lost a piece of paper that I had been hoping to read from for the lecture and I could not figure out where it went. So I was scrambling around looking for it. It went into Twilight Zone. Do you know Twilight Zone? You know how that happens where your keys go into Twilight Zone for a while? This paper, it was right there. I read it. I set it down. And not only that, the person who gave it to me said, this is the original. And it went to Twilight Zone. So I know it will turn up someday. And I don't even have a dog that ate it or anything. So welcome to Green Gulch on this Thanksgiving weekend. I hope you all had a fine holiday and a restful holiday and an abundant feeling

[01:04]

holiday. I know the holidays are not that easy for human beings. We think they are or we wish, we long for them to be, but they're often not so restful. At Green Gulch, we have a traditional Thanksgiving harvest festival or feast. And the Zendo is decorated with the fruits and the produce from the garden and the farm. And this altar is still decorated pretty much as it was for Thanksgiving with pitchforks and shovels and squash of various types and pumpkins and all manner of wonderful things, as you can see. And the main altar also was decorated with corn sheaves, I guess you say, and beans and squash and many other

[02:06]

things. But they began to compost right there on the altar, so we took some of them down. So on Thanksgiving, we prepare the food and the altars, and then we have two ceremonies. One is in the Zendo, and we chant the Heart Sutra. And this year, we chanted another sutra, the Vows of Ehe Dogen. And then we go in procession with bells from the Zendo. We file out two by two and go around these doors or out onto the lawn and around to the dining room where there's another altar set up and the tables for the meal. And we chant at that ceremony, we chant for Kanzeon or Kanon, the Enmei Juku Kanon Gyo, it's a chant about

[03:07]

the Bodhisattva of Compassion. And part of the translation is, morning my thoughts are Kanzeon or the one who hears the cries of the world or the one who observes all sentient beings with the eyes of compassion. So evening my thoughts are Kanzeon, morning my thoughts are Kanzeon. We do that particular chant in the Japanese translation seven times, and then we dedicate, oh, we dedicate the merit, meaning the positive energy that's been generated by this activity, we dedicate that to all beings in the ten directions. And we also read, as part of the dedication, the produce, the harvest of the year. This is done in a chanting form. So one of the sheets of paper that I lost was the Harvest of the Garden, but I wanted

[04:10]

to read to you just some of the harvest of the fields. 1,551 cases of lettuce, 798 cases of baby lettuce, 356 pounds of radicchio, 910 cases of chard, 592 cases of kale, 1,706 pounds of red cabbage, 3,698 pounds of green cabbage, and so on and so on and so forth. What are some interesting, 3,540 pounds of zucchini, 102 cases of curly endive, 443 pounds of burdock, 37 pounds of sugar snap peas, 20 pounds of rhubarb, and the last we get down to, the final

[05:10]

of the farm is 19,340 pounds of potatoes. That was nine and a half tons of potatoes came from the fields this year. And the things I didn't mention, fava beans, artichokes, runner beans, mustard greens, winter squash, pumpkins large and small, green, purple, and yellow snap beans, arugula, salad mix, fennel, leeks, dry garlic, green garlic, top red beets, kyoja beets, red beets, spinach, and so on and so forth. So when we hear this litany, this chant of all the produce, all the food that's come forth from this land with the innumerable labors of the sun and wind and water and earth and all the garden crew and the farm crew and the head of the farm and the

[06:10]

apprentices and the volunteers, and it goes on, all brought us this wonderful produce. And the garden, there were things like 200 pounds of red apples or more, maybe it's 400 pounds, 200 pounds of pears, 1,596 bunches of cut flowers for market, 10 cans of lemon verbena tea, 15 cans of English mint tea, and so on, herbs and flowers, teas. And then the last was innumerable strawberries, currants, raspberries brought hand to mouth in harvesting. And then the last thing we read is how many loaves

