Searching for the Mind

Exploring the island.

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SPEAKER_00 0:21

Thank you for your your efforts so far for for being here. It's um it's quite defeat that we managed to pull off a session with everything that's what's been going on. Obviously uh an unusual time. Um one of the members, one of Roshi's ordained uh students, uh Jindo, I was talking to him recently. He ended up uh, you know, he's he's back in New York, he's a doctor, he's been on the the front lines in this uh in this crisis, and um he ended up in um in a photo in the in a New Yorker last week. Uh the article was about uh a nurse and a couple of nurses that were documenting what life was like, and he kind of popped up in there, and we were talking about that and just saying, wow, you know, uh a year ago we wouldn't have thought that um you'd be you'd be in this situation for and for any of us. We we have a an idea, um a sketch, and um a plan in order to uh navigate life. Um that comes naturally to us. We may um obsess over that and add to that and overdo it. That's sometimes uh an issue for many of us, but at most it's uh it's a sketch, and of course, the uh how things are gonna turn out is is always unknown. And um today I wanted to bring up another uh a koan. I was uh in my attempt to uh build something on uh the foundation that Makwin began with uh yesterday, with bringing up the case of uh Zen's historical founder Bodhidharma, with his audience with Emperor Wu, and to to go on from that Koan with um another um story and remembrance from from that era. Because it's you know, I use the word story there. When we reach back to that this um almost legendary time in China, once you get that far back, some of the figures become quite um mythical, or some of the happenings. We we question did that actually happen? You know, Markwin brought up a Bodhidharma's cutting off his uh eyelids. There's another tale that says so when he threw them down on the ground, that's where the first tea bush sprouted in China. You know, so some of these things uh clearly one would think are quite legendary or apocryphal. Um as we move forward, you know, it's always struck me as just a wonderful aspect of our tradition that records have been kept so meticulously and the training has been maintained so meticulously for these many generations and centuries and even millennia. As we move out of the distant, let more legendary past, uh, but still a very, very long time ago, we find that um very detailed, reliable uh records were were being kept in that era in China. I read some time ago about the uh the earthquake fault that's off the coast of uh off the coast of the northwest United States off Seattle and Oregon in that in that area, and finding a geological record where they they realized there'd been some major tsunami in in uh ballpark 1200s or 1300s, somewhere like that. And of course, there were no records in the United States of that happening, but some bright spark realized ways. If that happened uh then here, the effect would have also been felt across the water in uh in Japan. So they they went and checked there, and sure enough, there was uh a writing around that time of uh what they called a ghost tsunami because they didn't feel the earthquake there, which came in and caused a lot of damage, and that was able to help corroborate what happened here all those years ago. So we have this uh wealth of tradition that really reaches back, and I've always been uh personally uh an enthusiast for history. I like to read history and be informed by history, and when we reach back into the legendary era, it struck me earlier in thinking what to raise up today, but it's almost like we're in a new, it feels like a new legendary era in some ways where um the love of truth and facts and how things actually are have been somewhat um moved away from into uh uh into a love of um a reliance on narrative and uh story and um perhaps uh a skewed way of things are. That's just my own opinion or my own comment on uh but that that does seem to be appearing in our in our news and and uh politics, uh financial world, all kinds of all kinds of places. And as as practitioners, if we use that word, it's really up to us in navigating and living our life uh how we where we choose to put our focus. Um we can put our focus into story and narrative and live that way, or we can aim our focus toward uh reality, whatever that is, as much as possible, and rather to uh lean in toward uh always realizing truth, and um that that's where I intend to continue to lean rather than into uh story and pictures of things. But anyway, to look back into this um distant time, which of course is right now we find here Bodhidharma, um, you know, Marquin brought up those answers to questions of Emperor Wu, and and I'm sure we can see that uh the heart of what became the Zen School is really clearly stated there. You know, you just to somewhat recap briefly, when asked questions about merit, about karma or cause and effect, and when asked who are you, when asked about nature of self, unerringly Bodhidharma as the exemplar and lineage holder of the Buddha points directly at emptiness or not knowing and gives uh no framework or explanation whatsoever to hold on to. And that