given by Nomon Tim Burnett
Bellingham Dharma Hall
April 08, 2004
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This evening I would like to start an exploration of the Book of Serenity. This book is one of the 3 foremost koan collections from Sung dynasty China. Norman has spoken quite a bit lately about koans and our approach to koans, and he’s lectured quite extensively on the other 2 major koan collections: the Blue Cliff Record and the Gateless Gate, or the Mumonkan as it’s known in Japanese. When we has here just a month ago he gave talks on three of those cases including the famous case about Nanchuan cutting the cat. As an aside the "mon" in Mu-mon-kan is the character for "gate" - the same character as in my name: No-mon which means "Responding Gate."
You probably have heard something about, and maybe a few of you have experienced, traditional koan study. This is done in the Rinzai school, in several Chinese Chan schools which predate Rinzai, and also in the most popular Korean lineage to take hold in America - the Kwan Um School. Some ideas about this style of meditation were introduced early when Zen was starting to be presented to the West by authors like D.T. Suzuki, Philip Kapleau, and the beats. Unfortunately traditional koan study is very easy to misunderstand and the way it was initially presented had a certain kind of glamorous intensity that really exacerbating the confusion and misunderstanding about koan meditation. You know what I mean: that koans are inscrutable puzzles designed by crafty Zen masters to thwart the intellect. That once you finally get rid of your intellectual mind, which is a bad thing, you will suddenly understand the koan as if it was the simplest thing in the world. And somehow understanding the koan is really good and means you are now more spiritual and with it than you used to be.
So I am saying all of this because I realize that whenever we open our mouths to talk about koans we have some version of that confusion and misunderstanding, it’s just in the culture now and that’s okay but it’s good to notice our cultural conditioning so it doesn’t trip us up quite as much.
In traditional koan study, you are assigned a koan to work with. And that koan becomes a major focus, or the only focus depending on the teacher, of your zazen practice. At first you read the koan, hear dharma talks about the koan, learn about the background and story of the koan. But then gradually you zone in on the koan, get close to the story. Embrace the actors in the story. Become yourself a part of the story. Merge with the story until really there is no story, or you could say the story of the koan is your own story.
Koans, when studied in this traditional way, are not puzzles. They are not about figuring something out. They are about intimacy. They are about opening up. They are about surrender to each moment of awareness. They are about forgiveness. And when you present your understanding to the teacher it’s not like you suddenly feel like you know something new. It’s more like an experience of deeply merging with what our life really is, without all of our ideas and fantasies. I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of practice, but my experience is that it’s really not that exciting to "pass" a koan. It’s nice for sure, but not a big deal. Working with a koan in meditation can lead to a kind of deepening and strengthening of your confidence in zazen for sure, and there is some deep feeling there, but it’s not like the buzz of figuring something out. It’s more like the deep relief in realizing, through and through for at least a moment, that there really is nothing you have to figure out.
In Soto Zen, and we are a Soto Zen group, we don’t emphasize this kind of koan practice too much. Not to say that we never do it - that’s a simplification. Sometimes you hear these simplifications about Rinzai and Soto Zen. Soto Zen is farmer Zen where we just sit patiently and wait for the apples to ripen and fall. Rinzai Zen is vigorous samurai Zen where you fly up into the tree and grab the apple at the very top. That kind of thing. It makes the Soto people sound a little quietist and dull, and the Rinzai people sound a little compulsive and hyper. It may be true in a way, I’ve spent a little time in Rinzai places and there is a kind of intensity to it, but there’s plenty of intensity in Soto places too - just different flavors I guess.
So anyway we usually don’t enter into a curriculum of koan study in Soto Zen. We don’t all start with koan number 1 and then progress to number 2 and so on until we complete the course, and they do in fact do that in Rinzai places. But we don’t ignore koans either. We don’t write them off as some kind of extreme realization instrument used by hardcore Rinzai guys. We study koans and appreciate them as the incredible literature of Zen. Norman said the other day that Zen is Buddhism in slang. Koans are the graffiti tagging the cars of the Buddha’s train. They take a little getting used to, and like any literature you have to spend some time learning the lingo and the style before you can get much of a handle on koans, but they are really wonderful and worth examining. Even when they are apparently abrupt or bizarre they have a kind of direct and wonderful beauty that after a while once finds quite moving and inspiring. And of course they are not all bizarre either, the koan I want to present tonight is actually quite sweet and straight forward.
