Newsletter 73 January 2007

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In January we opened a new zendo, Tekisui-an, in Poland. The zendo is named for the monk in the well-known story of the one drop of water that took place at Sogenji. After his experience at Sogenji, this monk changed his name to Tekisui, or "One Drop of Water." Later, he became a renowned roshi at Tenryuji in Kyoto. The opening ceremony for the zendo, led by the Roshi, was well attended. A kosesshin was then held honoring the occasion. This is the first part of the teisho Roshi gave during the kosesshin.

I am very happy to be able to come back here once again and do sesshin and especially today, the celebrating of the opening of this new zendo, Tekisui-an, a truly meaningful time to be able to be here.Today is this special day and many new people are also here to join us.

For what do we do training, what is important about doing training? I was asked to please talk about these questions, so I would like to do so.

This wonderful new zendo has been built. We are all a human physical body, so for us the way of being in our body is of great importance. Today there are so many things available for our health , but even a building, there must be some point to that building, or it is just a structure. As for our body the point of having it is to awaken. Our body cannot be just healthy but has to be peaceful and quiet and while our life energy is in this body we also have to have our mind be serene within that and this cannot happen if we are so full of thinking all the time.

In the old days there lived Basho Zenji, a splendid Zen Master. Both Basho Zenji and Sekito Zenji were advanced masters who lived during the Tang dynasty, at time when Zen flourished. It was Baso Zenji who established this era. When he was not yet awakened he did excellent zazen and sat on Mt. Nangaku, he was famous as someone who sat on this mountain. Nangaku Ejo, who eventually received the Sixth Patriarch' s transmission, lived on the same mountain and he heard that a very high quality Zen monk was there and he went to see the young man.

It was just as Ejo had heard. The monk was an amazing sitter and he could see even his posture was a superior one and when Ejo Zenji saw him he fell in love with his sitting and what a fine person he was.

He went close to him and said, you have been sitting here a long time, for what are you sitting ?

Baso Zenji then said, I am sitting to become Buddha and this means something special. It sounds like it means to realize a true profound peace of mind. This is how he answered. To this Ejo Zenji said nothing. A tile had fallen nearby, he picked it up and started to polish it.

Baso Zenji had answered the priest and then saw him polishing a tile and he was surprised and he said, "What are you scraping that tile for?"

And Nangaku Zenji said, "I am making a mirror; going to make a mirror."

There Baso Zenji started to laugh and said are,"Are you an idiot, even if you polish a tile it will not beome a mirror!"

"Oh really? It won't become a mirror? Then if you sit the body down will it become a buddha?" he asked.

It was extreme sarcasm but it hit Baso right in the deepest mind."Then what can you do? What is it that you want to say?"

Ejo Zenji then answered. If there is a horse drawn cart here and you want it to move, do you hit the cart or would you hit the horse, which one would you hit?"

Baso Zenji was an abundantly superior person and hearing that he immediately got it, he realized that just sitting down the body does not make an enlightenment. If we do not truly awaken we become a slave of the body. The mind has to lead the body. For the first time he understood this, it is a matter-of-course. but if we are careless we get it upside down.

We have a physical body but this form of our body gets hurt and is in pain and misery and feels joy .We understand this so we take care of our health and the joy that comes from that we have to hold precious. All of us think it all ends with our body ending, we have this superstition so we think if our body is injured we get injured and we get into a state of panic when we get sick.

In the koan collection, the Mumonkan, the editor Mumon Ekai gathered 48 old teachings from China in the Sung dynasty . This is a very famous book in Zen and in it we have the work of a Master Tosotsu.

Master Tosotsu Juetsu says the following to the monks, giving them three barriers,

""CASE 47. TOSOTSU'S THREE BARRIERS

Master Tosotsu, setting up the three barriers, always tried the pursuer of the Way:

"To search for the Way, the Zen student tries to grasp one's own nature and be enlightened."

"Now where is your true nature?"

Secondly,

"Once having grasped one's own nature, one is free from birth and death. If then, one's eyeballs have dropped dead, how can one be free from life?"

