The Living Zen Podcast
Dharma talks exploring Zen practice, awakening, and how to bring clarity and compassion into daily life.
The Living Zen Podcast
The Oak Tree
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Good morning. Thank you for being here. Thank you to those who drove up the mountain today. And thank you to those who live here as well for taking care of the place. Ten Shinrochi is currently visiting the UK. He'll be back later this week. I was talking with him just before he just before he left. And I was just discussing that the last the two major fires that came close to the centre were both in July. You know, Cranston fire last year and a mountain fire six years before that. We're both kind of mid to late July. So we're kind of in the heart of fire season. And sure enough, the day that he leaves, we go into town and some fire engines going by, and and G Can emailed me heard something. And I go online and there's a fire in in Anza, or the other side of Anza, actually, which is you know a little distance away, but enough to see the smoke in the air and see the few here a few helicopters going over, and it's just that feeling of here we go. And um fortunately they contained that quite quickly and able to uh to put that out, but uh I'm sure all over you know the the West Coast and beyond we're all hopeful for uh a quieter a quieter season. Definitely. Yeah, definitely. But uh but we'll see. We'll we'll deal with it one way or another. Uh so today I wanted to to bring up a Koan from our tradition from the book of equanimity. So this is uh quite a famous Koan, uh case 47, Joshua's cypress tree. Preface to the set to the assembly. The cypress tree in the garden, the flapping flag on the pole. As a blossom bespeaks for boundless spring, a drop bespeaks for ocean's water. The five hundred year old Buddha clearly leaves the usual stream, not falling into speech or thought, how do you express it? The main case. Attention. A monk asked Joshua, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the west? Joshu answered, The cypress tree in the garden. It's also an appreciatory verse. Eyebrow banks snow tipped, river eyes embracing autumn, ocean mouth booming out waves, sail tongue drifting downstream, riot quelling hand, peace making strategy. Dear old Joshu, dear old Joshua Stirring up the monastery, he's not yet taken rest. Uselessly rendering aid, making cart, and entering the well worn ruts. Basically untalented, he blocks up ravines and fills ditches. So quite a lot there in the um in the appreciatory. The service is the standard way that the old Koans were collected and presented, uh, a preface to the assembly. So in in the temples then they would have had a um an assembly of monks. Back in China in those days, they would also invite the public. So it's not so dissimilar than a uh Sunday morning program here. They'd have a uh a flagpole, apparently, and when there was going to be a talk, they'd run um run a flag, a signal up, and then people from the surrounding village, villages, or people would be invited to come and they'd hear uh a Zen master present a case. Present a case. And apparently, from what I read, it was typically done um outside and standing often. Um yeah, you you you read that in the book of Rinzai that they were that they were often standing, they'd be outside, so they gather everybody together. And so then the preface is often in these cases, then, is uh a pointer toward the the main point, the main point of the koan. The main case is the main case, and then a verse of appreciation that uh visits the main points of the case and maybe adds something to it as well. Uh these coins, um, for those of you who wonder what the heck we're talking about here, you know, we're bringing these things up, then a coin is can be taken as a statement from uh within the principle, within the principle of awakening or a principle of enlightenment. So something that's being said that's in accord with reality, and it's nature often. Um we have this uh wonderful uh ability and faculty to understand all kinds of things, but we typically, with our brains, the way we navigate the world, we understand things in a dualistic way. It's a standard intellectual faculty of being human. We understand things intellectually and uh in a dualistic way. And then we come across these commons, we hear something like this, and they're they're puzzling because they're not um presented or expressed in uh a dualistic manner, an intellectual manner. Not out of some great conspiracy to befuddle everybody, right? Which is sometimes we might come across comments and be like, well, why don't they just I remember Tension Roche you bring up it as Mom Barbara, I remember well, would say, why don't you just tell us what it means? Why don't they do that? Because that way we could easily think, well, okay, now I got it, now I can now I understand. But it's a statement from within the principle, which means it is um pointing at the reality of this experience, which we may navigate and understand to a certain degree dualistically, but that dualistic understanding, that