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Teachings of Bodhidharma #3 | Otter.ai

Teachings of Bodhidharma #3

John Pulleyn49min

Dhara Kowal

00:04

This is the third day of this. September, October, 20, 24/7, day so sheen,

Dhara Kowal

00:22

and we'll continue with Guo Guz, the essence of chan, A Guide to Life and practice according to the teachings of Bodhidharma.

Dhara Kowal

00:39

Previously, I I read from his his commentary on a couple of the more legendary stories about Bodhidharma, which are part of the books introduction, and the remainder of the text is Guo Gus translation and commentary on a text that is attributed to Bodhidharma. It's titled two entries and four practices, and it's considered to be the oldest known text of the Zen school Guo Gu translated it from Chinese, and in its entirety, it's About six paragraphs long, and I'll be reading bits of it at a time, along with some of Guo Gus commentary.

Dhara Kowal

01:54

Bodhidharma starts with introducing what he calls the first way of entry,

Unknown Speaker

02:06

which is entry through principle

Dhara Kowal

02:12

and by entry. It's what we must do, the door we must open in order to realize our true nature. And entry through principle is covered in just one paragraph, while the rest of the text is entry through practice, in which he outlines four practices before I read any of it from the start, I want to mention the way he distinguishes between principle and practice. Entry. Through practice in the context of this text, goes beyond doing Zazen. It includes bringing a mind of stable awareness into the life we're living, in other words, off the map, out of the Zendo, at work, at home, in one's one's family, one's community, and it covers things like morality, as in not causing harm, being responsive to others, not acting out of self interest, and also not defiling the three treasures,

Dhara Kowal

04:08

entry through practice also involves adapting to changing conditions and not clinging to anything, not seeking anything. So in a nutshell, it's acting in the world in a way that is in accord with our true nature and now entry through principle, that word principle could be misleading if we take it at face value in the conventional sense it might sound like it has to do with the. Beliefs and ideals holding on to them. But actually, entry by principle

Unknown Speaker

05:15

is about faith,

Dhara Kowal

05:18

faith in the teaching and and also actualizing the teaching through zazen, and that's what we'll focus on entry by principle and

Dhara Kowal

05:47

Bodhidharma says, and again, this is Guo Gus translation, entering Through principle means that one awakens to the essence by means of the teaching one has the profound conviction that all beings are identical In their true nature. Now

Dhara Kowal

06:21

let's look at this line and gogus commentary on it. I'll read it again. First entry, through principle means that one awakens to the essence. By means of the teaching, one has the profound conviction that all beings are identical in their nature, their true nature. And Guo Gu says to awaken to the essence by means of the teaching is dependent on first, whether or not one can truly integrate the teaching into one's own being and one's own life. Second, one must not even attach to the teachings they are provisional, temporary expedient means, which is like seeing the moon by following the finger that's pointing To the Moon, the teachings themselves, or the finger are not the ultimate truth we must practice without chasing after enlightenment if we genuinely devote our life to being Free from the trappings of vexations and at the same time devote ourselves to helping others, then it is possible for us To become enlightened.

Dhara Kowal

08:19

So the teachings they give us direction. They point us in the direction of living a more authentic life, realizing our authentic self,

Unknown Speaker

08:42

which is to say,

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08:44

simply being one with things as they are. But it's not enough to believe in our true nature. We need to actualize it, we need to do the practice and do it without clinging to the teaching, not dwelling in words or ideas about it, not thinking and reflecting on what is said, and that includes Tasos.

Dhara Kowal

09:33

The best way to actualize the teaching to embody it, is to receive it, to hear it and let it go, return to the breath, return to move.

Unknown Speaker

10:01

To this

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10:07

Dhara Kowal

10:18

and as Guo Gu says, not clinging to the teaching also means not grasping at chasing After awakening.

Dhara Kowal

10:37

In this text, Bodhidharma cites a line from a sutra, and this is the line,

Unknown Speaker

10:48

to seek is to suffer.

Dhara Kowal

10:53

To not seek is bliss. So there's, there's a difference between trusting and putting our faith in our true nature and clinging to it, holding on to it as if it's an object, as if it's something outside of who we already are, something that we have to get, it's like treating it like an item we want to put on our resume or to do list. I

Dhara Kowal

11:44

for my own experience, this kind of grasping, and I know it well, can happen as a sort of undercurrent or Undertow

Unknown Speaker

12:09

to your practice.

