What Is Buddha? - Shindo Steve Given

Shindo Steve Given - August 2nd 2026 - Suggested Donation $5 - Through the koan “What is Buddha? Three pounds of flax,” this talk explores the limits of language and our tendency to become trapped in explanations, distinctions, and opinions. Drawing on Dōgen, Suzuki Roshi, and other Zen teachers, it points toward zazen as a direct encounter with Buddha nature—not something to be understood through words, but something realized in silence, practice, and the immediacy of this moment.

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SPEAKER_02 0:13

Good morning. Good morning online.

SPEAKER_04 0:18

My usual people staring at me from little boxes. For those of you who remember back that far, and I know you're there. Also a song by Malvina Reynolds that I used to love. And uh thank God Gensen is here, so someone in the room remembers Malvina. Oh, well, and Terry. Good, good. You know, at my age, small gifts are still small gifts. Good morning. Thank you all for being here in person and online this morning. Thank you all for your support of Seattle Soto Zen. Uh, it's wonderful to see you all and hear you all in person. I am hearing impaired, which makes going along with everybody else in a chant online remarkably difficult and much easier when you're all howling into my hearing aids at the same time. So thank you all for your support of the somewhat disabled. Um and uh thank you for your generosity to Seattle Soda Zen. We are here because of your generosity. Excuse me. Uh, before I go on to the topic of my Dharma talk this morning, I want to take a moment and ask us to think of peace. I've been practicing with one of Joan Sutherland's miscellaneous coans of late, stop the war. We face yet another war with the loss of life and suffering, dukkha, that results. This is especially meaningful for me. I was the conscientious objector in a previous undeclared war that uh involved the participation of the United States in a foreign country that neither wanted us nor invited us. We face yet another war with the loss of life and suffering dukkha that results. We live in a time of violence against people, attacks against communities of color, the LGBTQIA plus community, immigrant communities, and diverse communities of religious experience. Recently, I've had a wonderful talk by a Buddhist teacher who studied with Shinri Suzuki Roshi, Myazin Barton Stone on suffering, the end of suffering, and not turning away from suffering. And I'm asking each of us not to turn away to see what is happening. Sometimes that's all we can do is not turn away. I hope, I pray that we will find peace and acceptance for all. May all beings be happy, live in safety, free from want, and live together in dignity, justice, and peace.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

