Good morning, everyone. Good morning.
As Chuck just announced, my name is Nenzen.
And I am the abiding teacher here.
And I'm very happy to be with you practicing here at Jikoji today
Singled friends and new faces
And thank you for making your way up the mountain.
I like to start the Sunday program, when I start to speak by thanking the Ohlone people who were the first
People of this land, they took care of this land for and continue to for 10,000 years they've been in the Bay Area.
These land acknowledgements sometimes get a little stale and tiring, and I basically want to bring your attention not to a sense of guilt for having taken this property from them.
Because it was not voluntarily given.
But out of a recognition of our intertwined lives and the respect
And gratitude for our endless interconnection.
So I give
Gratitude to the Ohlone people who took care of this long before we did
Speaking of giving gratitude
sometimes on
Npr and PBS say this program is brought to you by
And I would like to say this program is brought to you by
Our founder, Coventino Otogawaroshi, who founded this temple.
And
Our residents are Ino, Taishin.
takes care of this temple
His wife, Michelle, who has two days off a week from her full-time job off campus and gives one of them to us to sit with us here today.
To our beloved Tarot
Whose calligraphy and tea and attention to every stone and rock and pebble and leaf and branch
If you think it looks beautiful outside, you can bow to Tarot
Henry.
And also to show Hiroshi, Mike over there.
I first came here because another teacher in another lineage
Brought me here
But it was Mike's teachings.
That brought me back.
It's all your fault.
That I'm still here.
And he guided
Truly guided
Jikoji for
over two decades
Not many people know what that feels like. There's only a few.
Kind of in awe of his ability to stay with it.
And take care of this place.
And
So
I want us all to bow to him
His wisdom and compassion
It's here. It's inseparable from whatever it is you experience here.
So I want to thank him.
So speaking of
This program is brought to you by Cobam is Mike's teacher, Shoharoshi's teacher
And
This next coming weekend is Coburn's Memorial Sashin. So beginning on Friday
Shoho and I will
participate with you, any of you who come
in a celebration of
Chino, Otagawa Roshi, who is the founder of this temple
And the founder of the Phoenix Cloud lineage, which is all over the world.
This next weekend, Sashin is a very short and very kind of not so quiet Sashin. Usually a week of sitting is in silence.
And a week, not three days.
So this is a little different. It is really a celebration of his teachings and his offerings
And here we are all in his temple
And this year's celebration is actually even a little more profound and fun and celebratory
Because over the Memorial weekend on Saturday, we will celebrate
The Shuku Tokudo, the priest ordination of Devon is right there.
Devin is a professional musician, a drummer.
He's very accomplished. I've heard him live and it's amazing. I've also heard him live here in his dorm room.
Without drums
His upcoming vows have been on my mind because it is a very
Happy event
In our lives, in our shared lives
And in honor of this event, I
want to talk about a koan today from the Blue Cliff record that has something to do with a drummer.
He's a drummer.
So just for your
Context putting this in order in your own mind.
This is the volume two of the Blue Cliff record
These are koans. They're all from the Chinese tradition
Here's a note from you that is my bookmark.
And these were actually these teaching stories from the Chinese tradition were collected in about the 10th century. They weren't called the Blue Cliff Record until the 12th century. But there's a hundred of them
And they were originally collected by please don't punish me for getting that all wrong.
Someone else can help me get the pronunciation. We call him Sacho in Japanese.
And he also wrote not just the koans now, but he also wrote some verses that you'll hear a little bit of that today. This is case 44 from the Blue Cliff Record
And the teacher in the story is Hoshan, also known as Haitian Wuyen or Kassan
And one thing about Hoshan is that he was kind of
famous for being pretty intense
and direct, and had the habit, apparently of
hitting a jump may be very, very close to his students ears to get them to let go of their ideas about what's happening, to just let go. So imagine that right next to your ear.
He's kind of immortalized for being rather fierce.
So that's enough koan esoterica today. I'm going to read to you the koan. And the name of this koan
Is Hochan's knowing how to beat the drum?
Hoshan imparted some words saying
Cultivating study is called learning
Cutting off study is called nearness.
Going beyond these two is to be considered real going beyond
A monk comes forward and asks
What's the real going beyond?
Hoshan said
Knowing how to beat the drum
Again, the student asked
What is the real truth? Hoshan said.
Knowing how to beat the drum
Again, the student asked
Mind is Buddha, by the way. This is kind of an inside joke between this teacher and the student. Not really a joke, but he's referencing another colon, okay? So don't worry about it.