Dhara Kowal

12:12

So in the process of continuously trying, continuously redirecting your attention to your practice. At the same time, there can be this recurring narrative going on or feeling

Dhara Kowal

12:42

that No, I'm not okay with things as they are. This sucks. I want it to be different. I want it to be like it was before, like it was the last round, or the last hasheen, or whatever moment in the past. I want to I want to get back to that. And so we convince ourselves it is habitual, and we, in turn, we can convince ourselves that practice has to feel good. If it doesn't feel good, then I'm not working hard enough, or it's just not effective, or I can't do it.

Dhara Kowal

13:30

And we can also find ourselves projecting these high expectations as if there's some kind of measure stick onto other people. Nachu is grasping Guo. Gu tells a story about this from his time as a monastic when he was training under Master Sheng yen.

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He says,

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14:03

When I was a monk in the monastery, I had a Dharma brother who practiced really hard, studying the scriptures and meditating every day, even in his free time. He became irritated whenever he observed that others were chatting and joking around, not practicing as hard as he was. So yeah, for anyone who has spent any time in residential Zen training, or, I suppose, a monastic program where you're living, working, practicing on a schedule in close proximity with others. This is, this is a classic. Example of the drama that can play out. Guo Gu says one may have a romantic notion that monks live rather solemnly, always practicing and having no fun, but this is not so in their free time, monks note know how to have fun. In their free time, monks know how to have fun. One day when my dharma brothers and I were joking around, this serious monk came by and said, you should be practicing. Don't you know that he talked on and on about emptiness and impermanence, and told us that we should not be wasting our precious time. We looked at him as if to say, You can't be serious. We went back to our joking, and he went back to studying the scriptures. The point of this story is that when we think something is right or true. We often see at the same time everyone else's faults, and it goes in both directions. Notions of right and wrong, true and false. How often do we hold not only ourselves up to some benchmark,

Unknown Speaker

16:51

but also others?

Dhara Kowal

16:53

And sometimes we hold others to a higher benchmark than ourselves? So and this is a habit. It's a habit, habit pattern that can show up in sashin, just like any habit pattern in our life, it can be amplified in sashin Because we can't really escape from it. We have to face it. We notice it, we

Unknown Speaker

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see it.

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17:31

So when we get annoyed by someone else's behavior, say, maybe the person sitting next to you, accusing them of this or that. Implicitly, what we're doing is taking pride in our own behavior, and likewise, if we lavish praise on someone else, making them out to be holier than thou. We're telling ourselves that we don't measure up in comparison to them.

Dhara Kowal

18:27

And when we allow ourselves to fixate on comparisons, and that's the key word, fixate, we're going to have thoughts. We're going to make comparisons. But fixating on it is a choice.

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When we fixate We

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19:04

on our mellow dramas that we conjure up. We're stuck in duality,

Dhara Kowal

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but not all's loss. All we got to do is notice it and return to our practice. That's all we got to do.

Speaker 1

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Keep it clean. Notice return. Just that you.

Dhara Kowal

20:00

Moving along, here's the next line from Bodhidharma about entry by principle. He says it is only due to the covering of adventitious dust and deluded thinking that this true nature is not revealed. It is only due to the covering of adventitious dust and diluted thinking that this true nature is not revealed. Adventitious means accidental, happenstance.

Unknown Speaker

20:52

Dust happens just as shit happens.

Dhara Kowal

21:00

Simply the stuff that passes through the mind, the conditions that we experience, and it's, it's a byproduct of being human, that it's, it's, it's part of the development of being human to acquire dust from, and we do that from infancy into adulthood, where we're shaped by our family,

Unknown Speaker

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our peers,

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our education system,

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the groups of people we interact with, the media that we're exposed to. So all the information and messages that we receive across a lifetime, it's a lot of dust and and it's it's part of the process of acquiring a sense of self.

Dhara Kowal

22:35

But what's maybe less obvious to us is that that we refer to ourself, as me, as an individual, I, is Only distinguishable. It's only possible to conceive in relationship to others,

Dhara Kowal

23:10

a self can't exist without an other, and the same goes for other animate things and also inanimate things.

Dhara Kowal

23:28

You know, we think that, and we have words for

Speaker 1

23:34

objects like pumpkins and teacups, cushions, and so forth,

Dhara Kowal

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doorknobs, toilet paper, you name it. We think of all of these things as unique and separate, and each has their own name that's only one side of the coin. It's not the whole of it.