[07:10]

of bread, and I think this year it was, do you remember Mick? 5,627. 5,627 loaves of bread. So there's a lot of activity that goes on here at Green Gulch, and we are thankful. We feel, I should, should I speak for everyone? I feel enormous gratitude and thankfulness and awe, really awe, as this is read, because this goes on. This is just, this isn't anything special. This is the day-to-day life of Green Gulch Farm and Garden and Kitchen. And, you know, people sit zazen, we go to breakfast, we go to work meeting, we bow to each other, and we go off to work in our various places, and some people go down to the farm and garden, other people go to the guest house, and make

[08:15]

innumerable, if we were to count how many beds we made this year or toilets we cleaned or tables we dusted or reservations we made, it would be, you know, 19,000 tons of beds and so forth, too. So we don't actually mention that at harvest time, but we could if we wanted to, just the work, the work of this place. So, so I wanted to say something about the meal, what the menu was. The tables this year looked just laden for some reason. There was a mound of brussel sprouts like Mount Sumeru. Mount Sumeru is in the old cosmology, it's the center of the world, and anyway, there was a huge mound of beautiful brussel sprouts and beets and little, what are they called, butterfly rolls? No, little

[09:19]

pull-apart dinner rolls, and there was a wonderful fruit salad with marshmallows in it. That was new this year. There was yams without marshmallows. Maybe at your house you had yams with the marshmallows on top. There was mashed potatoes, and then the center kind of main, main dish was crunchy cheese nut loaf with yeast gravy, and crunchy cheese nut loaf is, it happens to be a recipe my sister sent me when I was the head cook at Tassajara in 1975 or something. She was taking a vegetarian cooking class, and there was this nut loaf that they made that she thought would really be good for Zen Center, so we tried it out for guest season, I think, and it works just perfectly. It's brown rice and cottage cheese and regular cheese and

[10:22]

mushrooms, and it's all padded into a loaf pan, and it comes out all crispy on the outside, and then it is perfect with gravy, and then you can slice it cold for sandwiches later in the week if you want to, or reheat it. Anyway, it's perfect for holiday meals, and we have it every single Thanksgiving and other holiday meals, and pumpkin pie with our own pumpkins. Am I missing anything? Did we have anything else? We had cranberry sauce, so innumerable labors brought us this food. This is our meal chant. The opening line of the old translation of the meal chant was, innumerable labors brought us this food. We should know how it comes to us, and now it's chanted a little differently. It's, we reflect on, I can't do it without my hands in gassho, we reflect on the

[11:24]

effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us. We reflect on our virtue and practice and whether it is worthy of this offering. So this food that comes to us is an offering. We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life. Let's see, we reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us. We reflect on our virtue and practice and whether it is worthy of this offering. We regard it as essential to keep the mind free from excesses such as greed. We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life. So this relationship with food is, we eat in order to sustain our lives.

[12:32]

We eat as for medicine, good medicine to sustain our lives in order to practice the Dharma, in order to continue practicing for the sake of enlightenment, for the sake of our waking up in this life, we eat food. Now there may be other practices of not eating food that other traditions have, but in this particular practice and tradition, our practice is to eat food to sustain our life, but also being mindful of excesses such as greed. We regard it as essential to keep the mind free from excesses such as greed. So along with walking into the dining room and seeing this beautiful table set with, well, the table was set with tablecloths and cloth napkins, which we usually don't have, and then the serving table was laden with beautiful, wonderful food. And then we regard it as essential to keep the mind free from

[13:39]

excesses such as greed. So do we notice that there's a greedy mind that arises when we see the food or have a festive meal like this? And if so, let's watch that. Let's watch the greedy mind. And can we also bear in mind as we're filling our plate that we regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life? Now it's not, when we say good medicine to sustain our life, it's not a mind that's really, really set on, no, I can't have any of that. No, don't give me any of those. That's bad. Oh, that's horrible for your health. That's a kind of greedy mind, too, you might say, that's very, very, very interested in having only the most healthy, healthy things past these lips. That may be going off into being attached to eating in a

