Sesshin Teisho JOHN TARRANT ROSHI June 29, 1994 - Day Four Camp Meeker, California THE SIMPLICITY OF UNCOMFORTABLE JOY Please sit comfortably. We have now come a long way deep into the woods, deep into the stillness and when it is like this, it is good to have everything simple. When things are simple, then they shine. Our mind does not get in the way of everything that rises up. Gradually all the attitudes and opinions and feelings and thoughts that are customary to us start to fall away. It's very important to just let them go. Some things are worn out and just need to fall away. You can hold onto them if you wish, but you will regret it. In that simplicity we just keep walking along as if on a mountain path. The most interesting discovery, perhaps, is that whichever portion of the path we're on is joyful, and that this joy actually encompasses our whole lives. It is not a matter just for retreat when we feel the joy. It is something that we can see underlies each moment of life, whether we have a special attitude towards that moment or not; whether we are happy or whether we are sad, underlying it is that great light and joy, the great engines of the world and of your true nature. The important thing is not to get in the way too much. If we keep letting things fall away and stop standing in our own light, then everything becomes clear. It's as if we look into a lake and the lake is entirely still, and you see every tree reflected there, every bird, every cloud in the sky. All the struggle, then, at this time really should be about just letting things go. Everything that sticks to you just let it go and then the moon rises all by itself and spreads its light. The problem with our customary ways of thinking is that although they're painful, they are so familiar that we tend to fall back into them as soon as the mind ripples. We fall back into thinking this is special, thinking that's horrible. Picking and choosing among many things that do not need to be picked and chosen among. An important thing to do here is to have an open heart and accept whatever comes. Whatever comes at this moment in retreat, you can just welcome and bless. If you think you're supposed to be having a time of great clarity and joy and actually you're flung into depression and fog, you won't improve matters by complaining to yourself about where is the clarity and joy. If you enter the fog, right there, you'll find the clarity and the joy. The light of our true nature is something that is autonomous and natural, and it can't be stopped. It just bubbles up all the time and is all around us. Everywhere you look, that's it! Everything you look at, that's it! Everything in your mind that rises, that's it! When we just open ourselves to receiving this, that's it, too. When we're ignorant, that's it, too, but we suffer. I thought I would read to you an old story, today, from the Chinese tradition which is a story of Ch'ang Sha. It's a teaching story, a koan, handed down from more than a thousand years ago in China. Ch'ang Sha was a student of Nan Ch'uan and he was a contemporary of many great teachers, Lin Chi and Chao Chou among them. It was the golden age of Zen Buddhism. One day Ch'ang Sha went wandering in the mountains. When he returned and came to the gate, the head of the temple asked, "Where have you been, teacher?" He said, "I've been wandering in the mountains." The head of the temple asked, "Where did you go?" He said, "I went out following the scent of grasses and came back following the falling flowers." The head of the temple said, "That's the spring mood itself." Ch'ang Sha said, "It's better than the autumn dew falling on the lotus blossom." Hsueh Tou, the poet who collected these stories, said, "I am grateful for that reply." This story is often read at a funeral of a zen person, a monk or a nun, but any person dedicated to zen. They went out following the fragrant grasses and came back following the falling flowers. This is the whole of life, this story. We are born and we walk into it and each step, if we are open, is surrounded by fragrant grasses and falling flowers. If we are closed, it's surrounded by diesel fumes. It is our mind that makes that difference there. It is also the products of our mind. The things we create. We make trucks that burn diesel. Dogen, the great Japanese teacher, said, "A bit of difference is the distance between heaven and earth." It's the distance between heaven and hell, too. If you are suffering when you're sitting, try releasing into the suffering. If you wiggle, if you find things to distract yourself, you'll never be free. If you really enter the suffering and the resistance that you have, you'll find that you have been beating on the window that is locked all