Dhara Kowal

24:17

Here's what Guo Gu says about dust and delusion.

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He says dust has the connotation of something extra, like the dust that covers a mirror, it is not part of the mirror. Similarly, the dust, like vexations or aversions, are not part of the nature. Mind, even though our mirror mind is covered, it has never lost the ability to reflect, to illuminate our deluded thinking falsely assumes that things are permanent, separate and independent. This false assumption temporarily covers up our true nature, and as a result, we make mistakes in judgment and cause problems for others and ourselves. And then he he gives an example of an incident he he experienced on a car trip. He says, I was in a car with a friend when we stopped to rest up ahead, my friend saw what looked like a pile of dog poop on the side of the road. She became annoyed and began to complain about dog owners who don't clean up after their pets being righteous and environmentally conscious, she started to walk toward the pile with the intention of cleaning it up like a good Buddhist, all The while I was sitting in the car, meditating calmly, listening to her complain, and then watching her walk away. When she came upon the pile, she turned toward me and waved with a smile, calling out, it's just a bunch of pine cones.

Dhara Kowal

27:07

It's so amazing how the mind can play tricks on us.

Dhara Kowal

27:21

On the one hand, the default mode network, as it's called

Unknown Speaker

27:27

in science,

Dhara Kowal

27:30

which is basically the term for thought patterns, habits of mind, filters, okay? Yes, even though that comes in handy for us in many situations. For one, it helps us to identify potential dangers, keeps us safe, keeps us from running into the middle of traffic

Dhara Kowal

28:10

or picking up a boiling pot of water without a pot holder and yeah, that default mode is useful. On the other hand, though, it can become a problem when we let it run on autopilot. So and when we do that, we're not seeing what's right in front of us. We're not looking directly. We're seeing a thought and

Dhara Kowal

29:13

now here's the last part of what Bodhidharma says about entering through principle and it gets to the crux of the matter. And again, this is grogus translation. Bodhidharma says, If one relinquishes delusion and returns to the true, abides in stillness and engages in wall like contemplation, where the self and other are absent and the ordinary and the holy. Are equal, then, without any wavering whatsoever, and without chasing after the written teachings, one is in Sublime accordance with the principle, this is the state free from discrimination, in utter quiescence and without any effort. This is called entrance by principle,

Dhara Kowal

30:49

abiding in stillness, wall like contemplation and

Unknown Speaker

31:05

Shin

Dhara Kowal

31:09

Zazen. Zazen itself, turning inward, seeing what's what's here,

Dhara Kowal

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not looking for anything, not discriminating between this And that,

Unknown Speaker

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but just just looking

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and Seeing it all with equal mind and

Dhara Kowal

32:07

Guo Gu then says, and this is part of his commentary, an analogy is the world of Play Doh, one can mold the dough. One can mold the dough into a person, a cow, a table, or anything that one wants. But no matter what shape the Play Doh takes the nature of play. Doh does not change the nature of emptiness is like this. It is because of emptiness that there can be all sorts of forms and appearances. Some of these can be quite pleasant, while others very scary. But no matter what the forms and appearances are, their nature is the same. We all share the same true nature and

Dhara Kowal

33:31

from the very beginning, Play Doh and

Dhara Kowal

33:44

and we're all capable of realizing this for ourselves, because we Are it.

Dhara Kowal

33:57

Bodhidharma said, all we need to do is return to the true return to the true

Unknown Speaker

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return to this.

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34:17

Whatever the conditions are you

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just this.

Dhara Kowal

34:37

And then Guo Gu says, speaking from the perspective of principle, a huge, dangerous tsunami wave and a limpid, peaceful pond have the same nature and.

Unknown Speaker

35:00

Wetness.

Dhara Kowal

35:03

We may sit one day with a lot of wandering thoughts and think it's bad and we don't like it. At another time, as we become more skilled, we get into a nice, comfortable, blissful zone, which we think is good, but the scattered mind and the blissful mind have the same equal nature of wetness in meditation, whether there is thought or no thought, it does not affect our mind's nature of clarity and openness. Again, whether there is thought, including a tsunami of them or no thought, it does not affect our mind's nature of clarity and openness because of our self, cherishing notions of me and mine, this versus that. We compartmentalize states of mine and experiences as good and bad. We fail to see our true nature and what is actually happening in

Unknown Speaker

36:53

Dhara Kowal

36:55

to be clear, it's not a problem that we have thoughts. It's not a problem that we have a sense of right and wrong, good and bad on a day to day basis. Having a moral compass helps us to live in harmony

Unknown Speaker

37:16

with others,

Dhara Kowal

37:20

keeps us from going off the rails. It's only a problem if we cling, in a stubborn way

Dhara Kowal

37:36

to how we think things should be in service to what we want, what will benefit us, what will pacify our mind, wasting So much time and energy and projecting it onto others.

