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NOVEMBER 16, 2002
Dharma Talk
by Jakusho Kwong Roshi
This talk is from Suzuki Roshi’s book, Not Always So. We’ve
been using this book for study period, and this next chapter is called
Letters from Emptiness. This is one of my favorite titles. How can that
be? Letters from Emptiness? But it’s true.
Here we are. Here’s that Zen term again, Shikantaza.. I think maybe
over the years I had read the wrong dictionary, so I had a thicker dictionary,
and I looked up the word shi, which I thought was genuine. This other
dictionary said free. The ideogram is a box which means mouth and two
legs, person. It basically means freedom: mouth, two legs, but strong
legs. They are grounded on the earh (hits floor with palm), not off
the earth, but (hits again) grounded on the earth. This means this person
is free.
Kan I had translated as duct, and it does mean pipe and so forth. But
it also means control, like the head of Eiheigi or the head of the Soto
School is Kancho, which means controlling head. But not by the principles
that most people live by, not by dualism. Not by our usual self. Not
this kind of control, subject and object. It’s a different kind
of control. It’s a kind of control that’s free of itself,
where you manifest into the present. You’re in reality. It’s
not separated from reality.
Ta means to strike (hits ground). Za means to sit. So we are not just
sitting there like a lump of flesh. Shikantaza also means emptiness.
We are manifesting, revealing emptiness, our true nature. Believe it
or not, we are revealing our true nature, and it’s empty! Shikantaza
is the actualization or the practice or the expression of your true
nature which is emptiness.
That’s the first sentence. Ta, besides strike and sit, also means
to become one. The small self, just like the white heron, disappears
into the snow. The small self disappears into the big self, the grat
universe: Ta-za.
Over the years, you see the same words, the same difficult words, are
just different descriptions of the same old, old thing. Our same old,
ancient face, the eternal face.
 As
I read this chapter, I think I might paraphrase so it won’t be
exactly what Roshi is saying. But I hope it will be what he means. “Although
you can have a tentative understanding” – this is tentative
–“of emptiness through your thinking, you should understand
emptiness through your actual experience.” So you have idea or
conception and then you have the actual experience, which is the ‘letter
from emptiness.’ Direct experience: That’s Zen.
“You have an idea of emptiness and an idea of being,” -- your
own being, your own self. You have an idea of who you are. “And
you think that being, your being, and emptiness” -- non-being could
be another word for emptiness -- “is in opposition to each other.”
Because we’re conditioned to and we are attached and we are deluded
by the objective world. Because, that’s what we see, that’s
what we touch. But it’s not real.
How can that be so? What’s that? Why does the dharma say it’s
not real? But yet, what’s that (pointing). This is the quest; this
is the wonder of it all.
Even though we think that being and emptiness, or being and non-being,
are in opposition to each other, that’s only what we think. Thinking
is actually a small part of our being. There’s deluded thinking,
and there’s clear thinking, and there’s just thinking thinking.
It’s just a small part. “The emptiness we mean is not like
the idea of what we think it means.”
Even though I am reading this, and I am talking about it, probably more
than three quarters of you do not understand emptiness. But someday,
even when you don’t understand it, it may even be better, because
you have no idea about it. But you will experience it because you are
a human being, and you have the potentiality, the inherent-ness to experience
it. And maybe you have already, probably you have already experienced
it, but you can’t recall it. Maybe you had no memory then (laughs),
very young, just a baby.
How can you experience something that you don’t know? It’s
a reality, it’s not an assumption. It’s not a premise: but
you have it.
“You cannot reach a full understanding of emptiness with your thinking
mind or with your feeling.” I think that in the 60s, feelings were
good, and thinking was bad. Actually, it all comes from thinking. I’m
a feeling person, but behind the feeling is the thought. This is very
important: What are we thinking about?
“You can’t reach full understanding about emptiness with your
concepts or ideas. Or even with your feelings. This is the reason why
we practice Zazen. There’s a term called shozaku, which is about
a feeling you have when you receive a letter from home. You’re
far away, and someone writes you a letter. It’s nice when I come
back from Poland, and I come up Bennett Valley, and I see the sign Sonoma
Mountain Road, it’s very comforting me.
You have a feeling, a sense of the area, the seasons: the autumn in
Northern California, in New England, in Europe. Anywhere. You have a
sense of home, the people who live in the village, and the people who
live in the town, who shop in the mall or the street. There’s a
sense, a feeling for it, and that’s called shosoku.
“Although we have no actual written communication from the world
of emptiness” -- (laughs). Where is that letter? Where is that
letter? “Although we have no actually written communication from
the world of emptiness, we do have some hints or suggestions about what
is going on in that world. And that is, you may say, enlightenment.”
