I'm very sorry to be late, but it's been one of those days. Let me get organized a little here. Well, first of all, it's great to be here. I always love to come over to Berkeley and see old friends and new friends. This is the place where I started practicing, not in this location, the old one. And the place is the dharma seat of my teacher, so what could be better? And we're going to have four weeks on cases from the Wumen Guan or the Wumen Kan, the gateless barrier.

[01:04]

And we're going to meet on four consecutive Mondays tonight and the first three Mondays in March. That's what I think. Is that what you think too? So far so good. And we have some, two different versions of a short bibliography for anybody who wants to, where will we put these for people? Yeah, in the back. And I also brought copies of the mailing of Everyday Zen Foundation, which we can also put in the back. It really isn't necessary to read anything if you don't want to. But for those of you who are interested, probably a lot of you already have these books, so then if you feel like it, you could read the case before the class.

[02:10]

If you don't have these books and you feel like getting them and reading the case before the class, one or more of them, that would be also good, but not necessary. So I'm offering the bibliographies just for your interest. Here are the cases that I would like to talk about for the four weeks. I've selected some of the more famous, sort of important cases from Mu'min Khan. Cases 2, 6, 12, and 14. So that will be the program, 2, 6, 12, and 14. So all of you are familiar with the Koan literature in Zen, I'm sure. There are various approaches to the Koan literature in Zen.

[03:20]

The one that most people know about and think about is the one that was sort of systematized in the 18th century by Hakuin, a Japanese Zen teacher who had a terrific sense of humor and created a system, a method of studying Koan that depended on Sashins, frequent Sashins, and frequent Dokusan in Sashins so that people could sit with the Koan present responses to the koan, get feedback, go back again, present another response, and eventually present a satisfactory response, have a breakthrough with the koan, then go on to the next koan in a whole curriculum. And this method of koan study is continued in the West in most of the lineages that do what we usually call koan study.

[04:28]

quote-unquote koan study, follow versions of this Hakuin method. So the lineages of Maezumi Roshi, Aitken Roshi, and so on. And there are many teachers who teach this method. And it does focus on Sashin and frequent dokusan, as I said. And you all, so you all know this, and you also know that in our tradition of Soto Zen, we don't follow that Koan study in that way. And there's a wonderful book who's, this is very useful, the title and the author escaped me. at the moment, so it's going to be hard to figure out what book I'm talking about, but I think some of you know actually what the book is, I'm sure. It's called Dogon and the Koan Tradition, is that the title of it? Do you know? Dogon and the Koan Tradition, I think that's the name of it, right?

[05:30]

And who's the scholar who wrote that book? Right, Stephen, H-E-I-N-E, right, thank you. Right, and so that book, it's very hard to read that book because it's kind of written in academies, but it's a great book. And essentially what he points out in the book is that the method of Koan study that I've just told you about, that we're all familiar with, is, it's obvious but we never think of this, it's one of many possible methods of studying Koans. It's not the only method or the best method or the most true method or the most real method, it's one good method. And there are many other ways that Koans could be studied and could be used in an authentic and serious way that aren't that way. And his argument is that

[06:32]

that the way that Dogen studied Koan, you know, it's often said in Soto Zen, we don't study Koan. He points out that this is not so, that Dogen with his students studied Koan, but that his method was entirely different from the one that I described. His method was to give talks about Koans and to give those talks in a kind of a Koan style, so that the experience of hearing the talk would be the experience of studying the Koan, and presumably the students who heard his talks would take them to heart and try to work on in their meditation and in their daily life the themes that he brought up in his talks, and that this is just as valid a method of Koan study as any other. That's Stephen Hines' argument in his book. And I believe that, I think that's a good idea. We certainly don't ignore in Soto Zen the Koan literature, but we just work with it differently.

