given by Nomon Tim Burnett
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
December 05, 2009
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Happy Rohatsu everyone. Rohatsu literally means the 8th day of the 12th month. Ro means 12th month, and hatsu is the number 8.
They used the lunar calendar of course, and in Japan it's been celebrated on December 8th since they did their high-speed Westernization in the 19th century. Why the 8th day of the 12th month I don't know. I don't know why the Christians decided that December 25th was the birthday of Christ either. It's all stories, myths, invention and tradition.
So it's a day of story and myth and re-enactment. And this jibes a bit with our cultural need for originality and freshness. But re-enactment doesn't mean stale or derivative or phony either. We re-enact Buddha's enlightenment in our ceremony and sesshin today as a fresh and new and mysterious act.
And Zen Buddhist's all over the world are doing the same. The best way to celebrate rohatsu is to have a 7-day sesshin starting on December 1st, continuing to the evening of December 7th and then concluding by sitting up all night until the morning of December 8th when in the wonderful heroic story of Buddha he was the morning star and was awakened. So today actually being the 5th we can have confidence that at many Zen temples and training centers all around the world they are having this 7-days-and-an-extra-night sesshin. So many are sitting with dedication right now. And we even know one of them personally - Chris Burkhart is right now sitting rohatsu sesshin at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in California. So we sit today in support of her and many other dedicated practitioners today and in the past.
The story of Buddha's enlightenment and the 2500 years or so that followed is also a story of ancestors and lineage. We chanted in the ceremony today a long list of names, using the Japanese voicings, of the Buddha's before even the Buddha we know, down to him, to his first enlightened disciple MahaKashyapa - makakashO daiosho - and to his enlightened disciple Ananda - aNANda daiosho and on and on to Suzuki roshi - SHOgaku shunRYU daiosho.
All Buddhist schools emphasize lineage and ancestors to some extent, certainly all Buddhists honor key teachers of the past and continue to study them and comment on their teachings for generation after generation. But while all Buddhists honor ancestors and lineage I think the Zen lineages are unique in asserting so strongly this linear unbroken chain of understanding. They say that the teachings can't just be learned in a book, that they are outside words and letters. That true understanding of Buddha's way is only passed from "warm hand to warm hand."
And this is really true from our experience and honors something really fundamental about our practice. Books and teachings are essential of course, don't misunderstand Zen as anti-intellectual, but there's a certain way that we're stuck in our own conditioned point of view and getting unstuck always requires help. If we tried to figure all of this out on our own we would make a complete hash of it. So please don't feel like I figured something out here, or that Norman did or that anyone did, each of us is just doing our best to express that which was passed down. That's all.
In historical fact of course the linear lineage of Zen is partly, or maybe in some parts even largely, fabricated by the great Zen masters of the Sung dynasty in China. For one thing it's never going to work out that simply - one teacher, one student - people study with many teachers. And of course we are so strongly reminded lately people die. Zen teachers die just like anyone else, and often before they've completed the rituals of transmission. And also whether those rituals of transmission were even invented in India or in the early days of Zen in China is doubtful too. So it's a bit of a historical fiction but also a powerful spiritual teaching. We need each other, we need teachers, we need support and we exist in a great matrix of support. We are surrounded here now with a great circle of monk and nuns and great teachers from the past, from the present, and from the future. And we notice also that this great ancestral lineage used to be called the patriarchal line for a reason - it's all men's names. So in our practice we fully include our appreciation of our women ancestors known and unknown who's shining practice guides us to this day.
It's all stories to fill the time and encourage us to see more clearly that our whole life is stories. The reality of our problems and limitations is not so. But these stories can also confuse us or limit us. Our job is to work with these stories and to work through these stories to crack them open and see our true life revealed. To ride these stories down into emptiness beyond all stories and find our original dwelling place.
Buddha's story of the desperate and total quest is the story of the hero's journey. Of a quest. And it fits into our Western culture which is full of stories of heroes going on quests from earliest remembered stories from Babylon down to Luke Skywalker's great quest to ride the galaxy of evil. So we can easily relate but in a way we also inevitably remake the story of Buddha in the light of our own conditioning and understanding of how things go.
As I'm sure you remember birth and death and suffering were so shocking and overwhelming to young Gautama Siddhartha after his pampered life in the palace. So shocking that he abandoned everything he knew and left home to practice as the only thing. Moving from teacher to teacher he learned and mastered different meditations and yogas. He was extremely skilled as a practitioner too.