remains the living practice that we're engaged in. At some point, Master Bodhidharma, it's ascribed to him, but he said he described or defined Zen as a special transmission outside sutras, not dependent on words or phrases, directly pointing to the human mind, seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood. So a special transmission or an intimate, there's another translation which perhaps is closer, an intimate transmission outside sutras or not reliant on sutras, not dependent on words and phrases. You know, even at this time of Bodhidharma, it's said I think that he was a Lankavatara sutra master. So but in in these uh threads from around that time, we we we learned different things or about the practice. He wasn't the first uh monk to come from India to China that had already that cross uh pollination of that you know, people had already been coming for quite some time, and it would already uh sprung up uh a love of um you know many of the sutras, Lankavatara Sutra, different ones which I could also mispronounce, that were common during that day. And it's always that tendency for us as human beings to uh mistake uh the moon for the finger pointing at the moon. Meaning, you know, a sutra is brought up where somebody has put an enormous effort, uh, the fruit of decades of diligent and meticulous practice in an effort to say a few things, which is very difficult to say a few to say anything good. And and has managed to do that to point at the reality of this human life, to point at this human condition, to to steer people away from a reliance on on description, on narrative, or on story, on explanation, on belief system, an opinion, or or any of those things, and to point directly right at this. And then the the the terrible irony then that that then becomes the new method, the new religion, the new story that people can become reliant on. You know, somebody asked Roshi on Zoom, I think last week, of a the week before about the burning of the blocks for um making the blue cliff record. You know, it still confuses people to this day. But this is along that similar line where something is held up that's very good, a very good explanation, this really points at it. But then that book, that writing then becomes the holy grail that's venerated. And then we we we miss the point. So Bodhidharma, it said that when he left um his audience with Emperor Wu, you know, across the across the river, there's some metaphor involved here as well, and then headed off to um to a cave where it said that he sat sat facing the wall for nine years, that became his practice. Master Dogen, in one writing, um, talks about this in uh in answer to a question just paraphrasing here about why continue to practice. And he brings up how after many decades of diligent practice and succeed in the Buddha, with the at that point the Buddha's robe and bowl. Bodhidharma still continued. Why why did he continue to do Zha Zen? Why was he still engaged in uh in a practice? But he did this, he went to what became Shaolin, it said, and then sat facing the wall for nine years, uh a type of practice of Zha Zen, which is still uh practiced in um a key practice in the Sotho tradition today. It's not not done here, that was that was uh uh changed uh uh at some point before I became here. But people literally turn and face the wall, which again is takes away a reliance on method or description in a search for the realization of self, in that practice you are faced with quite literally a wall. What is there to see there? You know, of course, as you can project a lot onto a wall. A wall is a suitable background for a uh projector, you know. You could you can watch a movie on a wall. That's similar to what happens here, though, same thing. Whether you literally turn and face the wall as you can here, or turn in where there are other people and a high shiki at an altar, it's still facing the wall. Each time that we uh sit or engaged in Zazen, whether it's in the action of physical sitting in this way, or it's in the midst of uh movements being involved in another activity, it's still facing the wall. It's still facing the wall of an impregnable fact of this great mystery of and any word is off when we put something in, we say self, self-nature, brought up to look directly at that. So Master Bodhidharma goes and uh practices or sits our zen, lives a simple life one can imagine, and then uh to pick up the the koan here um Bodhidharma, this is Bodhidharma pacifies the mind from case forty-one of the Mumon Khan. Bodhidharma faced the wall. The second ancestor stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and said, Your disciple's mind has no peace as yet. I beg you, Master, please put it to rest. Bodhidharma said, Bring me your mind and I will put it to rest. The second ancestor said, I have searched for my mind, but I cannot find it. Bodhidharma said, I have completely put it to rest for you. This is so who became uh Master Master Eker, who had become the the second ancestor in the patriarchal lineage of Zen, said that he was uh in his forties at this at that time. So quite an advanced stage for China, although you look back to this record, it seems like everyone's living into their 90s, you know, must have good water and stuff, you know, or a good