would say, there's fear. Now, there wouldn't be fear in the first place if the person were the Buddha previous moment, because the Buddha would have been dealing with, the awakened person would have dealt with whatever was happening without leaning into the future.

[40:33]

But if you lean into the future and fear comes up, then Buddha's compassion comes to you at that time and lets you then recover by letting the fear just be the fear. which doesn't create more fear. But the Buddha wouldn't have leaned into the future and gotten frightened in the first place, but if that's happened, then the Buddha's compassion is still there. And again, the first dimension of compassion is giving. That's the beginning of compassion, is giving. And giving is basically to let your fear be fear. That's what's happening. And that's not fear, and that doesn't create fear. That just lets the fear be fear. And then you're conscientious and vigilant about the nature of your experience, if it's fear or whatever. And then you're patient with that. You create this situation. And then a lot of energy and enthusiasm for the practice which I've just described, namely giving conscientious observation and patience.

[41:40]

And then you absorb yourself in this kind of practice. And then your eyes open. So Buddha's compassion is what allows us to completely and appropriately embrace what's happening, just like Buddha would do. Given our life, Buddha would handle it that way. He would practice those giving, conscientiousness, patience, enthusiasm and concentration. That's how Buddha would compassionately respond to whatever situation it is. And when you're like that and those practices are complete, your eyes open. Then you see What's going on? You're upright. You're upright. Well, these practices are all dimensions of being upright. They're like the guy wires of uprightness. OK? So we're ready to move on to the next part, poems.

[42:44]

So the poem is written by the person who compiled this collection. His name is, he's abbot of a mountain called Tiantong in China. His name is Hongzhi Zhengzhui. Hongzhi means spreading wisdom or propagating wisdom. And Zheng Jue means authentic awakening. So he wrote this poem. And so this whole page of commentary is about boats, and wind, and darkness, and water, and night, and flowers, that kind of stuff. So this is a... For some reason or other, this is what's happening now. We have this case, and so a whole bunch of Zen teachers have gotten into, like, read flowers, rivers, boats, and winds, and darkness, and night in response to this case.

[43:58]

So we can, like, wonder what that's about. What wonderful thing is this? Where did this come from? So here's the case. Here's what he wrote. The boatman turns to... the rudder in the dark. The lone boat turns its bow in the night. Reed flowers snow on both banks. Reed flowers are white. So the picture is a river with reed flowers on both sides. So the sides of the river look like snow. Hazy water, a boat go without rowing. The voice of the flute calls the moon down to the land of spring. Another translation is the flute notes call the moon.

[45:06]

The flute notes call the moon down, sailing down to paradise. So that's the poem, and this is written by Tien Tung. Now, the commentary then quotes another poem written by Dan Xia Qijun. And Dan Xia Qijun is Tien Tung's teacher. So it looks like Tien Tung made his poem somewhat in relationship to a poem his teacher already wrote about this same case. So his teacher said, the long river clear to the depths reflects the moonlit flowers. Okay, you got that image? So you've got the river, this long river, and you've got flowers along the side maybe, and the moon shining on the flowers, and the flowers are reflected in the water.

[46:19]

The clear light filling the eyes, so you're on the river and the light from the moon is filling your eyes, is not yet home. The light... the light, the clear light filling the eyes is not yet home. I ask, where has the fishing boat gone? Deep in the night, as of old, it rests in the reed flowers. So then the commentator says that these two elders, Dantia and Tiantong alike, versify the still water of the clear source. which is still rowed, on which is still rowed a lone boat. And then he feels that Dantzsche also got his source as Suedu's eulogy of Shrensha. So here's Shrensha was, before he was a monk, he used to like to hang out with fishing people.

[47:32]

And so he was either hung out with fishing people and or was a fisher person. After he became a monk, he stopped fishing for fish and started fishing for people. So Suedu is eulogizing this monk who used to be a fisherman. He says, originally he was a traveler fishing on a boat. He happened to shave his hair and put on monastic robes. Even in the ranks of Buddhas and ancestors, he didn't stay. By night, as before, he rests in the reed flowers. So, this is a proposed, what do you call, lineage of poems, right? The first poem is eulogizing this Zen master named Shrensha, who used to be a fisherman, but isn't anymore. And now that he's become a monk, he doesn't even stay with the Buddhas and ancestors.

