Sweeping Out the Dust, Finding the Buddha

We’ve been sitting quite a bit over the last couple of days. I still remember the early stages of practice for me. I was in my early thirties, and boy, we all start with some idea of practice—some gaining idea of where it’s going to take us. Maybe we seek release. Maybe we want some sort of freedom from our stress, somewhere hallowed, right? Somewhere separate, where we think life won’t touch us.

I used to drive for hours to get to the Zen center. This was before Zoom. I had to drive an hour and fifteen minutes to get there, and maybe I’d get ten or fifteen minutes to see a teacher or present a koan. I had some challenges in my life at the time. My intractable karma even had a name. I won’t use that name here, but it pulled me into a constant loop of despair.

At some point, I decided, “You know what? I’m just going to let it all go.” I moved across the street from the Zen center. That made it easier to get up at five in the morning, make instant coffee, and stroll over to sit every day. It wasn’t bad. These weren’t bad ideas. It was a required part of my practice. I had to go through that phase.

I had to stir up the bottom of the pool. I had to see how the water became cloudy, to fix my gaze so I wasn’t looking past the cloudiness. At first, that’s where I thought it was all found. But then I began to appreciate the mud for what it is. I began to truly learn to work with it.

After a little while of practice, we begin to see that practice is just practice. It’s not that there’s no magic; it’s just that we stop looking elsewhere to see it. Then we see the magic. We see the arrow of our lived experience—the relative—meeting the arrow of the absolute. At one pinpoint. You can’t dwell in either place. If you’re misaligned by even a little bit, the suffering overwhelms you. You go on hoping to meet your life’s one true moment someday, but you never actually meet it.

There’s a case in the Shōyōroku, also known as the Book of Equanimity. It’s the sixty-eighth case, titled “Kasan’s Slashing Sword.”

A monk asked Kasan,
“What about when sweeping out the dust, you see the Buddha?”

Kasan said,
“Straightaway, slash with a sword.
If you don’t, the fisherman will live in a nest.”

The monk then went to Sekisō and asked,
“What about when sweeping out the dust, you see the Buddha?”

Sekisō said,
“He has no country. Where could he be met?”

The monk returned to Kasan and related Sekisō’s response. Kasan ascended the high seat and said,
“In setting up expedients, I am better than he.
But in the profound talk of the principle, he is a hundred paces ahead of me.”

Everyone starts the same, right? A question: “How about when sweeping out the dust, you see the Buddha?” When I sweep away the delusion in my own being, and wisdom manifests as a result, then what?

Kasan is asked this, and he essentially says, “Cut that out. Cut that out. Otherwise, a fisherman will live in a nest.” You’re getting things all confused. What’s the Buddha doing in your thoughts? How can a Buddha reside there anyway? Is that where he belongs? Is the Buddha sitting there like some idol? Is this some rarefied state? Or have you just conjured up a new label?

What good is it if you have images of Buddha in your mind? Maybe there’s some passing good in that you aren’t attached to the other elements of your karmic consciousness, but you can’t get stuck here. This is no place to go. For the Buddha to be the Buddha, the Buddha has to move. The Buddha has to dance. The Buddha has to heal. The Buddha has to be transcended as an idea. And when that happens, you are moved by it.

On the other hand, Sekisō says, “He has no country. Where could he be met?” In the Sandōkai, we all know the famous line: “To encounter the absolute is not yet enlightenment.” Where indeed can he be met? If you say all the dust has been swept, who swept it? Where’s the broom?

These are all just ideas. What’s left when you’ve gone past all your ideas? Emptiness? Absolute emptiness? This is pointing out the empty mirror, the dharmakaya. But you can’t dwell there either.

This is why Kasan and Sekisō each expressed one side of the coin. But you can’t go into the store and spend one side. It won’t work. In reality, we’d say they’re not separate. But we see them as very separate. And that separation is what makes us suffer so badly—the relative and the absolute.

Kasan’s talking about entering through practice. Sekisō’s talking about entering through realization. But here’s the thing: both must manifest, or neither one does.

This isn’t a minor point. You don’t even need to call it anything. The moment you do, you’ve probably lost it. Wherever you are, that’s the Dharma gate. Wherever you are, pay attention. In the gap between the observer and the observed, this moment and the next, good and bad—that’s where wisdom is found.

The moment you think you know it, you’ve lost it. Yet, you can see the vastness of your true nature. That’s important. Each of you has to bear witness to that. But at the same time, you have to move the hands and the feet that you call “mine.”

This is the way. This is where it meets. It meets at the point of these two arrows. Despair—how does it move you? Will you turn in and chase your tail, or will you actualize your realization and be the bridge over troubled waters?

A Teisho at One River Zen by Sensei Michael Brunner on Shōyōroku 68

Ultimately, you all are going to have to answer a question: What is this life? What am I going to do with it? Who am I? There are a million different ways to point to it. We can call it purpose. We can call it calling. We can call it connection. Whatever you call it, don’t squander it.

The door has been open for a long time. Everyone has a good reason why they can’t step through it. Everyone knows what’s on the other side and why they can’t get there. This is going to take you moving beyond knowing, moving to a place where your wildest dreams are manifest—not through grasping, but through wonder.