Notes from Lost Coin Class 8-29-2011
Posted today on blog- poems of Cold Mountain.

Koan from Blue Cliff Record:
Why didn't ancient stop here and stay once they arrived HERE. (holding up the stick).  Because this is emptiness.  To get and stay in emptiness - not possible but more than that it has no POWER!  Emptiness relieves suffering.  But we need, in our lives, to deal with the 10,000 peaks.  The circumstances.  Sitting and practicing to get into emptiness is NOT to avoid life.  You are sitting and practicing getting into emptiness in order to INFORM your life.  Emptiness itself, seeing this, will inform all of your actions.  You don't have to figure it out.  It's like you don't have to figure out how to get drunk when you drink wine.

If a fighter- you don't say, "what have I learned about muslin" while you are fighting.  You either go in or you do not.  The practice all happens before you face that opponent or your canvas or your musical instrument.

Put your faith in the emptiness and go forward.

Does that mean emptiness is illogical?  Nope. The more empty your mind, the MORE logical because it is NOT a mind full of emotion.

The ancient ones did not stay HERE because nothing happens from there.  This is a world of cause and effects.

Early scientist- Galileo found that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the opposite. This was observable if you were empty of other ideas but no one did.  To believe that the sun goes around the earth is religion.  To see that the earth goes around the sun is science.

Cold Mountain poems.  Rocks and bark poets.  Wrote them in the wild.  Collected later.  No one knows who Han Shan (cold mountain) was.  Legend is that he was at monastery and he was very advanced and so left because was more advanced than the monks there.  

THE COLLECTED SONGS OF COLD MOUNTAIN.  HE is cold mountain.  He is telling you who he is.  They were often named after the mountain where they taught.  Cold mountain is cold as in absent of touch, taste, sounds, color.  This is the true body- the buddha body.  FIND IT TODAY is his poem.

When you were born, it was not you and then the rest.  You were the cold mountain.  All was one thing.  This is still true.  We just forget.

Cold Mountain says DO THIS RIGHT NOW.  See it by sitting and it will inform your life.

The wind whistling through the old pine.  Hear it closer you'll hear it better. This doesn't mean better fidelity and louder.  This means better, it stops thought.  Close enough to stop thought.

The practice means you don't necessarily have to sit down and say how to apply this.  Sometimes you have to do that too but really the practice is right there manifesting in your 10,000 ways of life.  Truth appears.

Cold Mountain poems are a treasure trove of this pointing.

The trail to Cold Mountain is faint.  We live in a time where the dharma is very available to you.  60s really made that possible.  But that doesn't mean that you can follow the trail.  You can be walking it and still missing it if you don't have the right teacher and guide.  It is a subtle trail.  You have to really look.  The banks are the jungle of your live.  Live obscures the trail.   Birds chatter all the way.  Year after year I hear no person- really really deeply into the absolute.  This would be unusual for us in this day and age to get to go so deeply.  We, in Lost Coin, will be more in the karma of everyday but still we can find Cold Mountain.  Everything is melting snow if you are cold mountain.