subject-object understanding, doesn't reach the living expression of our life, the full thing, the great mystery of being uh being this, isn't it? An extraordinary thing. It you know, it hits me upside the head every day for myself that there's this, that I am this, that this appears. You know, we may obscure that with our everyday, and we do it with our everyday life, you know, and it's just uh seems like yesterday, and now we've got today. And often that that basic wonder uh becomes obscured with our understanding that we layer on top. So these koans are a way to point back to the essential mystery of this experience, to look at it before or beyond the filter of intellectual appraisal and knowing and interpretation, and just look face to face with this life. And that way, a koan which is written a thousand years ago functions uh wonderfully right now. There's another koan where we talk about something that was written around the era of the Buddha, and it and in the verse it says a thousand-year-old prescription on a piece of paper. At that point, that ko'an was a thousand years old. And they were writing about it a thousand years ago. Now here we are a thousand years later, and yet these koans are still alive and completely relevant now. Because the same life. The years have gone by, but the same essential experience that we have in uh appearing as voss, appearing as in this case, as human beings, you know, that is the same experience, backwards and forwards through the through these eras, through these years. It's an amazing thing. So a statement from within uh within the principle or koan. And another translation or connotation of it is uh to make unevenness even. So to uh often these koans will arouse doubt or will present something that isn't easily understood or solved, but in bringing our attention to bear, to really looking in toward uh what this is pointing at, we're able to make unevenness even, which is the action of coming into accord with this living reality, coming back into accord with that, so that we're alive and functioning in this present experience, aligned. So Master Joshua is one of the great uh, you know, the stars of um Zen, of Zen history, one of the most highly, probably the highest regarded Zen master in the tradition. He was uh Master Dogen, who was the founder in Japan of our lineage, uh was referred to him as old Buddha Joshu, which he didn't refer to anybody else apart from Joshu and his teacher, uh Tendo Nyojo, he called those Buddhas. And another nickname for him was Little Shakyamuni. He's kind of like uh Shaky Muni Jr. Which to the Buddha, but this is like often the way that uh culturally these things are written, if it's like really high praise. What may seem kind of like little Shaky Muni might seem it's like playfully demeaning, which is often high praise. It's a Joshua was an extraordinary teacher who lived for uh an extraordinary length of time, too. And um said that he practiced um lips and tongue zen, in which he very uh very skillfully used words to um express understanding, his understanding, to express zen, uh which is for anyone who's been involved in the practice for a period of time, you gain an appreciation or respect for the ability to express well in words because it's difficult. It's difficult to express at all in words. To express very well in words is is uh very difficult. Uh just one story of Master Joshua, which I really appreciate, said that he was once he was having uh tea with the local superintendent. So sometimes in his old collections there'll there'll be a local dignitary or a superintendent from the village will you know be kind of hobnob with the Zen master, they'll come and visit, and he's having tea with a superintendent, and uh superintendent comes in and says, Superintendent have some tea, and they're having tea. And then uh a monk comes by and Joshua asks, Oh, uh, how long have you been here at the temple? And the monk says, uh, uh, just a few days. And Joshua says, Hmm, have some tea. And you have some tea. And then later another monk comes by and um Joshua asks, How long have you been here? And he says, Oh, several years now. Must be this number of years. And Joshua says, Huh, have some tea. And then the superintendent ponders this and says to ask Joshua, he said, the first monk came and asked you, um, and said he'd just been here a few days and you said, have some tea. And uh the second monk has been here several years, and he told you, and you said to him also, have some tea. What was your meaning? And Joshua said, Superintendent? He said, Yes, he said, have some tea. Which is quite a funny story, but it also has a wonderful expression, you know. So I often will like look for meaning in something, we look for some secret or something that's hidden deep, which is actually abundantly clear. You know, whether someone's been there a day, a week, or a year, they're having tea and everyone's invited. That's something of the mind of Joshua. Here um a monk asks him, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West? And it says, in Khan Study, it's a standard this is a stock