Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak, we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind. Our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister, our tormented animals and friends. Their suffering continues unreieved by our personal escape. In the process of discovering bodhicitta, the journey goes down, not up. It's as if the mountain pointed towards the center of the earth. Instead of reaching into the sky, instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt. We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it. We move toward it however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain. And we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is at our own pace. Without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhicitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.
Anybody know who that's by?
Pella children. Um, I wanted to just kind of bring us together with that for many reasons. It's got so much wisdom in it, you know. And it's a real corrective to whatever fantasies we might come with. Or I mean maybe fantasies is not quite the right word, but whatever um I don't know models or impressions or idealizations we may have of practice. That it's a path. I mean it's framed as a path for the end of suffering in all the classic early teachings of Buddhism and throughout really. But to think that that means we're sort of leaving it behind, that we're transcending this world, is I think absolutely wrong personally, you know. I mean others might disagree with me and with good reason. But my view from my own experience and for most of the teachings that I've been lucky enough to receive over decades now of practice would confirm that the point isn't we're leaving anything behind. We're not transcending anything. When I hear people talking about self-transcending experience, I mean, I know it's often used as a kind of shorthand to indicate the kind of experience that spiritual practices can lead to, especially a practice like this Zen, which has a fullbore emphasis on clarity around an experience known as kensho, which I assume you'll all have heard of, which means seeing into the real nature of things. It's a sudden glimpse or suddenly very sometimes more than a glimpse of the way things really are somehow, which doesn't deny the way they appear but it's seeing what that appearance really is. And that includes not just the things around us but what we ourselves are. And it's never revealed on one side only actually. Although it can seem that way. But when people talk about self-transcendent experience, researchers do a lot now as a shorthand for that kind of experience. It's wrong. The formulation is wrong. It's not self-transcendence. It's not like you're checking out from yourself above it, transcending it. You're just seeing what yourself really has been all along. It's a coming back to what you've actually always been all along. It's not a tool or sort of escape, a journey up. Because this, the title of this talk is actually the same as the title of the last talk I gave at Mountain Cloud about, I think it was mid-July I think if my memory is right, like kind of 10 weeks ago, 11 weeks ago, 'The World and Us'. It's a great title if you're into Zen and stuff because you can talk about just about anything and it's very hard to stray off topic. And I was just sort of reflecting on, you know, in a way that the practice is all about the world and us, you know, in different ways. It's about finding how to live, how as an individual, how to live in this world. You know, how do you personally find your own sort of true path in this world? Or how do you find your path to your true path? You know, how do you do that? And I mean, basically as everybody here, I think, we could... I would assume you know at least has an inkling that the practice of being still and quiet every day for a piece of time, a little bit of time, and perhaps occasionally having some guidance, and perhaps occasionally going in for a deeper period of time of stillness and quiet, that's going to help with finding a path to your true path in life. What you need to be in this world. And you may think and you may find no, there's nothing in particular, there's ways I need to show up, but there isn't a particular path. That's absolutely great, fine. And whatever path we may think we have when we're in our 20s, who knows, in your 30s it might be quite different, you know. And that is your path, the winding path is the path. In Zen there's a great koan: how do you walk straight on a narrow mountain road with 99 curves? You know, it's like switchbacks going up a mountainside, 99 of them. But you got to go straight, the koan says. How do you do that? Well, we're not going to go into that right now. But I might just say you can't help but go straight actually. Actually, it's just clarification. So yeah, you know, how do we live ourselves in this world? What is our true relationship with this world? You know, and it seems like the world and us, as the title suggests, that's two