The student asked mind is Buddha. I'm not asking about mind is Buddha
What is not mind and not Buddha. And Hoshan says
Knowing how to beat the drum.
Again, the student asks
When a transcendent man comes, how do you receive him?
Hoshan said
Knowing how to beat the John.
That's the colon.
So as you came in today, you may have noticed Giro's calligraphy outside. This is something
It said, this is it. Did you see that big sign that said, this is it?
Even though those words are there and these words are here.
Koans and the teachings and even these words here. This practice is not about words.
All the time, every teacher with words is trying to get a student to go beyond the words.
to go to their actual direct
Unique
You could even say quirky experience of this is it. This right here, right now
And I love this Koan because every single profound and I'm sure deeply sincere question the student asks the teacher is met with the exact same maddeningly
Reliable answer.
Knowing how to beat the drum.
So I think most of the time our minds look at Cohen's and we want to maybe attach to the drum as a metaphor for something else. But Hoshan is very clearly saying, no, no, we're not actually talking about a drum anyway.
He's talking about knowing how to beat a jump
If we make it into a metaphor, we're now adding another concept, and he's saying
Let go
of all conceptual ideas
All right, show how we call conceptual imputations.
Something that we're putting on top.
of this is it
So Hoshan is intentionally frustrating the monk so that possibly the actual teaching of this moment and this moment and this moment
Pierce
This little ego he's holding up his little shell of being a fixed person, separating him from reality
So how many other people other than Devin here play drums? Anybody?
A drummer! Curtis
Okay, that was amazing. We got one.
How many other people play any instrument?
So you've all had the experience
have
Being pretty frustrated at the beginning of learning an instrument.
Well, I play the Shakohachi, and amazingly enough, my Shakuhachi teacher, who I did not tell to come today, is in the room. No, Shri-san.
So I should say
I spent a lot of time negotiating with this bamboo tube
And it actually plays me most of the time.
By the way, the practice of blowing
Through that bamboo. Playing Shakhachi is called Sui Zen which means
blowing Zen
When I first started
I didn't want to
Especially learn to play the Shakohachi. What I wanted to be
I want it to sound like Roshi son
I wanted to blow Zen
I wanted to use this
instrument to express what
I told him when he said, what does it sound like to you? Because I went up to him in awe and said, what is that instrument? And he said
It's Shakahachi
And I just stared at him, he said, what does it sound like to you? And I said
I don't know who was talking, but somebody said
It sounds like the whole range of human experience.
I don't know if you remember this, Neo Susan, but he said I will give you a lesson. I'm like, oh, I'm not asking for a lesson.
I will give you a lesson.
It was very much grasshopper and the master here
Okay, I'll take the lesson.
I had been incredibly moved by his expression of this is it and I remain incredibly moved
By the Shakahachi. Not necessarily from me.
But the entire experience
of this
Is it
So I took his flute home and practiced with one of his flutes
And I practiced really hard. I mean, I really tried hard to make a decent sound.
And I practiced a lot. I would hold the flute just perfectly, my arms in the right place
mouth where it's supposed to be, I would give it everything I had, trying to summon up all the cosmic gravity I could pull together, visualizing the great absolute void, and I would take this deep, incredibly obnoxiously
self-centered and aware at breath
And I would blow
For many, many, many weeks, the sound that came out
It's kind of like the sound that a balloon makes when you let it out the air
It progressed maybe a little better to the whiny tea kettle.
And one of my sons said to me
It sounds a lot like a sick cow.
So I decided that maybe I was facing a profound obstacle having to do with the equipment, right? Maybe the equipment's not good. Maybe it's the float and not me. Isn't that handy?
All the time we do this. Maybe it's them, and not me that's causing my suffering.
So I went to my Shakohachi lesson. I can't do it and I'm trying so hard
takes the flute
But he watches how I'm trying to blow, first of all, he's looking at me very carefully. And then he takes a flute from my hands. He just blows this perfect crystal clear note and then just to put the hammer in the coffin does it several trills
Up and down like
Clearly, it's not the flute
And then he barked a rather gentle bark, but kind of a bark. Your bottom lip is too far back
You're not engaging your horror, just breathe out through the flute.
He didn't talk about the great mystery. He didn't talk about the absolute. He didn't talk about the void. Now, he could have, he's got the chops to do that. He didn't.
He pointed to me and said
It's your own for sure.
It's your breath
It's all you.
That was maybe a very early lesson in knowing how to beat the drum.
Hitting the drum is not about
Merging with the absolute, because you want to go be merging with the absolute
It's about where you put your lips.
It's about how present you are right here in the this is it moment.
