Teisho: On Not Slurping Dregs

I take refuge in Buddha -- the awakened nature of every being. I take refuge in dharma -- the path of understanding and love. I take refuge in sangha – the community that leaves in harmony and awareness.

In celebration of the Buddhist holiday Vesak I am today offering a Teisho – the Japanese word for a Zen talk. It’s traditional for a Teisho to begin by reciting the three refuges, and then to read a case – a koan from the tradition – to serve as the springboard for the talk.

The American Zen master Reb Anderson wrote an essay, “Guidance in Shikantaza.” Shikantaza translates as “just sitting” – no object, no goal, no particular focus. It’s a main approach to meditation in Zen. Shikantaza practice, Anderson writes,

“is not merely stillness; it is complete presence in stillness. There is not the slightest meddling. It is physical and mental non-interfering. It is thorough intimacy with whatever is happening.... [In this way, zazen] opens the door to a full understanding of how self and other dependently co-produce one another.”

Anderson concludes this essay, “We can’t do it by ourselves, and nobody else can do it for us.” Nobody else can do it for us: we must, each of us, take up the task. AND we can’t do it by ourselves: We have to do it together. It takes a village to awaken a being.

So, with that prelude: Here’s the case – the koan. It appears as case number 11 in the Blue Cliff Record, which is 100 cases compiled by Xuedou in the 11th century.

Huangbo addressed the assembly and said, "You are all slurpers of dregs. If you go on studying Zen like that, where will you have Today? Do you know that in all the land of China there is no Zen teacher?"
Then a monk came forward and said, "But surely there are those who teach disciples and preside over the assemblies. What about that?"
Huangbo said, "I do not say that there is no Zen, but that there is no Zen teacher."

That’s the case – the koan – for us to look at.

Huangbo was a 9th-century Chinese Zen teacher and abbot of a monastery. Huangbo says there’s no Zen teacher, but there is Zen. No Zen teacher means nobody to do it for us, nobody whose words we just have to learn, whose posture and movements we just have to imitate. If you’re looking to your teacher for the truth, you’re just gobbling up dregs. But there is Zen: there is this thing that we do together. Whether it’s traditional Zen with rakusus, bows, chants, bells, clappers, incense, altars, mats, cushions, and sitting cross-legged in silence for 25 to 45 minutes at a time -- or whether it’s the Zen of Unitarian Universalism with stolls, chalice lightings, hymns, choirs, candles, folding seats, responsive readings, listening to a sermon for 20 minutes at a time, and also bells – there is this thing that we do together.

Practice – whatever form spiritual practice takes -- is a joint venture. The great 13th-century Japanese Zen teacher Dogen insisted: the practice is the enlightenment. We do it together – we practice together and in that practice manifest our inherent enlightenment together. We do it together, or we aren’t really doing it at all. A private, solo retreat can be wonderful as long as, at the end of it, you come in and see how you stand up in the context of your spiritual leader and guide and your fellow practitioners on the path with you.

It’s ultimately a joint venture, even when you’re by yourself. The Buddha, according to legend, reached a great realization while practicing on his own – but he wasn’t far from five friends. The story goes that Siddhartha Gotama left home at age 29 to pursue spiritual liberation. He left behind a wife and small child to, in other words, go find himself – yeah, that’s the story. He found a teacher and advanced quickly, but wasn’t satisfied. He left that teacher, found another teacher and advanced further, but hadn’t found liberation. He left that second teacher and was soon followed by five friends who joined him in practicing extreme asceticism. Finally, he abandoned extreme self-denial for the middle way: neither indulging in sensual delight nor denying himself basic sustenance.

He split off from the five friends for, essentially, a private solo retreat. Six years had gone by since he left home. He sat, by himself, beside the Neranjara River, under a pipala tree, also called bodhi tree, for a week. And as dawn was breaking on the seventh day, he looked up and a little to his right, and saw Venus, the morning star. That pinpoint of light triggered a cascading psychic reaction that felt like a complete opening, an awareness of the one-ness of all things, a falling away of all the usual ego protections and defenses.

What he said at that moment was: “Behold, all beings are enlightened exactly as they are.” That was his moment of awakening, the moment when Siddhartha Gotama became the Buddha, the awakened one. Soon after he’d had his morning star experience, he met back up with his five friends to whom he gave an accounting of himself. He came back to a community of accountability. We have to have Sangha – community.

Huangbo urges us not to be gobblers of dregs. The term is literally, “eaters of wine-dregs” or of “brewer’s grain” – it’s the dregs left over after the wine or brew has been made and siphoned off. Huangbo is saying, “You think you’re getting the real thing, but you’re just taking in the dregs of it.”

“If you go on studying Zen like that,” he says, “where will you have Today?” He’s talking about students who travel around from one teacher to another – doing a retreat here or a few visits with a group there. As soon as they’ve heard a few talks from, and had some interviews with, one teacher they’re ready to move on to check out the next one. They are dilletantes -- spiritual tourists.