things. Obviously, me and the world. Me in here, world out there. But actually, where is me? I mean, 'cause this body is presumably part of the world. If I could accept that, then I am a little nugget inside here. I'm not the skin bag. I mean, at one level, I'd say the skin bag is I'm all of what's within the skin bag. Skin plus interior thereof, right? That's all me. But then I have to say, well, clearly this foot is sort of part of the world, you know? It's not... Yeah. So it's a little trickier. So really the me is actually not sometimes I feel this all this skin bag, but other times I'd say no, I feel the pain. So it's a me, the pain in my toe, let's say, pain in my toe is not really me. I'm a little, um, some kind of little nugget within. Yeah. And this foot is part of the world. Body is part of the world. I'm still preserved from the world because I'm still a little nucleus in here somewhere that knows it's separate from the world. That is unmistakably separate from the world because it perceives the world and it receives impressions of the world and it decides how it's going to operate to the best of its ability in the world. Although we now know there's a thing called the unconscious. We've known it for 126 years since Freud published Interpretation of Dreams. 1899 was it? You know, and the unconscious actually makes us realize we operate in lots of ways as well that our conscious mind doesn't have full control over. Um, and of course it's a lot more complicated than that, but basically I can feel like an agent in the world and that's me in here. Somewhere in here there's a me. So what's that? World and us. World and self. There's self in here, world out there. So Zen is a tradition, a school, a path within Buddhism that really targets that construct world and me. And it invites us to examine it. I mean, it's a lot more than that. And there's different schools of Zen, of course, and they're not all the same. They're not all the same in their emphasis and the way they frame practice and the way they then practice within the frame that they have for practice. But in some schools of Zen, um, that relationship me and the world is sort of somewhere in the target zone of what the practice sees itself as being for, because it can be investigated because that fundamental assumption that we make and have been making all our lives is actually an assumption. It's not a fact. It's an assumption and we but we don't think it is. So kind of becoming... I don't know whether you all agree with me. Maybe you think you don't make that assumption. Maybe you're all enlightened Buddhas who don't make that assumption at all, but I certainly have been much of my life and it seems like a lot of people do as well, that I'm in here, the world's out there. Fundamental assumption. In this kind of Zen, um, and you know I'm very open to being corrected on this, but it seems to me that it's that fundamental relationship, that world and us, that gets investigated. And one of the ways it gets investigated, as some of you will know, either to your delight or to your horror and frustration and boredom, is with koans, especially with the koan Mu.
And sometimes I feel I've felt that the koan Mu comes to be a stand-in for any kind of external experience. It's a sound in the mind, but that's still external to me. Okay, does that make sense? Like I'm hearing mu, you know, we're trained to, or we're encouraged to, try to repeat mu on in the mind on each exhale. Actually, how many of you are sitting with Mu or have sat with Mu? Okay, a fair number have sat with Mu. Okay, so many of you have some idea. And those of you who haven't, do you have any idea what I'm talking about, or do any of you not have a clue what this mu? Have never heard mu before?
Okay, thank you. Um, have you heard of the word koan? Yeah. Okay. So, Mu is a classic koan. The full story is a monk asked this master Joshu or Zhao, does a dog have Buddha nature? Does a dog have Buddha nature? And Joshu answers mu. It would have been I think in Chinese in his day. And that sound has become a widely used koan in Zen practice for over a thousand years now. So, just you know, the logic of it is that you're sitting, you start to sit with this mu sound in your mind, and it gradually becomes kind of a question, sort of what is this thing, what is this sound, and what's the relationship of me to mu. And it's... I think it's good. It's good because it's so small. It's just such a tight little focus. Me and Mu. It's such an intimate little laboratory. Me and Mu. Me and Mu. Me and Mu. All in my mind, you know, rather than me and the mountain or something, which would work as well. What's the real relationship between me and this wall? Me and the wall. Me and the seat. Me and the mountain. Me and the trees on the hillside. Me and Mu. Little standing for everything else. Right. And so in Zen um this experience that has been kind of... you know, it's been upheld as a kind of important insight, important discovery for human beings in the Zen tradition since maybe about 527 CE, the