Once in a while when a koan really strikes one - when you feel some affinity for a koan you can indeed take it up as a practice and work with it in zazen and in your daily life. I find koan study often quite helpful in remembering during daily life that I am practicing. We forget so easily, and as wonderful as the breath is, as ever present and deep as the breath is, we actually do forget that we are breathing most of the time, you know? But if we are turning a koan in our minds and in our hearts, it often bubbles up to the surface to remind us about who we are and what are intention is. Our life is so completely made up of stories - if you listen to your mind you really see that we are nothing but a big jumble of competing stories - we get so twisted up and confused by our stories! A koan that you feel some affinity for can be a kind of mental story virus that helps to deconstruct your story life. Helping you release yourself from your narrative a little bit so that once in a while you can just be here. Just be present with whatever is going on.
Well enough said. Tonight’s koan is case 21 of the Book of Serenity.
As Yunyan was sweeping the ground, Daowu said, "Too busy."
Yunyan said, "You should know there’s one who isn’t busy."
Daowu said, "If so, then there’s a second moon."
Yunyan held up the broom and said, "Which moon is this?"
At the time of this story, Yunyan and Daowu are senior students at a large monastery. Their teacher was Yaoshan and several of their conversations became koans. Surprisingly they were not just dharma brothers and colleagues, but also biological brothers. But you can feel the friendliness and brotherhood in this exchange so maybe that’s not so surprising after all.
One of the great innovations of Chinese Zen was physical work. The original Buddhist monks didn’t do work. They supported themselves by begging and devoted all of their time to meditation and having a very slow and simple life. In fact the regulations they lived under included things like never handling money or eating after noon so they couldn’t practically do a lot of work in the world. The Buddha’s original design was for his students to radically disengage from regular life to devote themselves to practice. And that’s a great idea. Even today there are monks practicing in this way.
But due to the size of the monastic establishments and the Chinese cultural milieu it made sense for the Zen monasteries to be partly supported by the work of the monks themselves. So the monks would build the buildings, work the farms, cook the food and so on. And not just do the work to get stuff done so they could go get some meditation in later - the idea was to make work itself a dharma gate. The idea is to make the very actions of work and the approach to work non-different from zazen itself. And part of this institutionalization of work as practice was to make the work and the lifestyle of Zen monks extremely communal.
Traditional Zen monasteries might well be the most communal institutions in the world. The schedule and the activity and the rules and regulations are followed by everyone and everyone has their place. One’s individual preferences are simply given no opportunity to express themselves. Everyone just follows the schedule and takes care of what they are asked to take care of. There is a strong hierarchy, but when it works that’s not a hierarchy of oppression - it’s a hierarchy of freedom from making decisions that will distract or destabilize the mind. The senior people just tell you what to do and you just do it. And the senior people are grounded enough in the practice to tell you what to do with kindness and awareness of your mental state.
A set of consistent rules for monastic conduct evolved until they were given their final form in China by one of Yunyan’s teachers, Baizhang. Every second of every day of Zen monastic life was regulated and communal. The monks slept together in the monks hall. Ate together. Brushed their teeth together. Sat zazen together and worked together. The only individual activity, ever, was dokusan - the individual meetings with the teacher. And very few breaks. You would just get up when the wake up bell rings, sit when it’s time to sit, eat when it’s time to eat, and work when it’s time to work. Dogen’s version of these rules is in our library here - Taigen Leighton translated this work, the book is entitled Dogen’s Pure Standards for the Zen Community. You can read that and see.
So it’s no surprise that in our story tonight, Yunyan is working. It’s the work period, just like we had here last week, and Yunyan is cleaning the monastery. Doing his best to mindfully sweep the stairs, aware of his breathing and his posture. Letting go of any thoughts of future or past that arise in the mind. Just returning to sweeping. Sweeping. Sweeping.
He must have looked a little too intense to his brother Daowu. A little too into it. Maybe Daowu was concerned that Yunyan might have the confused idea that you will get something out of doing the work. That Yunyan might be too intent on doing it right. Too self-conscious. That maybe with a little encouragement Yunyan could let go a little and enter more deeply into the dharma gate of working as just working, nothing extra there. Just this. So Daowu sneaks up behind him, let’s say, and whispers in his ear: "Too busy!"