That’s the realization of the world of emptiness. That’s our
letter, special delivery (laughs). Very special. It’s special delivery
at the beginning, but later it’s just regular mail, snail mail
(laughter). The first time it’s special delivery.
He’s siting realization or this special delivery from history of
Zen, like one monk or person saw the plum blossoming. It probably was
snowing, a very difficult, cold season, and he or she saw the blossoming
of plums.
Or another person ‘heard.’ He was walking on a gravel path,
and he accidentally kicked a stone, and it hit some bamboo: the sound
of bamboo. It was his letter – or her letter – from emptiness.
“That is a letter from emptiness. Besides the world, which we can
describe, there is another kind of world that we can’t describe.”
So the only world that we know, that we grew up with, that we’re
taught and conditioned to is the objective world that we can see, that
we can touch, that we can objectify, that we can name.
We don’t pay attention to the world that we can’t see. “Behind
each and every thing, there is a world. Behind each and every thing
that we cannot see and we cannot touch, it has no name, and it has no
form, and probably we can’t even talk about it, but we try.”
That’s why there’s so much literature in Zen, a tradition
that you can’t talk about. Yet look at all these words. I’m
sorry to give you some more words.
I mentioned this before. The world which we can describe: you see me
and I see you. This is the world of Ji. The world that’s behind
the object that you see, or within the object that you can see –
but you can’t see it -- that’s the world of ri.
“But, at the same time, all descriptions of reality are limited
expressions of the world of emptiness.” It can’t come close
to it. “Yet, we attach to these descriptions and these details
and think that they are real.” But, because we attach to the objective
world, the conditioned world, this is what causes our suffering.
Our suffering boils down the sense of self, because this self contains
all those ideas. It is how we come to resolve ‘who is this self?’
that these conditions also resolve. These conditions don’t change.
They’re the same conditions: school, work, 40 hours, computer,
telephone. These conditions do not change.
But this condition (pointing to head) can change. That’s the most
important thing. You’re the one that’s thinking, you’re
the one that’s making up reality.
When we look out with our eyes, when you and I look, this is the world
we see. I like this saying, I think Ocamura Sensei wrote this many,
many years ago when he was in Japan – he wrote, “So when are
boats are rafts not boats and rafts? It is when they are thought to
be boats and rafts” (laughs).
Now, this is true. It’s interesting. You are near the sea, oh that’s
a boat over there -- the conversations we have with each other. But
that boat, that inanimate thing, has the same essence that you do. Your
experiences or your life are kind of dead experiences because you are
separated from reality. That is this subject and that’s that boat.
We have no commonality. That’s a boat! I’m a human being!
I’m thinking, when a baby comes into this world, they are one.
They are taza. The baby’s not even sitting cross-legged, or the
baby has sat nine months already, and it comes out into the world. They
are already taza. Kitzit: they are one with everything. Then, later,
they are told, no, no that’s not you. This is a spoon.”
But somewhere we should also tell them, “that sky, those stars
and the moon is also part of you.” We should teach them that, because
that’s the truth. The name doesn’t separate them. They are
also part of you. The fact that we can recognize it means that it’s
a part of you. How could we recognize what’s not a part of us?
 “It’s
when there are thoughts to be boats and rafts that things cease to be
what they truly are when we assume that they are only what they appear
to be.” That’s name and form. “It is this sense that
Christians, Muslims and also Buddhists make their biggest mistakes.”
Buddhists are also people (laughs). It doesn’t matter what religion:
You could make the same mistakes.. Maybe we are the biggest mistakers
(laughter), so we have to be careful in a way, okay?
This is pinned on the back of a poem by Soehn Sahn Nim that a student
gave me. It is saying, “Coming Empty-Handed,” like when you’re
born into the world, “Going Empty-Handed,” when you leave
the world. You can’t hold on to anything, no matter who you are.
“This is the human way. When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go? Life is like a floating cloud that appears.
Death is like a floating cloud that disappears. The floating cloud originally
does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, appearing and disappearing,
are also like this. But there is one thing that always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death. Then what is
the one pure and clear thing?”
This is a whole subject in itself, but I just want to make the point
about reality. This is the mistake, because what it describes is not
actual reality. And when you think it is reality, it’s only your
own idea. And this is the idea of self, of your creation of reality;
It doesn’t match reality.
“Many Buddhists have made this mistake. This is why they were attached
to the written scriptures of Buddha’s words. They thought that
his words were the most valuable things, and that the way to preserve
the teachings was to remember what Buddha said. But what Buddha said
was just a letter from the world of emptiness.”