question from that era. It's really a probe asking about what is the meaning of Zen? What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning? What is the point? It's really pointing at that. And it was presented in this language. Bodhidharma was the first um ancestor of Zen in China who traveled from India. Hence this, what is his meaning coming from the West? What is the meaning of Zen coming to China from India? Now we could ask, what is the what is the meaning of Maizumi Roshi's coming from the east? For us that would be apt, to put it in that language. You know, well what was the point in founding Yokoji? What was the point in bringing the Dharma from Japan? What is the point of practice? What are we doing? Joshu answered, the cypress tree in the garden. That's the meaning. The cypress tree in the garden. In the garden, yeah. I've read in other places that um they're not quite sure of what kind of tree. Here it's translated as cypress. Um, in another place it says oak tree. And in yet another place it's translated as uh a juniper. And I bring this up because uh in some further reading I read that it's important that this um these kind of trees didn't really have much use outside of there being a tree. You might say oak tree in the garden. Oak has um got some extra meaning, perhaps. There's a lot you can do with oak. Kenya, right? I suppose there's a lot you can do with cypress, too. Not so much. How about juniper?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00You can make gin out of uh. Yeah, yeah, okay, well, whatever kind of tree it was. You can imagine uh this situation. It's good when looking at these koans to uh imagine the scene. Imagine the scene. You're in a temple, perhaps not too dissimilar to a setting like this, perhaps in uh in the mountains in China. Joshua is sitting somewhere, maybe looking out on the garden. He's an abbot of the temple, perhaps he takes his tea with a view of the garden. A monk comes by wanting to inquire. And this was encouraged then, you know, to ask the teacher questions, expose put oneself in a in the place of uh risking something to ask. And if you look at the Othercoins, it's sometimes uh, you know, a risky business to ask his masters what the meaning of Bodhidharma was coming from the West, because in those times sometimes that was um you were struck with a stick or received a bellowing shout in response. But it wasn't really Joshu's style. Taking tea there in the garden, he said, or looking at the garden, he said, the cypress tree in the garden. So we can conjure that up. We can imagine that. The tree, the beautiful tree. Trees are we don't have as many trees here as we used to with the fires that we had, and the bark beetle and the drought before that, but there's still uh too many to count around here. And just like us, every one of them is um different. There's no tr two trees that grow the same or look the same in the whole world. Right? They're all unique, completely unique, these trees. The cypress tree in the garden, how does that answer what is the meaning? What is the essential meaning of this life? What is the meaning of this experience? And when we come to a practice like meditation, or we're in the midst of a practice of meditation, or be it Zen, or a different lineage, Buddhism, or whatever that approach is, then often there's uh the search for the meaning, and to find or to resolve the questions that we have that have brought us to uh this place of inquiry, or looking into this, looking into a practice. And often the process of that is these questions around our experience often appear as uh questions about our life. Like, who am I or what am I, and the circumstances of our life, and the um the business of our life and other people in it. That's often what preoccupies a majority of our mental activity as human beings, you know, our um experience of um this one and that one, this one and that one. It's in our own heads about this experience of me, and we look outside of what we take to be the external world, and then that's full of people and things too. And that's a lot of our uh inner life is how we navigate that. And through uh, you know, our core practice in Zen here is Zazen, is sitting meditation, like you're engaged in this morning, sit and meditation, and over and over in sit and meditation in Zen, we are encouraged and steered back to and reminded over and over again that Zazen is not the time to engage with uh thinking about the conditions of our life, or thinking about the conditions of anything at all, or thinking about things, or being involved in conditions. As a human being, we're always uh in the midst of changing conditions, on in a in a bodily form that's so, but then also in an inner mental form that's so. But often the inner mental world is what causes us uh the problems. When we're sitting, when we're still, apart from the usual aches and pains and the basic uncomfortable discomfort of sitting, you know, which we we learn to sit with, there isn't a lot to do. There isn't a lot to be involved in. And yet, the our brain, you know, the brain continues to produce