Last time we were talking together about how to ascertain anything. How can we make sure of anything? How can we know something? What can we use for guidelines? some aesthetic judgment or philosophical or what can you trust. Confronting a question like such a fundamental question

[01:01]

it immerses you in practice immediately. And trying to respond to something you see or notice is practice. So practice may be the other part of thinking or necessary necessary because we think. We can get, we can know things because we think. But they're just thoughts unless you can practice.

[02:44]

So when you, maybe the most fundamental observation we can make is sameness and difference, and that when you look closely things don't remain the same, they keep changing. So how, that's very good to observe, but how to have that of any significance in your life? you can say, well, we suffer because we are attached to having things not change, but still that doesn't offer us much opportunity to practice.

[04:15]

Buddhism tries to offer you some response to the observation that everything changes as a way of practice, and that is the first paramita, giving. Giving in Buddhist practice is a is the way we recognize that everything changes and our way of practicing with it. And it raises the whole question of what is a possession? What can you possess? What can you give or receive or give and accept?

[05:31]

And giving is not just a moral virtue that we should give, because if you take the view that giving is better than receiving, that giving is in itself a good thing to do, it questions the receiver. Well, I'm going to be giving and giving and who's going to be receiving? Are you creating possession for someone else when you give? So you certainly have to be willing to receive and to possess or use things if you're going to give. Can't be one way, you know, just good Buddhist giving, not receiving. So how to give something so that you don't create a possession?

[07:07]

how to receive something so you don't possess it. Anything you kind of... you'll have to find out for yourself what you own or want to keep or want to give away, because certainly this practice means willingness to just give your time or your the physical objects that you own, some more subtle things away to people. So what kind of thing does constitute a possession? You can have some rule of thumb like, was it given to me? If someone gives you something, then maybe you shouldn't give it away if it was given to you. Or maybe you should give it away. Or if you have something, you use Suzuki Roshi.

[08:37]

has given me various things to use, so I have some relationship to them, and eventually I'll give them away to one of you, some of you. So my... having some use for something, a book or whatever it is, is a kind of recognition of the nature of the space we are. which is always changing. I have talked once or twice now about static space and moving space.

[10:07]

more I think you should consider what it is that you do possess. Do you possess a particular life? Do you possess time? Do you have some allotment of time? If you're a famous poet, can you write something that will live, outlive you, or live forever? You know, they're rebuilding the main Shinto shrine in Japan now. They've just finished, I believe. And they take a part and put it back together, and it's all done by I don't know now exactly, but originally it was supposed to be done all by binding and fitting, no nails or anything. They actually tie, bind things together. This goes back to the most ancient concepts of civilization or... what could you say?

[11:35]

You know, in very early poetry in China and Japan, there's a completely mixed illusion between a woman binding up her hair, or a man or woman binding his belt, girdle, and binding a building together. That the binding together and the ability to untie, back your hair or to tie your clothes on. that in the most early poems which express, also in those times, express an identity between love, between two people, and the creation of a state, that it requires some binding. And yet they bind the building together and can unbind it. So this building, this shrine, he said,

[13:15]

every twenty years is completely unbound and rebuilt. It's one of the peculiarities of modern states, that Japan is richer than it's ever been before, but next twenty years from now it can't afford to undo the building again. No. That's modern economics. Anyway, they've done it for thirteen hundred years. And 1,300 years means they've done it 60 times. Actually, there was one 100-year period they didn't do it, so for 1,200 years. They've done it 60 times. But that's rather interesting that there are only 60 20-year periods in 1,200 years. So, this 20-year period you're practicing Zen is 160th. It shows you how short, you know, what we call civilization, society is. That in the next 20 years,

[14:42]

you could make a contribution which would be 1 60th of anybody's contribution in the last 1200 years. And you have maybe 20 or 40 or 60 years. So our effort now is not something insignificant. in the history of Buddhism or America or society. And yet what do we possess, you know, that 20 years of effort or do you? possess a particular career. You know, it's interesting why we, if we think of our lifetime, mostly we think of what we will receive. We don't think, oh, what will I have a chance to give away in this lifetime? Usually you think, what will I have a chance to receive? Happiness, enlightenment, zazen, I don't know what you want.