Unknown Speaker

38:08

This is basic Dukkha. It

Dhara Kowal

38:14

always leaves us unsatisfied and

Dhara Kowal

38:27

and then Guo Gu says to be in accordance with the principle or with the teaching, is to fully recognize our intrinsic freedom, which cannot be ensnared by all the constructs, narratives and ideas we create about ourselves in the world. The relationship between these constructs and the nature of mind is like the relationship between the space, the space inside a chan Hall, and the furniture inside it does the furniture, no matter how dirty or clean, messy or orderly, affect the nature of the space. No similarly, all of us are originally enlightened. That is the true meaning of wall like contemplation. I even if we're a total mess, a hot mess, we're still enlightened. That's our original nature. We can look at this Sunday. Here in the Sunda, we have the altar. We have tons.

Unknown Speaker

40:07

We have the walls,

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40:10

the ceiling fans,

Unknown Speaker

40:13

the wood floor, the carpet,

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40:21

and if you're you're sitting at home, perhaps you're surrounded by

Speaker 1

40:29

maybe a bed, a desk, a dresser, a couch,

Dhara Kowal

40:37

a picture on the wall, a

Dhara Kowal

40:44

things might look very neat and tidy or not. There might be a bunch of clutter,

Dhara Kowal

40:59

even in this Zendo on the on the surface, it looks very clean and tidy, but if you Look closely, you might find

Unknown Speaker

41:11

cobwebs, dust,

Dhara Kowal

41:18

stink bugs and

Unknown Speaker

41:23

and It's okay,

Dhara Kowal

41:26

it's not a problem. It's all mind. I

Dhara Kowal

42:08

as Guo Gu continues, he talks about what it really means to do Zazen.

Unknown Speaker

42:21

He says,

Dhara Kowal

42:23

Some people think that wall like contemplation, simply means to sit facing the wall, remaining still and not moving during meditation. But Bodhidharma is pointing to something more subtle than this. A wall has many functions, but it makes no judgments based on its own preference. When we hang beautiful paintings on a wall, it never says, I do not want ugly paintings on me. I only want beautiful ones.

Speaker 1

43:19

I a wall

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43:24

can divide up a room and make it more livable. It can also confine criminals in a jail. We can lean on a wall when we're tired, and we can decorate it to make it pretty.

Dhara Kowal

43:55

Can also drill holes in it,

Unknown Speaker

44:02

in all these instances,

Dhara Kowal

44:07

the wall has numerous functions, and its meaning for the user depends on its use. There are no self referential attachments. Nothing we experience is self referential. Contrary to what our ego says, We're not the center of the action. The world does not revolve around me. What I want, what I think, is right, I. And what we're cultivating through Zazen is basic awareness, basic awareness of life, just as it is, as it unfolds, moment by moment, constantly changing and minus, minus our opinions about it, I

Dhara Kowal

45:46

to be aware

Unknown Speaker

45:49

of space

Dhara Kowal

45:56

of bodies and

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46:06

of sensations,

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sounds,

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colors smells,

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textures and

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46:45

phenomena of all kinds,

Dhara Kowal

46:53

without the labels, without the sidebar commentary and just dropping that, dropping all of it, and just experiencing and opening up

Unknown Speaker

47:21

To this right here,

Dhara Kowal

47:30

with equal mind and

Dhara Kowal

47:55

at This point in sashin, the dust of the mind has much less hold

Unknown Speaker

48:07

on us.

Dhara Kowal

48:15

That's not to say we don't notice it, or that we no longer get caught up in it. But it's much, much, much lighter,

Dhara Kowal

48:36

and even if it doesn't feel like that right now, even if it feels like you're in a dust storm this moment or some other moment at any point in sacheen, really, even if you think you're thoroughly stuck in thoughts,

Unknown Speaker

49:11

remember that it's just dust.

Dhara Kowal

49:21

It has no substance, and it's weightless and

Dhara Kowal

49:47

we'll stop here and recite the four vows i.

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