given by Nomon Tim Burnett
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
March 12, 2008
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These are my lecture notes, the actual talk is a bit better I think. If you are interested in transcribing this or any other talks of mine please let me know.
--Tim 3/12/2008
This is a momentus evening for me. A milestone. I set out some years ago to give talks on 25 koans which our guiding teacher Zoketsu Norman Fischer selected as koans worthy of study. A selection made from about 300 koans, 300 Zen stories, in the main koan collections.
So a milestone for me, but also just another talk, just another breath, just another night. I remember in about 1993 Janet and I did a bike tour in England and Europe and in England riding along we saw actual mile stones. I think it was on the road from London to Oxford. These mossy old stone markers, I don't know if they were really every mile at one point or not. We were talking the other day about expressions and colloquialisms and it's amazing to think about all of the history and collective knowledge embedded in our language. I remember seeing this milestone and having this feeling of something being activated in me.
Reciting sutras is kind of like that too. We chant the Heart Sutra or the Merging of Difference and Unity over and over again and we don't really know what we're saying in a way. Just like when we say "this is a milestone for me" we don't really know we're talking about a mossy stone with a number chiseled on it. But something gets in there, a seed is planted, and one day conditions are right and some knowledge, some wisdom, is activated and we feel that our life is broader and deeper than the way we usually think about it.
One of the things giving talks taught me is something about humility and just doing my best even when I am not totally comfortable, even when I'm not convinced of my own brilliance, even when I don't have lots of time to prepare and try to do it right. When I sit down to write these talks I notice that I hold in my mind a high standard that I always fall short of. I want to have lots of time for study, and I guess it's not just having time is it? We all have bits of time that we fritter away on this and that, it's having some kind of super focus and discipline that I should sit down every day and study. That I should have been studying and thinking and meditating about each koan for many weeks and months and that what I say in the talks should emerge from some deeply considered and realized place.
Well that is obviously not realistic for me of course. I do study a bit, mostly just before giving a talk or a class. I do sit almost every day. I do keep at it, but I am not a scholar in the way I fantasize a scholar should be. I imagine building a little hut in the back yard for study and speaking with people, kind of Japanese style inside. I imagine I should be in there for quiet afternoons sipping tea from a tiny little cup and reading sutras and koans and preparing brilliant talks. Kind of a nice fantasy, huh?
And then I remember my actual life. A wonderful family that I put a lot of time and energy into supporting and being with and enjoying. Health challenges. A 100 year old house that needs maintenance and tidying up all the time. This wonderful sangha and our recent adventures creating this practice space. Making a little time to exercise. Sitting at my desk 3o or 40 hours a week writing software and coordinating with the people I work with in New Jersey and New Hampshire and other places. This isn't the fantasy life of the person who should be giving this talk in my mind, so I have to recognize that I hold that fantasy, an attachment to a certain idea of what should be, and let it go.
Notice the feeling of inadequacy, the feeling of being unprepared, of being incomplete. Notice that and let it go. If I get caught in that I get flustered and busy, I show up for class and I talk too fast. But if I can notice that feeling and not be caught. If I can drop it and just write my talk when it's time to write my talk. If I can just show up and be with you in the zendo. If we can just be here together, breathing, appreciating as best we can our worthy Zen ancestors. If I can do that, if you can do that, something important happens.
This is something I appreciate so much about Zen training in the context of a sangha. You take on a new role, like ringing the bell, or being the cook, or giving the talk, and you feel like you don't know what you're doing and you do it anyway. In front of everyone. And little by little you see it's okay to do things when you don't know what to do. An ultimately you see how essential and important that is too. We have no idea how to save all beings either and yet that's our vow. But it's so clear to me that all of this functions in community. You can't do it alone.
We create something together. Something that's bigger than me, bigger than you, bigger than us, and yet something that has no size or dimensions either. We have all these words and markers for it: peace, emptiness, awakening, but we don't know what it is, nor is it a thing or an it exactly. But somehow as human beings we need to find a way to remember. The Dharma is one flavor of it that I find so deeply helpful, deeply satisfying. The only thing that truly satisfies.