This morning I'd like to talk about a koon. I've returned to practicing with koans and have begun to translate some of them from medieval Chinese, mostly because I never saw something that was so difficult that I was not willing to beat my head against a brick wall over it. I guess I should tell you the story that uh when I was relatively newly born, my parents had me in a room on a tile floor in a crib, and the crib would migrate during the night. And my parents found that um like extremely unsettling. And so one night, very late, they went in and watched, and I had managed to clamber up to uh almost standing position, I would beat my head against the bar of the crib until it walked across the tile floor. Um and I really in in the I mean I'm now in my eighth decade and not much has changed, except now uh the koans associated with Tong and Song Dynasty Masters have taken the place of my crib. Here we are. The term koan is the Japanese pronunciation of the word kong on. That was for you, Kansin, if you're listening, and is usually translated as public case. I believe the character on is also used for a legal case, if I get that correctly. For the record, I've begun this talk half a dozen times, probably more than a half a dozen times, trying to find the right words. Words can be a blessing and a curse, often at the same time, for those of you who have been in a relationship. You know who you are. We can become trapped by words, entangled in their meanings and interpretations. God forbid, other people's meanings and interpretations. A koan frequently involves a conversation with a Zen ancestor and a monk or a student. Today I would like to talk about the twelfth case in the Bianlu, the Blue Cliff Record, a collection of 100 koans assembled by the Chinese monk Shui Do Zhongxian during the Song Dynasty, about 830 years ago. Even I don't remember, and I'm old. This case is also the 18th case in another collection, the Mumen Khan, the Gateless Barrier, sometimes translated as the Gateless Gate. The Song Dynasty is, of course, the great Song, quote unquote, mentioned in Dogen's writings. Dogen traveled to the China during the late Song and studied with his teacher, Tintong Rujing, during the 13th century, also a time I don't really remember. Rujing's monastery in China is still active today after about 1700 years. Another interesting note uh when the Chinese Communist Party came to power in mainland China, they closed all the monasteries. Um, because of course the Chinese Communist Party, as all Communist parties of the time were self-declared atheist um political systems, therefore it is just not needed. Um starting in the early 1980s, after the Cultural Revolution, China began to thaw, the great thaw, and they started opening up the monasteries, the temples, the Buddhist temples, as tourist attractions. By the time I arrived in the Middle Kingdom in 2002, they were full, not of tourists, but of Buddhists that had been there all along, waiting for the opportunity, practicing Chinese-style Buddhism. They were so happy to be there. Their incense sticks were a meter long. I'm hearing a positive, yes, they did. Their meter sticks were the incense sticks were a meter long, and outside every temple there was a street where dozens of vendors sold them for a few ren B a piece, and you could torch these suckers and put them in big bronze um containers. The only I've only been to one chan, as in Zen Temple in China, and they gave you free the normal-sized incense, which I thought was very civilized. So I was able to make an offering without sounding like I was a fire hazard. Kohen 12, that was another uh off topic aside. Kohen 12 goes like this. A monk asked Dong Shan Shochu, What is Buddha? Dong Shan said, Three pounds of flax. Dongshan Shochu was born in 910 and died in 990 of the Common Era. Dongshan's Japanese name was Tozon. There were two Tozans. This was quite confusing. I'm talking about one of the two Tozans. Um, he lived at the beginning of the Song dynasty, the dynasty that would give rise to many of the teachers and monks memorialized in Koan collections. He was the disciple of the late Tong dynasty ancestor Yunman Wenji. Um Dong Shan would also have stated the following, also did state the following. Quote, language doesn't help matters. Speech does not bring forth the truth. Those burdened by language are lost. Those held up by words are diluted. Clearly, Dong Shan does not see language as a path to enlightenment. Unfortunately, I'm using words today. There was no escape. Perhaps this is a clue. It will definitely make our conversation this morning more challenging. We share with each other, communicating using words. Language is so central to who we are as human. My son is in graduate school. His days and nights are spent hunched over a computer, sending words in great profusion to his professors to demonstrate his mastery of the material he studies. Each day we interact with the world, with each other, using words. What to make of this exchange between