[14:43]

particular way. But at the same time, we don't go the other way, which is anything goes, I'll eat anything because it actually may not be so conducive to awakening the mind or for enlightenment. So it's a kind of balance. We eat what's offered and watch the mind of excess and greed and at the same time, and eat to sustain our life. But we're not too attached to that. You see the difference between them. So this is a lifelong practice. Because as we all know, food, we often don't treat food as medicine or to sustain our lives. We eat for all sorts of other reasons, like because we're disappointed in something or sad or lonely or missing

[15:51]

someone or not feeling so good. So we eat more. And we eat for all sorts of reasons that may not have to do with sustaining our lives. So I think this relationship with food is very, very important to examine and study. And Dogen Zenji, who is the founder of this lineage of Soto Zen in Japan, he brought this lineage from China to Japan, wrote a treatise or an essay on the instructions for the head cook. And it's all about practicing with food, both from the cook's point of view, but also about how we receive food. And this is called the Tenzo Kyokun. Tenzo is head cook. Kyokun is the instructions for the head cook. So we've been studying that in a class that I've been offering for the last five weeks or so.

[17:05]

And I want to talk a little bit more about that. But yesterday, I just wanted to say that yesterday, we had three different ceremonies or celebration. You could say celebrations. To celebrate doesn't necessarily mean festiveness. It means you could also celebrate a mass, as you know, or celebrate can be a religious ceremony, celebrate a marriage. Yesterday, we had birth. We had the celebration of the year's birthday of one of our little members of Greenbelt, Jacob. Jacob Sloan was one years old yesterday. So we celebrated Jacob's birthday. And then I celebrated by being the officiating priest at a wedding that didn't take place here, but it was in Mill Valley in a redwood grove, actually in a clearing in a redwood grove. So there was a celebration of a marriage.

[18:22]

And then in the afternoon, we had a memorial service for a Sangha member's sister who passed away a few days ago. So this one day included birth and death, and then this commitment of two people to each other. And the word celebrate means, well, all these things that I mentioned, a festification or occasion of respect, festivity, or marking. And it also means to praise. And the word celebrity and celebrate, it comes from the root word, which means to visit some place numerous times, thereby making it famous. I thought that was an interesting way to think about celebrating something.

[19:23]

A day, you mark something over and over and over again, you mark it, and thereby bring it forth as something to perpetuate this observance of it. It's being marked so many times, makes it famous or makes it a time to continue to mark. So just like visiting any famous place, as you know, when you get there, you might think, so this is what everybody's been talking about? And it may be that same way with a celebration or with a ceremony. Recently, this fall, I was in China for three weeks, and I visited the Great Wall of China, which is someplace that held a spot in my imagination for years and years and years. And to go to the Great Wall, I really was looking forward to going to the Great Wall.

[20:33]

And when we got there, it happened to be a beautiful day. The sky was blue. It was very clear, which the tour guide said was unusual for that part of Beijing or the outskirts of Beijing. It's often very smoggy, actually. But that day, there was a wind, and it was blue skies, and we could see the wall as we approached on the bus from far away, serpentining its way over the mountains, as you've seen pictures or those of you who've been there. And did you know the Great Wall is the only man, human-made structure that can be seen from the moon? It's like a snake, a little thin snake on the surface of the earth. So when we got there, there it was. And I could feel myself wanting to grab hold of it, somehow, with my consciousness, take it and get it in somehow, which doesn't work.

[21:38]

You can't actually grab hold of anything, any experience, any person, any festive meal. If you try to grab hold of it in that way, we miss it. There's just grasping. There's no experience of the event. And what helped me to let go of that, wanting to grab this experience, was climbing the Great Wall, meaning the steps. And where we were, there was, I'd say, an hour's worth of steps to get to where you couldn't go any further. Up and up and up and turn and up and up and a landing and a little guardhouse, kind of a place to explore, and then up and up and up. And just doing that many steps, just the body practice of step, [...] allowed me, I just didn't have any other room for grasping and grabbing.

