there’s nothing that is not “it”

[AUDIO AND TEXT]

Everybody is talking about the presidential election, trying to process what happened and even starting to cast blame on one party or the other, one group or the other, one person or the other. That’s happening, but I don’t want to play that game tonight. Tonight, I want to seat us in our roots. I want us to embrace our primary focus, our practice. Tonight, I want us to live in our True Nature, our Essential Nature – the True Nature of the Universe and everything that it is.

To that end, I want us to consider a verse that we read together during sesshin: “On Zen.” You can find this verse in the Mercy Center East-West prayer booklet. If you don’t have this booklet, not to worry. I’ll share the text with you in the Zoom window when we get to that point. Some of you may recall, I gave a talk about this verse back in 2022; you can find that earlier talk on the Empty Cloud West website. But I’m bringing it up again because it may help us work our way through our feelings about … well, certain current events.

“On Zen” is supposedly the work of the Japanese Zen Master Nanpo Jomyo (1235 – 1308). He was named National Teacher sometime after his death. (You can find several references to Jomyo on the web; search on “Daio Kokushi,’ which means Daio, National teacher. See, for example, this URL: https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/daio-kokushi.html) Here’s the text, as translated by D. T. Suzuki:

There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth;
Indeed, it has no form, much less a name;
Eyes fail to see it;
It has no voice for ears to detect;
To call it Mind or Buddha violates its nature,
For it then becomes like a visionary flower in the air;
It is not Mind, nor Buddha;
Absolutely quiet, and yet illuminating in a mysterious way,
It allows itself to be perceived only by the clear-eyed.

It is Dharma truly beyond form and sound;
It is Tao having nothing to do with words.
Wishing to entice the blind,
The Buddha has playfully let words escape his golden mouth;
Heaven and earth are ever since filled with entangling briars.

O my good worthy friends gathered here,
If you desire to listen to the thunderous voice of the Dharma,
Exhaust your words, empty your thoughts,
For then you may come to recognize this One Essence.

We’ll look at just a few lines from this remarkable verse. It starts:

There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth;
Indeed, it has no form, much less a name;

These lines remind us that the world we perceive with our senses and in our bodily experience is a manifestation of a formless, timeless reality – something beyond our ability to conceive and name. So, all the distress or even joy that we feel today is of our own making; it’s not the true nature of things. And if we’ve made, or concocted, that distress, we can determine what to do with it.

Here’s another segment:

Wishing to entice the blind,
The Buddha has playfully let words escape his golden mouth;
Heaven and earth are ever since filled with entangling briars.

Entangling briars! We’ve seen a lot of those in recent times, haven’t we? In fact, we’ve been getting caught up in these briars since we’ve been here, as the human species. Sometimes they bring the kind of distress many of us are feeling right now. Other times, they bring us more positive emotions. But the point is, the briars are just that: words. And again, we can determine what to do with them.

Jomyo closes his verse with a clear instruction about what we can do with all this:

I hear him advising us to stop talking and thinking so much about stuff. Just stop obsessing. Now, I don’t think (there’s that word again – we can’t escape; it’s why we have brains and minds, after all) – I don’t think he’s saying we should go about like silent beings, like people who don’t exercise their God-given minds and intellects. And I don’t think he’s advising apathy or even complacency. No. We still have stuff to do, in and with our precious lives. I think he’s cautioning us against being attached to whatever it is we say or think. Don’t get ourselves entangled in those pesky briars.

We can still act in a way that advances harmony – the “One Essence” I think he’s talking about. And according to the teachings of all the major religious and spiritual traditions, harmony is what we’re after; it’s our natural state. And as active Zen practitioners, that’s the ground of our practice. Because after all, we’ve recognized, intuitively – before we ever came to Zen – this truth:

There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth;
Indeed, it has no form, much less a name;

A phrase came to me recently. It’s a phrase I’ve found myself repeating to myself (and unfortunately, to anyone within earshot) when I find myself getting buried deep in the well of what’s happening.

There’s nothing that is not “It.”

For me, this puts everything that is in perspective. “It” is what Jomyo was referring to in his opening two lines and in his closing line. Our teacher, Fr. Greg, used to say what sounds to me like the same thing this way:

If it excludes anything, it’s not Zen. (Or, it’s not Real).

In really embracing these expressions-in-words of what Jomyo called “this One Essence,” I think we can all find a way to accommodate ourselves to whatever is happening in this world of form. It’s all of a piece, so why beat ourselves – or anybody else – up over how it looks or feels to us. We just do whatever it is we naturally do to be true to ourselves, to advance harmony – to express our True Nature, our Essential Nature, through our words and actions. At least, this is how it all looks to me. So, that’s all I have to say tonight. Thanks for listening.

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