So, I'd like to begin tonight with the second mushroom story, and actually start with the mushroom story, instead of spending all evening talking about something else before even getting into the first mushroom story. I just thought of several things to say, you know, before I tell you the mushroom story. I'm going to go ahead and tell you the mushroom story, and we'll use that as a place to start. So, you know, I haven't studied closely about Dogen's four years in China, but apparently he actually stayed on the boat for a while.

[01:04]

The boat that was in the harbor, and didn't get on the boat, get there, and then just run off to find his teacher. So, while he was on the boat, a Chinese monk came, a Tenzo, a cook monk, came to the boat to buy mushrooms. And Dogen met him, and they got to visiting. And Dogen said, I feel this is so auspicious meeting you, and I've so much enjoyed your company. I'm wondering if you would stay, and we could have a meal together. And the cook monk said, no thank you very much, but I need to go back to my monastery. And Dogen said, you need to go back to your monastery? And how far is it? And the monk said, well, it's about 12 miles.

[02:10]

What is that in kilometers? 18, 20. So, and he said, yes, I left, you know, about midday, and taking me several hours to get here, and now I've got the mushrooms, I need to go back. And Dogen says, well, why do you need to go back? And he says, well, he says, tomorrow morning, there's a temple, there's an offering, and if I'm not there, it won't be okay. And Dogen says, why don't you have one of your assistants do it? And this monk is like the other one, you know. In my old age, I have taken this responsibility, and I intend to fulfill it. And so, I will need to leave shortly. And Dogen says, you're so, you know, you're so advanced in years, why do you waste your time working? Why don't you sit in meditation and study the sutras, the words of

[03:18]

the ancient masters? Wouldn't that be a much better thing to be doing? This is a young, you know, 20-something guy from Japan, you know, talking to the 70-year-old Japanese monk. So, the old monk says to Dogen, good man from a foreign country, you really don't understand practice or the words of the ancients, do you? And Dogen is, you know, as you might imagine, taken aback. But bless his heart, you know, then he just comes right back, well, tell me, what is practice? What is the meaning of the ancient teaching? And all the old monk says,

[04:23]

why don't you study those questions carefully? You are sure to come to an understanding. Keep those, he says something like, keep those questions close to your heart, and you cannot fail to become a person of the way. Keep this question close to your heart, and you use the question, you know, to study. So, and then he left, he had to go back to his monastery. Well, sometime later, Dogen visited that monastery, and then he went to see the cook monk, and he said, you know, I've really appreciated your time and the teaching you gave me to study carefully. And now I want to ask you again, what is practice? And the monk says to him, one, two, three,

[05:32]

I could even do this in German, eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf. And then he says, and then Dogen says, and what is the meaning of the teaching? And the old cook monk says, nothing in the universe is hidden. This is a very interesting teaching, nothing in the universe is hidden. I want to talk about this a little bit. I'm not trying to say that one, two, three, four, five is self explanatory. With Japanese stories like this, or Zen stories like this, it's, I don't know what to think myself. Do we take this literally? Do we take it figuratively? You know, how do we understand

[06:35]

this? You know, scratch my head about that. I know in other parts of Tenzo Kiyoken, Dogen says, and we were doing this today, measure carefully. You know, count the number of people who are going to be there. Did the other people who were counting count correctly or not? Study this carefully. Know your quantities. You know, study how much time something takes. So this has a lot to do with one, two, three, four, five, maybe. But you know, there's something to be said for, in other words, there's something to be said for relating to things accurately. But who knows? You know, I'm not, I don't know about one, two, three, four, five. And then there's also the sense

[07:42]

of, you know, being a beginner. One, two, start where you are. Go from there. Take another step, step by step. Next step, next step, next moment. One moment, second moment, next moment, next moment. So who knows? You can take these, these are things that are poetically, or there's not one answer. I'm sure, but so I don't know what Dogen got from that. Interestingly enough, the other comment, nothing in the universe is hidden. There's a Japanese Zen teacher named Tenke, who lived many centuries after Dogen, and he used to say to his monks, see with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue. Nothing in the universe is hidden. So that sounds like what we're doing. And then he would say, well, what else can I tell you? What else do you want me to say? So I think that's a very interesting question. Well,