[07:35]

Now, when you read all these books on this list, are all written, and most of them are not really written, they're lectures, transcripts of lectures, all these books follow the Hakuan method. And the method, the way of speaking about Koan in the Hakuan method is to basically say very little about them. In fact, the usual method is to tell the stories of the teachers in the Koan and then tell other Koans, you know, that don't really illuminate the point particularly, but kind of get you psyched up to find out your own answer and give away absolutely nothing, which is a good way to give a talk if that's the method that you're working in. So my approach in this class will be different.

[08:41]

My intention will not be to sort of keep the Koan sexy and secret so that you have to be mystified and amazed by this impossible-to-understand koan that you think that I understand or somebody else understands, but you don't, and you must meditate till your legs drop off until you finally, someday in this life or another one, will understand the koan and then become immune from all suffering and trouble. This is not my intention in this class. or in my approach to Koan, I'm working on the possibility, and you can tell me at the end of the class how successful we are in doing this, I'm working on the possibility that it is actually possible to speak about these Koan in a sensible way, in other words, a way that makes sense, that is not impossible to understand, does not require numerous seshin,

[09:46]

without watering them down or making them, reducing them to something tamer than they really are, because koan are deep metaphors that touch us at the bottom of our hearts and of our spiritual life. So that's my, so how would you work with these koan? How would you understand them if you felt like you were gonna try to live them every day? rather than they were just a highly specialized form of religious aesthetic, religio-aesthetic practice. So that's kind of the standpoint that I'm coming from. So what I would like to do then in each class is give a talk that I've prepared on these cases as I've mentioned, the ones I've mentioned. And then, and I hope we will have time for it tonight, but with my being late and with this lengthy introduction, I don't know how much time we'll have, but my plan is that every week after I give the talk, you will all talk.

[11:00]

In other words, instead of you're just listening to the talk and then we go away, or you're just listening to the talk and you're asking me questions, you will all talk. and you will all express your serious, personal sense of the Koan, based on what I've said about it and whatever reading you've done about it. And the way that we'll accomplish that is by having us speak to each other. It's not putting everybody on the spot to spout off brilliant content or something, but actually it will be a chance for people in groups of two or three I will ask you a question and ask you to speak about something and then we'll have a somewhat organized way of speaking to each other and talking to each other. What does this koan mean in my life, in my practice? How would I make use of it? That kind of thing. And we'll see what happens as a result of those conversations.

[12:05]

In my, you know, in Everyday Zen, I do a seminar once a week, which is basically what this class is based on. And in my Dharma seminar, I have spoken about all 48 cases of mumankand in just this way, and we've had these conversations. So I know that this actually works. You're not the guinea pigs here. We've had about three years of guinea pig work, and we figured out that this can be done. So don't worry, it can be done. by regular people. So there's no reason why you couldn't do it as well. So with all of that introduction, I think I've made myself clear, and let me begin speaking about Mu Man Khan case two, which is a very famous case and a very important case. And it's one of the few cases of mumankand that have a very long-winded... The case itself is very long-winded. Most of the cases, as you know, are very brief. This one is not.

[13:09]

So I'll follow the traditional method of reading the case, reading the commentary, muman's prose commentary, and muman's poetic commentary, and I'll warn you in advance that I make my own translations of all these things. In other words, I can't read Chinese. Those of you who know me understand that that's true, I can't read Chinese. But what I do is read all the translations and then using my own sense of the Koan, sometimes, not always, sometimes change things around to make the Koan in English appear clearer and more something we can actually make use of. So I don't wildly change things around or anything like that, but I'm just saying, in case you hear when I read the case, it doesn't sound exactly like any of the other cases in the books.