year 527 CE something like that, when Bodhidharma, great Indian monk, came to China and sort of sowed the seeds of Zen in China. And he said there are four characteristics of this practice, four marks of Zen. It's a special mind-to-mind transition or heart-to-heart transmission outside scripture, not relying on words and letters, pointing to the human heart mind and finding Buddha, discovering awakened nature. So it's just looking at your own heart mind, your own self, your own soul, you know, your heart and soul kind of thing, getting to see it and there you find Buddha nature, awakened nature. The revolutionary side of it was that you don't have to go through many lifetimes of gradual cultivation. You don't have to study all the sutras. You don't have to study the whole Vinaya, the code of monastic practice. You don't have to be a monastic even. Anybody, all they have to do is sort of see their own self and see what it really has been all along. And awakened nature shows itself, original nature shows itself, Buddha nature is discovered. It's not discovered actually out there. And that is what the experience known as kensho is about. It's about making the discovery for ourselves in a way that absolutely nobody else could do it for us. Absolutely no one can do it for you, for us. You know, it really is intimately you discovering something about you that, although it's a discovery, has never actually been hidden. And what is it? Well, one, it does show up in different ways, but they're all really faces of the same thing. And one of the ways you can think of it is like it's this sudden golden bridge between me and Mu, between me and the world. A sudden shaft of unassailable connection. It's not strong enough a word. Bridge. It's not the right word, but let it stand for now. Channel between me and the world. Like there's a river that makes us inseparable. Okay, that's not a great analogy. I'm sorry. But suddenly it's seeing that actually the 'and' has been wrong. Rip out the 'and'. World and us—take away the 'and'. World, us, are one. And it's again it shows up in different ways, but that's the invitation, the possibility, the charge that has been running in the veins of Zen for a long, long time. World and us. Um, let's see, maybe that's just about it. Um, yeah. Okay. Well, let's see. Are there any questions at this point? Anything bubbling up for anyone?
I have just recently seen—I don't know if you ever have seen a video of Himari. She is a Japanese violinist, and she started her concerts when she was 8 years old. And when you see this child—she's now 14—she disappears in the music. There's just the music. And I think Mu is something like that. So there is no thought of... And if you do music or poetry or this is just an example.
Mhm. Yes. Nice. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So, I think that's a great little pointer actually for if anybody is interested in working with Mu or any other koan for that matter. Can you, if you just keep doing it, if you really are as dogged as you can be about it—and that's not a reference to does a dog have—just be dogged about it. You know, just keep coming back to it. Your mind will wander, keep coming back, keep coming back. Actually, in time, you can get... You can start doing it on autopilot and Mu starts doing it by herself. And then actually, as Maria says, you can also then suddenly get completely absorbed by it. And I think of it as if Mu is out here, you know, that's the Mu that I think I'm working on. Mu, mu, I'm gazing at Mu and doing Mu and hearing Mu, there it is. But meanwhile, actually, the real Mu is sneaking up behind me, getting ready to swallow everything. And it can't do it if I'm looking around and wondering and thinking about many different things or looking for it. If I think I'm looking for something like an experience of awakening, glimpse of what Bodhidharma was talking about, um, Mu can't do it. It needs me locked on with not a thought in the world about anything else. And just this, just this right here, then the Mu can gobble me up. The real Mu.
Let's see. Any other questions or comments? Anything at all really? Um, yeah. Great, Patrick. Yeah.
Henry, thank you. I admit to sort of losing the thread here. What I thought I heard you say Bodhidharma identified four elements or something like that. I, but then what I got was the first one I think. But what I didn't—what are the other three?
Okay, the four are: the first one is it's a special mind-to-mind transmission outside scripture. Secondly, it doesn't rely on words and letters. Thirdly, it's pointing directly to the human heart mind, untranslatable 'shin' I think, right, shin, yeah, untranslatable word but means heart, mind, soul, heart, core of who we are. Pointing to that. And there becoming Buddha or discovering awakened your awakened nature. That's four. One, special mind-to-mind transition. Two, not relying on words or letters. Three, pointing to your heart, mind, soul, core. Four, becoming Buddha.
I was mistaking all four of them for the first one, I think.
