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 Great Silence
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Thank you to everyone for being here. Those of you who've been uh helping support the the uh the guest group here integral Zen who um come back through the through the Rinzai lineage originally with some modification now uh so the rinzai style of uh Zen. I was just outside earlier and I could hear some shouting going on in the Zendo, you know, which is kind of goes along with a with the flavour of that of that school. And uh they've been coming here for some years and appreciate the way they come here and bring an attitude of uh service and gratitude and uh taking care of the place, but of course it takes everyone who lives here a lot of effort in supporting that too. But this uh supporting this uh Dharma practice and whatever lineage certainly uh brings uh real value to people. I wanted to bring up a um a Koan case. Maybe we'll start with uh a comment from Master Rinzai. So in our tradition or the lineage here, although it's a Soto Zen lineage temple, so therefore it kind of looks back toward um it's called Master Dogen, um the founder in Japan, and uh Master Uh Keizan, a couple of generations down, they're known as the mother and father of uh So Ozen in Japan. And then those routes go through China uh back to uh Master To Zen. And of course in these several schools of Zen, but the dominant schools were Soto and Rinzai, those are the dominant schools uh now. And a real great exemplar of the Rinzai school, Master uh Rinzai, or uh Linji, Chinese. So from Master Rinzai, you keep trying to find Buddha, but Buddha is merely a name. Don't you know what it is that you are running around seeking? The Buddhas and the ancestors of the three periods and the ten directions appear only in order to seek the Dharma. You followers of the way who are studying today, you too have only to seek the Dharma. Attain Dharma and you're all done. Until then, you'll go on transmigrating through the five paths of existence just as you have been. What is Dharma? Dharma is the Dharma of mind. Mind is without form. It pervades the ten directions and is manifesting its activity right before your very eyes. But because people lack sufficient faith in this, they turn to names and phrases, attempting to grasp the Buddha Dharma through written words. They are as far away as heaven from earth. So what is Dharma? Dharma is the Dharma of mind. Mind is without form, manifesting its activity right before your very eyes. So just say that as an opener, and then the Koan is from the Book of Equanimity, case 48, Vimlakurti's non-duality. The preface. Marvellous activity may be limitless, but there is a place where the hand cannot reach. Speech may be unimpeded, but as a time when the mouth can't be open. As Rugi was a handless man who used his fist, so Kassan was a tongueless man who used words to cause understanding. To liberate the body when halfway down the road, who is such a person? Attention. Manjushri replied, As I understand it, with regard to all dharmas, there are no words or speech, no revelation or knowledge, and it is separate from all conversation. This is entering the non-dual Dharma gate. Thereupon Manjushri questioned Vimlakurti, saying, All of us Bodhisattvas have each had our say, venerable sir. Now you should expound about a bodhisattva entering the non-dual Dharma gate. Vimulakurti maintained silence. A story from our from our Buddhist tradition, from our history, said that uh Vimila Kurti, you know, I don't know anything of him, was uh uh famous as an exemplar of uh being a householder. So somebody who was uh married, had kids, worked a couple of jobs, uh, was a businessman, uh was involved in all kinds of things, and was involved in things which wouldn't have been allowed under the uh Vinaya or Buddhist rules. So he dealt with money, he dealt with alcohol, uh I think he liked to gamble. So it's all kinds of, he was involved in all activities basically, and is held up as uh as a real um example of uh practice in the world. And also um held up, you know, in somewhat in opposition in one sense to uh a rigid kind of monastic practice of following uh rules and guidelines, showing it's not just dependent on that. And it said that as he was sick, um the Buddha was um asking uh the people go and see him, you know, pay their respects, and it said that nobody would go because Vimalakirti was famously uh would go on the uh with his Dharma understanding, would um crush people. So nobody wanted to be embarrassed by going to go see Vimalakurti. But then it said that he asked Manjushri, and Manjushri being Manjushri, the Bodhisattvara wisdom, he couldn't refuse to go. But he did say, I'll go, but I want everyone else to come with me. It's pretty smart, right? So it said that he uh he brought everybody with him. It says here, they all went to see Vimala Kurti in his little 10-foot by ten-foot sick room, and into that room arrived 32 bodhisattvas and 32,000 enlightened beings, or our hats, all in a 10 by 10, with room for a