thoughts uh with thinking and feeling. But in the preface to the assembly, it says here not falling into speech or thought. How do you express it? Zarzen is the practice of not falling into speech. Or thought. You know, and that speech can be inner speech. That means that it's not the time to work things out. Apply the dualistic function of subject-object function, however we want to describe that, to working our lives out or working them better during the practice of Zarzen. And that Zarzen does not just, of course, mean sitting on the cushion. That's just sitting Zen. That's what Zarzen means. But the expression, the living expression of Zen goes through 24365. The activity changes. Those conditions change. But still zen, well the practice of Zarzen, the expression of Zarzen, is ever present in whatever it is that we find ourselves doing. That basic presence that we are, awareness, is always apparent, is always functioning. Now if we are always applying the thinking function to try and resolve our difficulties, you know, as we do, if we bring that to Koan, so we bring this to the deeper meaning, the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West, or Mizumi Roshi coming from the east, it never reaches it. It doesn't satisfy. And if we're always just involved with our inner life of how I am and how this one relates to others, then we discover that that is endless. We may reach certain places where certain things resolve, but as long as we're in a body that will continue to run endlessly. There's a nature of impermanence and a nature of change in conditions, that it is constant change. That will always continue. But Joshu here points to the place or points directly to that which is beyond or before changing conditions. Points to the place which doesn't change, expresses that which is always luminous, awake and aware. So why does he say a tree in the courtyard? And if we when we spend, if we spend a lot of our majority of our time in the in the me identity, and that's what we're always dealing with, and giving that a lot of power and a lot of substance, and and taking that along as being the most important thing and the most real thing. And then we're taking those things on the external and taking those as being truly external and separate from ourselves. That is a snare which we often fall into. You know, if we look out into this world, where does the self, where does this one begin and where does it end? What does it include and what and what is left outside? A little more on this Koan. The record of Joshua contains a longer version of his Koan. A monk asked Joshua, why did the first patriarch come from the West? Joshu said, the cypress tree in the garden. The monk said, Oh priest, you shouldn't talk to me of external things. Joshua replied, I didn't. So this points directly at this. You shouldn't point the cypress tree in the garden, you shouldn't talk about external things. Joshua said, I didn't. That's the mind of Joshua. The monk asked him again, then why did the first ancestor come from the West? Joshua said, the cypress tree in the garden. You won't let him off the hook. But it really points this and gives the game away. You know, don't talk to me about external things. What is external? What is internal? How do we draw those lines? Where do we draw those lines? What don't we what don't we accept as ourself? You know? We've got a thousand ways to do that. Maybe people of uh um a different uh uh political affiliation. That's a popular one now. Is that not you? Is that not me? Is that not the self? Maybe we draw the line there. Those guys, those people, they're on the outs for these reasons. Then we can bring it closer and say, you know, here at the Zen Centre, these people, but these these guys, they're on the outs. Because that's not me. And it doesn't even have to involve people. Or it could be disowned or cherished ideas about ourselves, how we take this one. You know, what how what we allow in and say that's me, but that's not me. I'm not like this, I'm not like that. We play this game of identity and protect this identity at all costs. In another play, Master Dogen devotes a fascicle, whole part Shobogenzo, a fascicle to this coin, and he brings up um uh a great rinzai teacher, Kanzen Egan, who's a founder, I think, of a Miyasinji sect, it's a the big rinzai sect now in Japan still, and he talked about this coin, he said, Joshu Cypress has the function of a bandit. It steals everything from you. It steals everything from you, this tree. How do you see the oak tree in the picnic area? That one. What is that? I mean living those who live up here are fortunate. We have a lot of time available to uh ponder a tree. And we what you know, I I would say that we're, you know, uh probably better better um suited, or or we we would do better pondering a tree than we would ourselves. And I mean I mean that in the two things sense. You know, because we can rearrange things a thousand times over, you know. But if we really wish to know the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West, Joshua says, a cypress tree in the garden. You