[14:11]

It's because it's not like the other cases in the books. I've made my own translations. So here is case number two of woman guan in Chinese, Baijiang's box. When Bajang delivered some Zen lectures, an old man attended, unseen by the monks. At the end of each talk, when the monks left, so did he. After they had gone, Bajang asked him, who are you? The old man replied, I am not a human being. But I was a human being long ago when Kasyapa Buddha preached in this world. In fact, I was a Zen master, and I was abbot of this very mountain that you now are abbot of. At that time, one of my students asked me whether the enlightened person of causation, and I answered,

[15:25]

No, the enlightened person is not subject to the law of causation. For this answer, I was reborn as a fox for 500 rebirths and I am still a fox. Will you save me from this condition with your Zen words and let me get out of a fox's body? And now I'm asking you, is the enlightened person subject to the law of causation? And Bajang said, the enlightened person is not blind to the law of causation. At the words of Bajang, the old man was enlightened. I am free, he said. paying homage with a deep bow. I am no longer a fox, but I have to leave my fox body in this mountain. Please perform a monk's funeral for it. And then he disappeared. The next day, Baizhang gave an order through the chief monk to prepare for the funeral of a monk.

[16:33]

No one is sick in the infirmary, the monks wondered. What does our teacher mean? After dinner, Hyakujo led the monks, Hyakujo is the same as Baijong, it's a Japanese reading of Baijong, led the monks out and around the mountain in a cave he found the corpse of an old fox and performed the cremation ceremony for it at one wood for a priest. And that evening Baijong gave a talk to the monks and he told the story exactly as I just told it to you. Huang Bo, one of his important disciples, was there, and when he heard the story, he asked Bai Zhang, I understand that a long time ago, a certain person gave a wrong Zen answer and became a fox for five minute rebirths. Now I'm asking you, if some modern master is asked many questions and always gives the right answers,

[17:42]

what will become of him?" Bai Zhang said, come here and I will tell you. And Huang Bo went near him and slapped him across the face, slapped his teacher across the face. So that's the case, very lengthy case. Woman's comment on the case, not causality. Could this cause 500 rebirths as a fox? Not blind to causality. How could this emancipate a fox? To understand clearly you have to have just one eye.

[18:47]

Then you will appreciate how Bajan lived 500 fox lives as 500 lives of grace. In Woman's Poem, not subject, not blind. One die, two faces. Not blind, not subject, error piled upon error. So this is, I'm sure many of you, if not all of you, have heard this story before. It's very famous and it turns on the dialectic between the two aspects of our lives, which philosophically we can say, we can use the terms, the relative side or the relative aspect of our lives and the absolute aspect. All of us are ordinary people.

[19:49]

We all have ordinary outlooks, ordinary lives. We all have our quirks and our foolishness. We all have our brilliance, our dullness, our loving, our hating, our likes, our dislikes, our hopes, our fears. Everybody's like this without a single exception. because we're all karmic beings. We're all limited, particular beings who have been born and will die, and because of this, our perspective is always limited, it's always a little off, and so our actions inevitably will be slightly skewed. We're all like that. On the other hand, and at the same time, we're all also Buddhas, magnificent, perfect, because we are animated by consciousness, because we breathe the breath of life, we are all absolute beings, and there is always a rightness to everything we do.

[21:05]

So we are always living in the midst of this paradox, that we are, absolutely are, and absolutely are not Buddhists, and this is our human problem. How do we live out this problem in peace and harmony, and joy and happiness, instead of in suffering and confusion? In our order. friend, or girlfriend, or spouse really... everyday bills, temptation, stress, the horrible state of the world.

[22:32]

It is very difficult to get through the day. traffic, as I experienced this evening, very hard. So much going on. When I come over to Berkeley at this particular time of day, I always think, so many people living in the Bay Area, you know? to think about much more than daily pressures. Even if we do have a little extra time and do a little meditation once in a while, to think about our deepest wishes and commitments, we may go a little deeper than our bills and our what not as Buddha nature. the audio system.

[23:35]

I'm wondering if there are. And wait till it's wired. I expect it's that the battery. Yeah, I think I can. I think I can speak loudly enough without this at all. Lose our recording. We're not using that. Well. Is it recording even though we're not getting it? It's recording with intermittent cutouts. Why don't I just forget it, okay? Next time it'll work perfectly. You might even say the nature of religious practice is that it is absolutely impossible. for a human being to actually do, which is why so many people get twisted out of shape by religious practice, because they can't help but notice that they're not doing what they say they're doing or what they're supposed to be doing, according to the book.