Thirdly,

"Being free from birth and death, one instantly knows where to go after death."

"Being dead and the body dispersed into the four elements, where then does one go?"

Mumon's Comments:

Whoever can pass these three barriers will be a master anywhere. Whatever happens, this person should be able to become the founder of Zen. Should one be not yet capable of answering these three questions, this person must diligently chew them well to finally comprehend them. Humble meals fill one's stomach, and chewing them well, one will never starve.

To instantly realize is to see endless time.

Endless time is this very moment.

If one sees through the thought of this very moment,

At this very moment, one can see through the one who sees through.

The Buddha and all of the Patriarchs taught the Buddha Dharma and before that the Buddha had his own house, his own country. These and all of the people's happiness he had to give it up and not be attached to even his son. That which existed even before our physical body, that truth which allows us to know this - that we have a Way and conflict and stealing and all of human misery and pain are because we think this body is real. That is the source of all of our confusion, is our body really all there is or not?

The Buddha put everything on the line to answer that question. He was ordained and what he realized, what he awakened to, was that there is a huge source of all of us, that we all are endowed with this source of the whole universe, and that, equally, and we can awaken to this mind, we all have the wisdom to do that right within us. "How wondrous, how wondrous, all beings are endowed with this very same bright clear mind to which I have just awakened." This is what the Buddha said when he awakened to this deepest truth.

""To search for the Way, the Zen student tries to grasp one's own nature and be enlightened."

"Now where is your true nature?"

We do zazen and our every day meaning and efforts are not just for our health and good physical condition. There is a greater meaning to it all. Not just all of humankind but this whole universe's existence is involved and that mind which gave birth to that is in existence. To give an example, it is as if our mind is an ocean and our body and our wisdom are tools for scooping up that ocean's water and our life is based on our mind which brought us to be born here. The wisdom of that mind gives harmony to all existence. This is true not just for humans but for all beings. We have to help and support each other to realize that true base, where we have this wisdom. To realize that we sit, if people here think that the form of this body is something they want to go beyond, and also to go beyond that ego and realize that which unites and touches all things, what mind did you awaken to then?

This is being asked here.

CASE 47. TOSOTSU'S THREE BARRIERS

Master Tosotsu, setting up the three barriers, always tried the pursuer of the Way:

"To search for the Way, the Zen student tries to grasp one's own nature and be enlightened."

"Now where is your true nature?"

Secondly,

"Once having grasped one's own nature, one is free from birth and death. If then, one's eyeballs have dropped dead, how can one be free from life?"

Here we are doing zazen and this body, this actual thing that exists that we all have, and the thoughts that we have all gathered that go with this body, these make up our ego and if we let go of those and stop being caught on them and if we dig deeper than that we go beyond our mental ideas and explanations. We have a deeper understanding and only with that can we know this, not by imagination. It takes deepest faith and for this we have to really experience it, not just thinking we would like to have it be this way, we have to experience it directly to have the deepest first hand belief in it.

We have this faith and this true source of our mind is to realize and awaken to the fact that we have not one thing in our true mind and we have to throw everything away completely to awaken to this which is our true source, our true base.

We have to all realize this mind of nothing at all, of holding on to nothing at all, we have to return to it, and because there is nothing held on to, it becomes everything.

This is very hard to understand with a mind of rational thinking, but our true mind is way before rational ideas only. Today people may perhaps relate to it as a zero, this zero is our true base and all things are freely moving and manifesting, changing and transforming in every way possible. The true source of all of that is zero

Humans having discovered the zero, from there we could know all numbers and the possibility of all existences was then awakened to, and from there mathematics cames forth. We are not fixed and limited. We are capable of knowing all transformations and have infinite possiblities of alternatives and that is because we know zero and we can call this the mind of zero. If we all see this and become that transparent mind of zero, that is the center of zazen.

If we think we have understood it, this is not zero, nor is to think we have not - that is also not zero. Nor is intoxication zero. Zero is completely zero. It is not about doing something consciously but about returning to that original mind and cutting everything about a yesterday completely.