Dong Shan and the unnamed monk? Usually the monk and student is unnamed. Not always. This seems to be the essential question. One of the translators of the Bian Lu, Matthew Juxan Sullivan, in his discussion of the case, said the following quote, this is the most important case in the Bian Lu, end quote. Doesn't have to be why I picked it, but no pressure here, Steve. The monk begins the short exchange with a profound question, perhaps one of the most significant questions in Buddhism. What is Buddha? What is the nature of the Tathagata? The historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, is of course our original teacher. Is this what the monk is asking? Or is there more to the question? Is Dong Shan showing the monk that there is more here? I don't think this is a simple search for identity. The monk did not ask the Buddha who the Buddha was. We need to look further. A more prosaic explanation is offered by John Fraser in glasgozengroup.com. And you're thinking, who knew that was there? I just found out myself. He states that the three pounds of flax will produce enough fabric to make a monk's rope, right? Flax makes linen, right? To make matters more confusing, the character for flax, ma, second tone, can be translated as flax, hemp, or fiber made from flax or hemp, such as linen. In Ehe Dogen's Tenzo Q Kun, instructions for the Tenzo, Dogen states, Dongshan's answer is three pounds of sesame. I found this to be odd. I admit it. Thank God you're all sitting here and online. I was a little skeptical of that one. Um I found and went so far as to try to verify this translation. One dictionary of old Chinese that I happen to have on my shelf, Schussler's ABC etymological dictionary of old Chinese from 2007, if you want your own copy, suggested that Ma could be in fact sesame in early Chinese. I don't think this helps us. With my deep apologies to uh the Japanese soda zen founder, Dogen Zenji. I decided to end on time. Excuse me. Matthew Juxan Sullivan also states that flax seeds are bland. Um, they're in health stores here in Seattle, as well as where I'm from in Portland. He puts them in his porridge, implying that flax is in and of itself not very special. Clearly, focusing on three pounds of flax does not, did not answer our question. I asked the Buddhist teacher, Kogan Jamie Howell. He's in the Bay Area, he's a good friend. And to use a technical term from a different tradition, he is a mensch. I guess technically, er bist ein Mensch for those of you who are into details. He is familiar with rinzai practice. He practiced rinzai for a number of years and studied koans with Joshua Suzaki Roshi at Mount Baldi's End Center in California. You may also remember that is where Leonard Cohen studied. And um he said that measurements are important. He feels that this brings the nature of the Kohen into the absolute rather than the relative. This teaching is in the realm of the Dharmakaya, the truth body, the auspicious aspects of the Buddha, including wisdom, his compassion, and his teachings, his dharma. Jaime associated this coin with the absolute in Tozan's five ranks rather than the relative. Um, Shinri Suzuki Roshi spoke of this indirectly. Big mind can be understood as the mind of the absolute, and small mind understood as the mind of the relative, our human mind, the mind that relies on language. Suzuki Roshi stated this quote, to accept small mind too, knowing that it is small mind, big mind watching small mind, then small mind will work. We can't live without small mind because we know other humans. But knowing where it is relative to big mind is valuable. Perhaps then the distinction is found in the use of language by the small mind. The Kohan asks us about big mind, going beyond small mind and dependence on words. In the end, Dong Shan's belief that language doesn't help, perhaps the most important clue. What we are looking for is beyond three pounds of flax, beyond what is Buddha, beyond what is. This is the late Robert Aiken Roshi's translation. Aiken Roshi was the founder of the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii, thrusting forth three pounds of flax. The words are intimate, the mind is more so. If you argue right and wrong, you are a person of right and wrong. Woman is telling us that if we are trapped by our words, we are led astray, away from big mind, away from the absolute. Suzuki Roshi's big mind. If we use discrimination in an attempt to pry meaning from the cohen, we then are trapped in discrimination. Words are the medium of discrimination. When we use language to articulate what we see, feel, and understand, we are taking a position, making a distinction regarding our perceptions. This becomes a trap. We are trapped by our own words, our need for words. As stated in the Xinqin Ming, Faith and Mine, a verse attributed to the third patriarch of Zen, Chan Shu Tsun Tsan. The great way, the Tao, is not difficult for those who have no preference. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undistinguished. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinion for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is a disease of the mind. There are two aspects to this. There are always a number of aspects. There are so many numbers in Zen that in the back of uh Buswan Lopez's uh dictionary of Zen Buddhism of Buddhism, rather, there's a whole chapter just on the numbered lists. So I'm adding one more to the number two list for a future edition. There are two aspects to this. First is discrimination, separating this from that. This, of course, runs counter to our understanding of dependent origination. Everything, to quote a secular author, everything is connected to everything else, right? So we are all connected, even to things we said previously we disliked. So that is dependent origination. That all things are interconnected. Such discrimination does not simply appear, it is couched in language, in the words that we use. The light John Dido Luri said in the following about the Kohen three pounds of flax and the roll words of words in our understanding. Quote, this is an old case that has been echoing in the halls of Zen monasteries for centuries. And yet there has been only a handful who have been able to penetrate Dongshan's meaning. People immediately rush to the words to understand, not realizing words and speech are just vessels conveying the truth, not the truth itself. If you take Dongshin's three pounds of flax to mean this in and of itself is Buddha, then you have missed his intent by a hundred thousand miles. We should understand at the outset that three pounds of flax is not a reply to the question about Buddha, and it cannot be understood in terms of Buddha. This being the case, then you tell me what is Buddha. I can feel the fear and anxiety. I will not ask you to do it. That's John Dido Lore asking me for my opinion. And uh there you have it. To seal the deal with the reader, Luri Roshi included a capping phrase with this cohen. Capping phrases are phrases and comments are phrases made by a student in Sanzin to his, her, their teacher to demonstrate understanding of a cohen. It's a rinse thing. Luri Roshi's capping phrase goes like this quote seeing a gap come up in this monastic question, the old master quickly moved to stuff it with flax. Those who accept words are lost, those who linger in phrases are diluted. If I were to add even more words, as if this is a good idea now, in an attempt to clarify this already wordy explanation, I would say that focusing on three pounds of flax is like confusing the moon with the finger pointing at it. In both cases, we're led astray. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Three pounds of flax are not Buddha. Both can be the starting point of enlightenment when these ideas were. Result in a deeper understanding. Here, finally, we have some clarity, rather late in this process. The question, what is Buddha, is not an invitation to discourse in spite of my elaboration during the Dharma talk today. The question is an invitation to go beyond words without description. As noted by the Rinzai teacher Hakuan Ikaku. Talk about killing. The great death is easy. Whether enlivening or killing, if you kill opinionated rationalization, there is an immediate revival. Talk about life-giving, enlivening, is difficult. Activating subtle wisdom and subtle function from total mindlessness is called enlivening. The heart of nirvana is easy to clarify. Knowledge of differentiation is hard to understand. You perish, lose your body and mind, and right then there you are, living Buddha. We are a Soto community. And I think it we're well served by going to our founder, our Japanese founder, I should say, Ehe Dogen. In 1231, he wrote Bendua on endeavoring the way. In response to the following question from a student, Dogen talks about words and the consequences of words. Question. We understand that you have studied the path of the Buddha ancestors and authentically transmitted the Tathagata's excellent art. This is beyond the reach of ordinary thought. However, reading sutras or chanting Buddha's name must be causes and conditions of enlightenment. How can Zazen just sitting there uselessly doing nothing? I know, a little ironic, be dependent upon for attaining enlightenment? Dogan's answer. To attempt to reach the Buddha way by chanting Buddha's name thousands of times is like foolishly trying to go south while heading north, or to fit a round square peg into a round hole. To be consumed with words and letters while ignorant of the way of practice is like a physician forgetting how to prescribe medicine. What use can it be? People who chant all the time are just like frogs croaking day and night in spring fields. Their efforts will be of no use whatsoever. Even worse off are those deluded by fame and gain who cannot give up such practices because they're acquisitive so deep. Such people exist in the past, and there's not even more today. What a pity.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Indeed.

