KANNON’S CROWN – ONE CONTINUOUS MISTAKE

This dharma talk was given by Kwong-Roshi at SMZC during a Shambhala Drala Retreat on October 28, 2006.

Introduction by Charity Martin:  Good morning.  It is a great pleasure and honor to introduce to you this morning Jakusho Kwong-roshi, founder and abbot of Sonoma Mountain Zen Center and Dharma-heir of Suzuki-roshi and a great friend and mentor to our community.  The word 'confluence' keeps coming to me.  Where two rivers come together as one.  In this moment, the coincidence of that.  In this moment and this place, right now.

Roshi: Such a wonderful introduction, undeserved, completely. This confluence of streams coming together.  Actually, it's so true that I don't doubt it anymore or I don't question it anymore.  And it's really a big relief.  Not to be discouraged when you step out and start engaging in the Dharma.  It's when you expect something that's when the difficulty happens.  We are human beings and are conditioned to expect something.  But little by little, if you can give up expectations, there is a wonderful thing right behind it.  In a way it's like hopelessness. The Kannon or Chenrezig statue standing right here in our zendo has eleven faces surrounding its head.  The front faces are pretty calm looking.  But as you follow the faces around her, there are three foreboding faces.  Actually, not three, but all of them are foreboding. Things that we may encounter within the path.  She wears all those faces, those horrible, those foreboding faces as a crown on her head.  She wears it as a crown because she knows that's it.  Each one of us actually will be forced to recognize it because each of us is a human being whether we practice or not.  When we die, get sick, we come to hopelessness.

So, the last three of the foreboding faces is devastation.  I used to be so strong.  I can do ten things.  I can do everything.  You know how that storyline goes.  Then things become spare and slow and you may say I can't do it.  I am sick or something.  I have cancer.  The last stage is hopelessness.  You may have some serious illness and search to understand your illness. And then there comes a point when no one can tell you anything anymore.  But the disease, or the imbalance lingers and you start giving up.  We have to give up.  And the idea is to kill a part of yourself.  That hopelessness doesn't mean resignation.  Doesn't mean the end.  But it does mean the end of this perpetual thinking machine.  Because it's reached an edge, a line.  You can't do anything.  You have to trust the process.  It may be like feeling you won't be the same as you were before.  But if you are anxious and worried it’s of no help.  It's easy for me to say this, but I know what it's like.  You have to give up. And when you give up: that's where it is. It's a whole new landscape.

I just came back from Iceland.  A whole new landscape.  Someone said, "This must be the end of the world".  When the astronauts first went to the moon, they took it to Iceland.  (Laughter from listeners) “Get used to this.”  The thing they didn't tell astronauts about was space.  The emptiness.  Some of them have experienced it.  But this emptiness or hopelessness doesn't sound like a good thing, yet it is really a very rich place to be.

We talk about two streams joining but actually, all streams join.  Every tradition, every human being, every creed.  But they don't know this.  This is why there is big turmoil in the world now.  I don't know but maybe it's getting so bad it forces people to face this fact.  It's got to be really bad, then it forces people to look inside.  It doesn't seem like anything is working outside.  And I think of all the new faces here and that's the best place to be, just where you are.

This big introduction, dharma heir, practicing nearly fifty years, all this undeserved credit.  I'm no bigger than you.  And some day, you keep on the path, and the most important thing is you continue your practice, in an individual way, but come together and practice.  That's really dynamite.  And to practice with another community from a different tradition, that's extra dynamite.  As Rinpoche said, when two traditions or many traditions come together something sparks! (laughter from everyone)  Because who is hosting whom?  Are we the guests or are we the hosts?  No! We're the hosts.  (laughter).

Actually I was with my teacher a very short period of time, just ten years.  That's not very long.  Then Roshi died in 1971.  And it left a big hole in what we were to do.  It threw each one of us back on ourselves.  What are we going to do?  I just had a very simple idea.  Maybe sit together with a group of people but I didn't know you had to have some kind of credentials to do that, so I was criticized.  I really was ignorant - I just didn't know.  I just thought, get together with a group of people to sit was the best way.  At the same time when I was maturing or becoming a man, I shaved my head.  And I had to become a teacher through the training.  Becoming a teacher is a very scary thing because I thought I couldn't make a mistake.  What kind of teacher is that, making one mistake after another, one continuous mistake.

