Master Yoka cautions: ‘Getting rid of things and clinging to emptiness are the same illness. It is like throwing oneself into fire to avoid being drowned.’

(The Wisdom of the Zen Masters by Imrgard Schloegl)

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In this podcast:

• The Buddha’s first teaching of the middle way.
• The problem of the five ascetics
• What happens when ‘I’ give up smoking?
• Some advice on ‘giving up’ - don’t (TL advice to a smoker)
• Giving myself into Zen practice; the practice brings about the transformation

National Teacher Daito (1283-1338) founded the monastery of Daitokuji in Kyoto and Rinzai Zen Training monastery. 

Before his death he gave his admonition to his monk which gives the essence of his teaching and points to just that which is most important for the training of his monks.

The full text can be found here.

This Dharma talk includes:

• The importance of both physical as well as spiritual wellbeing.
• How form and discipline encourages us to practice letting-go and going with the flow.
• How the outer circumstances, even in the training sodo is not the most important issue. What is important can be done anywhere.
• The importance of the transmission of the teachings & practice.

Followers of the Way, when I say that there is no Dharma outside, the students do not understand and deduce it is necessary to search within themselves. Then they sit, leaning against a wall, tongue pressed to the upper palate, and remain so motionless. That they take for the patriarch’s gate of the Buddha-Dharma. What a great error!

(The Zen Teaching of Rinzai; tr. Irmgard Schloegl, pub. Shambhala 1975)

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In this podcast:

• What is Dharma?
• Mumon’s treasures of the house v. Hogan’s ‘Is that stone inside or outside?
• Master Mumon’s looking for fire with fire…
• Wisdom arises out of the samadhi of the situation

“As I see it, there is nothing complicated. Just be your ordinary selves in an ordinary life, wear your robes and eat your food and having nothing further to seek, peacefully pass your time. From everywhere you have come here; all of you eagerly seek the Buddha, the Dharma and deliverance; you seek escape from the Three Worlds. You foolish people, if you want to get out of the Three Worlds, where then can you go?”

The Zen Teaching of Rinzai tr. by Irmgard Schloegl

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In this podcast:

• Some background on Rinzai and early Chan in the context of Chinese Buddhist development.
• Why do ‘I’ want to be famous?
• The cult of ‘more and more’, the disease of ‘I’.
• What are the Three Worlds and what is their significance?
• A wholehearted life v. escaping boredom.

The God of Buddhism is the god of wisdom. In Buddhism, the Buddha means one who knows, the knower. One who knows one’s own wisdom is Buddha.

Our eyes, which have the faculty of seeing; our ears, which have the faculty of hearing; our other senses - smell, taste, touch - are all manifestations of the power of knowing. So our sense organs are the eyes of Buddha. Every one of us is Buddha. However, Mr. So-and-so is not Buddha, but our ‘persons’ are Buddha.

… The Buddhist believes in a pantheistic god. This personal, pantheistic god is god-nature in me, in you, in all sentient beings - in everything… There is no such word in the Orient as ‘individual’! The Buddhist believes that souls are not created by God, one by one, but that each is a drop of water in the ocean of soul. The ocean of soul is existence; it is Being existing from the beginningless beginning to the endless end. So there is no creation of the universe and no destruction of the universe. Each wave of the ocean has its own character, its own shape, its own power, and its own velocity, yet all waves are nothing but the body of water that is the sea. Each individual has his or her own keynote and characteristics, yet all individuals are nothing but waves in the ocean of soul.

The Zen Eye: A collection of Zen talks by Sokei-an; ed. Mary Farkas pub. Weatherhill 1993

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In this talk:

• The etymology of consciousness. Is consciousness possible without ‘I’?
• Sense consciousness & awareness. To whom does consciousness really belong?
• Immanence and transcendence - What is the difference between monotheism, polytheism and pantheism?
• Emptiness and dependent origination, the awareness of being in relationship with everything and the principle of reciprocity.

The unborn Buddha-mind deals freely and spontaneously with anything that presents itself to it. But if something should happen to make you change the Buddha-mind into thought, then you run into trouble and lose that freedom. Let me give you an example. Suppose a woman is engaged in sewing something. A friend enters the room and begins speaking to her. As long as she listens to her friend and sews in the Unborn, she has no trouble doing both. But if she gives her attention to her friend's words and a thought arises in her mind as she thinks about what to reply, her hands stop sewing; if she turns her attention to her sewing and thinks about that, she fails to catch everything her friend is saying, and the conversation does not proceed smoothly. In either case, her Buddha-mind has slipped from the place of the Unborn. She has transformed it into thought. As her thoughts fix upon one thing, they're blank to all others, depriving her mind of its freedom.

(The Unborn: The Life & Teachings of Zen Master Bankei 1622-1693 tr. Norman Waddell)

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In this podcast:

• Bankei’s awakening
• Legacy - spontaneous v. written legacy and Bankei’s admonition against writing his words down.
• [Udana 8.3] : “There is, practitioners, an unborn, unproduced, unmade, and unconditioned. If there were no unborn, unproduced, unmade, and unconditioned, then you would find no escape here from the born, produced, made, and conditioned. But since there is an unborn, unproduced, unmade, and unconditioned, an escape is found from the born, produced, made, and conditioned.”
• Myokyo-ni’s ‘Quiet spaciousness” in Zazen and then in Kinhin and then in daily life a return to.
• Picture no. 7: Stay not where the Buddha is; hurry by where he is not’ - ‘Cultivate the heart that doesn’t settle anywhere’.

In this podcast:

• The language of religion and how different schools of Buddhism teach.
• The importance of the lineage (Master Sesso)
• The Heart-Buddha is the source of the teachings which only appear to come from outside.
• The story of Rinzai’s own awakening
• Avoiding the stink of Zen; Joshu’s ‘Mu & Uu’.

As we enter the holiday period, I recall that you talked about setting aside the Zen practice for a while. Why is that a useful thing to do? What happens if I find it difficult to re-start the practice after the holiday is over?

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In this podcast:

• The value of taking a break from the timetable and regular practice - 2 types of student
• Using common sense
• Why things become ‘chores’ and why the practice becomes a duty rather than a support.
• Returning to the practice after the holiday period.
• ‘I’ don’t want to… finding inspiration again
• The Three Refuges - Reading some Dharma; joining a group
• A hearty admonition to oneself
• Clean the shrine
• Acts of cultivation

Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,

Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -

Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams,

A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust;

It will drink deeply of a century’s streams,

These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,

Sealed in their shells a million roses leap,

Here I can blow a garden with my breath,

And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

(Muriel Stuart)

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In this podcast:

• Zen & poetry: How it appears in the training.
• The Buddha uses an agricultural analogy with farmers to explain how things arise.
• Creating causes and conditions (Make the things you want easy, the things you don’t want difficult).
• Right Intention, the making of a vow
• Creating conditions for practice: a timetable & ritual practice, a meditation space, regular exposure to the Dharma, good friends in the Dharma etc.
• How to perfurme consciousness - How we read the writings of the Zen canon.

1. Q) I’ve heard you say that in daily life practice we should give ourselves wholeheartedly into what we are doing. How do I know when something is being done wholeheartedly?

In this talk:

• The problem of teaching someone how to ride a bike.
• The three ways ‘I’ give myself wholeheartedly in everyday life already
• The quality of flow in wholeheartedly being given into what is being done.
• Use the body

Exercise: The disliked chore