breath, the bed and a pitcher of water and a couple of chairs. So you know that's how that can sound kind of crazy to us. How do 32 bodhisattvas and 32,000 and enlightened beings all fit in uh one room to uh check on Vimala Kurti and see how he's doing? I was reading yesterday. I was uh we were driving back up the hill, and they still have uh the stop and go traffic coming up the mountain from Hemet. And um so I was doing some reading. So it's just reading, something on my phone, and uh it was uh it was a scientific, little scientific snippet that said, if we took all of the empty space out of our bodies, out of the atoms in our bodies, and removed all the empty space from everybody's body, then every human being on earth would fit inside one apple. If someone did the math, or we could trust that they did the math. So if everybody, you know, five five, six billion people on earth can fit inside an apple, then 32,000 ahhats and bodhisattvas, I think, can fit in Vim Lakurti's room. And it, you know, this might be quite uh a good analogy, you know, because it says if we remove the uh remove the empty space though. Even scientifically, we're mostly empty space. And um all things are mostly empty space. And yet we experience, live, navigate, and appear in the world of form. We live in the world of form. At least right now. Right? We function and appear in the world of form. So when asked these uh questions, you know, if we inquire into uh emptiness of a non-dual, then typically uh that is necessarily uh disruptive to the uh to the intellect. We can't help but uh have an idea about it. You know, we've we function in our brains like it kind of function in that way. You know, we're presented with a problem and we all we may go after it. We're trying to work it out or seeing what the best minds of the day uh have come up with. You know, and there's nothing uh intrinsically wrong with that. But here Master Rinzai says, if you want insight into Dharma as it is, don't be taken in by the deluded views of others. Master Rinzai says, Don't you know if you want to really know what the Dharma is, don't be taken in by the deluded views of others. It's an interesting statement. Now, our own ideas, opinions, or projections around Dharma, around Buddha, what we come up with often in the mind, uh diluted views of others. Because when we look into our own heart and mind, and we the way that we function and we commentate and interpret the world, um when we look in and identify a self and fix a self, that's just another way of creating other. It's just turned in. We do it on the outside with perceived externals, we find other, and then when it's turned in, and we look at this one, whatever we can say about that, however we identify and limit that, that's another way of finding other. For other to be so, there needs to be uh real and existing separation. There needs to be real and existent separation in this world. There need to be things. But when we look at it in this way, if we look into uh our mind, look into the the Dharma, this experience, we begin to see that there are no things. There are the appearance of things, there are the changing forms. But there is something more. There is something beyond or before the things, the forms. This is a question that um is brought to Dimalakurti. Attention. It's a very important word. Attention. So we put our always have our attention, activate attention, where we are. Entering the non-dual Dharmagate. So Vimalakirti may be feeling ill, but he's still Vimalakirti. He's still testing, probing, and this is his his function as a teacher. Even to Manjushri, wants to know what Manjushri has to say. What about entering a non-dual Dharma gate? Again from Mastarinzai said, Among all the students from every quarter who are followers of the way, none has yet come before me without being dependent on something. Here I hit them right from the start. If they come forth using their hands, I hit them on the hands. If they come forth using their mouths, I hit them in the mouth. If they come forth using their eyes, you get it. Not one has yet come before me in solitary freedom. All are clambering after the worthless contrivances of the men of old. As for myself, I Miss Master Rinzai says this. As for myself, I haven't a single dharma to give to people. All I can do is secure illnesses and untie bonds. You followers of the way from every quarter, try coming before me without being dependent upon things. Then I'll speak with you, or I would confer with you. Semester Insert is very direct. I have nothing to teach, I have no dharma. I have nothing to impart, nothing to bring. But I can, he says, cure illnesses. I can cure illnesses and untie bonds. And that really is the function of a teacher in Zen or in this practice. It's not to impart something or to bring some knowledge across. If so, it'd be easy because you know, you just do it. You just, oh, here you go, and then you, you know, write it and then you got it. It's like we've been doing this long enough, right? But we see that it's not something that is based