[22:45]

I just had to keep stepping. The full body practice of step after step after step completely filled body and mind, which allowed me to let go of wanting to get the Great Wall of China, wanting to get it into me. And in letting go of that idea about grasping it, the Great Wall came in through the body, through walking, through up those steps and seeing the views and just that practice. And it's the same with all ceremonies. In this wedding ceremony that I did yesterday, it was an uncommon wedding ceremony. It was unusual because the couple had been together for many, many years and were parents and they had never wanted to have a ceremony that was an empty formality, that just was going through the motions,

[23:46]

or some traditional thing they were expected to do but didn't really meet how they felt. So they waited a long, long time. And then it arose in them almost naturally that they wanted to have what had been the commitment, the deep commitment internally for decades, they wanted that to be manifested externally with witnesses in a public way and have it be affirmed and honored in a new way, re-consecrated, or I should say consecrated and re-consecrated, which is made sacred again to re-consecrate. And so with a ceremony like that, if we try to hold on to the ceremony, we lose the ceremony. It's over and done and that was it, I guess, that was it. I don't know what happened.

[24:49]

But with any ceremony, if we completely invest in the ceremony with our full attention and bring to it our complete attention, which means body, breath, and mind, then the ceremony comes to meet us and we receive it there. But if we try to grab on to the ceremony with some idea about what it's supposed to be and what it isn't, we miss the ceremony. So there's an effort in the beginning of the marriage ceremony to have people settle and just take a moment to breathe and listen and quiet their minds, for all of us to quiet our body and minds, so we can meet what's there and feel what's there.

[25:55]

So that was the effort of the couple and the family and friends that had gathered and their children. So in this marriage ceremony, the commitment, we start in a marriage ceremony with giving our word, to give our word. And this giving of our word is, you might say, the giving of the word is one way of manifesting or conveying or expressing that we're giving our whole self, our whole body and mind, without reservation, to this marriage, to this person. But how do we express that? Well, we start with our word, we give our word. And in a marriage, this commitment to another person is a letting go of the small self or the, Suzuki Roshi calls it small mind, small mind and big mind.

[27:21]

And the small mind is the mind that's very self-concerned, looking out for number one, attached to things that make sense, for this one over here, that's small mind or small self. So in a marriage, the effort is to give up the small self and take refuge in each other as big mind, as some instance of big, wider mind, where it's not just about what makes sense for me, but it's broken open into what makes sense in a wider way. So, one of the, part of the marriage ceremony says, in a Buddhist ceremony, we're married body to body, mind to mind, true nature, nature to nature and true nature to true nature.

[28:26]

So this commitment is, it's inconceivable, really, what is being married nature to nature or true nature to true nature. So there's a kind of mystery, a kind of beauty and mystery and scariness too, because of this unknown. What does it mean to join your life with another person? It's completely unknown. And if we're holding on to what our life is, what we want our life to be, if we're holding on tightly, it's very hard to open to another person and all their limitations, their fullness and their limitations and all their whole world. So this commitment is, it's a big commitment, it's kind of a leap into the unknown, uncharted waters, as Rilke says, about relationship or unexplored frontier in a vast sky of being.

[29:41]

So to give our word, to give, Suzuki Roshi translates, Suzuki Roshi, the founder of Zen Center, translates giving as non-attachment. To not be attached is giving. To not be attached to things is giving. Now, I looked it up in the dictionary just to see, and they don't have the definition of giving as non-attachment. There's all other, lots and lots of other things, bestowing and giving gifts and giving our word and giving, giving is used in so many different idiomatic expressions, give way, give up. A springy mattress is, it gives, you know, it's all sorts of things, but there's nothing that says non-attachment. To give is non-attachment. To give is non-attachment, this is Suzuki Roshi, that is, just not to attach to anything is to give.