good, honest, simple life as simple uh food and meditation, you know. But he was in his 40s at this point and had already exhausted had already put a lot into this search, and this is not the first time he came knocking on Master Bodhidharma's uh cave door. You know, he would just have been refused time after time. So you can imagine what would be involved. He lives up a mountain, you know, you really gotta want to go. You get all the way up there, and he tells you to get out of here. But not, you know, so to look at even at that process, not easily dissuaded. Not like Bodhidharma says no, and he's like, ugh, wasting my time here, you know, and then takes off and goes looks for somebody down in the valley. But he's already searched through the valley and has already lived a life of search and is not yet at peace, which is the fundamental driving point for being engaged in any spiritual practice or pursuit. This quest to be satisfied, a quest to be free in this fact of impermanence in this life that is so fleeting. You know, I picked up this book today, this Mumon Khan, and I thought, oh look, this is the one I got. Dave Scott gave me this when uh my Dharma brother and successor at Tenshin Roshi in in 2000, in the year 2000, just when I first moved here for Dave. Best wishes, who has called me Dave? David Best Wishes for year 2000 and beyond. I'm glad our life paths crossed. Good luck with your practice, whatever form it takes. You know, 20 years just like that. So Master Ecker's mind is still not at rest, so he climbs the mountain uh again and again. You know, I was watching my my son Dylan is playing uh a video game, it's um one of the newer Star Wars ones, and he was really near the end of it. He's put a lot of kind of hours, and he's almost like an end game. And I walked in and I'm like, hey Dylan, and he's like, shh, like he's like really locked in, and and he's on the last boss, you know, so like super focused on the last boss. And I like to think about this as that, you know, it's like Master Echo, it's like the last boss that you got a face. It's like is is is Master Bodhidharma. Maybe he's just removed his eyelids, you know, looking particularly fearsome at this point. Doesn't want to be, doesn't want to be bothered, doesn't want to have to answer these questions. You know, so Master Ecker comes ever and asks him, you know, it said that he was stood in the snow. And this line has caused some consternation in in practice, you know, it says he cut off his arm. You know, I was reading a little about this. He said it's an old, it's quite an old tradition in Asia for a practice of self-mutilation to show one's sincerity. You know, um Robert Aitkenroche says in this book there was a nun at the temple in Honolulu who had a finger missing because parents had demanded that she be get married and she wanted to become a nun. They said no, so she cut off a finger to show that she was uh sincere. Then they said, okay. And there's there's there are accounts of that culturally going back. So some of this is of course is cultural, it's an act of sincerity. Could you really literally cut your arm off and be stood in the snow and survive the night? Well, you know, again, we're we're we're we can we can use this for for its purpose to show what what is the point of its being raised. You know, it's just refusing to stand down or refusing to to give up, refusing to to give up. Remember, you know, uh Roshi bringing up how Mizumi Roshi would say, my you know, again, I'm paraphrasing, um, I'm not here to make things easy for you, I'm here to throw concrete blocks in your way. This is the action of uh a Zen teacher to put blocks in the way. So something of real value can be found in one's own heart, in one's own mind. It's not reliant on the sutras, it's not found in words and phrases. You know, although people may try to do that and to monetize that, in the Zen school is not found in that way, it's for it's found in each one of our own being. You know, this exploration of self. I have, he he says to Master Bodhidharma, your disciple, already saying I'm your disciple, whether you like it or not, my mind has no peace yet. I I beg you to put it to rest. And he says, Bring me your mind, and I will put it to rest for you. Bring that to me. In another translation of this Koan with uh Master Konyo. Yamada is in a um a lineage through another um line that my Zumi Roshi was uh transmitted in Khan Yamada Roshi said uh looking for this mind is like exploring, is like trying to find yourself on an uninhabited island. You walk round and round looking for yourself. And you know, and perhaps like Robinson Crusoe is that moment where you come to the beach and you find some footsteps, but then you realize uh they're your own. You know, it's like this journey of this exploration of self nature is what unfolds in session and in this in this container of practice and in a lifetime's journey in this form. You know, we see as we inquire that this the self that is we we grow up with or are formed with and is taken and informed as being reliable and distinct and defined is not so. You see that it is indistinct, that it cannot be grasped, it cannot really be defined, the name doesn't reach it, this shifting um sea of conditions, of uh joy spheres and