[24:38]

How's that? Are we better off? What did you do? I changed the battery. Oh, you put a different battery. Okay. Okay, so these are the two sides, the daily life and the impossible idealism of religious practice. Are you with me? Does it make sense what I'm saying? Yeah. Now, actually it does make sense that religious practice would emphasize the absolute. Because if it didn't emphasize the absolute, then spiritual practice would be more or less a self-improvement course. Of course, we do hope that our lives will improve as a result of our spiritual practice, but self-improvement can't be the point, because all religions strive to give us some sense of meaning in our living deeper.

[25:45]

than self in the world. And we need some sense of meaning deeper than the self in the world, because we won't be satisfied, no matter how much we improve, with self in the world. And isn't that what the Absolute is, after all? It's a wider, deeper sense of our living than we could possibly ever achieve or understand. So that's why it makes sense that religious practice is over the top, in that way. Now we come to the theme of this koan, which is one of the most important themes in Zen practice, and that is that the Absolute is necessary for us, but it's not sufficient. The Absolute is just really not enough. The Absolute in Zen is actually the starting

[26:46]

In Zen, longing for the absolute and being attached to that longing is called hanging around in the cave of emptiness. It's considered to be a fault, a disease, an occupational hazard of the Zen student. As you all know perfectly well, in our practice we sit a lot. We do, we sit. But we always get up. We sit and we get up. Sitting down and getting up, that is Zen practice. The Absolute is not in the sky or up in heaven or removed from this world. It's right here in our living, in the ordinary world. It cannot appear in any other way. The limitless sky of nirvana only appears as you and I and what we are having for breakfast.

[27:51]

It doesn't appear in any other way. And that is, particularly in the Zen tradition, what we mean by real awakening. That the relative and the absolute are completely intertwined as one lived experience. That's why Wu Men says in his comment, you must have one eye. So this is the real trick of our practice, to be ourselves just as we are, just as our karma has shaped us to be, and at the same time to know personally, viscerally, that we are Buddha. And to allow ourselves to be Buddha, to let that side of our lives also manifest because usually we don't. Usually we really don't believe that side of our life and we don't honor it. I'm not talking about a notion of Buddha superimposed upon ourself that would be too stinky and too religious and too much absolute and false.

[29:07]

So not Buddha superimposed upon ourselves, but ourselves as Buddha. For you and I, what other Buddha could there possibly be besides that one? So that's what this case is really about. The old Baijan, the old man, was asked long ago a question about karma, which is the relative Is the enlightened person still a prisoner of the relative world? And he actually gives the classical answer to this question. No. The enlightened person is free of the relative world. The Buddha is free of the relative world, of the bindings of the relative world. He's loosed those bindings. He's free. He's entered nirvana. That is the answer that it says in the Sutra. The Buddha is not subject to entangling karma. the Buddha has left the dusty world behind.

[30:12]

That's the answer the old man gives, but it looks like the answer of the Sutras is not the right answer. The poor old guy apparently made a mistake and he gets punished. 500 fox lives. And here he comes to the present Hyakujo seeking a better answer than the one that he gave long ago. And the answer he gets is The enlightened person is not blind to causality. With this answer, Bai Zhang embraces the relative. He doesn't try to escape from it. And his answer saves the old monk. Of course, this whole thing begs the question of past lives. You know, the old monk says, many lives ago, I was an abbot of this mountain. I wonder how many of us believe in this notion of past lives.

[31:16]

If you don't believe in past lives, then what do you think will happen after you are dead? Where do you think you will be going? And if you say, oh, I'll just disappear. That'll be the end of me. What does that really mean, if you say that? According to the laws of physics, Nothing disappears. Matter circulates around and transforms. It doesn't go anywhere. And then there's consciousness. What about consciousness? What is the fate of your consciousness after you die? Actually, as far as I know, no one actually knows what consciousness is at all, which is a strange thing because Consciousness is our life every moment, and nobody knows what it is. It's pretty strange. Not only doesn't anybody know what it is, but nobody even knows how to find out what it is.