[08:48]

what else do you want me to say? Well, what you want somebody to say is tell me how to do it so I get it right, so I don't have any problems. So it will come out the way it's supposed to. Give me the recipe. Tell me how to do this. Because I've been doing this, and I've been getting happy, unhappy, scared, sad, frustrated, annoyed. I've been getting upset. Things haven't always worked out for me. So tell me how to do this better. But nothing in the universe is hidden. I mean, that's the way it is, folks. You can't always get it to come out the way you want it to. You make a good effort, and it comes out some way, and it's not always the way you want it to. And that's the way it is. There's no secret here. There's nothing you did wrong. You made your sincere, good-hearted, whole-hearted, careful effort, and something happened. And sometimes we can still eat it,

[09:52]

and sometimes we can't. And sometimes what we eat tastes pretty good, and other times it doesn't. So we try. But again, usually nothing... And then this is interesting, of course, see with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue. And now I've encountered this, not just in food, but just last week. I told you about my friend Rob in Spain, who told me the story about how women cook with the music and the phone and people, and the men turn off everything and close the doors, and then can't you see I'm busy frying an egg? And they're much more irritated or upset about any kind of little interruption.

[10:54]

But Rob also told me, when you write, read what you have written, what does it say? If you can read it like you're the reader, what you've written, what does it say? That's different than writing what you think you want to say. Do you understand this difference? Mostly we concentrate on writing what we think we want to say, and then we don't read what it actually is saying. We think we've said it, and we talk that way. We talk, we try to say what we're thinking, and we're not hearing it how somebody else hears it. But it's not hidden. There's not some hidden thing there. Listen to what you're saying, you know, from another's point of view.

[11:59]

And then I take photographs. I have some cards upstairs, so I can tell you the secret of taking a photograph. Look at what's in the viewfinder. You know, if you're not careful, you will think, oh, I will take a picture of Gernot, and hold up the camera and take a picture of him. No, you're taking a picture of what's in the viewfinder. And if you actually look at what's in the viewfinder, and you forget about what's out there, then your pictures change. Pretty much immediately. So this is like taste. What you taste with your mouth, smell with your nose, see with your eyes. What's going on? It's not a secret, but it's different than, you know, I told you the other day, cook the onions until they're translucent. And the editor said,

[13:10]

how long? How do we know? But use your eyes. Use your nose. Use your mouth. Know for yourself. And there's not some secret. And even if you follow the recipe, it doesn't mean that, you know, now we understand, you know, the ingredients aren't necessarily so great. Let's see what we can do. So Dogen was very pleased with the monk's response. Nothing in the universe is hidden. One, two, three, four, five. Nothing in the universe is hidden. In the same way, you can know your own experience. What are you feeling? What are you

[14:15]

thinking? It's not about reality. You know, you think that there's a reality, which you could know. What you can know is your experience. That's your viewfinder. You look through your viewfinder and you have what's in your viewfinder. That's not what's out there. We never know what's out there. We know what's in our viewfinder. So you know what you feel. You know what you think. You know what you believe. It doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't mean somebody else doesn't taste something else or feel something else or think something else. But you know what you feel. You know what you think. You know what's salty for you and what's, you know, sweet. Somebody else has a different experience. And the way, of course, Western consciousness works so much is there's good and bad, right and wrong. And you should know that. And you should make your experience be the

[15:21]

way it's supposed to be. And you know, then we say to other people, don't talk to me like that. That's not the way to talk to somebody. Do you understand? My dear daughter, you know, has a very difficult mother. If I may say so. Now that I've been divorced from her for, you know, 75 to 05 is 40 something years, right? No, 35? No, yeah, 35 years. Yeah, 30, 35 years. So her mother will say, you know, like my daughter said, was telling her about, you know, now she's gotten married. So when her mother first met the young man, her mother said, Ligon, my daughter's name is Ligon, you can find somebody better than that.

[16:30]

Thanks, mom. So mom, you know, what mom's idea is that her idea is the right one. Even if somebody else has a different idea, she knows what's what. And it's what's what, not just for me, but also for you. This is challenging for the people around. So my daughter went on, so here's another example, for instance. My daughter calls her mom and says, they sometimes meet, my ex-wife lives in France, my daughter lives in California, and then, you know, their family is in Maine, so east coast of the United States, you know, but almost the same time from France to Maine and from California to Maine by plane. So sometimes they meet in Maine for

[17:40]

vacation. So my daughter calls and says, oh, you know, Scott and I, we only have a little vacation time and we're thinking about going to Italy on our vacation. And her mother says, what? You're not going to meet with me in Maine? Don't you love me? Don't you? I thought I was important to you. I thought you cared about me. What? You're going on a vacation to Italy? And you're not going to come and be with me? So a while later, my daughter calls her back and says, mom, we've decided to come to Maine. We've thought it over, and Italy is too expensive. And her mom said, did you already get your tickets? And my daughter says, yes, we've got our tickets. And her mother says, what? You've already got your tickets? I thought we could make our plans together and we could meet at the airport. And now you've just gone ahead and said, no, [...] no You haven't made your own plans? Thanks, mom. I thought maybe you'd be happy that I was coming to Maine. So what is reality here?