So, after you’re sixty years old, you have made all the possible mistakes you can make.  When you are getting on the airplane and you are wheeling your luggage along, all the wheels come off your cart.  The handle falls off.  Everything that can happen has happened.  The Koreans say after sixty you have passed through the twelve astrological charts. You have passed through everything. Almost everything.  But still there is more. You can grow your hair long.  I did it once, and I looked like Elvis Presley. So I shaved it off.  Becoming a teacher means I couldn't be myself.  Not being myself, I couldn't make any mistakes.  So at Kobun Chino's funeral service I was the speaker and I was asked to offer incense.  My hand was shaking.  What kind of teacher is that when the hand shakes?  It could mean we are self-conscious, very afraid or have tremendous energy.  I'm shaking and they are making me shake.  And so I shake so much.  I didn't feel bad about it.  My hand is shaking.  There is the Zen saying, "You're sleeping".  What happens, is that you are having a dream.  When you are sleeping you are, in the dream, in a big building with many rooms and the person in the next room is pounding rice.  He's pounding rice in a rice pounder. As you are sleeping it affects your dreaming as you hear the boom, boom, boom.  It affects your dreaming so that you think you are dreaming something else.  It is affecting your dream like some fine music.  But when you wake up, you KNOW it's a rice pounder. This is Zen. When you wake up you KNOW it's a rice pounder.   During that shaking I said, "my hand is shaking".  Actually it still shakes.  I think it will always shake and I am happy about that.  So I said to a monk from Japan, "could you put this incense in for me?"  And he did.  So that was okay. 

There are a lot of times things have happened.  I had an idea after I was ordained that I would wear my robes wherever I went---as a monk---to see what it was like.  I had an idea, it was just an idea, but it caused havoc.  I walked down Chinatown.  The robes are long and black.  Everyone parted, like the Red Sea, for me.  Then, when I arrived at my mother-in-law's house she saw me and her mouth got paralyzed.  And then, as I was doing commercial artwork my butterfly sleeves would get caught in the elevator door.  I would look around to see if anyone was watching to see if I made a mistake.  Everything happens.  It's a wonderful teaching because it's naked.  You can see who you are and what you are.  But I still don't want to be that.  (Roshi laughs)  I want to be more perfect.  So, little by little, I became a teacher in some sense and I became myself.  The two are now together.and I am very happy.

Practice is synonymous with becoming awake.  You can't separate the two.  So think about what you read, and put it into practice.  Activate it.  See if it's true.  It's your life.  See if it's true.  You hear something, you practice it.  Practice is actually realization.  The word practice, in the ancient ideogram, is like an intersection where the horizontal meets the vertical.  And that's practice, right there where the relative meets the absolute.  Right there.  In the Kagyu lineage in the Zen lineage --- long years of sitting.  Be prepared.  Just long, long, difficult, wonderful Zazen.  But sometimes I hate, just hate zazen.  And I hate holding my water. And then when you find a good seat, something else happens.  But it keeps on going through.  And we must learn to stop shopping.  That's great.  What a relief.  You found something.  I can't say that we complete something but we stick with it.  Don't give it up.  Keep going straight no matter what happens.  No one can do it for you.

Teachers like Rinpoche and Suzuki-roshi became our examples. It was also pretty hard for them, too, you know. Roshi said to me, "What do you think about the Sangha?" I could hardly talk. I think I kind of just failed him all those years. I wanted to be a perfect student. When I came for interview - we only had an interview once a year. We were a small group. He (Roshi) would look out the window to see who was coming for Zazen. I was very self-conscious and terribly withdrawn. Lots of Zazen students are very withdrawn, not extroverted, by far. Maybe being extroverted is found more in the Rinzai tradition. But Soto students say, "How come people can't get together? People hardly talk to each other". So one day I had my appointment with Suzuki-roshi. Time came for the interview and the bell rang and I went in. He looked at me and probably tried to make no judgment about me and thought, oh no, it's this guy again. I just sat in front of him and I was trembling inside. I was afraid he could see my imperfection. Of course. I was trying to hide it. Then a long time passed. Roshi got out a piece of paper and a pen and asked, "Can you write your name?" I even had a hard time doing that. He knew my father was a Chinese doctor and he said, "Maybe in the evening you should have a glass of wine. Just to relax. Do you think your father would approve of that?"