The story goes that on that time after time he mastered the essentials of the teacher's teaching so thoroughly that the teacher would offer him a job teaching by his side. But as subtle and sublime as those meditative experiences were there were always conditioned states, always temporary, and before long he remembered this driving under-the-skin feeling of dis-ease. How can anyone be happy or content in the face of how things are - in the face of sickness, old age, and death. How can it be that our member Marc Livingston, a big quiet sweet humble man who loved his family and our sangha and was talking to me not long ago about his fears and dreams got sick one week ago and died. How can he have been here but suddenly not be here? How can that make any sense? How can we just go about our business like everything's fine? Everything is not fine. We remember that sometimes too, but the story of the Buddha is of one person who just could not ever forget that even for a second. He was haunted by a powerful and direct understanding of the weight of dukkha, of suffering, but he couldn' t find any way to make sense of living in light of that understands.
And the story lays out nicely in chapters. The next chapter has him going off with a few of his practice buddies into the forest to practice without teachers and organizations and support. To practice hard. Really hard. They tried being as intense about their practice as possible. Nearly killing themselves with exertion, with fasting, with really hard-core hard practices. It seems to make sense if you have a big, big problem you should try really, really hard to deal with it, doesn't it? Meet fire with fire. And that famously didn't bring any real relief either.
Here's the most famous passage in the Pali canon where the Buddha's remembering a practice he did then that was so insane they thought he was dead:
"I thought: 'Suppose I were to become absorbed in the trance of non-breathing.' So I stopped the in-breaths & out-breaths in my nose & mouth. As I did so, there was a loud roaring of winds coming out my earholes, just like the loud roar of winds coming out of a smith's bellows... So I stopped the in-breaths & out-breaths in my nose & mouth & ears. As I did so, extreme forces sliced through my head, just as if a strong man were slicing my head open with a sharp sword... Extreme pains arose in my head, just as if a strong man were tightening a turban made of tough leather straps around my head... Extreme forces carved up my stomach cavity, just as if a butcher or his apprentice were to carve up the stomach cavity of an ox... There was an extreme burning in my body, just as if two strong men, grabbing a weaker man by the arms, were to roast & broil him over a pit of hot embers. And although tireless persistence was aroused in me, and unmuddled mindfulness established, my body was aroused & uncalm because of the painful exertion. But the painful feeling that arose in this way did not invade my mind or remain.Pasted from http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/buddha.html
And then, so the story goes, the Buddha remembered something important from childhood. And to me this is a pivotal point. He remembered a time of spontaneous peaceful abiding that he experienced as a boy during the plowing festival one time sitting under a tree. Here's is how Buddha himself described that moment in the Pali cannon:
"I thought: 'I recall once, when my father the Sakyan was working, and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree, then — quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful mental qualities — I entered & remained in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. Could that be the path to Awakening?' Then following on that memory came the realization: 'That is the path to Awakening.' I thought: 'So why am I afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities?' I thought: 'I am no longer afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities, but that pleasure is not easy to achieve with a body so extremely emaciated. Suppose I were to take some solid food: some rice & porridge.' So I took some solid food: some rice & porridge. Now five monks had been attending on me, thinking, 'If Gotama, our contemplative, achieves some higher state, he will tell us.' But when they saw me taking some solid food — some rice & porridge — they were disgusted and left me, thinking, 'Gotama the contemplative is living luxuriously. He has abandoned his exertion and is backsliding into abundance.'Pasted from http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.036.than.html
It could be that all of us have some forgotten moment of childhood, or even in a previous life if you go in for those, where we too experienced just spontaneously a deep sense of contentment and connection with all of life. And all of practice has that element of deep remembering. It's not like we're discovering something new here exactly. Buddhist understanding is not about acquiring some new knowledge exactly so much as returning to original intrinsic knowledge.
And you know the rest of the story. The young Buddha-to-be had this powerful realization to stop fighting, to enter into practice in a more positive way. To embrace the depths of life instead of trying to strip something away. To just be still, and open, radically accepting of whatever arises. He ate and sat down under the Bodhi tree, engaged the forces of confusion and desire in a great battle all night, and emerged victorious realizing for himself in a unimaginably direct and clear way the working of karma, the nature of suffering and the path for all beings to awakening.
It's a wonderful story.
