Ballylagnan, County Clare
The following is the sermon given by Dr. Edward Sanshin Oberholtzer at the Saturday morning regular meeting of the Sky Moon Zen Sangha on April 20, 2024.
I am convinced that one of the gateway drugs that led me in the direction of Zen practice was the PBS series of Japanese films introduced by Edward O. Reischauer and broadcast on Boston station WGBH in the mid-1970s. There is. Films by Ozu and Ichikawa were featured, including that Buddhist classic The Burmese Harp, and of course many of the films were directed by Akira Kurasawa. His samurai films Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Rashomon, Sanjuro, and Yojimbo received a lot of attention. I was especially fascinated by the character played by Toshiro Rokufumi. In the opening credits of Yojimbo, Mukhuni is seen walking down a dusty road to a place where the road forks. He pondered this for a moment, then reached out his hand and picked up his stick and threw it into the air until it stopped in one of his two paths. The samurai shrugged his shoulders, and as I wandered off in that direction, my mind returned to the couplet.
The great road is not difficult
For those who don’t choose
Sengkang, the legendary third founder of Chinese Zen, is said to have written these words, which are the opening lines of the poem we know as “Trust in Mind,” and at that moment he took on the character of Mukhuni. It may have been talking to you. Buddhism, the classical form of Indian Buddhism, gives those of us who tend to follow maps the Eightfold Path, a road map with steps and stations. The Great Road is rather an invitation to a long and dusty road. Both have travelers, and both are invitations to seekers of dharma.
Little is known about Sengkang. The story of enlightenment told by our ancestor Tsunekin Keizan in his collection Denkoroku appears to be a pale echo of the story of enlightenment of Keike, Sengan’s direct ancestor, and is similar to Keike’s. He replaced Senkan’s leprosy in place of his severed arm, and Senkan’s sin in place of Keike’s heart. Both are resolved by their very unknowability. Little is known about Sengcan other than his collection of poems, “Trust in Mind,” which was heavily influenced by Taoism and consists of his 146 lines in couplets, which, as the poem suggests, urge us to Masu.
When you put your preferences aside, the path rises clear and unconcealed.
However, even the slightest difference made earth and heaven far apart.
If you want to see the truth clearly, throw away all opinions for and against.
But, in my opinion, perhaps it is the words of Yogi Berra, worthy of the New York Yankees, that provide the best and most concise summary of this poem: “When you come to a fork in the road, go for it.” Words that neatly follow Mukhuni’s character.
Indeed, as we hear in the next titled koan, Sengkang and Yogi Berra both continued to speak through their grandmother’s Zen master, Chao Shu. Zhaozhou rural bumpkin, Blue Cliff Records case 57
A monk asked Zhaozhou. He said, “The supreme path is not difficult. It’s just that you don’t like to choose.” What do you mean by not choosing?
Zhaozhou said, “I am alone and honored both above and below heaven.”
“Isn’t that still a selection?” When the monk replied, Zhaozhou said:
“You country boy! What choice do you have?” The monk said nothing.
A fork in the road, a stick thrown in the air, a weary samurai trudging along a country road alone towards a troubled and unknown village, and yet again we meet another curious man. I heard from a monk. Case 58: Zhaozhou’s innocence
A monk asked Zhaozhou. “You said, “The highest path is not difficult.” It’s just that you don’t like choosing.” Isn’t that the hole we’ve fallen into?”
Zhaozhou said, “Someone once asked me about it. For the next five years, I couldn’t apologize.”
Koun Yamada once asked Anne Aitken what she thought about death. “When the bus stops, I get on,” she said. Standing at the bus stop, the hissing of the bus’s brakes, the sound of the doors sliding open, the hooded bus driver, rather than taking a ferry across the River Styx, a simple, almost mundane thing that lasts forever I heard a hand holding out a vehicle. , the old ladies don’t have to think about anything, not even a stick thrown in the air. She just gets on the bus, pays the fare and takes her seat. And on the side of that dusty road, the bus passed a dusty, grizzled samurai and a series of old Burmese Shave signs displaying yet another question from yet another monk.
Case 59: Zhaozhou’s simple method
A monk asked Zhaozhou: It’s just that they don’t like making choices. ” If there is a word, it is to choose. So how can we teach others? ”
Zhaozhou said, “Why don’t you complete the estimate?”
“I just want to know about this,” said the monk.
“Just this: “The supreme path is not difficult. It’s just that you don’t like to choose,” Zhaozhou replied.
One wonders, did the samurai ever regret taking the stick trail to that tense Japanese town? Does Anne Aitken regret her bus destination? I’m afraid not. I don’t think they had any regrets in their hearts. But here the bus, traveling down the road, passes first a samurai, then an ancient but more recent poet, a redneck, though perhaps born in San Francisco, who himself, moving down the road, passes another I’m wondering about such things.
The path not taken
By Robert Frost, of course
Two roads diverge in the yellow forest,
And sorry I couldn’t travel to both.
And be a traveler, for a long time I stood
And I looked down as far as I could.
To a bend in the undergrowth.
Then the other equally received it as fair,
And you probably have a better argument.
I wanted to wear it because it looked grassy…
Although it passes through there
I was actually wearing them the same way,
And that morning they both lay the same way
Not a single leaf turned black.
Oh, I saved the first one for another day!
Still, I know that the road follows the road,
I wondered if I should come back.
I say that with a sigh
It’s been around for ages somewhere, and therefore:
Two roads diverged in the forest, and I…
I rode on the side where not many people were passing.
And that made a big difference.
Probably a good choice, but a choice nonetheless.
Frost may not be the only one, as the poet Issa Kobayashi writes:
this world of dew
This world of dew is exactly…
And yet…
And yet…
Whether we choose to or not, we step out onto the dusty path and put one foot in front of the other. Sengkang encourages us along the way. The white-haired samurai looks back at us as we travel, and An Aicheng passes us by waving from the bus.Her grandmother Zhaozhou concludes: It’s just that they don’t like making choices. ”