[16:09]

something, a career. And even if you are giving up your time and space or your opportunity for various things, still often we want something. Still, we want something. One of the most noisome possessions is the special experience, satori, or some insight the artist has, or something. If you're... Go around, say you have a job,

[17:13]

and you put down everyone else because you have some deeper insight, or because you practice, or because you actually are a secret poet behind the Xerox machine, in the mail room. That's maybe the worst kind of possession that you guard. And if someone criticizes you, or when you feel criticized, you feel, well, they're jealous because they don't have this secret possession. They're this special ability to do such and such. how to get rid of our tendency to want to accumulate or possess or make sure. Is the first paramita and the first practice in response to your noticing that actually everything's changing?

[18:55]

There's a Zen story which I have always liked very much. I think I've mentioned it to you one or more times before, but it's about Dao Wu and Yan, who's sick, and Dao Wu comes to see him. And Yan Yan is sick and Da Wu comes to see him and says, What if you die? Where will I meet you? What if you, where will I meet you if you leave this, just leave a old, cold corpse behind? Where will I meet you? And Yan Yan said, I will meet you in the place where nothing lives and nothing dies. Da Wu didn't like that answer. He said, you should say... Yan Yan, I wish he'd been strong enough to hit him.

[20:29]

before he got a chance to say anything more. But Dao Wu said, you should say, making him sicker, you should say, there is no place where nothing lives and nothing dies, or anything lives and anything dies, and there's no need for us to meet. That's rather mean to say. He wanted to meet him, I think. Anyway, Tao Wu maybe is a first-year Zen student or something. Later he became quite a famous teacher. He goes from, now you're here and you're going to go, and to trying to create another place, another possession.

[21:31]

a possession which nobody lives or dies in, and we don't need to meet anyone in, but some other kind of possession. Yang-yen's answer was quite simple. He said he wanted to meet him, so he said, I will meet you, that's all. Just reflect it back. I will meet you. where nothing lives and nothing dies. He could have said where we already are. Anyway, in the commentary there is a wonderful poem which goes something like, I forget the first part, but something between meeting and not meeting. Maybe it's between alienation and friendship, no difference, I don't know, but between meeting and not meeting, no difference. On the old plum tree, fully blossomed,

[23:13]

The north branch owns the whole spring, as does the south branch. On the old plum tree, fully blossomed, the north branch owns the whole spring, as does the south branch. Fully blossomed. And it's the whole spring. So what can we really possess and what can we really give away? How do we practice with each other?

[24:43]

Do you have anything you'd like to talk about? In your earlier lecture, you just talked about Suzuki and what she was saying about his glasses. She said, they don't really belong to me. I just let them down. Is that worthy of attitude? I wondered maybe what your attitude is. I don't know, but I assume you probably have some nice people in your house. What is the right attitude to have towards a sort of special possession you don't have? Yeah.

[25:47]

That story of Sugiyoshi is wonderful. You all know, I think, this story. Maybe some new people don't. But one day in Sokoji, in San Francisco, he took his glasses off and he said, These are your glasses, actually, he said. But you know about my tired old eyes. Will you let me use them? Hmm? Yeah, that's true. Well, we each have to find some way to practice with that kind of thing. And if you're a householder, it's more complicated if you have a household or have to have a household where people visit. The particular circumstances of it, I think each of us has to figure out for yourself. But, for example, in my own case, I made a rule that I would not buy any Buddhas. Any Buddha or such thing that I have was given to me. So, though I have various Buddhas, various people have given them to me. This is if Hiroshi, Graham, Petchi, Peter, various people have given me

[27:12]