All Zen koans, without exception as far as I know, are interactions. Are meetings. This is the other point about Zen training that I want to bring up today. Zen might appear to be something you do on your own, but it’s not, it’s something you do in relation to others. In relation to sangha. And the great deepening experiences, the enlightenment experiences, they write about in Zen koans are all facilitated by, triggered by, engaged powerful interactions between two people. Most often it’s between teacher and student, but not uncommonly it’s between peers as it is in tonight’s case. So don’t think that this is something you will figure out on your own. This is something that arises from deep, trusting relationships. Relationships between us here in the sangha. Relationships between yourself and your loved ones, your co-workers, you parents. Relationships between you and the birds, the rocks. Relationships between you and passing strangers: panhandlers in the street, a kind look between you and the grocery look. The dharma arises in relationship. In interaction. In engagement with the world.
Not to say that we are going to change our schedule again so that we can have two hours of intense interpersonal work on Thursday nights. "Now find a partner and share the most powerful experience of your childhood and so on." (Though that’s not the worst thing to do). No - we understand that transformational relationship arises from the depths of emptiness. And we need to be deeply grounded through our zazen practice. True relationship arises not from chatter and busy-ness, but from silence. And that’s how we should understand these stories in the koans - against a deep background of silence. Many many hours of zazen. Dharma study. Dokusan with the teacher. Returning to awareness over and over. Probably Yunyan and Daowu only spoke once in a while. Only when there was really something to say. How much of our speech is really necessary or helpful?
Against the background of all of that silence, Daowu’s comment went deep into Yunyan’s heart. Words have more meaning and power in a quieter life. Yunyan really considered the feeling and meaning of this "Too busy," realizing in a flash what he’d long suspected - that in all of our activity there is one who isn’t busy. "You should know there’s one who isn’t busy."
Maybe Daowu wasn’t quite clear on this point yet himself, or maybe he wanted to encourage Yunyan to confirm his own understanding, I’m not sure. But he answered, "If so, then there’s a second moon."
Like most apparent non-sequiters in the koan literature, this second moon is a literary reference. In this case to a metaphor used in a long Chinese sutra called the Surangama Sutra. In this Sutra, the first moon is actual reality - the way things really are outside of our ideas about them. The second moon is our perception of reality - not wrong exactly but already one step removed from the first moon. Then it says, there’s the reflection of the moon in the water which represents our ideas about what reality is. When we are looking for the moon, which is itself a metaphor for enlightenment, or life in accord with true reality, we tend to look down at the reflection of the moon. With practice we learn to look up, but even then we only see the second moon - our perception of the true first moon. So we have to be humble, realizing that our understanding is never quite it. We are never quite seeing the real moon.
So seeing the second moon is a kind of metaphor for saying, "That’s pretty good, you’re right, but can you see the true moon, the first moon?" Can you take this all the way to the source?
And Yunyan can! Ah ha! He holds up his broom and says, I imagine the exchange thus far in whispers but now Yunyan proclaims in a loud voice, causing the other monks to look up started from their work, "Which moon is this?" I don’t differentiate between anything. This broom, first moon, second moon. Just this! And this is a kind of friendly challenge, and a thank you back to Daowu. Yes! I see that - the second moon is just an idea, being busy or not busy is just an idea, can you see it too? But then the koan ends and we never find out what Daowu said after that. What would you say?
You should know there is one who is not busy. Zazen helps us appreciate this, but our regular activity is our opportunity to realize it - to practice this awareness. Even in the middle of great activity there is always one who is not busy. A completely calm center.
We tend to think that inside and outside are separate. And certain outside conditions always lead certain inside conditions. So we think when we have to work harder than usual we will be stressed out. We think that when something changes outside we will be somewhat traumatized inside. But who is stressed out? Who is traumatized? Is there really the simple and unavoidable cause and effect there that we habitually make manifest? Does more work really equal more stress? Is that some kind of pre-ordained natural law of the universe? The one who is not busy is never stressed out. Never traumatized. Always there. Our core. Our support.