[32:22]

Nobody even knows how to design an experiment that would reveal exactly what consciousness is, because consciousness seems to be not an object. So how could you design an experiment that would discover what it is? all schools of Buddhism, the law of karma is an absolutely crucial thought. The simplest formulation of the law of karma goes like this. It says this in one of the early sutras, if this then that. That's the simplest explanation of karma. In other words, if there is an action taken, there is, following that action, a particular consequence from it. Now, we can't predict exactly what the consequence will be of an action that you or I take because there are so many causal factors in the world constantly interacting with one another.

[33:27]

None of us have a big enough computer in our minds or anywhere else to be able to compute them all and therefore predict the future. But one thing seems to be definitely true, and that is positive actions will have positive results, negative actions will have negative results. Now, you may believe this or not, but I really believe it. And I believe it because I've sat on my little black cushion for a really long time, and I have observed my own mind over that period of time, and it's pretty clear to me that positive actions and thoughts lead to positive actions, positive results, positive feelings, negative actions and thoughts go the other way. I know this, you know, because it's absolutely foolproof pattern of my own mind, and I have faith in this.

[34:34]

because it's based on my own experience, and I'm sure this is true for many of you as well. Somebody else, though, might come along and say, well, that's fine for you to say that, but I've done many negative things, and I have not had negative results from them. In the reverse, I've done many positive things, and I've had negative results. So how can you say that? Well, this is actually never the case. But I can see that somebody might think so, if they haven't examined their own mind closely enough. But if they really think that, and I would like to convince them otherwise, I might say to them, okay, maybe you have not seen bad consequences for your bad actions yet, but just wait until your next life. See what happens then. something terrible will happen to you.

[35:35]

If the person believes this, then maybe they would be motivated to do good things and avoid bad things. And this is what happened to the old monk. He maybe lived a perfectly enjoyable life as the abbot of Hyakujo Mountain, of Baijiang Mountain, but then after he died, he got this terrible retribution of 500 lives as a fox for his mistake. Now you might think, as I myself actually think, that actually it's not that bad to be born as a fox. It's rather a nice life, you know. In many ways, it's superior to being a human being, you know, being born as a fox. So you might think, what's such a bad punishment, you know, of being born as a fox? But, you know, this is a story after all. And in the story, it's just a convention of the story that you're supposed to think that it's a bad retribution to be born 500 lives as a fox. And in China, A wild fox is more or less the equivalent of a black cat or a goblin or something like that, a really negative, sort of nasty creature.

[36:42]

So I said a minute ago that karma shows us, if we pay attention closely enough, that positive actions lead to positive results and negative actions to negative results. But the whole issue of karma is only half of the story. That's just the relative's half of the story. Nirvana is freedom. Freedom from positive and negative results. That's also part of our human story. So how do we put these two together and live them? The old monk, I think, was a little bit too literal-minded and unsubtle. He thinks, because there's two different words, absolute and relative, they must be two different things. And so he answers that way, as if absolute and relative were two different things.

[37:47]

The present abbot of Baijiang Mountain knows better. No, absolute and relative are two words. Two concepts, two ways of understanding one thing. To embrace the relative completely with absolutely nothing extra left over. That is the absolute. There isn't any other absolute somehow elsewhere. So let's examine a little more closely. What do we mean by bad actions or negative actions and negative results? In Buddhism, as you all know, there is no God who gets mad at you if you do something wrong. Maybe that would be good if that were the case because then maybe you could hide out, sneak around and escape God's punishment. Or maybe God might be busy doing something else that day that you did this wrong thing and not notice.

[38:55]

Or maybe God would be very forgiving and spontaneously forgive you so that your bad actions would have good consequences just because of the goodness of God's heart, which is after all what God is supposed to be, very good and nice, so you could escape. But karma doesn't work like that. It's just the way the world is. You will certainly receive the fruit of your action. I don't know why, but that's just the way it goes. So, you better be careful with your acts of body, speech, and mind. That's why we have precepts. You better figure out, not by what someone tells you, but by your own conduct and your own experience in that conduct, what is positive and what is negative, and try to cultivate the positive and gently let go of the negative.

