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Shuso-Hossen Dharma Talk

Presented by Ven. Senbo shuso

Dainen-ji, May 18th, 2007

  


 

        One early morning, 2600 years ago in Northern India, the sky was clear and brightening up. A man, who had been sitting all night on a pile of kusa grass under a pipal tree, looked up and saw, for the first time, the morning star. Well, he had seen it many many times before, but this time it was different. He actually saw it completely for what it was, and through this clear seeing, had a great realization. He said: “I and all beings everywhere together attain the Way at the same time.”

        Latter, as he was teaching what he had realized to an assembly of students, he held up a flower and blinked. One of his disciples, whose name was Mahakasyapa, saw this, and saw, for the first time. Mahakasyapa could not help but smile. The Buddha said: “I have the Treasury of the Eye of Utter Reality, the luminous Awareness beyond reference point. This I transmit to Mahakasyapa.”

        This transmission has been passed down to us from Buddha to Buddha, from Ancestors to Ancestors, and is taking place right now, in this very moment. But don't think that Sakyamuni Buddha started anything. What is actually transmitted is much, much older than this. Older even than the morning star. So old... it never began.

        The reasons that draw students to the Dharma can be as numerous as the sands of the River Ganges. But what keeps them coming back to their seats is the recognition of a truth. A truth unlike any other truth. Not one you need to believe in. Not one that you should agree with because it is written in sacred scriptures. Not one that you believe to be true because you have a “gut feeling” that it somehow should be true, or because you've had some extraordinary experience, perhaps a state of bliss, that you rendered in a way to fit and confirm your believes and assumptions. The Dharma is not an experience because it is what is true about all experiences. It is an open-ended truth. In order to realize this truth, we must leave behind what was true in the last moment and enter directly into this moment, and this moment, and this moment, with the whole bodymind, with the whole of experiencing, all together, all at once.

        Right now, there is the hearing of these words, the sound of the ceiling fans, the belly rising and falling as air fills and leaves the lungs. Can you feel the gentle breeze brushing across your face and neck? [Did you notice the smell of incense? The sound of distant traffic?] Can you feel the sensations of fabric against skin? What about the hands in the mudra with the thumbs gently touching? What is it? What's happening here? What is this knowing, this experiencing, this life? How is any of this possible? Beyond all of your thoughts and beliefs and unquestioned assumptions, who are you, really? Beyond your name, height, sex, nationality, skin color, personality, and preferences, who are you, really?

        The twenty-eighth Ancestor Bodhidharma carried the transmission from India to China. When he arrived, he was summoned by Emperor Wu of Liang. The Emperor asked, “Who is this standing here before me?” Bodhidharma said, “Don’t know.”

        This is where we start. Zen is a process of radical questioning into, and with, each and every moment of experiencing. We may come to Zen in search for truth, certainty, happiness, a cure for depression perhaps, or curiosity, and the list goes on. But what the Dharma has to offer is so vast and inconceivable it will surpass any of our expectations. In order to make ourselves available to what it has to offer, we must leave behind the usual views, the certainties, and unquestioned assumptions that condition our experience, our perception of who we are and what the world is.

        The Buddha said: “I have the Treasury of the Eye of Utter Reality, the luminous Awareness beyond reference point.”

        Ultimately we must abandon all reference points so that we can allow Reality to reveal itself nakedly. If we can do that, then we will be able to see, for the first time, the tiles on the kitchen floor; to feel, for the first time, the dishcloth in our hands; to hear, for the first time, the hissing of a cloth rubbing against a zabuton.

        The Dharma does not offer a better view in order to replace our old views. Instead, it asks us to release all of our views. It does not provide new, better answers but allows the presencing of Reality to answer for itself. In his commentaries on the Xinxin Ming, one of the founding and most influential texts of Zen, attributed to the thirtieth Ancestor Jianzhi Sengcan, Zen Master Anzan Hoshin concludes one of his teisho by saying, and I paraphrase: “If you can truly hear the sound of rain, then you will hear everything that the Xinxin Ming has to say.”

        If we can truly and completely expose ourselves to the presencing of Reality as a whole, moment after moment, with this whole bodymind, with the whole of experiencing, all together, and all at once, then we can allow ourselves to truly hear, to truly see, to truly touch; we can allow ourselves to experience the freshness and vibrancy of the sound of rain, the flicker of a candle light, the feeling of moisture between our fingers.

        The instructions we receive ask exactly this. To open past the contraction of attention that limits and distorts our perception of Reality. We cannot understand this practice through our usual ways of understanding. As Anzan roshi once said:

        “You can’t fit a big box into a little box. You can’t fit a big understanding into a small understanding.”

        If we approach practice with our narrow ways of understanding, then we can become very confused about the instructions. But this practice is utterly simple and easy. So utterly simple and easy that it will inevitably make obvious all of the complexities with which we approach everything that we do, with which we live our lives and base our choices upon. And so this is why we must follow the instructions very precisely because the tendency to stray from them can be very appealing. This is why we have Teachers and practice advisors whose job it is to make sure that we stay with the simplicity of the instructions. Because if we follow our own made-up, or even slightly modified, set of instructions, then we are refusing to move past our own limitations and ways of understanding, we are refusing to move past our strategies of avoidance and recoil, we are refusing to move past our sense of problem and poverty, we are refusing to move past the contraction of attention that poison and deaden our lives. It will of course seem easier and give us a sense of certainty, but certainty is when we have confused ourselves so thoroughly that we don't even recognize it. Luckily again, we have Teachers and practice advisors whose job it is to point out to us that we may have become somewhat entrenched, and relentlessly bring us back, again and again, to the simplicity of this practice.

        In other words, Zen really kicks us out of our comfort zone. It kicks us out of the comfortable nest of our usual views.

        This evening you have witnessed Shukke-Tokudo, attaining the way through leaving home. This is leaving the nest. It is the realization that there is no home, no fixed and solid truth, no certainty. But only the playful activity of the the luminous Awareness beyond reference point. This is the transmission passed on from Buddha to Buddha, from Ancestors to Ancestors.

Up high in the branches
A bird stands a the edge of a nest
Opens its wings
And leaps free
In the open sky

 

 

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