Thorns become attached to it in time.<\/span><\/p>\nKeizan\u2019s anthology is placed near the end of formal koan practice in our style, which I think wise. It is a subtle document. On first glance to the maturing practitioner it seems to be pretty much the same case repeated fifty-two times. Perhaps appropriately, we are, after all each of us catching the same flame. Our individual human experience is that common human experience, in some very real sense one thing. And each of us on this way is finding how our own individual blossoming comes from our common ground, our native earth.<\/p>\n
The Indian stories are more dream like, more magical, in part reflecting their purely mythical aspects. Zen, after all, wouldn\u2019t birth in India, but a millennia after the Buddha, in the rich soil of China. And even the stories of the first five Chinese ancestors are themselves a blending of myth with flesh and blood, befitting their more or less historical quality. After that, the remaining cases begin to have a more complete smell of human struggle, failure, and victory.<\/p>\n
I like all these kinds of stories. But, there is something about those stories that mark the turning of the wheel, the dawn of new insight, the renewal of our human possibility in a new age. There are three of these, stories that particularly point to the shaping of the Zen way. This one recounting the Buddha\u2019s awakening, the story of Bodhidharma coming from India to China, and the story of Huineng, the great sixth ancestor of the Chinese transmission.<\/p>\n
The history of each of these stories is subsumed to other purposes. And those purposes are the establishment of this school, the way of awakening that we follow in this gathering.<\/p>\n
History has a place. I think it very important to learn our history. But, as a matter of koan practice, of that assertion about reality and invitation to our own intimate encounter, we don\u2019t need to worry a whole lot about the history of any of these events. And we won\u2019t be spending any more time reflecting on where these stories come from and how closely they relate to what we know about historic figures that are the actors in these various dramas.<\/p>\n
Here is the invitation within these stories. In fact, they\u2019re about you. They\u2019re about me. They\u2019re about what we can find, when we throw caution to the wind, open our hearts and minds wide, and allow the universe to present itself as it is. After ages of hard practice,
Siddhartha once a prince, and now just one more homeless vagabond, after sitting quietly through the night, watching, listening, just being present: he looks up and sees the morning star. And in that seeing everything is revealed.<\/p>\n
This encounter is not limited to the Zen world. William Blake gives us much the same sense of this foundational story, of Siddhartha looking up to the morning star, and noticing something fundamental about who and what we are. He could have used Blake\u2019s words.<\/p>\n
To see a World in a Grain of Sand<\/span> And a heaven in a Wild Flower,<\/span> Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand<\/span> And Eternity in an hour.<\/span><\/p>\nAlthough I feel the more direct expression unmodified by all those \u201ca\u2019s\u201d which litter Blake\u2019s little verse, which we get out of twenty-five hundred years of distillation, of reflection on this encounter, gives it a bit more directly. While in our practice we take Shakyamuni\u2019s statement \u201cI and all sentient beings of the great earth have in the same moment attained the way.\u201d as one point, I suggest we can profitably break this into four points for this evening. Some are stated, some implied. Let me reframe it slightly, as befits the various translations and versions, distilled as \u201cAt this moment I see that I, all beings, and indeed the great earth itself, awaken together.<\/p>\n
At this moment.<\/p>\n
I see.<\/p>\n
That I, all beings, indeed the great earth itself.<\/p>\n
Awaken together.<\/p>\n
First, about \u201cthis moment.\u201d Within our tradition we are constantly called back to this moment. Of course we stray, all the time. To the past, regrets and triumphs. Or, we run to the future with its longing and anxieties. This morning I attended a Christian funeral. The priest spoke of past present and future, and the complexities of these moments in time. But her thrust was to the future, to the heavenly time. This is not how we approach the matter. While the past and the future have numinous elements that invade this moment, our invitation is to not stray overly to the past or to the future, but rather come here; this is home.<\/p>\n
Next, and so important is that \u201cI.\u201d As in Gestalt\u2019s therapy we are invited to play all the characters, all the parts, in any koan. Each becomes intimate, each part, me. No second person, no third. What is to be found is going to be found in you, in you, in you. Each as me, as I, as I, as I.<\/p>\n
And that bleeds into that other clause, \u201cthat I, all beings, indeed the great earth itself.\u201d Here each thing arises in its own way. I. All beings. The great earth. Each thing distinct, following its own trajectory in time and space. But that clarity has begun to fog. We\u2019ve taken on the various parts, each as an I. And no doubt as we venture deeply into the great matter, things become confused. Deep into this we find that \u201cI\u201d which inhabits this body, is also the many other \u201cI\u2019s\u201d that manifest as all beings. And then we find it is also the \u201cI\u201d that is the earth, itself. The question presents itself. Is there any place that isn\u2019t I?<\/p>\n
Here, perhaps we capture a bit of the sense of the Rastafarian term \u201cI and I.\u201d But, let\u2019s not push that too far. We tumble at this moment into something very dream like, very confusing. But the guidance of our teachers is to let it play, to let these contradictory experiences each wash over us. As Blake sings.<\/p>\n
He who binds to himself a joy<\/span> Does the winged life destroy.<\/span> But he who kisses the joy as it flies<\/span> Lives in eternity\u2019s sun rise.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd that brings us to the great victory, to that line \u201cawaken together.\u201d How can we not awaken together? We are made of the same stuff, you and I and the great earth. We are, each of us, an expression of something other. That \u201cI\u201d is, along the way, first completely lost and then, miraculously, regained, but as something new, something subtely different. As one contemporary teacher put it, echoing older lines of older masters, \u201cBefore awakening I drank beer and hung out with my friends, after awakening I drink beer and hang out with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
This journey of exploration and finding takes us to a place of incredible intimacy, where you and I are you and I and yet, at bottom, each and every one of us, is also vast as the sky, completely boundless. The German poet. Ranier Maria Rilke saw this, and sang of it, in Stephen Mitchell\u2019s translation.<\/p>\n
Ah, not to be cut off,<\/span> not through the slightest partition<\/span> shut out from the law of the stars.<\/span> The inner \u2013 what is it?<\/span> if not intensified sky,<\/span> hurled through with birds and deep<\/span> with the winds of homecoming.<\/span><\/p>\nBut maybe this isn\u2019t completely clear. So, Keizan composes a verse in celebration of this matter. The first line goes \u201cOne branch from the old plum tree extends splendidly forth.\u201d Now the direction is different. That I is no longer the center of the universe. We, you and I, we each of us are now branches, coming forth from the old plum tree, from the great source.<\/p>\n
And then \u201cthorns become attached to it in time.\u201d This isn\u2019t a reminder of forgetting, although that\u2019s a spiritual question for another time; rather it is a celebration of our true individuality, completely grounded in that vastness which we all share, but at the same time, yours, mine, each thorn earned, each thorn glorious.<\/p>\n
And all that, that\u2019s what we celebrate today in sitting together, in reflecting on one person\u2019s awakening, and in doing so, about our awakening, about our homecoming.<\/p>\n
Any questions?<\/p><\/div>\n
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