know, I really encourage everybody in Zarzen, but not just in the practice of Zarzen on the cushion again, but really look at where we draw the lines of self. What is self? That is what is the meaning of Podhidharmas. What is this experience, what is this self? What does it include, what does it not include? What is it really? Because as human beings, most of our suffering comes from the misinterpretation or our difficulty with that. Because we were born as uh a person that's gonna die. That's like the hard fact of and the real reason for all of this. Practice. You know, is is the that just great truth of impermanence, even this very body, this very one. And if we put all of our, you know, if we put our investment in always shoring up this self-identity, it is always um, you know, like however long the stock market runs, at some point there's going to be a crash. No matter how we shore this self up or how it's understood, at some point it will crash. So what is beyond that identity, or what is before that identity? You know, we can let this koan in and really let it breathe when we look, when we hear something of the mind of Joshua, where he says, Don't talk to me about externals, and he said, I'm not talking about externals. That's the difference. What is external? What is internal? You know, I saw it with somebody uh recently at a class off the hill, and I and they said, I really feel like I've done a lot of work and I'm reconciled to not blaming or beating up other people on the outside, but I really still do it to myself. I really still do it to myself, you know, and we were talking, and I thought, well, when you turn in and you do that to yourself, that's just another way of creating other. It's not different. Just one mirror, you know, you just aim that way, you've got a world full of others. You turn it in and look at this one, you've got another world of others. That's your idea of who you are. That's our idea of who we are. It's an idea, it's a sketch. It doesn't reach it, it doesn't really reach the heart of this experience. And why look? You know, as Kanzan Egan when he said, you know, when this tree of his answer of Joshua steals everything from you, that's the best medicine. That's the best medicine. That's not a um a negative thing. It steals everything from you. All the ideas, the opinions, the beliefs, the fears, all of these things, all of these things that come through our mind that cause us, that we uh hold on to and cause us to suffer. We can let all those things go. Zen is a great dissolving agent, a great catalyst, a great dissolving agent for all of these ideas about who we think we and other things and people are. Not that we let those go and then we don't have any more, it's just like you know, sound of crickets in the mind. It's because we still have these ident, you know, sense of this one, sense of other opinions, beliefs, ideas, perspectives, preferences. I've got all kinds, I'm sure you do, I have tons of preferences. But the difference, the shift, the difference is you know what you know what beliefs, uh opinions, ideas, perspectives, you know they're always partial. You know it's not the truth. You don't have to hold them and keep them tight and defend them against other people and other things. You don't have to hold that identity. You know, you can let that go and be like, yeah, I like this, maybe I like that, maybe I don't. You can shift. Everybody's involved, everybody can come and have a cup of tea.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00No matter what they believe in, we might be like diametrically opposed from their views and their ideas about stuff, but it's our life. Our one life that we all are, that all people come and go in. Trees, people, dogs, things, how all these things. It's this one great life. How much richer if everybody's invited, but nobody is excluded. I don't have to, again, you don't have to agree, it's not a matter of capitulation, but you see, however we hold ourselves separate, who whatever, whoever and whatever we put on the outs from a tree to a person on the other side of a country, that's how much we limit this life. And you know, the the good news is this is our basic experience already. This is not something we need to go on a whole endeavor of study of decades in order to realize. But rather it's a matter of losing, not gaining. Allowing whatever to fall off that has clouded the mirror over the years. Allowing these identities, these beliefs, these things, just let them go. You still find yourself sitting right here. Anyway, I'd like to open it up for um for questions or comments, anything anyone would like to bring up or share or ask.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Before I came in, um I was standing out by the water and there's um like it looks like a redwood tree. Um, and it has a rock right in front of it. It's the one right down. It doesn't look like anybody has access to it, and it it looks like such a beautiful spot. I was thinking it would be really nice to make the road open so that you could sit around it. Do you know which one I mean?