The Buddha didn't teach that all life is suffering. He taught that the things we usually try to find satisfaction and lasting happiness don't work. They just don't work out. Me clinging to some imaginary other life and wanting things to be other than the way they are right here, right now, doesn't work out. Not to say I can't change things and thinking about the arrangements of my life there have been many changes for sure. Some years ago I could never have imagined any of all of this would happen for example. Many changes, and yet nothing changes too in a way. This life emerges through the conditions I've been given. They are just the right conditions for me to practice and learn about suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path. The Buddha taught also that being a human being is really the best thing possible. Human beings have just enough suffering that they have a reason to practice and that in doing the practice we realize that it's really deeply all right to be just who and what we are. So here I am giving a talk I didn't prepare very much for and like I have with a few of the cases that I couldn't get much mental traction on I'm going to share with you another teachers' words.
Well more than one other teacher because guess who the subject of the 25th koan in my series of talks is? Not one of the Tang Dynasty Chinese Zen masters we've been talking about but a wonderful and exasperating character whom John Bailes introduced to us when he was here: Vimalakirti!
Vimalakirti as many of you probably know from John's class (and here my wish for a different life in which I could have attended all of John's classes and be able to expound in depth about Vimalakirti bubbles up strongly…letting that go….) Vimalkirti is understood in the tradition to be an enlightened lay student of the Buddha. A very wise and accomplished pracitioner who understood emptiness very deeply. He's the central figure in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra which was composed in Sanskrit sometime around the 100 CE and first translated into Chinese in about 200. It survives only in Chinese and Tibetan translation now. And like much wonderful and wise religious literature it's historical accuracy is questionable at best. Vimalakirti may or may not have existed as an actual person and even if he did whether he was anything like the character in the sutra is unknown. We do know that he wasn't mentioned in any of the cannonical Buddhist texts which do mention a lot of different disciples of the Buddha. We first hear about Vimalakirti in the works of the Indian sage Nāgārjuna in about 200 BCE, about 300 years after the time of the Buddha.
Tonight's koan is actually a quotation from the sutra in which after many many pages of discourse on emptiness, at the end of Chapter 9 all about the godess which oddly enough was the part of the sutra John was talking about on the one night I made it to his class, Vimalikirta has a conversation which Manjusri, the bodhisattva of wisdom.
The case shows up in both the Book of Serentiy (case 48) and the Blue Cliff Record (case 84) and oddly in the Blue Cliff Record the key final line is omitted so I'll read you the Book of Serentiy version here. In a minute I wan to read a talk by Daido Loori - he uses the Blue Cliff Record version.
Introduction
Even if one's subtle function is universal, there's a place where one can't even being to act. Even if one's eloquence is unhindered, there's a time when one can't open one's mouth. Longya was like a handless man boxing, Jiashan made a tongueless man able to speak. Who is it who can extricate oneself midway?
The Case
Vimalakirti asked Manjusri, "What is a Bodhisattva's method of entering nonduality?"
Manjusri said, "According to my mind, in all things, no speech, no explanation, no direction and no representation, leaving behind all questions and answers-this is the method of enterging nonduality."
Then Manjusri asked Vimalakirti, "We have each spoken. Now you should say, good man, what is a Bodhisattva's method of entry into nonduality?"
Vimalkirti was silent.
Apparently this was an important story for Xuedou, the Chan teacher who compiled the Blue Cliff Record because he is mentioned in the commentary in the Book of Serenity and even puts himself into his Blue Cliff Record version as we'll see in minute commenting on what the silence actually says. But weirdly he forgets to mention that Vimalakirti was silent. Anyway he says that what Vimalikirti meant is "Completely exposed!" or "Seen through!" as the two translations of his saying go. And this exposed and thorough silence also makes me think about giving these talks. It sounds so Zen and cool to be like Vimalakirti being silent or Bodhidharma telling the rules of the land "no merit!" but not so easy to do. We want to dance around and reassure ourselves and others instead of saying what's really in our heart.