Zen is not a conceptual doctrine and that is why we sit. We sit and throw away our body completely and throw away all of our thinking, we cut, and cut, and cut, and cut everything we think and understand, we cut it away allowing nothing to be acknowledged at all. Ourselves completely have to be cut or it does not become zero,

If we truly become zero then what happens?

It cannot be a mental zero it has to be the true and actual zero.

A clear and transparent lens, if it is not infinitely clear it is not useful. It has to reflect everything in the universe, totally bright and completely without even the name of "lens" but this is the source of our true mind. It is as if a clear lens is seeing this world and there is not a speck of cloud anywhere. Then everything exactly as it is can come right into our mind.

This true experience, we have to throw ourselves away completely and this whole world becomes totally who I am: sun, moon, flowers, birds and stars and mountains become me if our mind is totally returned to its original state. Anyone will become this without exception.

If we truly return to the mind of zero, infinite activity and infinite manifestation and possibilities are born. We become the sun and the moon, then we have a birth of explosive energy.

Even if someone says is "it is not like that" we know for ourselves and this is because no one taught us about it, we experienced it with our very own mind.

Here for the first time ever we know true faith and belief. But how is it in the world today, is there even one person around who really has faith and believes in this world?

That is because everyone is looking at it from their own personal state of mind and inserting that into what we perceive so we cannot be one with other things completely. If we truly liberate ourselves then the whole universe is born as our life energy and that huge existence and energy is our truth. This liberation and this absolute faith was what the Buddha expressed, and the patriarchs also manifested this completely and fully.

In this way we are the huge mind, if we can know and have faith in this.

Secondly,

"Once having grasped one's own nature, one is free from birth and death. If then, one's eyeballs have dropped dead, how can one be free from life?"

Our true mind, if we awaken to it then we are not caught on life and death. They become very clear to us, and if our egoistic awareness is persent there is always life and death, and if we go beyond that, no life and no death, this is clear to us, and if you realize that clearly, then how is it at death? How will you go beyond it? I want you to express that.

And further Tosotsu then gives the third question,

Thirdly,

"Being free from birth and death, one instantly knows where to go after death."

"Being dead and the body dispersed into the four elements, where then does one go?"

That place of no life and death, if we can actually know that then where do we go? We are a body but that is not everything. When the body is gone where do you go? It becomes clear - so, tell me where?

We have this ego and our physical body and our stance and a position but this position makes us judge our life and so this is very difficult. If we make our small self the center of our view we cannot truly answer to this.

But this small self, this ego, if we are not stuck on that, we see that it is all us, all people, all vegetables and minerals, and all animals, all of it. We are just not awakened to that but everything that exists is who we are, beyond birth and death we see this so clearly. We will see it with our own eyes and know this truth with our awareness and then everything is clear and revealed. Still, as soon as we add in our own small minded view we get confused about everything and unable to see.

Everything that exists on this planet, all plants, all of them manifest this, they have no awakening but neither do any of them plant seeds to do damage. All of the growing things exist beyond humans rational understanding but people do not realize it. It is only humans who are tripping over this, that delusional us, we who cannot let go of that idea of a small self.

In our mind we have the capability of liberating all people. We can commmit every possible crime and catastrophe such as war and spread ecological destruction everywhere and simultaneously we can liberate all people. To awaken to how we can do this is Zen. Please, each and every person, see that light within, take that light and all of that wisdom, turn that inward and then we can know this huge all embracing wisdom that every body is endowed with.

Today we are always looking outside and doing external things and becoming blank inside. We just try to understand everything and want to know, but we use up all of our inner energy doing that. Those external things are not everything neither is knowing. Within we have a huge energy for liberating all beings and that is so much more important

While it is important that we carry our awareness to the external world, that is also the energy for seeing the truth and the explosive energy that can realize the huge all embracing mind that gives forth the whole picture. If our inner world is full and taut then we can see what great meaning there is in this zendo, anyone will be able to see that.

Please, realize that this zendo's birthday is for everyone's good fortune and I pray that this will connect to the good fortune of all beings.

Thank you.

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