on words or phrases. It's not a thing. You can't hand, you can hand a thing back and forth, but this isn't a thing. All Master Rinzai can do, like a good teacher, is he can spot the dependence on something and take that away. He can cure that. He can talk with students, and the student has an understanding. Bring out the understanding is that okay, this is where this person is holding this and take away that which is being held. In his manner, knock it out, you know. But probably you wouldn't be able to get a lot away with a lot of this behavior in 21st century California. You'd have to have a hell of a liability insurance. So, but he would use these methods, but it's the still, it's still the same thing, it's the same, it's the same way. Dissolving or helping to dissolve our the complications that stand in the way of our realization of Dharma. And those are always those are written in the mind, those are written between the ears. Ways that are understood or not yet resolved or dissolved. You know, we come in dependent usually on something, whether we know it or not. And over and over again, we're encouraged and aimed right back here, turned right back to the self, and given the project of you have to resolve it, you you resolve it, just look. And then all of course, the the teachings of you know, while we're in training that drive us nuts. Of okay, we're told the same thing over and over, and then the feeling of it not really, it hasn't really sunk in or it hasn't quite shifted yet, or I'm I'm leaning into it, but I'm not I'm not kind of done. I don't know for sure. That is a good situation to be in, it's not a bad situation to be in. It's good to be frustrated in practice, it's good to be in that place. You like really lean into that, and then that way you are sure when it's resolved. It's better to keep the to keep the heat under that that way. Keep the heat on it in a sense of just continue over and over to really to look, to illumine one's nature, to bring this to bear on in this awareness. Right? Always our sh always our you know, our predilection or thing we have to watch out for is that tendency to personalize and bring it in and bring the me in. Bringing the me in where we we're within our own heads, perhaps in Zazen or through the day, we're we're toying or arranging or moving around the circumstances of our life in our heads, and we bring that to our practice, like how we how we perceive or understand it. We do that, and we we do that to some degree as human beings, but it's so important to widen the lens that this thinking me navigating this world is just a part of this world, it's just a part of inhabiting this form. Awareness inhabits this form, thinks and feels and does these other things. But that we need to go, we really need to penetrate that in order to really know the dharma in our hearts. Moving beyond just the me and mine. Again, that's not that that needs to be cut out and discarded, but it's always partial, it's always just a part, it's just a changing weather, it's a rising and falling of karma. Rising and falling. How do you feel today? Good or bad. You know, we we we can talk about it, but it's irrelevant to the Dharma. You know, how it is is always how it is. Then will a curtier sick, whether he's sick or well is irrelevant here. It's he's just sick or he's just well. Again, we're talking about something that is beyond, you know, before the change in forms. If we're in our minds, if we're always enamored of the forms of things, people and things, and that's where the awareness always goes, we always stay on the level of people and things. And then we find practice difficult. So Vimla Kurti is you're testing Manjushri, saying, what is the the gate of a non-dual? How does how does he say it? What about a bodhisattva entering the non-dual dharma gate? Manjushri replies, as I understand it with regard to all dharmas, there are no words or speech, no revelation or knowledge. It is separate from all conversation. This is entering the non-dual dharma gate. Is that so? That's how Manjushri understands it. How do we understand it? How about entering the non-dual Dharma gate? You know, it's very important, of course, in in our uh in our Zazen to over and over enter the non-dual Dharma gate. You know, to have duality you need to have more than one thing. There's me and the room, there's me and you over there, there's me and the fan. There's me and there's some me and it's dual. There's my life. You know, all of these things that we put in and we make these, we split the world up in a sense, and then how do we enter the non-dual? How do we how do we experience awareness or uh expand or look into our nature so that the fact that the non-dual, the great life that includes people, all these things, everybody in the room, you know, where does yourself begin and where does it end when you look out? Does it include the fan? Does it include the room? Does it include the canyon? How big is it? Does it include the sky? Is it bigger? Is it smaller? Where does it end? It's good to like blow away out from