With these koans which are quotations I think the assumption is that you would know the context, that this is reminding you of something you've been studying and thinking about for a while. The way Chapter 9 of the Vimalakirti Nirdesa sutra goes if you remember is that a series of different Bodhisattvas all give their take on entering the dharma gate of nonduality. Of letting go of being got in our opinions and preferences born from discriminative thinking. Vimalakirti asks the assembled Bodhisattvas: , "Good sirs, please explain how the bodhisattvas enter the Dharma-door of non-duality!" and they each respond with a short saying.
Here a few choice ones:
The bodhisattva Srikuta declared, " 'Defilement' and 'purification' are two. When there is thorough knowledge of defilement, there will be no conceit about purification. The path leading to the complete conquest of all conceit is the entrance into non-duality."
The bodhisattva Tisya declared, " 'Good' and 'evil' are two. Seeking neither good nor evil, the understanding of the non-duality of the significant and the meaningless is the entrance into non-duality."
The bodhisattva Simhamati declared, "To say, 'This is impure' and 'this is immaculate' makes for duality. One who, attaining equanimity, forms no conception of impurity or immaculateness, yet is not utterly without conception, has equanimity without any attainment of equanimity - he enters the absence of conceptual knots.
The bodhisattva Suddhadhimukti declared, "To say, 'This is happiness' and 'That is misery' is dualism. One who is free of all calculations, through the extreme purity of gnosis - his mind is aloof, like empty space; and thus he enters into non-duality."
The bodhisattva Pramati declared, "'Eye' and 'form' are dualistic. To understand the eye correctly, and not to have attachment, aversion, or confusion with regard to form - that is called 'peace.' Similarly, 'ear' and 'sound,' 'nose' and 'smell,' 'tongue' and taste,' 'body' and touch,' and 'mind' and 'phenomena' - all are dualistic. But to know the mind, and to be neither attached, averse, nor confused with regard to phenomena - that is called 'peace.' To live in such peace is to enter into non-duality."
The bodhisattva Aksayamati declared, "The dedication of generosity for the sake of attaining omniscience is dualistic. The nature of generosity is itself omniscience, and the nature of omniscience itself is total dedication.
Likewise, it is dualistic to dedicate morality, tolerance, effort, meditation, and wisdom for the sake of omniscience. Omniscience is the nature of wisdom, and total dedication is the nature of omniscience. Thus, the entrance into this principle of uniqueness is the entrance into non-duality."
And so on and so on.
And then the chapter concludes:
When the bodhisattvas had given their explanations, they all addressed the crown prince Manjusri: "Manjusri, what is the bodhisattva's entrance into non-duality?"
Manjusri replied, "Good sirs, you have all spoken well. Nevertheless, all your explanations are themselves dualistic. To know no one teaching, to express nothing, to say nothing, to explain nothing, to announce nothing, to indicate nothing, and to designate nothing - that is the entrance into non-duality."
Then the crown prince Manjusri said to Vimalakirti, "We have all given our own teachings, noble sir. Now, may you elucidate the teaching of the entrance into the principle of non-duality!"
Thereupon, the Licchavi Vimalakirti kept his silence, saying nothing at all.
The crown prince Manjusri applauded Vimalakirti: "Excellent! Excellent, noble sir! This is indeed the entrance into the non-duality of the bodhisattvas. Here there is no use for syllables, sounds, and ideas."
When these teachings had been declared, five thousand bodhisattvas entered the door of the Dharma of non-duality and attained tolerance of the birthlessness of things.
So it's all about dualistic thinking and that even these attempts by these worthy Bodhisattvas to transcend dualistic thinking are themselves dualistic.
What are we to make of this? Let's appreciate together a great American Zen Teacher, Daido John Loori who founded a Zen monastic order and a major monastery in upstate New York. This is kind of a classic Zen-style talk which I am glad to share with you even if I don't so much give that kind of talk.
[Tim read several quotations from
http://www.zen-mtn.org/zmm/teachings/daido/teisho09.php]
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.