So I want... I decided not to have any Buddha, which I desired and got. The story about Buddha, in that story he was... Well, actually I think It's in a sutra, the Diamond Sutra. Buddha said that for a whole lot of lifetimes, 500 or millions or something, he was tortured by something or somebody who, I don't know, did all sorts of things to him, like cutting him up into pieces and just all sorts of things that I don't think are very pleasant. And, as far as I can figure out, he didn't think they were very pleasant either. But he thought it was good for him to do this, you know, to lie around and let somebody cut him up into pieces, whereas it wasn't, I mean, he actually had some choice about it. He could have, you know, jumped up and cut the other guy into pieces or something maybe. I'm really, but,

[28:45]

He claims he didn't do this, but I just don't, okay, he did it. But, I first of all, I know that the third parameter, or one of the third or fourth is patients under affliction. So, a lot of people must have agreed with him, you know, wrote up parameters and the third one was patients under affliction. But, I don't know, I've thought about this a whole, It's like if Buddha takes a vow to save all sentient beings, this guy looks irredeemable to me. The guy who's cutting Buddha? Yeah. It seems like... I thought the vow to save all sentient beings wasn't possible because there were so many, but that doesn't seem to be the problem.

[29:49]

It's because people and things are so stubborn. I mean, without a say, all good guys, leave out the irredeemable ones. Well, I don't know. It doesn't seem that Buddhism makes much sense at all. I just, I can't make any sense out of that at all, and it seems to be pretty serious. I can't imagine somebody, that patients under affliction mean that a whole bunch of people feel sorry for you because somebody's cutting you up and therefore you get something good out of it. Okay. Okay? I'm asking you a question. I know. I was wondering if you were through. Yes. First of all, something about the usefulness of that kind of story. Those stories are... exist from, like, two directions. From one direction, they're like a children's story.

[31:40]

and they're often usually used in children's stories to make some point, you know, not a point that makes sense, because Buddhism doesn't maybe make sense, but make some point a child can understand. And from the other point of view, they're like a compression some enormous story covering all time and space into something quite short. The point of such a story is not to make you go to the dentist and refuse to have novocaine or to look for somebody who will cut you up. Though some people do, even say the masochists, I'm told, look for, they prefer people like a surgeon to beat them, rather than somebody else, because a surgeon knows how to hit you, so it doesn't do so much damage.

[33:12]

They look for some expert. You're right, most people, even sadomasochists, avoid being cut up, usually. try to explain such a simple story is too complicated and I don't want to do it. If you begin to say, well, I'm going to forget about those that aren't redeemable, if you think that way, you'll have quite a lot of difficulty.

[34:14]

trying to figure out, well, is he on the line, over the line, or not over the line, or is he redeemable, or is this one I should discount? Eventually, you will see everyone is redeemable, if you're redeemable, or whatever redeemable means, but certainly not to be discounted. And if you have some attitude that I won't put up with affliction, I'll avoid affliction at all costs, as often as possible, again you'll have some kind of trouble. And if... If you're an ordinary person, and someone is about to cut you up, you know, as occurs, actually, in San Francisco and other places, not so seldom. If you have some choice, you will talk the person out of it, or go away, or close the door. If you have no choice,

[35:45]

You have no choice, but this person being cut up isn't Buddha. But if we're telling a story about Buddha, Buddha has some choice. But he doesn't choose, so what does that mean? Of course, if you're in a situation, practically, if you begin to see that you can't draw a line about who's redeemable, and you find yourself in one situation after another, and there are many kinds of situations which, although somebody doesn't have a knife, something is happening that's pretty unpleasant.

[36:54]

Whether you fight back or whether you follow, do unto others as they wish to be done unto, offer yourself. At what point do you fight back or at what point do you still consider them redeemable? If you're in a shop and someone's robbing you, you work in Kirby's, do you shoot the person as soon as they come in with a gun or after they've fired once? Or to what point do you decide to attack the other person? This is a very serious question, actually, and I talked all afternoon and one evening with Charles Lindbergh about it. Lindbergh, who flew across, you know, the Atlantic. He agreed... maybe he's a Buddhist, you know, almost a Buddhist, but the The problem for him all day long, we talked about, was if you're in a confrontation with somebody with a gun, who shoots first? And Lindbergh said in his life he's always chosen to shoot first, and he has. Most of us don't live at the edge like that, so we have so many chances to be so directly confronted with that kind of problem.