traumas and these things that that have occurred all all inform this, but what is really at the what is at that bottom? That's the question to be answered. That's the question to be brought forward. What what's really at the bottom? What what is this self? What is this mind? What what is this great mystery? That's what Master Ecker, the question that he brings to Bodhidharma. I can't, my mind is not at peace. And the same the same quality of responses to Emperor Wu. Bring that to me, and I will put it to rest for you. Bring bring me my mind, I will put it to rest for you. And the search then goes on. But undaunted, and that's an important, a very important part. I look back, you know, after getting this book to look at 20 years ago, I look back at the last 20 years, in one way, you know, the practice is difficult. Well, zen is difficult. You know, a Dharma brother of mine said that, you know, Zen is the uh effort school. It's a school of effort or hard effort. I would agree with that. Not that life is not challenging and demands effort in all other kinds of uh spheres of activity too. But most things that are really worthwhile, that are that worthy of achieving and realizing require effort. So the blocks that are thrown in our way are not necessarily a negative thing. The barriers or what feel like the barriers to practice that rise up from our engagement in the schedule and the engagement in the forms. All of those things that come forward can also can be used, turned around, and used as food for practice and food to go deeper. I um I heard a a podcast from um a motivational guy who who I like. He's uh he's like a an ex-Navy SEAL guy, uh his name's Joko Willink, and uh he he was talking about having that the attitude of not being not refusing to be stopped, you know. So I just wanted to share this. So this is him, and he's of course talking from his experience, you know, and and and remembering this is from someone who's in the military or who's in the SEALs. Uh so he says, Oh, the mission got cancelled, good, let's focus on another one. What we didn't get the new gear we wanted, good. We can keep it simple. Didn't get promoted? Good. More time to get better. Didn't get the job you wanted, good, gain more experience. You get in the picture, right? Got injured, good. Time we can take a break from training. Got beat, good. What did we learn? Unexpected problems? Good, let's figure out solutions. And he says, just skipping ahead, he says, I'm not trying to sound like Mr. Smiley positive guy. That person ignores hard truths. The person who thinks a positive attitude will solve problems, it won't. But neither will dwell in on the problems. No, accept reality and focus on solutions. Take setbacks, take problems and turn turn them into something good. Go forward, and if you're part of a team, that attitude will spread throughout. So that's from from Jocko. And I appreciate that. I heard that, I appreciate that. Because we can take our practice or our life to turn it around and to put it in that way. Whatever comes forward in Session or our life may seem temporarily a negative, and we can be dissuaded from the path of inquiry by okay, well, that didn't work out. Now I have to look for something else. Or it can be taken as this is what occurred. Good. How do I use that? Didn't pass for Koan. Good. Now I'm really gonna get into now I can really understand it. You know that that's the attitude of uh that's the attitude of Zen Training. You know, after some time Master Master Eka comes back to to Bodhidharma and says, I have searched for the mind. In another translation, I read, I have searched exhaustively for the mind, but I cannot find it. I have wandered the island looking for somebody, but ultimately cannot find them. I have searched exhaustively. That exhaustive search is very important. This is why, you know, in our typically in our tradition, it's not something you're done with in a week or two weeks or a year or a couple of years or ten years or or twenty, you know. Rather, it is an exhaustive search or an exhaustive exploration. You know, in in walking the island with like the eyes open, you become intimate with every part of it. With the beach, with the waves, with the trees, with the mountains. And we can apply that attitude of exploration to the entirety of the experience of Session and then beyond Session from waking in the morning, exploring and living what is real. You know, there are stories involved in that, but stories are just stories. But what is real or what is right here, this is the place to explore. In sitting, it's directly that. Whatever one's practice is, just be completely, just be intimately engaged with that and work that practice, or allow that practice to work you. Let that unfold. We're often we're always so quick to judge, way, and then pick, choose, throw some stuff out, rearrange things, and then try that. But much better to set that aside and kick that can way down the road, and rather just get involved in fully living whatever this present expression is, and look here. When that moves, then from you know, Zazen or sitting, and it moves to walking, then it is the direct experience and realization and intimacy of walking, and allowing that to unfold and exploring that, allowing the awareness