It's about the immediate physical reality of meeting this.
New flute, by the way, Bob, relatively new.
even though I can play my old flute.
It's about the instrument in your hands.
Sometimes the instrument is a drum.
Sometimes it's a flute
Sometimes it's your mouth, not in an embouchure.
The way you speak
The way you speak and when you speak
It's about your expression.
It's about making eye contact or not.
It's about how you move in the world. Like a robot
At ease
However it is
How to hit the jump is not something anyone can tell you.
You have to return over and over again to the moment. The moment.
the moment
Each breath.
And it's really a practice to be with each moment, to be really courageously honest about what your own experiences
In each moment
We have to practice being with whatever this is.
Not our ideas about it. Not what we think it should be, but whatever actually is doing right now.
Whatever it is that you are creating with this body and mind
Unsurprisingly
I highly recommend Zazen
for practicing with being with us
So I mentioned there are verses with these koans, and this is the verse
One Hall's rock
The second moves Earth
To shoot the boat requires a 10 ton crossbow.
The old master of elephant Bone Cliff
rolled balls
How could this equal Hoshan's knowing how to beat the drum
I report for you now.
Don't be careless.
The sweet is sweet.
The bitter
Is better
So one hauls rock. One moves earth.
I think it the exhaustion we feel this, the kind of the heavy labor
Of
Insisting that reality be the way we want it to be.
Trying to impose our concepts, our ideas, our opinions
Onto what's actually happening
Kind of to force this moment of reality into the box of what we want.
How it ought to be
If you're hauling rock
Removing Earth
It's a lot of work.
And you feel it in your body
This is not easy.
This is not an easy moment
Sometimes
It's like trying to use your hands to quiet the ocean.
In those moments
To shoot the bolt requires a 10 ton
Crossbow
That's pretty heavy
tons.
And I think it might be referencing the kind of
Spiritual strength that one must summon
To let go
To let go and let go and let go
And the principal thing we have to let go of, the thing that generates everything else
Sorry
It's this equipment
this one
the self
this selfing that we naturally do
Sometimes can just drop.
To let go
of our intellectual way of analyzing and separating the good from the bad
To cut off kind of at the very root
The ideas we have
And then sometimes when you let go like that, the teachings blow right into you. They pierce you.
Like
Like the food is breathing me
The drums are beating you
Can you
This is what Sesho is teaching.
To shoot the bolt, you need a 10 ton crossbow. You have to be insanely dedicated
To try to pick up a 10
Which is to say, you cannot be relying on an ego-driven muscle. Right? You're not going to be strong if you're relying upon
Look at me.
It doesn't work.
You have to somehow approach it all
Letting go of this big identity on your shoulders.
It's exhausting.
And I think it actually in life, it's kind of noisy too for other people.
And you might sound like a sick cow.
Playing the Shakohachi
So in the little verse, he talks about the old master at elephant Bone Cliff. I had to do some research because I don't know who the old master at Elephant Bone Cliff is. The old master at Elephant Bone Cliff is a real person named Master
Sui Feng, and he lived like many masters
and was named after his mountain, which was Elephant Bone Mountain.
And when students would come to him and ask him incredibly intellectual, complex thoughts
He would take these little wooden balls and roll them down the aisles of the monastery
That's what he would do. You know, what's the meaning of life?
Rolling a ball
I think he was doing that. The way Hoshan was as well, to try to frustrate the students out of their mental ideas.
About what this is.
So in this little verse to our koan today, some are sweating under the weight.
of these big egos trying to move the earth
And the old master is just rolling balls.
Or telling his students, the other old master telling his students knowing how to hit the jump.
And then the verse asks, how do we compare Hoshan's knowing how to beat the drum with the old master's rolling balls that's in the verse
And it's like a kind of kick in the pants.
In the verse, he's saying, are you actually still comparing things? Are you comparing yourself to other people? Are you comparing Hoshan to the old master with the rolling balls?
Give it up. There's no comparing
You've missed the point.
None of this is about technique.
It's not about the right flute
Beating the drum
Rolling the wooden balls
Blowing the shakahachi
Each is a direct
Immediate, unique
Relationship with what's here
Unique to you.
and shared with all existence, moment by moment by moment
Whatever comes out of this flute or whatever comes out of the thump, thump thump of your hitting
The drum
There's no theory about it. No rocks
to Hall
No earth to move
No one is trying to stop the motion of the ocean.
We're just meeting it
Setcho's last verse says, Don't be careless
The sweet is sweet
The bitter is bitter
We are not beating the drum or rolling the balls to get to a new philosophical abstract.