And it's also a kind of trap. A source of confusion. If we embrace the story and measure our own practice against this story of immeasurable heroism, how do we stack up? Or maybe we reject the story and fight it. There are some deep problems in this story of the Buddha's heroic journey too. He abandoned his wife and baby for one thing.
For another after his awakening he actually didn't really want to teach the world. He figured there wasn't much point, people are too confused to understand. To attached to their own pleasures and their own suffering. A delegation from the heavens had to convince him. How could that be? It's compassion and wisdom the nature of awakening. It's very troubling actually.
"This Dhamma that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment, enjoys attachment. For a generation delighting in attachment, excited by attachment, enjoying attachment, this/that conditionality and dependent co-arising are hard to see. This state, too, is hard to see: the resolution of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding. And if I were to teach the Dhamma and if others would not understand me, that would be tiresome for me, troublesome for me."Pasted from http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/buddha.html
And of course we have the women who wanted to practice with the Buddha. They came in great sincerity to ask for ordination and he rejected them at first, only with the intervention of his cousin and attendant Ananda and some restrictive rules against women's seniority did he relent and allow women to practice fully.
It's probably not so helpful for us to embrace the story of Buddha as the perfect story of the perfect life. Or as a map to our own life. Nor if it helpful to reject the story of Buddha as flawed and foolish, a story of purported spiritual perfection which is actually badly flawed by cultural accretions. Or just more religious nonsense. Maybe instead we can appreciate what has been handed down to us as including perfection and imperfection completely. As a story that is also beyond any story — like all stories actually are. Just stories and beyond being just stories.
Here are a few more stories that I find helpful. Maybe you can practice with one of them for the rest of today if you like.
That Zen lineage is explicated in many collections of stories. One of the more famous is the Denkoroku by Keizan zenji. KEIZAN JOKIN daiosho in our lineage chant. The title of this work translates as "Record of the Transmission of Light." Keizan was a Japanese Zen priest three generations after Dogen in our lineage. He did study with Dogen as a young man. Keizan was a really great organizer and administrator and he's credited for setting the wheels in motion for a huge expansion of Soto Zen in the years following Dogen's first monastery Eiheiji. Keizan is basically the number 2 man in the Soto school's sense of important ancestors.
Here is case 3 of the Denkoroku - a favorite of mine.
Ananda asked Kashyapa, "What did the Buddha hand on to you besides the golden-sleeved robe?"
Kashyapa said, "Ananda!"
Ananda said, "Yes?"
Kashyapa said, "Take down the banner pole in front of the gate."
Ananda was greatly enlightened.
Ananda and Kashyapa - also called Mahakashyapa meaning "great Kashyapa" were both disciples of the Buddha. Ananda was Buddha's cousin and famous for his devotion and great memory. When sutras start with the line "Thus have I heard…" the idea is that Ananda is recalling what the Buddha said. He supposedly memorized every teaching the Buddha ever gave but he was famous for just not getting it really. I often feel so encouraged by Ananda and his struggles. Here is someone who studies directly with the greatest teacher in the world for 25 years and just doesn't ever quite understand how to really put all of these wonderful teachings into practice. And according to Keizan's commentary this story takes place 20 years after the Buddha's death. Just goes to show you that the humility and patience required in walking the Buddha was is really endless. And yet another reminder that we need support and perspective outside of our own.
Kashyapa was, according to Zen tradition, the first enlightened disciple of the Buddha. And this story takes place sometime after the Buddha had died. Ananda is still trying to get it. What does Kashyapa understand that he doesn't understand? Is there some something that he missed? Is there some thing that is enlightenment? It sure seems like there is from the story of Buddha's awakening and that's the real danger to us too in that story. It seems like we're lacking something, like we are missing something, fundamentally flawed and inadequate in some way. So Ananda asks Kashyapa "What did the Buddha hand on to you besides the golden-sleeved robe?" And Kashyapa calls out to him - calls him forth in some deep way "Ananda!" and in that moment there is a kind of fruition a kind of turning moment when all of these years of careful practice and learning comes together and Ananda just answers from deep in his heart "Yes?" Just "Yes!" - there are many Yes's and many No's and many I don't know's in practice. What is this "Yes?" of Ananda?