that animates us to be really to be revealed in that. So often, our impulse, or you know, we have this human tendency, shrink it down, make it small. How's that working for me? But this me in this defined sense of I is the very root of suffering. That is the one that dies. How could it not suffer? It is aware of its own imminent dissolution, you know. So we we we are careful about that reliance on this definite defined sense of me and other. And it's never never really to do with other. But you've never seen out of another's eyes. It's always this one. You know, it said that um after this encounter or later in his own you know, teaching career or his life, Master Echo, who had returned to the city, he was in the city, and um it said that for a time he he liked to frequent wine shops and butchers establishments. And it said that somebody had said to him, you know, um, what are you doing? Doing this kind of thing, you know, he's a Buddhist priest or lineage holder, and it said to Master Ecker said, I have rectified my mind. What concern of it is of it is yours? I have rectified my mind. That was for him, and for each one of us, it's for us to do that work. For Master Bodhidharma is just master is Master Bodhidharma and lives his life out as Master Bodhidharma. For Master Ecker, it's that way. For each one of us, you know, in one way all of these people are dead and gone. Isn't that incredible? We look back a couple of thousand years ago, people live where where are they now? On the realm of form, it's just such a fleeting appearance, but one day we seem to fly in the window, and and the world's here for some time, and then at some point in the unknown, you fly out the other side, and that's that. What does that mean? No one knows, and for those engaged in the practice of of Zen, you don't drink the Kool-Aid of uh belief system. Yeah, I like that line in the Jukai where it says uh uh you you promise to no longer um follow people of dualistic understanding, so along those lines. You know, the belief system of a method, you know, the description, you realize, oh maybe, but uh not sure I can really buy into that, then what we left with a great challenge to like really to live this now, the only place, the only truth that we're sure of. This like how can that not help but raise the preciousness and the value of this life? You know, what a shame if we spend some of it, you know, how how much time we spend in blame and recrimination. Yeah, but the good news is always the place of renewal, the place to reboot, the place of practice realization is always wide open, is always this. So however, you know, often in the exploration of this practice, we run down into blind alleys or get lost in valleys or however we may go. That's fine. This is all the journey of the island. Just keep relentlessly awaring and exploring until this nature is is realized. When Master Ecker is uh comes back to Master Bodhidam, and he says, I've searched exhaustively. Again, this exhaustive search. I've really looked. I didn't look for a weekend, I didn't look for a week, I didn't look for a few. I've I've really looked, inside and out. There, I've put it to rest for you. And we can really look at that line. How can that line be taken? What was a function of what did Master Bodhidharma do? You know, on the surface it could be taken almost like an arrogant statement. There you go. I put it to rest for you. In one sense, he even said he could with his steep, uncompromising teaching. It helped to precipitate this for Master Eka. We can also look at it as I have put it to rest for you, the pivotal figure of Master Bodhidharma here. When he says this, I have put it to rest for you, speaks with the same I as the Buddha. I all beings, the great earth. Almost as the standard bearer, the emissary for the whole thing, for the whole of the world, for the whole experience. I have put it to rest for you. And Masarakar is able to gain independence or realize his own innate independence. And this he becomes the second ancestor, and the lineage the lineage continues in one sense, nothing special. Master you know Ecker realized Ecker. You know, so we don't need to be careful with our veneration or raising up of uh people, of figures, of examples, not to uh put them up on a pedestal and put ourselves somewhere fixed that's below that. That would be to do them a disservice. But for all of these great uh archetypes and examples of the past, they offer uh an open hand and an invitation for those that wish to really look into this matter, this mystery, this self, to become non-reliant on words, explanations, rather to realize and live their own independence, live their role, be who they are through and through. So that there's no nothing left over, and you live uh you really live your life, a full life. So, you know, I I encourage us all to um take barriers uh as opportunities, use everything as food for practice realization. You know, continue the the exploration ever deeper. In so doing, we live our lives more intimately. And in doing that, we're able to live with real purpose and be of some use and service. Because that's what we find as we have a as we wake up to say that, you know, but the the world is here and our uh attention is needed. And thank you for listening.