[30:50]

Just not to attach to anything is to give. So, so in, so these three ceremonies yesterday, so we have a birthday and we know that if we attach, not attach in the positive sense of having firm, bonding relationships with our children and parents and children, and we're not talking about that, I think that's, in psychological terms, we want to have attachment and children who don't have attachment, or parents who don't have attachment to their children, it means the children don't thrive, so I'm not talking about it that way, I'm talking about grasping and holding on in such a way that we don't allow the child to grow up and find its own way. We need the child to be a certain way for us, that's what I mean by attachment.

[31:57]

So in this birthday, if we don't allow the child to walk, Jacob just started walking just last week, I think, making his first steps, if we don't, this walking, watching the babies learn to walk here, it is unstoppable, their need to walk, it is like a cataract coming down a mountain stream, they will walk, and everybody is rooting for them as they start out, and I feel it's almost unsullied sympathetic joy and happiness and rejoicing watching babies start to walk. Nobody is saying, well, gee, I wish I walked that way, or I'm really jealous of them, and they're getting all this attention, I don't think people feel that way so much about babies, when they get a little older, that begins to crop up,

[32:58]

but for babies, pretty much it's unreservedly rooting for them. But if we didn't, and later on often there may be situations where you don't want your child to keep on walking all the way out the door and see you later, and we want to hold them back or make them pay for it, this is manipulation, giving a child the cold shoulder, right, or withdrawing, you know, because why? Because we don't want to let go, that's the detachment, that's not giving, to attach to something, that's the use of the word attachment I'm talking about. And in the marriage, in marriage ceremony, if there's attachment to having the person be a certain way that you want them, and not allowing the person to grow and develop and individuate, you might say, through the years as this life side by side together goes on,

[34:07]

then it gets pretty difficult, and it's not giving anymore, it's not giving your word, giving your full body and mind, it's holding on for dear life. And in this memorial ceremony also, when someone dies, we have to also let them go. You may say, well, we have no choice, you know, the person dies and we have to let them go, but I don't think that's true. I think there can be a way that we won't let them go in our mind, we hold, and for whatever reason, because there's unfinished business, because we didn't say what we wanted to say, we didn't ask for forgiveness, we didn't forgive, for many, many, many reasons,

[35:13]

we didn't say we loved that person when we could have, and the unsettled part keeps us holding on, holding on to that person. And so also in a memorial service, we have to be non-attached, we have to give them their life, their life in this next form. So to give is non-attachment, just not to attach is giving. So sometimes we say that in a ceremony, we say, let go, you know, let go of that person, to the living person. And maybe we say to the person who's died too in a ceremony, we might speak to them and say, go, leave us now, go, it's time. And if someone holds on when it's past time, this is called fixed views, this is the defilement of fixed views.

[36:20]

Defilement is tarnished, something that's tarnished, or the root of it means to trample on something. We think of defilement as, usually as to dirty something or sully it, but it comes from to trample on something, or tarnish. So I pictured this beautiful silver plate, maybe all shiny, and then it gets tarnished, or we stomp all over it. It's not that the silver plate isn't silver, but we don't allow it to just be what it is. So fixed views, stubborn fixed views have to do with holding on and clinging, often for dear life, where you have to unpeel the claws from what it is. And sometimes we don't even know that we're doing it, because of the fixed views we think, this is right, I'm not holding on to anything, what I'm doing is right, and you are wrong, you know.

[37:27]

Holding tight. So I was just thinking this, at this marriage yesterday, someone, one of the guests at the wedding who I had never met before, was telling me about mountain climbing, I wasn't going to tell this story, but it just occurred to me, he was given a mountain climbing lesson, and the person told him, first he was face to face with the mountain climbing teacher, and they touched each other's hands and arms and then their face, with their eyes closed, and the eyes and the whole face and hair, and then he brought him to the side of the mountain, and with his eyes closed, and he had him feel the side of the mountain, and feel for where there were hand holds, and he began to climb, just through the wisdom of the body, and he had no ideas, no fixed ideas about, ooh, that looks like a good one, or no, no, that's too little, I could never hold on to that, or this is too high, uh-oh,