[18:55]

So at one point, my daughter said, my mom is so unhappy with me. We had a big fight. And she says that we may not be able to, she may not be able to be my mother anymore. She may, you know, blah, blah, blah. And she says when I talk to her, I tell her mean things. I say a lot of mean things to her. I don't know if you can follow this, you know, your English is so good, I'm very impressed. But anyway, I said to my daughter, when you talk to your mother, ask her to tell you what you said that was so mean. Mom, could you tell me what I said that was mean? So I happened to be there, I was in the kitchen, my daughter's two rooms away, but I could hear her. And she's saying, mom, I'm wondering if you could tell me what I said that was so mean. And then there's blah, blah, blah, and then about several minutes later, mom, I'm wondering if you could tell me what it was I said.

[20:20]

So she had to ask at least three times. Because in the meantime, her mom used to say, no, it was really mean. It made me feel so bad. So finally her mother says something, and my daughter says, mom, that's not mean. But this is an example of one person, when you say that, I experience it as being mean. I experience feeling hurt when you say those words to me. And it's not that those words are mean or aren't mean, it's that somebody has that experience. So if you're careful with language, you say, when you said this, this, this, I felt hurt. That's different than saying, you always say, you say mean things to me. When you said this, this, this, I felt hurt. That's a different, that's a more accurate kind of reflection. You don't characterize somebody else as saying mean things. But if the other, but then that's not very skillful to say you say mean things. When you say that, I feel attacked, I feel hurt, I feel upset. So that's a different kind of, and then so oftentimes we say, you make me mad.

[21:41]

It's really better not to let anybody make you mad or make you sad. How is anybody going to do that? Why are you given that power? When you said this, this, this, I felt sad. When you said this, this, I got angry. You didn't make me, I could have laughed. I could have, you know, I could have joked about it. I could have, I could have felt helpless or scared. I got angry. Nothing is hidden. This isn't hidden. But if you start to think there's actually a reality and that one person could be right, you say mean things. No, I don't. Then you can argue about what's reality. But if you say what your experience is, nobody can argue with it. It's your experience. I felt hurt. When you said these words, I felt hurt. It's not that you did that to me, you said something, I felt something.

[22:53]

Very simple. Anyway, my daughter was getting married and then her mom was very upset. What? You're not planning to sit down and dinner? And so forth, you know. So my daughter talks to my next door neighbor and then she calls her mom up and she says, Mom, I'd like you just to come to my wedding and have a good time. Would that be okay? She got some coaching. Don't argue with mom. Please come and have a good time, mom. Okay? Don't worry about anything. So she came, mom came, and we all had a good time. How about that? Excuse me for going into this. I don't know whether it makes any sense or if there's any views to you. I want to get on to the next part of the story, though. So what's in your viewfinder is different than reality. Study what's in your viewfinder and know what that is. Taste with your mouth, see with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue. Think your thoughts, know your feelings. Know what's what in your experience, but don't put that on somebody else.

[24:22]

As having created that, that's just what your viewfinder brought into view. And how you experienced it. So Dogen said he really appreciated this monk, and it reminded him, there's nothing in the universe that's hidden, it reminded him, he said, of a poem. Later he came upon a poem by a famous Zen master named Xue Do, who I think in Japanese is... I may think, but I may not. That's the name in Chinese. Anyway, the poem goes like this. With one word, five words, three or seven words, nothing in the universe can be fully grasped. Nothing can be grasped. Night advances, the full moon goes down in the sky and sinks into the ocean.

[25:30]

The black dragon jewel that you've been searching for is everywhere. The jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. The jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. So, mostly, there's many things that we've been searching for. And partly, this is also, for instance, the nature of enlightenment, I would say, which is this kind of idea of, suppose this was enlightenment, how would you know whether it was enlightenment or not?

[26:54]

This moment, how would you know, how would you be able to say whether it's enlightenment or not? Would all of your problems have been cleared up? What would be different about this moment? And Dogen says, the black dragon jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. There are certain things that, as human beings, we look for.

[27:57]

You know, love is a big one. Love, affection, approval, recognition, attention. Does anybody notice that I'm here? And then you can spend a lot of effort, how do I get somebody to notice I'm here? How do I get them to approve? How do I get them to give me some affection? How do I get them to love me? And we think, I need to work on myself so I can get these things. How well has that gone for you?