that place of just what's going on with me, and rather experience and sit as this whole life, this whole experience, and take a good look, you know, like a watchful cat. Like take a really good look at yourself, ourself, this one, this one. So that then these words that don't become traps. These words of what is the non-dual? Well, I have an idea of that's like emptiness. And emptiness is, oh, we might go down that path, but you can look and experience what Master Rinzai, what Master Vimalakurti, what Manjushri all point to over and over. You know, they point to this. And why? As it says in that Heartra, it relieves all pain or relieves suffering. And the human condition to live in separation or to be in the place of Vimlakurti being ill, old age, sickness, death, the changing of uh the always shifting of impermanence. If we say only within that, then there's, you know, we're living good and bad and ups and downs, and that's fine, intrinsically, intrinsically it doesn't matter. But as practice, the Dharma offers us the realization, the experience of the non-dual, the experience of great awareness, a place where we can return, realize, and dwell and take refuge, taking refuge in Zazen. In looking at this in here, uh just kind of went off on a tangent. A couple of teachers have a successor of the um sixth patriarch. I didn't mark it in the book, and he's talking about this realization. He said, When I talk about this sitting, um, I don't encourage people to um uh find it just in sitting on the ground. It's not dependent on sitting on the ground. This sitting, this zarzen is much more than just sitting and meditating. The meditation is a wonderful vehicle, a very efficient and time-tested way where we arrange the circumstances just so to take the good look, take the good look. But the good look is always apparent in whatever activity. And we tend what tends to get in the way is just our the impulse of a to to work that out, to wear that down, and if you're in that place of working it out or wearing it down, that's a good place again, that is a good place to be in because that's what practice is, that's what the training is. You wear that down or you wear that through until the point where you don't do that in the same way anymore. It becomes clear, life becomes clear. You understand when asked, you know, what is the gate of uh non-duality, you can respond in your own way. And if somebody tells you you're wrong, you say, okay. It's right for me. And that Master Rinzai over and over again would admonish people and say, I want you to have faith in yourself. I want you to have faith. Don't listen to people, don't listen to teachers, don't listen to words or books, don't let any of this, just look at your own light. Look at your own light. It doesn't come from another person. But rather, you know, our own angster drives us in practice to really resolve the thing that brought us to it in the first place. Just keep looking there. Just keep keep the heat under that. I say like about bringing up heat because often we let the fire go down a bit. Which is natural, that's just a human way of it. I remember saying to somebody years ago, I said, wow, I feel like the first like several years of practice or something, I was probably running at about 30% of the effort. You know, and they let and they said, Yeah, but then that was your 100%. Like, oh, well, maybe that's so. You know, you can't you can't measure it. But as Master Rinzai really assures us, and it's almost in every passage that you you bring up in here, it's like he tells each person, look, look for yourself. So Manjushri explains it as well as you can explain it. We don't even have to go over it again. You can say a very erudite explanation of the non-dual. Thereon Manjushri asked Vimlakurti, we've all had our say. Would you expound about a bodhisattva entering the non-dual Dharma gate? Vimlakurti maintained silence. And somewhere else it says that with what kind of silence it was, it was a thunderous silence. And this is the what we see. This is really the expression of it's not about words and explanations for Bimla Kurti, although words and explanations are helpful when words and explanations are helpful. When it comes to expounding the Dharma, this is his great answer. Thirty-two thousand Arhats in the room all look at each other awkwardly, wondering how long he's gonna sit there, maybe. Mind is without form, it pervades the ten directions, manifesting its activity right before your very eyes. But because people lack sufficient faith in this, they turn to names and phrases, attempting to grasp the Buddha Dharma through words. And so we had monishers again, you know, rather than seeking outside, it's manifesting right before the eyes. The non-dual of the formless, difficult to see. But all these great examples and our tradition and living examples now can be done. If that's what we wish to have be so. Manjushri said, as I understand it with regard to all dharmas, there are no words or speech, no revelation or knowledge, and it is separate from all conversation.