[38:33]

it was just feeling his way, and lifting, moving, he could feel with his hands, this one is too small, he didn't have to see it and decide, he knew, and then the next one, and the next one, and when he finally opened his eyes, he was 300 feet up, which was, I thought, pretty amazing. So, I guess that story arose for me because there was no fixed views about I can do this, I can't do this, or what is mountain climbing, you know, we may have some idea about what it is and grasp that, and then we can't do it because that's too scary, but actually to put him on the side of the mountain after that, you know, exercise of feeling and exploring with fingertips, he was just ready to go on to the next thing. So, I wanted to get back to the story about a Tenzo that Dogen met, and it's, I think I have time to tell this story.

[39:53]

So, when Dogen went to China, he met a number of these head cooks, and they were very influential for him in understanding what the Dharma was. He was very well read, had practiced in Japan, in certain temples, very established temples, but he hadn't been exposed to Zen in this, in a particular way that it was taught. And so, he had a mind, Dogen's mind was very set that Zen practice had to do with Zazen, doing Zazen and Koan work, studying the words and phrases or the words and teaching stories of the ancient teachers. These were things that were called, those were Zen practice, and then there was other kinds of practices, offering incense, bowing, that kind of thing. Thank you kitchen, if that's the kitchen going away. And, so they were very, I think Dogen had some fixed ideas about this was practice and this other stuff was,

[41:02]

you kind of had to do it, but it wasn't really, it wasn't a real thing, meaning other kinds of work, like menial work maybe. So, he gets to China and he wasn't able to leave the ship for a while, he was on this Japanese ship in the harbor and a Tenzo came from a monastery to buy Japanese mushrooms that were on board the ship. And he came onto the ship and Dogen was sitting around with the captain having tea and the crew and this person, this Tenzo came to buy mushrooms and so he was very interested in this teacher, this Tenzo, and he said, oh please, where have you come from? And the Tenzo said he had come from Ao Wang Monastery and in his later years he had been appointed head cook and he was doing, this was the job he was given in his later years, he was giving it his all. And he had come to buy mushrooms and Dogen said, well when did you leave?

[42:06]

He said, I left after the noon meal. Dogen said, well how far was that walk to get here? And he said 35 li, which is about 12 miles. And he said, well this is so auspicious that you've come here, why don't you stay for dinner and we can talk some more and you can stay the night. And he said, no, I have to get back to the monastery. There's a celebration and I want these mushrooms for this special soup to give to the monks, so I must get back. And he said, well aren't there other kitchen workers who could do this work for you? Do you have to do this work? Aren't there other people? And he said, they are not me. This is my work, I've been given this job. Plus I haven't asked to be out overnight. I haven't been given permission to be out overnight. And Dogen is, this is, it strikes him how upright you could say this Tenzo was about his work.

[43:20]

So then he says to the Tenzo, Venerable Tenzo, in your advanced years, because he's about 68, it's not so advanced now but I think it was then, why do you not wholeheartedly engage the way through Zazen or penetrating the words and actions of the ancients, the ancient Zen masters, instead of troubling yourself by being Tenzo and just working? What is that good for? And the Tenzo bursts into laughter loudly and said, oh good fellow from a foreign country, you have not understood wholeheartedly practicing the way and you do not yet know what words and phrases are. Hearing this I suddenly felt ashamed and stunned and then asked him, what are words and phrases? What is wholeheartedly engaging in the way? And the Tenzo says, well, we can talk about this further and complete this dialogue.

[44:26]

If you take this up, this question that you've got, what are words and phrases? What is wholeheartedly practicing the way? If you completely take this up with your full body, then you'll become a person of the way or an upright person. And then he said, it's getting dark now and I'm going. So off he went the other 12 miles back to the monastery to make this special soup. So then later on, about several months later, the Tenzo gets word that Dogen is now off the ship and is at Rujing's temple, which ended up being his teacher. And he comes to visit him and Dogen is really happy about this, that this Tenzo came to see him. And he brings up this concern about words and phrases again. And the Tenzo said, people who study words and phrases should know the significance of words and phrases.