[28:59]

How well does it work? Dogen at one point said, you know, you've spent years planning and scheming and plotting how to get more of these things. How's it going? Don't you think if it was going to work, it would have worked by now? How many years has it been? And so it's the problem, you know, what you've gone about doing and that you haven't been very well about. You haven't done very well doing what you're trying to do. Or do you just have the wrong strategy? Dogen's suggestion is, give it a rest. Stop trying to plan and scheme and figure out how to get these things from others through your behavior, by your behaviors. So, you know, when you meditate, you give yourself attention.

[30:05]

You finally sit here and you're stuck with having to get attention to yourself. And then you say, I'm not a very interesting person, am I? How can I become, you know, another kind of person who would be more interesting and more enlightened? And you start giving yourself approval. And you know, love is very mysterious because it's just in the air. I tried to explain this, you know, but... Love is just the fabric of things.

[31:08]

And it's not something that you can earn or gain by your behavior. If I behave well, then I will be loved. If I behave better, people will love me. If I behave some, then I will get this love from others that I've been missing. That's just not the way it works. You just, you know, the black dragon jewel, you've been searching for this love, you've been searching for it, it's everywhere. So what about now? You just start to feel it. And then, just start feeling. Can you feel it? And then we go, I don't think so. So I say, well, to start with, people say, well, how do I do this? I say, well, probably awkwardly to start with. Because we're not used to doing that.

[32:15]

We're used to so busy. How do I make this? How do I do that? How do... it should come out better. And then maybe I'll get the love. And we're so busy how to do that, we're not able to just experience. The love that's already here. It's each moment. This is also, again, as I mentioned last night, in Zen, called Big Mind. How will you experience Big Mind? When you're busy, so busy with your small mind, thinking about how to get someplace. Big Mind.

[33:22]

Big Mind. So, I will tell you another poem by Rilke. Unfortunately, I don't have the German. So I will have to tell you in English. But this poem has a little bit of the same kind of feeling. Of the black dragon jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. So, Rilke's poem is,

[34:35]

You see, I want a lot. The darkness of each infinite fall. The shivering blaze of each step up. There are those who live on, and they want little. They're raised to the rank of prince by the slippery ease of their light judgments. But what you love to see are faces that do work and feel thirst. Most of all, you love those who need you like a crowbar or a hoe. It's not too late, and you are not too old, to dive into the increasing depths of your life where it calmly gives out its secret.

[35:45]

Dive into the depths of your life. It is not too late, and you are not too old, to dive into the increasing depths of your life where it calmly gives out its secret. Thank you. In Buddhism and Zen, you know, this is related to... So, it's letting things come home to your heart. And letting your heart, so to speak, or your awareness, resonate with the object. So you feel touched, and you touch with your awareness.

[36:58]

When you're busy trying to make it be the way you want it to, or think it should be, or what you'd like, that will reflect well on you, so you will get some recognition, or approval, or support, or love, you can't be doing... you can't feel. You can't... you're not in connection anymore. You can't resonate with the object. This is also the same as saying that when you're busy telling yourself or someone else how to behave, you can't be receiving yourself, or the other person, or in real connection, and then you won't feel the love that's always there. Thank you.

[38:03]

So, I want to encourage you to, you know, especially while you're sitting, but also throughout the day... And when you find the opportunity to not be busy, not be concerned about whether or not it's good and bad, right or wrong... And just allow the world to come to you. See with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue, breathe your breath. Allow your breath to breathe you. There's the light, the sunlight, the shade, the breeze, the clouds. And we... here we are in the midst of this. And we have this time to do this.

[39:25]

So even, you know, it was touching, this morning Gloria brought up, well, I have this good opportunity and I'm just all this thinking. And even that kind of thinking, you can pause. One way to do this is to say, even though I am thinking, I won't worry about it. I will be happy. I will sense the sweetness of the air. I will remember how... times when I was loved, or I will remember Quan Yin, or the Black Madonna. Okay.

[40:36]

Being aware of inhale and exhale. And let your body be soft. Your mind be soft. When we start to try to get someplace, our mind becomes hard. And we have expression for it, you know, in English, hard-headed. You know, hard-headed, bottom line. Accomplishment, production. So we have this time to be soft, and if you're thinking a lot, just, you don't worry. Think nothing of it. Okay. Thank you. So we'll get up and walk for a little bit. And then we'll sit for a few minutes, as we've been doing.

[42:12]

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