Not that there isn’t a time for exploring the field and getting a broad exposure. Huangbo himself studied with a number of masters before coming to Baizhang, from whom he received dharma transmission. So, no, I don’t think Huangbo is implying you should commit your life to the first meditation center you happen to walk into or to this church after just one visit. Give yourself some time and experience a number of different practice and teaching styles. The purpose, though, is not to keep on accumulating different experiences – as if faith communities were toys and you believed that whoever dies with the most toys wins. The purpose is to get a rough sense of what’s out there, so you can find one to settle down with.

If there is never anything about the faith community that makes you go, “Wait. That makes no sense” – then that’s a sign that place might be, for you, a place of more complacency than growth. The perplexing and exasperating can be a nudge toward liberation, toward spiritual growth.

“If you go on studying Zen like that,” says Huangbo – or, as it reads in another translation, “if you keep visiting temples and masters here and there in a lukewarm manner,” (Sato) – “where will you have Today?” Even if you are settled down with one teacher and sangha and they are solid, and you’ve been there for years, you might still be kinda slurping on some dregs. If you’re living on second-hand concepts, where will you have Today? Another translation gives, “when will there ever be a day for you?” Or: when will you come into your own.

The spiritual path aims to bring you to yourself, to your own, to the day, every day, that is for you. That’s having your Today: experiencing for yourself and in your own way the eternal quality of this day, of this hour, of this moment – seeing for yourself that, Chinese Zen figure, Yunmen, would say a century later: every day is a good day.

And some of Huangbo’s students did have their Today. One of Huangbo’s students – perhaps in the hall on the day he called them all slurpers of dregs -- was Linji – Rinzai, in Japanese – the founder of one of the two main lineages of Zen today.

Then a monk came forward and said, "But surely there are those who teach disciples and preside over the assemblies. What about that?" Huangbo said, "I do not say that there is no Zen, but that there is no Zen teacher." There’s no teacher – no one who can do it for you. There is no one outside you, so no one to fix you from outside. There’s no Zen teacher -- but there is Zen – all of us together co-creating practice, co-creating enlightenment.

If there is to be Zen, as Huangbo says there is, what is our task? If there is to be Unitarian Universalism, how shall we live it? What is the work that all the bells, clappers, mats, cushions, altars, incense, bowing, chanting, and getting together in a room with our friends to be very still and quiet together is supposed to facilitate? What is the work that hymns and sermons, forums, connection circles and religious education classes, operating budgets and capital campaigns, hospitality volunteers, and grounds clean-up days, is supposed to facilitate?

This congregation has a mission. We say the work is: love radically, grow ethically and spiritually, serve justly. And doesn’t love radically really include the other two? From the drive to love as radically as we can, as whole-heartedly and as whole-beingly as we can, comes the impetus to serve justice, and the path of our own growth ethically and spiritually.

The new graphic of Unitarian Universalist values places justice, equity, pluralism, interdependence, transformation, and generosity as petals of a flower centered on love. So the essence of the work is love – radically love.

And love goes with understanding. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s Old Path White Clouds, he has the Buddha explain,

“love cannot exist without understanding. Love is Understanding. If you cannot understand, you cannot love. [Spouses, siblings, parents and children] who do not understand each other cannot love each other. If you want your loved ones to be happy, you must learn to understand their sufferings and their aspirations. When you understand, you will know how to relieve their sufferings and how to help them fulfill their aspirations. That is true love.”

So if our task is to love radically, then it must be to understand – specifically, to understand suffering: our own and others. If our task is to love radically it must be to comprehend suffering. We have “been thrown into this world at birth” and are “constantly subject to illness and breakdown" (Batchelor) Each breath could be your last. Rather than pushing that thought out of mind, carry it in or near the front of your mind all the time. “We keep meeting what we do not like, losing what we cherish, and failing to get what we desire.”

Pay attention to features of life we easily fall into overlooking or ignoring – the tragic dimension of life. Otherwise, writes Stephen Batchelor, we

“become enamored, seduced, and captivated by what is merely agreeable, which leads to cycles of reactive and addictive behavior.” (Batchelor 71)

Comprehend suffering. Wrap your mind around it – wrap your heart around it. Take it in. Comprehend in the sense of encompass: encompass the totality of what life includes.

This is our task: keeping our eyes open to the totality: all the beauty and all the tragedy -- keeping our hearts open to all the ambiguity, strangeness, and ineffability of life.

“To comprehend dukkha is to comprehend life intimately and ironically with all its paradoxes and quirks, its horrors and jokes, its sublimity and banality” (Batchelor 73).

To comprehend suffering is to meet the reality of life with “an understanding that is openhearted, clearheaded, compassionate, and equanimous.” This is the task we take up on the cushion, and it is the task we take up in our lives.

The possibility of comprehending suffering is the possibility of loving radically. That’s the Zen path, the Unitarian Universalist path, the path of any spiritual tradition worthy of the name. Anything else is just slurping at the dregs.

We can’t do it by ourselves, and nobody else can do it for us. We must, each of us, take up the task – for ourselves and for all beings. We have to do it, and we have to do it together. Friends, we have to.