The Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance

So to begin with today, I want to take up a case that looks at this question of precarity and it looks at it in a very interesting way.

It acknowledges that so much of what we do from day to day is a kind of resistance attempt against precarity.

We build things, we make structures, we look for patterns, we do whatever it takes to try and fend precarity off.

And it makes sense, doesn't it? This is just a very human business.

It's actually wonderful that we do these things, that we create the safe places and the refuges.

This in itself, gathering here right now, is a kind of refuge and it's beautiful.

But at the same time, we must realise that there is no everlasting reality, no everlasting safety.

no everlasting thing that we can grab on once and for all finally and somehow be rescued from the nature of change and fluidity itself.

So here's the case, and this comes from the Book of Serenity, Case 75.

And it features the old teacher Yan Tao saying, And a monk who is called Ru Yan, who later goes on to become a great teacher himself, but at this stage he's a younger monk, and he's going to Yang Tao with a great question.

And his question is, what is the everlasting reality? What is the everlasting reality? And I don't know about you, but I don't think this is just a technical question.

I don't even think it's trying to be a clever question.

It's more like a deep cry.

What is the everlasting reality? What is it that I can depend on? What is it that I can believe in? What is it that I can cleave to with everything that I am? What might be my true salvation? I hear all of this in this young monk's question.

Well, in response, the teacher, Yantou, simply says, it has moved.

This everlasting reality, it has moved.

Yantou's not offering Ruyan any kind of life raft here.

There's no guarantee, no certainty, beyond the everlasting reality of it has moved.

In some translations, this is given as moving.

Just this one word, moving.

And I like this, it's very much of a peace with our zazen itself.

What is zazen if not this realization of moving, moving, just the air moving, just the sounds moving, just this body ever so subtly moving, moving, everything moving.

The very fact that everything is moving is very moving itself.

As we sit, grow still, grow intimate with this moving, we are deeply touching the very heart of the great matter itself, the Dharma itself.

And I think this is what Ru Yan, this younger monk, begins to hear a little bit here.