[48:42]

At night, he rests in the reed flowers. Now before we go on, What, you know, how come Tin Tung was inspired to kind of like make his poem based on Dantia's poem? And what was Dantia doing with Sui Du's poem? What are they doing here? How come this poem is in this case? Well, to me, still the most striking thing is the energy between the teacher and the student in the case, and the respect and the depth that they both go to with each other in turning it together.

[49:49]

And by Chantong going back to his teacher, and sort of he turns the verse in his own way. Just in looking at it, the teacher talks about the Clear River, and Tian Tong calls it hazy water. I just think that that's interesting. I don't know what it means, but it's certainly his own turn on some of the same elements. Right. And there's another difference between Tien Tung's... There's some other differences between Tien Tung's verse and the previous verses. What are some of the other differences besides the hazy river? What's he doing? Well, there's a boatman in the verse, in Tien Tung's verse. There's this boatman. There is no boatman. There's only a boat in his master's verse. Mm-hmm. Okay.

[50:50]

There's a boatman. Mm-hmm. In Damsha's verse, the boat is resting in the reed flowers, and in Tiantong's, it's moving a bit out early by the power of the wind. Yeah. In both the previous, in the previous two teachers' verses, there's resting in the reed flowers. In Tiantong's verse, there's not anymore, there's not resting anymore. He's got the wind blowing. And, not only that, but there's a lutes playing, a flutes playing, and the wind and the flute playing is this new dimension. The other ones are, they have the still water, right? They're emphasizing the still water. Tien Tung is disturbing the water, and the air is moving. How come he made this poem, this new poem?

[51:54]

What was he trying to do there? Yes? The thing that runs through all three of them is one of reversion. And in two earlier poems, there's a sense of reversion as being static. In Tientong's poem, there's a sense of reversion or return as being a dynamic activity and one that involves the circulation of light, not just statically appreciating or being filled with light, but circulating light and moving it. And in the end of the first part of the commentary, just before the poem, they have this quote from the Inexhaustible Lamp, which says, it says, Ching Lin's mainspring is swift and sharp. This is not a light only for this time, it's also a standard for vast ages. And the word for mainspring there, when he translates it mainspring, two characters, one character means pivot,

[52:58]

And the other character means function. Like my name, Zenki, it's the key, which means function or dynamic or working. So it's the working of the pivot. So it means like, you know, the controlling power or the guiding power or the mind-spirit of the situation. So the dynamic situation here of the teacher in the first case, the way his mind, the way his His guiding mind works. He's swift and sharp. Okay? And then the commentary after that quote is, I say, and the person, the commentator, Ten Thousand Pines, Wansong, says, I say, this is disturbing the spring wind unceasingly. And he says, look further. Tiantong blows on the flowers and rustles the willows. So he then refers to his teachers who are concentrating on this clear light.

[54:06]

Okay? The still water and the clear light. That's what they're doing. That's what they're talking about. And then he blows on it. Okay? Is that what this story is about? Is that why he wrote the poem this way? Well, it says the boatman turns off the rudder in the dark. There's a notion, one reason you could do that maybe is to correct a mistake. I don't know, but it seems like it. And you talked about seeing a mistake as a mistake. There's a notion of turning from seeing off, wrong view. And I think some of what the poem is doing is trying to bring out wrong view. Bring out wrong view? Recognize wrong view? Yes. So maybe that's why that image, I'm not sure, but it could be why that image is in there, cheering the brother.

[55:07]

Right. And what could the wrong view be? We already said, what's some wrong views here? Subdued self is the wrong word. That the boatman could be steering the boat. That the boatman could be steering the boat. That the boatman could be steering the boat, yeah. Let me just go a little further here to complete the picture so you can cook up your dinner. The next one, the next poem, this is a poem by Dufu. He says, the salt... of Shu, the flax of Wu. They had been traded for ages. The 10,000 bushel boats sail like the wind. In the long song of the elder statesmen, which is what they call boatmen in a certain area, pitching pennies in broad daylight into the towering billows,

[56:15]

You've got the boat zipping along in the water, big boat zipping through the water. And these boatmen are throwing pennies into the waves. Is that what's happening? Is that what they're doing? Throwing pennies into the waves? You see that? What are these guys up to? This matter is like someone going in a boat. This matter is like someone going in a boat. He doesn't land on either shore and doesn't stay in mid-stream. Okay? You don't go to either extreme and also you don't stay in the middle. Danxia rests by night in the reed flowers. Tian Tang pipes freely along with the wind. But tell me, how about turning the rudder, turning the boat? Deep in the night, not resting in the reedy shoals, going beyond middle and both sides.