All those writings, basically that’s what he said. It was just
a suggestion or some help from Buddha. “If someone else reads it,
it may not make sense. That’s the nature of Buddha’s words.”
It doesn’t make logical, conditional sense.
“To understand Buddha’s words, we cannot rely on our usual
conceptual thinking mind. If you want to read a letter from emptiness,
or Buddha’s world, it’s necessary to understand Buddha’s
world. To empty water from a cup does not mean to drink it up. To empty
means to have direct pure experience without relying on form or color
of being.”
Is this sentence hard to understand? Without relying on anything is
now you empty yourself. You can’t even want to empty yourself,
because that’s dualism. But the condition of your unconditional
moment is that you must be there; but not your thinking mind. You have
to empty yourself of your preconceived ideas of wanting to experience
emptiness. Of wanting to be here, of wanting to be alive, of wanting
taza, Shikantaza.
Does it seem impossible? Huh? But you do it, you do it every day: the
same thing. Every day you do it. But the difference is that you don’t
realize you are doing it: You drink, you eat, you breath, you walk,
you sleep, you get up. Who else could do it but you? You’re doing
it every day.
Suzuki Roshi explains it more: “So our experience is empty of our
preconceived ideas, our ideas of being who we are, our ideas of big
and small, round or square. Round or square, big or small, don’t
belong to reality, but they are simply ideas.”
This is something. Everyone agrees they hear it. But maybe your relationship
to it may be different from my relationship to it.
That was emptying water. That was a demonstration, believe it or not.
“At that point, we have no idea of water even though we see the
water or touch the mat. No idea. Who’s rubbing who?”
“When we analyze our experience, we have the idea of time or space,
big and small again, heavy and light. A scale of some kind is necessary,
and with various scales in our mind, we experience things. Still, the
thing in itself has no scale.” The scale is like our measuring
stick.
“This scale is something that we add to reality.” So, when
we are perceiving the grass, the mountains, the forests we add to it
by our scale. We say, “Oh, here’s that rain, we are going
to get wet!” We are adding to the rain, we are cutting our life
short, that’s what we are doing. We are cutting our life, we are
cutting life force from our life, with this kind of conditional discrimination.
“Because we always use the scale and depend on it so much, we think
the scale usually exists.” Meaning the self, the small self, the
ego self, is a reality. “But it doesn’t exist.” But you
mean it doesn’t exist, I don’t exist (hits self)? What is
this? It’s a paradox.
This sentence is very interesting: “If it did exist, it would exist
with everything.” If this ego or self-centered person existed,
this self would be part of everything. That would be the reality. But
it’s not part of it. The small self is exclusive, it’s not
inclusive. “If it did exist, it would exist with everything.”
“So using a scale, you can analyze one reality into entities, and
that reality becomes big and small. But as soon as we conceptualize
something, it is already a dead experience.” A dead experience.
Our lives become more and more dead. We have no more life, no more joy.
Not happiness, but joy, deep joy, a deepening satisfaction. To be satisfied
with joy. To know there is something you can rely on, something else
than what we’ve been taught, that does not fail you.
“So we empty ideas of big and small, good and bad, from our experience,
because the measurement that we use is usually based on the small self.”
The self-centered self. “When we say good or bad, the scale is
yourself. That scale is not always the same. Each person has a scale
that is different. So I don’t say that the scale is always wrong,
but we are liable to use our self-centered scale when we analyze or
when we have an idea about something.”
“This selfish or self-centered part should be empty or emptied.
How we empty that part is to practice zazen and become more accustomed
to accepting things as-it-is, without any idea of big or small, good
or bad.” Roshi is selling water by the river. So, how you empty
yourself is to sit zazen. This is selling water by the river. Because
we’re all in the river.
“For artists or writers to express their direct experience, they
may paint or write. But if their experience is very strong and pure,
they may give up trying to describe it. Oh, my!”
“I like making a miniature garden around my house.” Suzuki
Roshi loved [Chris: can’t hear this word] gashour? He made this
little garden around his house, but miniature garden, with stones and
little plants. He loved doing that.
”But, if I go to the stream” -- which was next to his cabin
– “and see the wonderful rocks and the water running and rushing
by, I give up. I shall never be able to make a rock garden.”
You know what Roshi did? He had all his students go into the stream
and rearrange the stones. This is what Roshi did. But you could not
tell the difference. You could not tell that Suzuki Roshi had everybody
– “Turn the stone over here.” It was nature that did
it. It was the empty mind.
So he said that instead of making or trying to making a rock garden,
it was probably much better to clean up the Tassajara Creek and to pick
up the garbage and papers fallen branches. Because the other thing is
too hard (laughs).