And Kashyapa acknowledges Ananda, confirms his understanding with a code phrase - these stories of Zen are always packed with code phrases from Buddhist tradition or Chinese lore. He says "Take down the banner pole in front of the gate." which refers to a tradition of religious debates they had in India. I guess when two teachers would have a big debate they'd run up a banner on the flag pole for each one and the loser's banner would be taken down. So Kashyapa could mean, take down my banner and leave yours up, it's your turn now, or he could mean take down all banners from the pole - release yourself from debate and comparison. That there is no debate, no victory, no failure, no understanding.
So you could study this "yes" of Ananda's on the breath. This is a wonderful practice and one that you can carry into every activity of the rest of the sesshin day and beyond. On each exhalation you could just breath "yes….." - and see if you can release the mind from clinging to that yes, that yes doesn't have implications and things to consider attached to it. It's just yes, just saying yes. Even just saying yes to life, or just saying yes to this moment is too much, is something extra. Practice that yes that has nothing extra. Just "yess…." and after a while you don't even need that word, just breath with that feeling. "yes…."'
Since we're on the theme of lineage, I will share with you now what Suzuki roshi said during a rohatsu sesshin in 1964. You can read transcripts of what he actually said on the web now. And it makes you appreciate the genius of the students who edited his stuff for Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and Not Always So because they're pretty confusing but please let's just appreciate together Suzuki roshi's words and continue our steady practice of sesshin. This day is a precious gift and we really don't know that we'll be alive when the next one comes around. Steady continuous practice will inevitably transform us. It won't add something new to us. The shape of our personality and our suffering is very strongly formed by karma. We don't expect some huge moment when it will be all better from our limited point of view. We will always be carrying around this awkward "self" that we find so troubling, but our attitude and understanding of what this thing is can and will change. It doesn't have to be a problem to us in the way we think it is. That realization comes in time with practice little by little and in spurts. Please be patient and continue steadily with no expectations, be inspired by the heroic journey of Buddha but don't set out on one. Just enter this moment, find steadiness and composure and have faith. You will awaken because you already are awakened. Norman said the other day at the wonderful 7-day sesshin at Loon Lake something like, "I think we all by now understand that there is not going to be some big flash of awakening when everything is different forever. That that is a kind of fantasy. But I think we also know that our belief in our own inadequate nature is the exact same kind of fantasy and we can little by little let go of that." So just be steady and let that compelling belief in your own inadequacy fade into nothingness on each breath.
Here is what Suzuki roshi said at a gathering much like this one 45 years ago:
Hashimoto-roshi,[2] the authority of Shobogenzo who passed away two years ago, in his lecture he told me-he told us refer to the menu and dishes, you know. We you make, you know, a menu of the dishes, and we cook, you know, salad or eggs or meat-everything separately. That is, you know, suchness. Everything is arranged clearly, beautifully. But he says, "When you start to eat [laughs], everything will vanish in a moment." In ten minutes there is no more dish, no more food on the table, and everything is mixed up [laughs] in your tummy.
So this is, on one hand, very beautiful things. But on the other hand, if food-function of food is fulfilled when the-function of the food fulfilled, there is no more dishes [laughs]. So everything is-our practice is the same thing. You know, you-when you get up, you know, you brush your teeth and wash your face. That is practice. You do it one by one carefully. And when you practice zazen, you practice zazen. One by one.
But, you know, none of them cannot be perfect practice, even though to wash your face is very good habit [laughs]. But, you know, even though it is good, if you are always washing your face [laughs], you cannot attain enlightenment [laughs, laughter]. Same thing will-can be said with your zazen practice. Zazen is very good practice. But even though you just always practicing zazen, you know, it doesn't work [laughs].
Zazen practice is something express-or purpose of zazen practice [is] to catch something as it is in mixed-up state. When you-so that is why you don't think, you know. When you think it-it must be each, you know-it must be each salad or bean or meat or eggs, you can think about meat or, you know, salad, but if it is mixed up, you know, in your tummy [laughs], you cannot think about it. So if you wa- [partial word]-if you want to real- [partial word]-catch reality in its true sense, you cannot think about it. When your life energy is burning in perfect combustion, you cannot catch it. That is zazen. But even zazen cannot be always same. As something you eat in your tummy does not stay always in the same way, it will change into something else.
So even [if] you practice hard, your zazen sometime will be good, sometime will not be so good. It is-actually it is not always in the same-we cannot practice our way in the same way always. The purpose of zazen is not to think about it. To catch ourselves in its full function is zazen. If so, there is no need to think about it. If you think about it, you cannot-you will lose it. When you don't think and [are] involved in the practice fully, you have zazen.