[57:21]

Yeah. So this is like the dynamic situation, right? And I think that these images are like... What do you call it? It's pretty nice. The poems of those two Zen masters are pretty nice, but the later generations, I think, are like stirring it up. Actually, the story occurs before these guys. And then these guys, their poems are not directly about this case necessarily, but their poems are somewhat static. and emphasizing the light and stillness, but this needs to be stirred up. Not stirred up in a destructive way, stirred up in a living way, in a way that you don't then go to one extreme or the other, you don't go to one shore or the other, and you also don't stay in the middle. You don't stir up the water in some way that you can't stay abreast of it.

[58:32]

and be sailing through it, joyfully throwing pennies into the waves. You're awake and present, but you're also not over in the reeds. But there is a time for going over in the reeds. That's OK. It's just not this case. Too bad. So, that's just what I was going to ask. Is there something inherent about moving as opposed to being still? Could it just as easily have been that the two previous poems had been about, like, for, say, the boat going down the river, and then in order to shake it up, Chiantong said, and the boat, or, you know, could say something like resting in the reeds in order to break away from a static notion of movement. Mm-hmm, yes. All right. What I was focusing on in the first two poems was the image of moonlight on what sounds like still water that is bounded.

[59:45]

by these white flowers on either bank. And I'm wondering whether, I just kept thinking about, is that an illusion of these white banks illuminated by the light indicating boundaries or indicating a way through this deep still water? It just, The image of the riverbanks being illuminated just seems to me to, it really strikes me as really important and I can't, at one level it feels, well it might be suggesting an illusion that there's a boundary or a limit or that there's an indication of a direction. but it's illusion, but it's not necessarily.

[60:49]

And I was just curious about one resting in the white, because it's not resting in the weeds, which would be green and dark, but rather it's resting in the white flowers. And so there's this whole illumination image that seems to be really important in those first two that I... I don't want to leave yet. You don't have to leave. I'm really just... You're sailing down the river. Yeah, I'm just sort of sitting. Yeah, and I think that the boundaries are, in a sense, an illusion. There's not really boundaries, but you can't... What do you call it? You can't... You have to honor the boundaries. There's sides to a river. You have to honor them without leaning into either side, without going... without leaning into either boundary. And also the boundaries offer an illusory, their illusory, and they offer an illusory direction.

[61:50]

So you deal with these illusions. Another poem which is relevant here, I think, is one by Dogen, which is called, I believe it's called Treasury of True Dharma Eyes. windless, waveless, there in the midnight water, an abandoned boat swamped in moonlight. Yes? Did you have your hand raised? I did. My question is going in a different direction than this. Well, that's part of why I said it, so you can go in a different direction. So, I'll abandon the question.

[62:57]

You're going to abandon the question? No, I meant, now you can go in a different direction from what I just said, abandon what I just said, and ask your question. Okay, don't ask your question. Listen to this. Okay? All right? The moon reflected in the clear mind. Even the waves breaking are reflecting its light. Now you have a question? That's the other side. Yeah. Because that's completely different from my experience and my experience of the original poem, where in some sense there's a point where he says it's lost.

[64:03]

It's not clear to me if he's recognizing something or a student to then recognize it. And then when I read the three poems, it seems not that the first one, the latest one, is the most dynamic, but it's the one that's furthest inside the notion of, you know, return, you know, the traveler to the course of his career going back. or settling in his boat on one of these makes the wind but the moment actually when you know you're in the middle of the river or not even you there's a turning in the dark and that moment is really kind of seems to me it happens in the dark it doesn't happen in recognition of banks or leave or any of that

[65:11]

You're stuck. How are you stuck? To me, that moment is dark. So why is that stuck, that moment's dark? There's plenty of darkness in these forms. I guess maybe I want to take a shortcut. Maybe I want the wind with my back. You want the wind to be pushing your boat What leads that turning into dynamism in this image is that the wind is helping the silver go above. Or there's some faith in the original that the master was there. But most of the recognition of mistakes that we make are made in the dark without, in some sense, a master or student doing it.