[39:59]

But suppose you do do negative actions as you inevitably will. Maybe you can learn something from the negative consequences that flow from those actions. Maybe it's not a question of right and wrong or punishment and retribution. Maybe it's a question of this particular Buddha doing precisely what this particular Buddha needs to do in order to get his or her Buddha work done, which is to evolve to enlightenment. So maybe what you need is, and what's just right, is 500 lives as a fox. All kinds of things happen in our lives and there's always a way to work with them, however tragic they may be.

[41:10]

Today was kind of a rotten day for me because today I found out that a dear old friend has liver cancer, which is a nasty no way out of it, kind of cancer. So that was not too great. And then I heard from another friend who has ALS and is now taking a very, very bad turn with that. So this is occupying my day today. Lou Gehrig's disease. Terrible disease. These are bad things happening to these people. And yet, even in these kinds of cases, there is a way that we can work with what happens.

[42:17]

Even when what happens is utterly impossible, and we will all face an utterly impossible situation someday. There's no such thing as, that shouldn't have happened. That was not supposed to happen. If it happened, it happened. And our practice is to work with what happens, with no regrets. And if there are regrets, we work with regrets. And that's the spirit of this koan. Free from karma, not free from karma, this is not the point at all of this koan. This dilemma is a bogus dilemma, and getting caught by this dilemma is common foolishness. Wu-Lan's comment, not subject to causality, how can this answer cause five hundred rebirths as a fox, not blind to causality, how can this

[43:31]

Emancipate a fox. To understand clearly you have to have just one eye. Then you will appreciate how Hyakujo lived 500 fox lives as 500 lives of grace. See, so it's a mistake to think that these 500 lives are a tragedy. And the poem makes it even more clear. Not subject, not blind, One die, two faces. Not blind, not subject. Error piled upon error. So in other words, karma, positive and negative actions and results are important and we need to try our best to do positive and let go of negative. Every moment we have that freedom and every moment we have that responsibility. we have that choice.

[44:32]

Every moment, as Suzuki Roshi liked to say, we are the boss. Every moment of our lives is an action point, a decision point, but also every moment is a result, the result of all the past moments. When we accept what is as what is and make our best effort with all of our heart, willing to accept what will come from it and to work with that, whatever it is, then we're free. We're free then. Not free from karma, which is a kind of a dream, but free with karma, free in karma. embraced by and embracing karma. And that's how we can be Buddha and human being at the same time.

[45:38]

And I mean that literally. We are and are not Buddha in every present moment of our lives, in the actual, connected, responsible presence of our living. Then there's this other part about Huangbo, who shows up, remember, afterward, and he hears the story, and he says, suppose the old master had answered correctly, or suppose a modern master always answered correctly, would he have saved himself the trouble of 500 lives as a fox before the abbot has a chance to slap Huangbo across the face, Huangbo slaps him. And this is just an old Chinese way of appreciating one another. It's too bad. This is very different for us.

[46:41]

You can't go slapping people across the face and they think it's jolly. In our culture, it's not a good idea to slap someone. But in the old Chinese Zen, monastic etiquette that was just like a bunch of jocks horsing around. Let me just finish this. This talk tonight, I'm sorry, is a little longer than usual, especially with the with the introduction. So let me go on for a few minutes and then we will take a break. Thank you for reminding me. So he slaps him. Practice isn't about being right about doctrine. This is not the point.

[47:43]

conforming to a set of values and ideas, because there's really nothing to conform to or to understand. Zen literature is not that complicated anyway, and if you understand it beautifully, that's nice, but it doesn't guarantee anything. If you're a fan of Zen, as I am, You appreciate that some people understand the literature well, but that really isn't the point. The point is how you live. So, you know, Zen is famous for its emphasis on enlightenment, and I don't know about that. The other day, someone used the word crux, and that word struck me. The crux of the matter, you know, that struck me. What a funny word that is, the crux of the matter.