SPEAKER_00It's the big I think that's uh an old sea. It's a cedar, apparently.
SPEAKER_04It just looked like such a I just wanted to go sit there, but it didn't look like it has access.
SPEAKER_00Maybe you should sit there after lunch. Yeah. We'll put it on the list. But yeah, it's a beautiful tree. I think it was struck by lightning at some point in its past, so you see the top is like broken off and burned.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it looked didn't look like it. Is it alive?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I have a comment. Um thank you for the talk. Um this is my first time here. I really enjoyed everything. Oh good. And um and the color was so beautiful in all in all the parts and um very helpful.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Um it reminds me of something, you know, like we were bringing up the tree. Like to be immersed in nature, yeah, it's one of the key things to like a place like this. You know, we can hear all of these teachings with words and we'll we'll brace we'll raise all of these things up. But really, like the my years here, but um some of the deeper teachings uh just come from the the landscape and the environment, year after year. You know, just from like sky, mountain, the trees. There's an old in a in a I think it's a case in uh some entangled vines. Somebody comments and says, but those who awaken through natural world uh do not easily regress. Do not easily regress. It's like words are always something of a pointer or an explanation.
SPEAKER_04This is also my first time, and that was my longest sit event so far, and I'm still just chewing on that reading. Yeah. Chewing on it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And like how a kind of cypress taste to it as well. I'm gonna chew that one for most of the day.
SPEAKER_03It's not that.
SPEAKER_01I kind of had an experience the other day when I was in the airport. Like often when I'm walking through airports, it's really easy for me to be like, you know, I'm kind of stress level goes up, and like anyone that's walking too slowly or like doing things that I think are weird, my head's just going, what are these people doing? Like the other day I had a kind of I was looking around, and I wasn't in a huge rush to get to my next gate, but and I kind of had a moment where I was just thinking, like the thought that popped in my head was like, all these people are just me doing different things. And it doesn't matter what they're doing, they're just me doing different things. But then I like kind of like struck me, and then I had to move on to the gate. So but I don't know, I just that popped in into my mind one day. And it was kind of nice.
SPEAKER_00It's not the kind of insight you share with a TSA personnel. Yeah, airports are strange play. I've heard a few people bring up things where they've experienced an airport, you know. I feel like airports are like good places for for insights into you know, this strange experience that we are. It's like we're ever everything's really heightened in a weird way at an airport.
SPEAKER_04Kind of like Venice speech. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, and uh in another coin, and I was just looking through for someone to raise up today, um another column that talks about uh not knowing as most intimate. You know, yesterday there was a day of reflection in that text we talk about um all things um as the manifestations of not knowing. So in bringing something like this up, this Koan, it really functions or can functions as a tool to look at the basic fact of an experience of not knowing. So or to disrupt that which is known. You know, which is like Zazen and meditation is that Krishna Murti said that uh meditation is freedom from the known. You know, taking a break or having freedom from the known. So this you know, these these divides function as devices to disrupt what is known. So you can return to what is not known. And from that place, or this experience of not knowing, you learn. You gain insight and realize, or you have realization of how things are. This first uh path of the Buddha's eighth fold path, see things as they are. Often the known obscures the as things are, really are. It's got a layer of known going over the top that keeps us blinkered. You let that go, you disrupt that, you return to not knowing. And then we're free to uh interpret, aim, prefer, say something, don't say something. But it's not based on a scheme, it's not based on an identity. Because whenever it's based on something, it's always incomplete, it's always subject to impermanence, it's always shaky, it's not a good investment. The best investment is made in not knowing, which is always well it's always of a fact anyway. Okay, that's enough today. Thank you. Thanks so much. I'll finish.