[38:22]

I took the position of shooting last or not at all. So we had rather interesting conversations. So here's someone like Lindbergh who has the same problem that you're discussing, and he's thought about it all his life. Who shoots first? Right now, in this world, maybe one million people or 100,000 people, 100,000 Buddhas, are right now being cut up by somebody. Right now, not in some past history, but right today. We can't deny it, because it's not happening to us. And do those people have a choice or no choice? And is your response because they have no choice, but you have a choice to go out and get a gun and shoot the person who's doing it? Do you kill the snake eating the frog?

[39:52]

Now, actually, we have a choice. Right now, each moment, you have a choice. And Buddhism is something radical because its practice is to move into the other person's space and, if necessary, join them. So Buddha didn't criticize even the person cutting him up. What do you mean by joint dying? that you asked for a knife and help. Why?

[41:03]

If you put it in the situation of... I don't know, it's something that you can't exactly explain in an ordinary way of thinking about it. It's maybe something you'll have to work with. But maybe you join them and inside them ask them to put their knife down. But it doesn't mean, you know, that you don't, you avoid all fights. Avoid all confrontation.

[42:24]

I don't want to talk about it anymore. Anyway, you have to find out by doing it. It seems that the act of noticing anything becomes a possession. But then the act of trying not to notice So how do you live without obsession? Well, the first stage of mindfulness is that you do note what happens. You are mindful.

[44:33]

Maybe second stage of mindfulness practice is mindfulnessness. But first you have to practice mindfulness. Then when you can be mindful and you have some presence and ease in your possession of each moment, then you can begin to forget. Yes, go ahead. I was wondering, it seems to me you were saying when you first found me that somehow giving and accepting gifts Yeah? Yeah? Occasionally we talk about getting rid of some desires, or tendencies, or self-assurances, or fear, or something. It seems impossible to get rid of them.

[46:05]

What if it no longer arises? That posits some reality. You know, a big basket of things, right? and you're stuck with them and you can either stick them in the basket or take them out. If you don't use them, they're still in the basket. That's a, excuse me for saying so, but that's a heresy. The idea that there's a substantial reality, that something exists. The whole idea of repression and repression, you know, etc., psychiatry, Western psychiatry, is based, that something actually exists. And as long as you think that, then you have that problem, how can you extinguish desires? But actually, eventually, desires just don't arise. They don't go anywhere.

[47:22]

When you talk about the guy behind the Xerox machine, you say he was working in the post office. Oh, in the post office. Did you work in the post office? It's like, if eventually they sent him a letter saying, hey fella, it's Osbert writing a blog. is what you're saying in answer to David's question. That letter becomes a possession. And are you saying... Who's sending who a letter? Well, it seems like the people who sort the letters and carry the mail back. Oh, yeah. Okay. They're writing the poem and not of the guide that's behind the Xerox machine, right? But the message they send, saying, wake up, you know, becomes a possession. And it's like, what... Why don't you take the message that says, wake up, and run it through the Xerox machine hundreds and hundreds of times until you have big stacks of them?

[48:56]

then what? No, it's those kind of stories, whether it's Dao and Yan Yan talking about whether you possess life or possess

[50:07]

a place that you'll be where nothing lives and dies, or whether it's Buddha, a story about Buddha accepting some affliction. It doesn't do much good to take that story or to, in your own life, make up stories that are extreme examples, you know. So, of course, I wouldn't do that. But right now, in a similar situation, right at any moment in your life, similar situations exist, but the stakes look lower to you. Maybe they're not, but they look lower to you. In that situation, what do you do? You don't always just get up and beat the person over the head. What do you do? And if you could do that thoroughly, you know, in any situation, you know, even if someone's about to cut you up, you might find something different. But right now, we have the question, you know, today, people are being cut up, and what do we do?

[51:36]

What can we do?

[51:53]

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