[48:50]

A crux, you know, is a cross. A cross is the intersection of two things, which at that point of intersection become one thing. And that's the crux of the matter. And we are every moment living right there at the crux of the matter. Suppose we did get enlightened in our next session. Then what? Does enlightenment make you immune to the difficulties of the next moment? There is no answer that's correct forever, just for now. And this doesn't make that answer trivial. It may be absolutely true now. There's no way of living that's correct all the time. Maybe it is correct and absolutely true now, because every moment, once again, we're at the crux, the place where life and death meet, the place where time and the timeless meet, the place where Buddha and yourself touch nose to nose.

[50:10]

As we know, in our culture, crux, cross, bears a special meaning. It evokes the idea of enormous suffering. I just was back from Mexico City the other day, which like most European cities, has lots of old churches, and I saw tons and tons of religious art. I don't know how many scenes of the crucifixion I saw last week. The cross in our culture evokes this sense of deep human suffering, the suffering that contains within it, at the middle of it, the seeds of redemption. And in this sense too, we're all always living at the crux of the matter. Every moment of our lives has that weight and that density. much are we aware of this?

[51:17]

How much attention to it do we pay? Sitting really helps. It really helps us to remember this. Teachings help too, so please do sit and remember to hear some teachings once in a while. A footnote, and I'll finish When I was thinking about this case a little bit more, I appreciated how hard it must have been for old Baizhang to endure those 500 fox lives. He must have suffered a lot. It took him all that time to get to the place where he could finally manifest a temporary human form so that he could go to the new Hyakujo and ask him a saving question. So this is an important point, too.

[52:24]

We won't find a liberative truth until we suffer through our karma just enough. It might be hard, but it's purifying. It's what we need to do. We probably would rather avoid it But you can't avoid it. To fully own and admit our human life is to take responsibility for all of our suffering and for all suffering. Nobody else to blame. No excuses. There's a lot of sorrow and grief in that. and maybe we'll have to swim in the ocean of tears for a long time. But we can hold that in the process of our practice and eventually we will be free of it.

[53:27]

So again, I apologize for being so long, but let's take a quick break and have just a few moments remaining. So can we take a five minute break? I really would like to know, what do you, personally, each one of you, actually, how do you understand and how do you take into your own living and into your own heart this teaching about karma? Do you really have, as Dogen says, deep faith in the law of causality? Do we have time for a question? Well, this is the question. I'm asking the question now and I'm asking you. So what I would like to do is to have you turn to the person next to you. No, I'm serious. And in a serious way, speak to that question.

[54:31]

You know, honestly and really. Not like, in other words, not what's the Zen answer or something like that. But what do you actually think about this? I mean, you're a practitioner of Zen, you're trying to live this. What do you actually think about these teachings of karma? How do they relate to the way you live your life? Do you have faith in this idea of embracing your karma? So the way we'll do this is, it's just very brief. Next time we'll have more time. But everybody find a partner, turn to each other, Okay? And I'm going to time this five minutes. Okay? So one person will begin and will speak as much from the heart as you possibly can and honestly, without any sense of this is the right answer or the wrong answer. What's your practice of karma? And then after five minutes, maybe the dawan can time this with the bell.

[55:36]

After five minutes, Can you, maybe why don't you give me a little, do you have a little bell? I can time it if you give me a little bell. I'll ring a little bell up here. You can time it? Okay. In five minutes you'll ring the bell. And then after five minutes, the second person will have five minutes, okay? The first person is not going to ask any questions or interrupt. They're just going to bear witness to what you're saying. And after the five minutes, the second person is going to talk. Now we have one extra person, two extra people. Can you find each other? Okay. You two, can you two speak? Okay. Everybody has a partner? Okay, so please begin with the first person and Ron is going to time it.

[56:22]

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