the time and you turn around there is an open door behind you. Ch'ang Sha is an interesting person so I thought I'd tell you a few more stories of his from the old records. A very sincere student came along to him, a monk, and said, "What is the nirvana of the cause of experience?" (A very complicated question. What is the enlightened state of the cause of experience? I don't know what that means. I'm not sure that Ch'ang Sha did either.) Ch'ang Sha said, "Venerable monk, you are it." The monk said, "In the scriptures this self is spoken of as an illusion. Is it a being?" The master repeated, "Venerable monk, you are it. What else can be said of the matter?" The monk said, "If it is so, is illusion non-being?" ( I don't know if you recognize this kind of question.) The master said, "Venerable monk, you are it. What more can I say?" The monk declared, "What you have repeated three times is not at all in accord with the self as illusion, master. I wonder how you explain the teaching of illusion." (He does keep coming. And so it goes on like that.) He was a disciple of Nan Ch'uan, the great master. A friend of his called San Sheng (sp??), who lived nearby and was a teacher instructed a student called Venerable Hsiu (sp??) to come and ask a question. His question was, "Where did Master Nan Ch'uan go after his death?" The master answered, "When Master Shih T'ou (sp??) was a young novice, he had an interview with the sixth founding teacher." Hsiu protested, "I did not ask about Shih T'ou seeing the sixth founding teacher, I asked about the whereabouts of Master Nan Ch'uan after his death." The master remarked, "He was made to meditate on the matter." Hsiu said, "Master, you may be a snowy pine tree soaring a thousand feet high, but you have no icicles hanging down." (Nothing to get a hold of.) The master kept silent and Hsiu said, "Thank you for this conversation." Again, the master remained silent. Venerable Hsiu returned and reported the incident to Master San Sheng, who commented, "If it is really as you say, then he is seven strides ahead of Lin Chi. It may be so. I'll wait and see him myself." Next day San Sheng came himself and said to the master, "I've heard of your answer to a question regarding the case of Master Nan Ch'uan after his death. Must this be regarded as a rare occurrence, present or past?" Again, the master kept silent. Many of the great old teachers would speak and then let the silence speak for them. Again, a student asked, "Who is the Bodhisattva Manjusri?" (The bodhisattva of cutting wisdom, the state, the mind, the deity of cutting wisdom.) The master answered, "The wall in the pebble." "Who is Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara?" "The voice of words." "Who is the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra?" "The mind of sentient beings." There's one more story I want to read. What you do after death was a common cause, a common question at that time--a common cause of delusion, I suppose; a common cause of enlightenment, too. It is still a common question. Something very interesting to human beings. Nan Ch'uan used to use it himself, and somebody asked him, "Where will you go after you die?" He said, "I will be a buffalo at the foot of the mountain." The student said, "I will go with you, master." Nan Ch'uan said, "If you do, you'll have to bring some grass in your mouth." And Chao Chou, who was also a student of Nan Ch'uan, so he was a brother of Ch'ang Sha. Somebody asked him, "Where will you go after you die, master?" He said, "I will go directly to hell." "A good, venerable, pure teacher like you, master, how could you go to hell?" Chao Chou said, "If I do not, who will teach you?" You can see how every moment of the day is part of it. There is nothing that is not your buddha nature. There is nothing that is not an occasion for laughter and joy and wisdom. It is always right here under our noses and that is so momentous that we shy away from it. We have all these pains and aches and distractions and all these things we give ourselves, but it is always right here. If it is not here, it can't be anywhere at all. Cynicism and many kinds of pain we have, doubt, uncertainty, all these are the same kind of thing. They're just like an ache in the knees. They're a distraction that fills the screen for us. Even the distraction itself is the light of the essential mind, but it is something that fills the screen for the sake of the habits of mind. It sort of protects us. Our doubt, in a way, makes us comfortably despairing. Our misery makes us comfortably miserable. When the layers start to fall away and the attitudes and opinions fall away, we will be uncomfortably joyful and that's much more interesting. Please, be uncomfortable. # # #