If you just memorize the sutras and memorize the koans
you know, you look great doing this stuff, no doubt.
If you just cling to the forms
Or cling to emptiness
Oh, Sean would probably call you careless.
Because you're not in this moment
Right now.
Realizing this is it is like the koans, not in the words.
It is actually sitting in the messy
Reality
Of life.
As it is
Moment by moment
Your actual experience.
And when I say you, of course
I mean all of this
We practice
Whether it's the drum
or the flute or rolling balls
To be with this.
Right now, just this.
not yesterday, not tomorrow. You may not have it tomorrow.
Just this
Because this is it.
Dogan
The 13th century
Founder of all of Symptom Zen
Who, by the way, had his own collection of 300 collections he brought from China to Japan.
different collection, but
He said, when you walk in the mist
When you're fully present
And whatever is happening
You will get wet
You'll be awake.
That's what's actually happening.
He also said
Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge. and is grasped by your consciousness.
In other words, you don't get to go get it. You don't get to have it.
And you have it.
And you are free
So when life is sweet
It is so sweet.
And then it is bitter.
It is bitter
We have to taste it as it comes.
We don't want to complicate
the actual raw, spontaneous receipt of all of this
with ideas, with concepts
By forcing it to be something else.
Reality is exactly what it is. Moment by moment, and we might as well agree with it.
So next Saturday
Devin
We'll receive the precepts again, the bodhisattva vows
He will put on his robes
For the first time
And we'll receive a Dharma name, a new Dharma name.
He will not be adding anything to this beautiful being. He was not putting on anything.
Thankfully, thank you. He's not even asking to put on anything. He is not reaching.
to be recognized or seen
Rather, he is just
humbly acknowledging in the presence of his Sangha
The actual rhythm.
of his life, which is, of course, our shared life.
As it is
arriving right now
Right now.
Right now.
And also next Saturday.
Just every beat by beat by beat.
Taking these vows is one way of expressing a commitment.
An agreement to be with all existence.
With all beings
And Devin agrees.
He's going to meet each moment. He's going to let
He's already doing it
The sweetness be the sweetness, and the bitterness be the bitterness.
I don't think he's going to attribute his experience.
To the drums
I think he knows where it comes from.
So
We are all Devin
We were all trying to get our timing down.
Right?
Can we
Live this precious life. Just moment by moment by moment, Meeting it exactly the way it is.
Stopping any sense of fighting.
ourselves first
And then each other
And then the world
When we stop that kind of
I don't like this
When we
Except that the better is bitter
We can enjoy sweet the sweet
And then we can express
Wisdom
and compassion
For every single Buddha we meet.
Actually beating the drum.
In our own weird, quirky, spontaneous, sometimes sounding like a cow, a sick cow, way
Is actually
A skill that we have to practice.
And as I mentioned, Zazin is a very good place to start practicing.
How to be with
Life as it is
Knowing how to hit the job is not escaping things as they are.
It's not looking Zen. It's not sounding Zen. It's just
facing the music
We practice to be with this no matter what arrives because we know we already know
This is it.
So in a little less than a week, Devin
Who knows how to beat a real drum
We'll step into his robes.
He will commit
to his seasoned, rhythmic
heart
to the service of the Sangha
Without looking the part, he already has done so.
Thank you for that
When Devin beats the drum, when I blow the Flute, when the old master rose balls, when you speak to yourself, to anyone else.
Nothing is hidden.
You're already expressing your wisdom and compassion. Pay attention to what you're expressing.
Devin beats the drum
When he takes on his robes. There's nothing hidden and there's also nothing holy.
He is would
Meeting skin
I don't know if John's still made with skin
kind of sort of in any event you get the idea. He is
wood Meeting skin
Through these woods
Through the city of Milwaukee
Do the whole world
In the silence between the beats as my
Chakahachi teacher would make me listen to the silence
Between the phrases
And Devin's beat is going to show us exactly where we are together.
Just like you.
Here.
Cohen very famously would sit on the seat of teaching and not
Quote chapter and verse
He would let whatever he wanted, whatever he could offer emerge naturally from the room, from the circumstances
In this spontaneous kind of
Connection. Alive
With the now
Warmly
Openly
Directly
Meeting what is here right here.
Coban, we're still sitting.
So I hope we can ask each other and of ourselves
To step into each moment
Kindly
Warmly
Even affectionately
And directly
Practicing how.
To beat the jump
Thank you.
Okay, it's your turn.
I'm really astonished that you're here, Yoshi Swan. I don't know, you must have heard the flute this morning.
John.