And you can really practice with this. This is very practical. Useful. When you start to feel overwhelmed by your activity, when your work feels like it’s getting to be too much, when your family responsibilities start to overwhelm you; you can remind yourself - there is one who is not busy. Breathe deeply with that. Merge with that. I have been practicing with this myself for the last few weeks and it really helps. I have had to do a lot of extra work this week, and it seems like this practice has helped me do so from a calm place. Gently just carrying on with the extra hours of work. Not adding too much stress or getting too caught up in the work.
And if this koan strikes your fancy you can work with it directly in zazen too. With the exhale you can say to yourself "not busy". Not busy. Not busy. And eventually these words become superfluous and you can just breath with the space where the words were. There is one who is not busy. There is one who is just sitting. Nothing else is going on.
Returning to Yunyan’s life in the monastery for a minute. Another really helpful thing about monastic life which really impressed me during the residential training periods I’ve done was the power of containing work in scheduled work periods. When it’s time to stop working and do the next thing you stop and forget about work. You move on. You don’t say "just a minute, just one more and I’ll have this finished." You don’t say, "Oh I didn’t do that quite to my satisfaction, I’ll just stay a little longer and do that again." You just stop. Immediately one thinks: well that’s nice and it would work in a monastery, but in my life, with my job, with my family, I can’t do that. Sometimes something just has to be finished on that day and it doesn’t matter how long I have to keep on it. Well maybe so, but probably a lot less often than we think. And when we have to work longer or harder than scheduled, we can do so with an appreciation for the spirit of the monastic work period. We are just doing our activity. Just taking care of it. And while we take care of it, we are remembering that there is one who is not busy.
Sometimes when I’m thinking about all of this, it seems a little trivial on the face of the incredible suffering in the world. Do you know what I mean? We are such privileged people. We don’t always feel rich, but we are super-rich on the world scale. Extremely wealthy and with great material comfort. There are so many people who will go hungry tonight. So many who will be scorned or abused, beaten or raped, tonight. So many who are barely able to just survive. And here we are trying to reduce our stress a little. Find our calm center. Does that really make sense?
And I remind myself that yes it does make sense. We can’t be of any real help to the world if we are caught in our own suffering and confusion. The one who is never busy has space in her heart. Is open. Is actually able to be with people who are suffering in a way that is truly helpful. The one who is busy and stressed out really can’t do much. Yes, the busy one can get up a head of steam and join a protest or a peace brigade or write angry letters to the government and maybe that does help a little. But that one will always burn out because that hot fire of anger and stress will just consume itself. Nancy mentioned something about this last week in her life - that she used to do political action with a great fire and anger in her heart and when somehow the world didn’t completely change she got seriously depressed and couldn’t go on. Nancy has offered to give the first student talk in our new schedule so hopefully she’ll tell us more about this in a few weeks. But she mentioned that now after some practice she sees that even in the midst of the great suffering of her own body and mind and the suffering in the world there is hope there too. That’s the one who is not busy. That’s the who one can appreciate the hope in the middle of suffering. This is the same as the calm in the middle of great activity. Always there. And maybe Nancy will return to political action someday but with this spirit of hope and patience. Calm.
So I think as bodhisattva practitioners - as people devoting ourselves to the welfare of all beings, it is a critical part of our work to find space. It’s said of another great master from old China, Zhaozhou, that he always had room to turn around. If we don’t have that space - if we don’t have that lived appreciation for the one who is not busy - we have no space for others. Our relationships are shallow and self-centered. We slip so easily into some form of self-centeredness or other. Always feeling justified. Closed up tight.
Here’s tonight’s case one last time - I hope you find it useful in your life.
As Yunyan was sweeping the ground, Daowu said, "Too busy."
Yunyan said, "You should know there’s one who isn’t busy."
Daowu said, "If so, then there’s a second moon."
Yunyan held up the broom and said, "Which moon is this?"
Thank you very much.
Resident Priest Nomon Tim Burnett has been a student of Zoketsu Norman Fischer since 1987 when he was a resident at San Francisco Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm. After sitting practice periods at Green Gulch and Tassajara Zen Monastery, Tim helped found the Bellingham Zen Practice Group in 1991. Tim was ordained as a Zen Priest by Norman in June, 2000. Like his teacher, Tim is interested in the possibility of deep and complete practice by lay people.
A person of wide-ranging professional interests, Tim has been a botanist, elementary schoolteacher, writer, and computer programmer. In addition to his work at the Resident Priest of Red Cedar Zen Community, Tim works as a software developer.