Even it is so, we have to prepare everything one by one carefully. That is our everyday life. When you wash your face you should wash your face carefully. When you walk you should walk carefully. One by one you take care of your activity. But when you are taking care of your activity, you are involved in something which is-which cannot be grasped. You are not anymore you.
So each-in each activity there is two side: positive and negative. Something which can be, or suchness and-what should I say-mixed-up state or ingraspable or unintelligible. So, "What is it?" When Baso asked Hyakujo, "What is it?" Baso should understand what he meant. And, "Where has he gone-have they gone?" He should understand what he meant. He was talking about our practice, the relationship between everyday activity and our practice, and what is our practice, and what is our everyday life. And everyday life is zazen, and zazen is everyday life. In this way, back and forth, he should assert his practice-he should make his practice sure.
In the sky, sometime wild geese is flying. And after that some cloud will come. And after that the bright moon will come. But each of the wild geese and cloud and moon is not-are not always same. The bright moon is bright moon, and wild geese are wild geese, and cloud is cloud. But at the same time, the moon is not moon, cloud is not cloud, and wild geese are not wild geese. They exist in the same place in mixed-up stage-state. Even [though] it is mixed-up, you know, we should-our practice should be concentrated on each moment. When we see the moon, we should see the moon. When we see the cloud, we should see the cloud. And we should appreciate everything one by one.
If people, you know, mixed up everything-or if so-if everything is changing and if everything exist in mixed-up way, there will be no need to work hard, you know. If everything is mixed-up from the beg- [partial word]-every-always, what is the point of appreciating everything if everything is just phenomenon? Why do we appreciate such a tentative phenomenal world?
If you understand in that way, that is-we shall-that is like to serve food in mixed-up [laughs] way. Salad and rice, [laughs] brown rice and miso soup in one big pail [laughs], mixed-up in bucket or something. It will be served for you. How do you [laughing] feel to eat from bucket like a pig [laughter]? It doesn't make any sense, you know. Even though it will be mixed-up in our tummy, we should serve one by one. Buying [?] each other [?]. That is our way, you know. But we do not keep it separately in our tummy.
But people, you know, some rigid people want to keep it one by one in their tummy, which is not possible. So that is why they suffer, you know. They don't feel so good. They cannot [be] satisfied with the way the food is served. Those people cannot be satisfied with human life, you know. Human being is so [laughs] indifferent. That is not right understanding of life.
Rikyu[3]-do you know Rikyu? Rikyu is-is supposed to be the founder of-founder of tea ceremony. He sweep-he would sweep the garden, and he appreciate the falling leaf-leaves on well-sweeped garden. If the purpose of sweeping the garden is to get rid of leaves, you know, why he can-he did appreciate-why he appreciated the leaves on the well-sweeped garden? Leaves on the, you know, well-cleaned garden and leaves on the-in the mountain is not same-are not same. The feeling is quite different. Some people may say it is useless, you know, to sweep garden every morning when so many leaves are cu- [partial word]-falling.
If you try to understand-if you understand the nature in its full sense, we are also a part of nature. We have something to do with nature, and we cannot satisfy without doing anything. We should participate [in] the nature. So even in Zen picture-Zen painting or drawing or what-picture maybe-sansui, we say. Sansui means "mountain and river." We paint one or two people-fisherman or woodcutter or farmer.
Nature-we are a part of nature. So the most natural way to observe nature for us is to do something-to participate [in] the great activity of nature. That is how we appreciate nature. And that is how we exist in this world. And that is how mountains and river exist. There is some rules in nature, and there is some rules in observing nature for human beings. And rules the nature has, and rules in observing things in human side is not different. We live in same time and same place. We live in same framework. So originally man and nature is not different. But when our civilization become so materialistic, and after violating nature, or after we tired out violating nature and material life, we are going to the other extreme, and just appreciate mountains and river, ignoring human life. That is one side of it-understanding or appreciation of nature.
We human being understand things from various angle-mainly from positive side and negative side. And when we observe things from both side-when we-when we are able to appreciate things from both side, one by one, there we have true way of life and true practice. We should not be involved in always just one-sided way of appreciating our life. Sometime positive, sometime negative. So in this sense we should practice our way in various way-observing ceremonies and not observing ceremonies by just sit. This is our way should be.
Pasted from <http://suzukiroshi.sfzc.org/archives/index.cgi/671204V.html?seemore=y>
Thank you very much let us continue.
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.