SPEAKER_01And the reality is undependent and dependent on so much. It's just interesting to me that and I I understand on a certain level that that ability to just move freely, you know, from a dependence on one thing to another, but are not Zen teachers completely dependent on you know your students, a particular position, that kind of thing. Um and I know Tenshin Roshi really values and emphasizes independence. Um and and I I do too in a certain sense, but there seems to be something more underlying that value that you know, like that is where I am myself.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, it's a good that's a good point to raise up. I you know, within the tradition of a way that it's we practice, it's for each one of us coming into it, um it's not so easy to gain spiritual independence, right? Or to to find that independence. So a teacher, Rinzai, or anybody throughout the tradition is is is pushing and prodding and and and encouraging and pushing away and doing all of these different devices, so people are able to just in the end stand on their own two feet. Yet independence is not standing apart from anything else. As part of this process of awakening, this process of practice, real independence is uh the understanding of self that includes that is interdependent. It shows up as a whole body, as everybody and everything else. You know, the disease is the idea of separation at the beginning, and it can be the disease of separation at the end, too, you know, if it's not really seen. It's just like find an independence, but that that's not the that's not um a stopping point. But a necessary thing to like, as you know, to uh find it in your own heart and mind. Find realization of uh the diminishing of suffering, of the assuasion of suffering in your own body, in your own heart and mind.
SPEAKER_03I have a thought. Like with the dependent we're we're all independent on the world around us. Um is it possible that like being dependent on something is a need for something or worry about something as a mindset? So if I say that I need this to be whole, I would be dependent on that. But if I don't need it to be whole, I need in a sense of worry. I can be interdependent without being dependent on that being part of my life. I'm not sure if I'm being clear.
SPEAKER_00Um I'm somewhat following there, but uh when they raise up about not being dependent on something, here as well, it's specific, he's being very specific about uh being dependent on a uh an understanding. He talks about people coming to see him, students, and he finds out where what they're dependent on. And that's like I'm you know, I'm dependent on oxygen and food and all kinds of things. And I I realize that there's an inter there's an interdependence there and a dependency. But what he's really talking about here is not being dependent on an understanding of life or an explanation or a dharma that's understood, or an independence that knows. There's not um, it doesn't have to come through a filter of words or explanations. So it's sure. I mean, you can be uh, you know, in our human lives, we're dependent or not dependent on all kinds of things. And we have to use a discerning eye to see is that something that's causing suffering or not. And if if it is, can we do something? Can you do something about it? Again, when we look into that realm, we're always just dealing with change and form. All kinds of forms. That's endless while we're alive. Here he addresses the formless, that which is always apparent. You bring it up over and over because for most people it's difficult to see. I hope somewhere we exchange we answered something.
SPEAKER_03I think we're saying the same thing in different ways.
SPEAKER_01I was just gonna say that I feel like I am dependent on understanding in particular ways just because of my way of mapping things out and functioning, but that understanding just constantly is disrupted by you know reality, whatever whatever comes forward, and maybe that sometimes is in teacher you can do. Yeah, for sure, yeah. But it's most often something else.
SPEAKER_02I have another question. Okay. Uh I'm really drawn to the story of V V Vim Le Curry?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There you go. Say it three times fast.
SPEAKER_02It's a great story. Did did you say that he was involved in money and gambling? And was that him?
SPEAKER_00I think so. I might have made up for gambling because you know I like to have a flutter myself. Um yeah, he was involved in all kinds of worldly pursuits which weren't considered.
SPEAKER_02So that leads to my question. Yeah. How is it possible for him to have attained such wisdom and yet be involved at that level in the material world, if you will?
SPEAKER_00He never attained anything.
SPEAKER_02He did not.
SPEAKER_00He already had it. Same thing as you.
SPEAKER_02That didn't bring him down?
SPEAKER_00Uh I guess not. And who knows, you know, uh some of his stories or constructions are uh probably pre-apocryphal, you know? But then when they're apocryphal in there, they're making a point. And then what's the point of that being an apocryphal legend? What does that mean? What's it saying here, you know? If we follow any system or way of doing anything, even as something as beautiful as Buddhism, it becomes a cage if we stick have to stick to the rules.
SPEAKER_02You know, so he was outside the cage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You need yeah, you need someone outside him. Right, you need someone outside the cage. Yeah, I think so. All right. Okay, well, thank you. Thank you for uh thank you for listening. And um we'll have um we'll have a little well, I'll make an announcement at the end. Let's finish, thanks.