You know, that’s what most of us are doing in our lives, just picking
up the garbage, shifting the garbage around from one area to another,
or maybe a fallen branch. But, is that what you want to do?
“In nature itself, there is beauty that is beyond beauty. When
you see a part of it, you may think, ‘This rock should be moved
one way, and that rock should be moved another way. And then it will
be a complete garden. Because you limit the actual reality using the
scale of your small self, there is neither a good garden or a bad garden,
and you want to change some stones. But if you see the thing itself,
as it is, as-it-is” – as it is is emptiness. Seeing the thing
in itself, doing the thing in itself is emptiness. It’s not with
your self-centered mind; as-it- is, Shikantaza, emptiness, the thing
in itself, the Zazen sitting itself, for the sake of itself, the thing
in itself.
 “But
if you see the thing in itself, as it is, with a wider mind, there is
no need to do anything. The thing itself is emptiness. But because you
add something to it, you spoil the actual reality. If we don’t
spoil things, that is to empty things. When we sit in Shikantaza, we
are not disturbed by sounds, because we are not operating our thinking
mind.”
So we don’t entertain the thinking mind when we’re sitting.
This means not to rely on any sense organ or the thinking mind, and
just receive, just let in the letters of emptiness. Just let it in,
or let go of the thinking mind. And when you let go the thinking mind,
the letters of emptiness arrive. This is called Shikantaza, if you can
even call it something.
Roshi goes on to explain a little bit more about emptying. This is not
the same as denying. “Usually, when we deny something, we want
to replace it with something else.” When I deny this glass, this
square-shaped glass, maybe I want a round-shape glass. “When you
argue and deny someone else’s opinion, you are forcing your own
opinion on another. That is what we usually do. But our way is different.
By emptying the added element of our self-centered idea, we purify our
observations of things. When we see and accept things as they are, we
have no need to replace one thing with another. That is what we mean
to empty things. If we empty things, letting them be as-it-is, then
things will work.”
“Originally, things are related and everything is one, originally.
And as one being, as one whole body” -- like the entire universe
--
”it will extend itself.” You don’t have to try to keep
it, you’re not attached to it, it’s limitless. “Originally,
things are related and things are one. And as one being, one whole body
it will extend itself. To let it, to allow it, to extend itself, we
empty things. When we have this kind of attitude, then without any idea
of religion, we have true religion.”
“When this idea or this reality is missing in our practice, it
will naturally become like oatmeal. To purify or to empty our experience,
to observe things as it is, is to understand the world of emptiness
and to understand why Buddha left so many teachings. So, in the practice
of Shikantaza, we don’t seek for anything.”
This may be hard to conceive. You make some effort, but then you let
go of the effort you make. Make effort, let it go. Make effort, let
it go. By letting it go, you are accepting that you are letting go of
the goal of what you think you are going to gain. You also have to let
that go. Because when we seek for something, we expect something. When
something doesn’t happen, we become very disappointed.
“Then, we try to achieve something to further the idea of self.
That is what you are doing when you make some effort. But our effort
is to get rid of the self-centered activities. This is how to purify
our experience.”
Then he gives an example about himself and his wife. ”For instance,
if you are reading, studying very hard, your wife or husband may say,
‘Would you like to have a cup of coffee.’ ‘Oh, no, I’m
too busy. Don’t bother me.” When you are reading in this way,
I think you should be careful. You should be ready to say, ‘Yes,
that would be wonderful. Please bring me a cup of tea or coffee.’
Then you stop reading and have a cup of tea. After having a cup of tea,
you continue your reading.”
That’s not so good, because your mind is actually not in full function
(laughs). We think that’s the full function: “Go away, that’s
not important.” But your mind is actually not in full function.
It’s lop-sided. A part of your mind is working hard, but the other
part may not be working very much. (laughs) But you may be losing your
balance in your activity. If it is reading, it may be okay, but if you’re
making calligraphy and your mind is not in a state of emptiness, the
work will tell you, I am not in a state of emptiness. You’re not
in a state of emptiness so you should stop. If you ‘re a Zen student,
you should be ashamed of making such calligraphy. To make calligraphy
is to practice zazen, so if you are making calligraphy, if someone says,
“Would you like a cup of coffee and you answer, no, I am making
calligraphy, then your calligraphy will say to you, no, no, no.
This is his last paragraph, “I want you to understand what you
are doing at the Zen center. sometimes it may be all right to practice
Zazen, as a kind of exercise or training. To make your practice stronger
or make your breathing smoother and more natural. That may be included
in practice. But when we say Shikantaza, that is not what we mean. When
we receive a letter from the world of emptiness, then the practice of
Shikantaza is working. Thank you very much.”
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