Dharma Talks by Zen Master Senshin
November 2013
On the Dharma Talk
Let’s look at the purpose of a dharma talk in the middle of a silent retreat. What is this talk all about? How can we utilise this talk to go to deeper into our training? How does our practice help others and ourselves? A dharma talk is an offering to people who are seeking truth and to give direction to those who have a deep question about who they are. Discovering and listening to that question is our jewel – a diamond within. The work of bowing, sitting, chanting and listening to a talk is part of an endless polishing of our experience until one’s life becomes clear and the diamond sparkles. Everyone has a concept of compassion and wisdom. Our practice is to cut through those concepts and become the living actuality of them. In daily life, we often use explanations to discuss ideas of wisdom and compassion. But our training involves going beyond concepts, of any kind, to taste truth in all phenomena – then explanations are not necessary.
I want to encourage you today, while you are listening to this talk, not to get tangled up in the words but instead to allow your ears to do their job. As you listen, feel the vibration of your breath moving through your body, and the ambient sounds in and around the dharma room flowing through you.
Most importantly, do not get caught up in what you think is the content of this talk. Instead, let the words come and go. Everything comes and goes.
There is no meaning in the content of this talk. A purpose of a dharma talk is to encourage you to return to the immediacy of this moment – sound of rain falling, hitting the tin roof.
Your efforts release a clear and pure direction that resolves, in part, into a question: Can you see it? Can you feel it?
Each person has a deep question, such as: What am I? Regardless of the words used, each person has a pulsing enquiry that is fundamental to humanity.
As you settle into your meditation, allow your question to find you. When you sense the question’s presence, sit with it, feel it, breathe it in, and breathe it out. As the question breaks through into your awareness, a natural expression of your essential self is freed. Why look outside your own experience to find out who you truly are? Why depend on others to mirror your life? Already your life is complete: What is that?
Through confusion, fear and frustration we frequently misplace vital questions such as these. Once a question is misplaced then it needs to be found thereby stimulating a cycle of dualistic thought.
By not investing in this dualistic cycle, we can feel these important questions and sense an immediate response – all of which continually varies according to each moment. Right now each person would have different responses as these quiet, lingering questions arise from an inexpressible experience of oneness with all beings.
So we use a dharma talk, we use the sound of rain, the breath, a question – we use each and everything available to us to clarify our mind thereby unifying our experience. In so doing, we go beyond what we think is real or unreal; what we think is right or wrong; and touch that which is universally shared. A talk helps each of us to stay focused on what is most important – your life direction as a human being – regardless of your profession or what suburb you live in; whether you are female or male; whether your skin is pink, purple or green. In a spiritual sense none of that matters. What matters is how you integrate your training and use your humanity for the benefit of all beings. Are you generous and open in relationships? Are you sincere and honest with your family members? Our training has no relevance unless it manifests in each thing we think, do and say.
Let’s consider a koan from the Mumonkan* Case # 46 titled Voice of Raindrops. Even though many traditional koans used at the Queensland Zen Centre are hundreds or thousands of years old, they are based in human experience. Sometimes we think “what relevance does this koan have in my life now?” When you first start a new koan you need to apply yourself by memorizing it. Once memorized, hold your concentration on the koan at the bottom of the out breath, gently teasing out tendrils of truth. As you continue to work on a koan, the koan begins to work on you. For example, you might be sitting on a train, chatting with a friend, when suddenly the koan is just there, demanding your full attention! Many students make a mistake believing: I am working on this koan, which tends to insert a dualistic perspective into the koan and intellectualizes your process of inquiry. However, when a koan is fully understood, it continually works on you by bringing your experience back to the bottom of the out breath – back to this moment.
So, the story of A Voice of the Raindrops is this: a master asked his student, “What is the noise outside?” The student replied, “That is the voice of the raindrops.” The master retorted, “People’s thinking is topsy-turvy. Deluded by their own selves, they pursue things.” Then the student demanded, “What about yourself?” The master responded, “I was near it but I am not deluded.” The student pursued, “What do you mean by ‘near it but not deluded’?” The master replied, “To say it in a sphere of realization may be easy, but to say it in the sphere of transcendence is difficult.”
After the master asked about the noise outside, the student replied that it was the voice of the raindrops. So here is the master saying, in part, extraneous thinking can make people say and do crazy things. People chase after what they want and try to hold onto it: a raindrop, a snowflake, or a concept that one does not even know is being held onto. According to the Diamond Sutra** all phenomena are fleeting, like “a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”
But who is it that is holding on? The student’s answer wasn’t good or bad, merely conceptual. Before any conscious thought arises, how would you answer this question? The master perceived the conceptuality of his student’s answer, which is why he responded by not encouraging extraneous thought or suppressing it.
Thinking occurs automatically – you don’t need to feel intellectually depraved as you sit this retreat! In a deeper sense, Zen activity originally has no meaning. As dualistic thinking comes and goes, like a mosquito periodically buzzing by, extraneous thought can draw our attention away from the simplicity of mosquitos’ buzzing or rain pinging on a tin roof. How is it possible to be continually immersed in experiences, such as, mosquitos’ buzzing and raindrops pinging while thinking vague, extraneous thoughts? Who is it that feels a mosquito as it brushes past your nose? Who is that hears rain pinging on a roof? Is it possible to distinguish the countless experiences that arise through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind from the one who is experiencing them? If we hold onto any ideas of the voice of raindrops, we separate ourselves from an immediate experience of ping, ping, ping.
Your essential mind already understands there is nothing missing – that there is no thing to be gained and no thing to be lost. There is no one who is a better student than another and no one more knowledgeable than another. Fundamentally, one cannot be a better or worse person than someone else. And yet we continually distance those around us through our judgment of self and other. And even though we may have glimpsed our pure and clear mind, we continue to feel anxiety about whether we’ve done some thing right or wrong. We tend to ignore our awareness of: Who is it that is born? Who is it that will die? Through the process of enquiry, your essential mind expands – deepening and widening, merging with all things – as all phenomena merge with and through you. As your awareness deepens, separation between self and other dissipates. But do not stop and congratulate yourself on having had a glimpse of oneness. How do your use your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind, with a clear and generous heart?
No matter where you are or what you are doing, do not trust in your idea of compassion or wisdom. Rather rely on the clarity of your experiences and actualize them. To see clearly through your concepts is compassion. To not be pulled and pushed around by extraneous thoughts is wisdom. In working towards fulfilling your great vow, do not hold anything. The voice of raindrops is right here, right now. Hence, the true meaning of this dharma talk: ping, ping, ping.
* Two Zen Classics: The Gateless Gate and the Blue Cliff Records (2005). Translated by K. Sekida. Shambala Press: Boston.
** The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui-Neng (1990). Translated by A.F. Price & W. Mou-Lam. Shambala Press: Boston.
Special thanks to Bul Shim for transcribing this talk, and to Gaye Ho for the accompanying photo.