[45:28]

People who dedicate themselves to fully engaging in the way should know the significance of fully engaging in the way. And Dogen says, what are words and phrases? And the Tenzo says, one, two, three, four, five. Dogen says, what is wholeheartedly engaging the way? The Tenzo says, in the whole world, it is never hidden. In the whole world, it is never hidden. And then later, Dogen came upon this poem by Xue Do. And the poem is very similar to this and also similar to the poem in this koan that has been in the koan class for this whole practice period. The poem is one character, three characters, five and seven characters. The word for words and phrases in Japanese is monji, which means characters in Japanese.

[46:29]

It can be letters, translated into letters, characters or words or sentences. But if you're a Chinese or Japanese person, that means these characters that are made with, you know, brush strokes, right? So one character, three characters, five characters, seven characters. Having thoroughly investigated the 10,000 things, none have any foundation. At midnight, the white moon sets into the dark ocean. When searching for the black dragon's pearl, you will find they are numerous. So the black dragon has the pearl of awakening or the pearl of understanding that the black dragon carries under. Sometimes they say under the chin or in the mouth. And if you're searching for this black dragon's pearl, what they're saying is,

[47:30]

searching for that pearl, it's everywhere. Let go of trying to get it somewhere out there, because it's everywhere. So this one character, two characters, three characters, seven. This is pointing to what you could say as each and everything or the phenomenal world. The phenomenal world or whatever comes up in your life. And if you try to grasp those things, you find that there's no foundation there. There's nothing there to grasp. Because things arise and fall away and arise and fall away like birthdays and our lives together and memorial services and life and death and life and death. There is nothing in the whole entire phenomenal world that you can get a hold of. It's inconceivable. And yet, that's not the end of the story.

[48:37]

Because the black dragon's pearl that you're looking for is everywhere to be found. Meaning in each thing. In making soup for the monks, chopping the shiitake mushrooms, in making a festive meal for someone, in giving your word, in cleaning the bathroom, in giving gifts without attachment. In every single thing we do in the entire phenomenal world, there's the black dragon's pearl. It's not just somewhere like Dogen says, what about sitting zazen? And how about studying the ancients' words? How come you're doing just cooking? How come you're just working? What's the use of that? And Tenzo flips that around. Right there, right in each thing,

[49:37]

one penetrates the marketplace or in each thing, everything is there. If you're not grasping it, this letting go, it fills the hand. Letting go, it fills the hand. But we, our tendency is to want to get a hold of it and then we get nothing. Because there's nothing to get. So our words, you know, our words, these words or characters or words are, they come out in a, everything, the whole entire universe comes right there when we give our word. The entire universe is there with the word, our word. So what are words and phrases? What is wholeheartedly practicing the way? Even though you can't say, what I said about Dogen saying, how come you're not sitting zazen?

[50:39]

And how come you're not studying koans? And the Tenzo laughing. It doesn't mean that he doesn't study koans and sit zazen. But it's not grasped onto. Because in the Tenzo Kyokun it says, after you finish your daily work in the kitchen and have planned the menus and washed the rice and seen to it completely, you put on your okesa and you go to the zendo with everybody and you don't miss one period of zazen. That's what it says. So it's not that the Tenzo doesn't, but there's no grasping onto it. There's no attachment to zazen is it, chopping vegetables isn't it. So I don't mean to say that, in fact only I feel with this practice of zazen will help us to understand this very point actually. This is another translation of that that I like.

[51:47]

Through one word or seven or three times five even if you thoroughly investigate myriad forms nothing can be depended upon. Night advances. The moon glows and falls into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you have been seeking for is everywhere. Okay, thank you very much. May artitch. [...]

[52:21]

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