One thing I'm trying to reconcile is
Right?
Like, how do you kind
Reconcile that with we have agency
And
Let's say you're going through a hard time
It's not something you can change immediately
You could kind of get stuck tasting the bitter, so to speak.
Thank you.
I think I can relate to that. I bet everyone here can relate to Sean's question, which is
We spoke about
Tasting the sweet, tasting the bitter, recognizing that's what here
And how do we
Not give up our agency. I'm already answering, but he's asking, how do you reconcile this with the fact that you have agency? In fact, it's major with the Buddhist teachings, right? Don't give up your agency. You have
The responsibility
Of your own agency. There may never be any free will. But you're responsible for your choices.
And how to deal with it when you feel like all you can taste is bitter. That's all that's coming. And you don't see a way
To respond.
That will make the bitter taste go away when you get stuck. Am I close?
Okay
Close enough for Jazz.
And I guess first I want to address the agency question because I am very sensitive to this because I think a lot of people
Can somehow, in my view, torture this practice into giving everything to the Buddha
I don't think that's what we're doing.
I think we're giving everything to life.
And not avoiding the responsibility.
of what we can do in each moment. And it's not easy. I mean, there's
Hard stuff
And it's bitter.
My own experience, and many of you have heard me speak about this is Angie Boycevann, the first director of SOGI, one time told me, in the midst of a lot of rough
This in my life
I said, it's so hard. It's so hard
I'm not being mean. I was kind of like. And she said, I said, but then sometimes I look up
and we were in a zoom call. I look up
And it's so beautiful outside. And she said, yeah, get your chin off the sidewalk.
That really works for me. Like, look up
Look around
It's sweet and bitter, not only bitter, not only sweet.
And then
You wait for the appropriate skillful response to your own experience.
Sometimes this takes a while.
You know
But it's not just bitter.
You got to take the bitter with the sweet. They're together.
That's a Carol King song, by the way.
So I think that your responsibility to life
As you are being expressed as life, you and all of us
Is to try to do your best to
Allow the veteran, allow the sweet to notice it all
And then wait for an action
That takes into
Into your heart
And into your expression, your choice, everything. It does not mean that people will like it okay there isn't a perfect answer
And my experience is they often don't like it. And they often will turn around and say, you
Well, you can say, I hear you. I hear you're hearing it that way.
I'm doing my best.
And they're doing their best to
You just
Be you as true to you as you can.
Wholesome action.
And just in case you're going to ask me what is wholesome, it's always the same answer. It doesn't harm you.
And it's your best intention not to harm anyone. So this is where we stop fighting
Here, and therefore stop fighting there. And again
You know, this is my like
caveat emptor about this whole path. Other people may not like your choices, and they may accuse you of all sorts of stuff.
You should look at what they're saying, see if it gives you a jolt of like, oh
Is there something there?
Sometimes there may be. You can pick up that and take care of it. And sometimes
Just a big fat projection
And you can say, I hear you.
Yeah
Anyone else?
Everybody ready for cookies? Ethan.
We hear you play some
Oh, I played a little before you got here, I guess. I wish Bob were here, but he's the one who can play. I'll play a couple of notes
It's not going to sound good, master.
Because it's not even on a
Not even a musician sound, I'm sure, but God.
Close your ears.
I'm talking to him.
What was I playing this morning? Okay
Really know. Thank you.
Anyone else want to try sounding like a sick cow for a few weeks? I have a practice flute. So does Curtis. Curtis is an incredible player, so you got a bunch of Shakahachi folks.
in the room, so to speak.
My Shakarachi pal, we played together quite a lot.
All over Europe
Bonsai ever been a company nun
Yoshui has the Shakuhachi ever been accompanied just shakuhachi and drums?
Yes.
Could I play with Devin? Devin can play the hell out of me, I'll tell you that. You guys got a week to practice.
Okay, whatever you say, master.
Okay. Oh, go ahead.
Shakahachi has been played along with the Han at the beginning.
I did that today.
You started that tradition and I am carrying it on.
So this morning, Jero played this wooden block outside is called the Han. And at monasteries and Zen centers, it's our clock. I mentioned this to the beginning meditation instructees.
And it tells us
This is your time to go be part of your responsibility to the collective, to the collection of people who are practicing
In Yoshvi-san and I started in Santa Barbara since there is this relationship, and we did all sorts of things. So there's the Holland, and then he would be outside, and I would answer him inside, or I would be outside, and he would answer me two flutes
It was cool. It was this little
Kind of endless relationship, you know.
And so, yes, I've carried on as instructed.
Anything else?