[66:20]

It's not clear to me that that dark also has the wind to your back. Well, let's see, it's not clear to you that the dark has the wind to your back? As you said? Do you say that? Yes. Okay. So just let me say, before the next sentence you say, and that is, when you recognize a mistake, isn't that light? Yes. Okay. So then when you recognize a mistake in the light, okay, then something dark, then something can be done in the dark. What's that? When you make a mistake, I don't know where I was or where you were when you made a mistake. When you recognize a mistake as a mistake, it seems like the light's on. Now, what about the dark at that point? What about the darkness and the night and turning in the night after you recognize the mistake? Then what? It seems to me that that is the point when you turn... In the dark?

[67:27]

In the dark. In some sense, as you say to yourself, the condition that eliminates your condition in such a way that you can't come to a place to get it. Recognizing your condition, there's some illumination. Okay? Recognizing your mistake. Recognizing your case, your mistake, there's just some illumination there, right? Some light, isn't there? Right. And then? Then maybe there's some, something happens after that. Right, at that point you're headed towards the weeds again. Okay. So you're what? You're okay. So you're okay, yeah, but that's fine, but then that's okay. What about neither okay or not okay in the dark? How about that? What's that about? How does that happen? What's that? It's dark. It's dark, but there's something happening in the dark, isn't there?

[68:30]

There's a turning in the dark, right? There's a turning in the dark. There's like learning in the dark. You don't learn in the light. But you recognize mistakes in the light. And you can make mistakes in the dark, too. But usually you make mistakes based on the light. And then if you make a mistake, you can also note the mistake. That's in light, too. But then the learning happens in the dark. And... it's possible that you can join the activity that happens in the dark. So that's part of what seems to be happening here, that somebody seems to be able to work in the dark, in the midst of the light. So if you know something's happening, then you notice it, you admit it, and then this dark working can happen. And part of what's happening here, you could say, is that this teacher works in the dark very, very, you know, very quickly and fluidly.

[69:39]

But it isn't like he's there doing things. It's that he is, you know, working in the dark, but it isn't like him doing these things in the dark. That wouldn't be the dark. That would be the light. That's mirrored in the original case. When the monk is realizing he's put himself in a bind, he's stepping on the snake. Not stepping on the snake in an either way, he's caught. There's a question. at just such a time, then what? That's, as I'm reading it, that's a turn on more than one level. Experientially putting yourself in that situation, realizing you're trapped either way, there's nothing to do but turn. But it's also a turning in the case, and it allows the Masters to say, it's lost, and that lost is this dark. And his question, where has it gone?

[70:44]

The grass is deep. There's no place to look for it. That echoes with many images in the later poems. On the one hand, it's the hazy water. It's the, I'm in the thick of it. There's nowhere to see it anymore, even though it's alive and active. In becoming alive, it disappears. But at the same time there's still a tension because the other image you have is of nestling in the reeds. So there's something about both of those in the grasses or in the thick of it that's both that static moment of recuperation and being in the thick of it, in the dark. Helenia, do you know the name of the person sitting to your right? No. Would you ask him what it is? Wes. Wes? So how are you doing, Wes? Huh?

[71:45]

Good. Are you in the dark or in the light? Both. Something else, as you were talking before, something else occurred. This light is moonlight. It's reflected light. The light on the banks, on the flowers is also reflected. It's not direct light. Well, light that we see is reflected light. That whole image, though, it's not direct. It seems to be just soft. It's reflected. Right, but you can't see unreflected light. Remember that. That's a physical fact. If you get light that's unreflected, you can't see it. It's invisible. You can only see reflected light. Do you know that? You can't see unreflected light. So I just want to say, yes, it's reflected light, but that's the only kind of light that we see.