SPEAKER_04 25:18

Dogen in Benduwa teaches us that practice and enlightenment are in Tatanahashi's translation inseparable. Our practice is shikantaza, Japanese for just sitting. We sit, our sitting is enlightenment itself. We do not sit in order to get something else, go somewhere else, be transported beyond our own lives. We sit in silence, we did so this morning. We sit in silence, facing ourselves, setting aside words and the entanglements of words. Inbenduwa Dogan goes further, stating, quote, just understand that when a master who has attained the way, with a clear mind authentically transmits to a student who has merged with realization, then the wondrous Dharma of the seven original Buddhas, in its essence, is actualized and maintained. This cannot be known by those who study words. Therefore, set aside your doubt, practice Dazen under an authentic teacher and realize Buddha's receptive samadhi.

unknown 26:34

End quote.

SPEAKER_04 26:35

For Dogin, our practice is based not on our intellect or contemplation of Buddhist ideas. God knows I love doing that, but apparently it isn't all that helpful. The samadhi of the Buddhas is, in according to Dogin Zenji, here and now, in this moment, in the stillness of our practice, we find what we are looking for. He goes on to admonish us that practice is not doing nothing. Quote, if you think that samadhi of all of that the samadhi of all Buddhas, their unsurpassable great art, is just sitting uselessly doing nothing, you malign the great vehicle, the Mahayana. Such misunderstanding is like saying there is no water when you are in the middle of the ocean. Just now all Buddhas sit serenely at ease in receptive samadhi. Is this not the actualization of vast merit? What a pity that your eye is not yet open, that your mind is still intoxicated. End quote. This practice of sitting in silence requires faith. Without faith, it is difficult to sit in silence, falling into the trap of thinking we are waiting for something that's not already here and now. We are not sitting in silence like the characters in the play, waiting for Godot, waiting for something that never arrives. We are sitting in order to face ourselves with the faith that we will find that we are Buddha. As noted by Hosho Peter Coyote in his text, Zen in the vernacular, quote, faith is not separate from insight. It is not separate from intellect, but intellect alone will never get us across the finish line to a peaceful, compassionate life. We need the power of faith, in this case, as expressed by the three-pound, three, excuse me, so many threes, the three thousand-year lineage of human beings who have preserved Buddha's wisdom, expressing their confidence in it by dedicating and rededicating their lives to it, burning themselves alive for it, teaching, refining the teaching, sharing it to model the life of Buddha in their own lives. End quote. Each day, we sit Zazan, quieting our mind, setting aside the stream of consciousness that we shine on this and that in our daily lives. In the stillness of our practice, we find the answer to the monk's question: What is Buddha? It is not found in the 100 grasses, the 84,000 things, the myriad minutiae of our lives, minutiae described, categorized, and explained by words. It is found in the silence as we sit facing ourselves with the self that existed before our parents were born. In this silence, we find the true nature of ourselves, our Buddha nature, we find we are Buddha. The last word goes to Ehe Dogin from his Ehe Koroku. Quote, if you want to visit that realm of glimpsing the ground of Buddhahood, you should further come here and close your mouth in silence. Has there ever been a careless has there ever been a carelessness in a good response? To see Tozan laying out facts according to the situation is like a lame tortoise or a blind turtle gone into an empty valley. Flowering groves, multicolored forests, bamboo of the southlands, wood of the northlands. So I think of Chokei and Officer Riku. He could say he should laugh, not cry. Thank you. I tried to time this to have time for one or two questions. If there are brave souls out there. Dogan makes distinctions. So it becomes an interesting conundrum, does it not? Um it reminds me of I there was a practice period at San Francisco Zen Center, and um there was a Shuso. Um, for those of you who haven't been through this, there's a Shuso, a head monk, a head student, who at the end of Sashin, the last Sashin of the practice period, um there's uh Dharma Hoshensiki questioning the Shuso. And the Shuso sits here with a stick in his right hand, which I found to be difficult because I'm left-handed. And each person in Sashin, and this was the Tempus Kozenza, there's like 90 people here, each of us asks her a question, she answers it and goes bang on a on a wooden block. We're done now. Next questioner. And I had been translating the Xin Qin Ming at the time. Um, again, because the callus on my forehead wasn't big enough yet. And so I was very full of myself about this. And so my question to the Shusu was the Xinqin Ming says we should make no distinctions between this and that. How do you live with distinctions? And she said, I make them every day. Next question, bang. And that was the end. Everyone makes them, nothing we can do about them.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Thank you. We have time for maybe one more question. How did you decide to end your talk on time? Showing it to everybody.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

There are many things I could have said that I did not say because I'm I'm told that we're done in in one minute. But uh thank you.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

I'll take that as a compliment. All right.

SPEAKER_03 36:08

It's unsurpassable. I can make the town free from it.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Hi everyone, thank you so much for coming to Seattle Soto Zen and for those attending online. Oh, closer. Thank you. Um, I don't have the paper in front of me. Um, we have books that you can take and read and then bring them back when you're done. Um, you can make a donation. Um, you can there's a QR code there. You can go to the website. Um, you can we're gonna go have coffee um at the new coffee shop that just opened. So feel free to join us. Um, and if if you could stay and help us clean up, that would be great. Am I forgetting anything? What was that? Oh, thank you for everyone in service positions.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

Thank you very much.