[72:46]

Like to see a laser beam, you hit it with some chalk, so you can see the laser beam, the chalk, that's... The sun goes through particles. Yeah, I guess where I, what I was stuck on was just simply that if it were sunlight, in poetry the sun is, the sunlight tends to be, the feeling is very different, it's more direct, more open, brighter. kind of a lighting, whereas the moon is always spoken of in terms of reflection and it's a different quality. It's a different quality. Right. Yes. Oh, you're just moving your hands in your face? Well, since you called, I was just moving my hands, but this turning the O in the arc The image of reaching for the pillow in the dark seems like the same. It's the same feeling in a way.

[73:50]

I don't know what to say. What do you say? What do you say? I think it's the same. But this is like... This is like... What is this case? You know, they talk about, you know, what's compassion like? It's like reaching for a pillow in the dark. There's an activity there, but it's not like, it's not dualistic, like I'm going to do this. It's just a response. And you reach, and if you don't get the pillow, you know, that's it. Maybe try to reach over there a little bit. It's like that. It's very natural. Then you do in the dark. Yes. Do you see any significance in you mentioning all the seasons except summer? There's like winter snow, and there's autumn and winter, and then down there are few colds down to the late spring.

[74:58]

Well, the main significance I see in it is that it's summer now. There are four corn, like Four Seasons. And I have a sense of beauty in each one of them that I have yet to understand. And I don't. You think you have a sense of beauty in each one? In each one of these poems. But what I have caught in the dark, if you will, is the movement between the change of seasons in these poems. And that's beautiful for me. I'm loving these poems a lot more as I go over them. But the individual poems... It's still rather dense to me.

[76:04]

But that's okay. Sure, it's okay, yeah. What I'd like you to meditate on is the relationship between these poems and the case. How do these poems illuminate the case and also how do these poems take you to the darkness of the case? How can you enjoy the light of the case the part of the case that you can be aware of in terms of making mistakes and doing things and not doing things, about avoiding running into the banks and also maybe sometimes running into the banks, that world, and another world where you're turning in the dark in the middle of the water. So this is a case that has a structure that you can see and it also has a structure that you can't see. And how can you, like, appreciate a life on the surface of light and a life that's in the dark?

[77:11]

They're both going on, and this case is bringing out, you know, I think, all this, and you feel the vitality of the two dimensions of the light and the dark in the poem. The world of duality and where you do things, where you're aware of it and you're respectful of it, the world of where you, like, think of things and see people and think they're you or not you and you admit that and stay upright in that world, okay? But there's also a world that's not, you know, upright or not upright or light or dark or anything. And that's working too. So, I mean, this is really... And to turn, to turn and... to turn the boat around in this water? How does that turning happen? How does that keep you alive in this meditation?

[78:12]

Yes? The last line of the first poem is like calling down death in the land of birth. Is that beautiful? That somehow our singing, our speaking, all the death that the moon symbolizes down into the land of which we're going? Somewhere in the moon. Is white the symbol of death in Chinese? It's a symbol of death? Yeah. The color white. Is it a symbol of death? Usually the, you know, white is usually the color that, you know, everything is, you know, like white flowers and... bones and white sheets. This is often used at the time of the funeral. Now, people wear black. The funeral equipment is often white. I don't know if I would say that white is a symbol of death. They hope that she didn't? That she wouldn't wear white? Traditionally, the Confucian scholars were black, so I guess if they were white, that would be unusual, right?

[79:39]

I'd like to just share two things that recurrently come to my thoughts, and they're not profound, they just keep coming. The 10,000 bushels just makes me think of the 10,000 things. Uh-huh. And 10,000 bushels are 10,000. Mm-hmm. And the pitching pennies and broad daylight and the towering billows, when the... The archaeologists in the Mediterranean kept finding all these Roman merchant vessels that sank because of storms coming, towering billows that see these storms. They were confused because there'd be all these things in the water, like a contrail, and then finally the boat. And what was happening is the sailors were pitching things out of it, trying to lighten the boat. And that just flashed into the breeze of it. No good reason, no? That's what he thinks. I would like to point out the clock.

[80:48]

It's kind of interesting. Wow. It's kind of a soggy clock. Can't quite come up to nine o'clock. Even though I really should. We'll call at 9 o'clock anyway, okay? So let's see if we can move on to case 60 now, all right? Case 60. Please start studying case 60. And next week we'll look at case 60. Do you have copies of 60? Do you do all right? I have copies of 60 right here, yes. So you can come up and get copies here after we chat.

[81:35]

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