I want to talk a little more about how we think, you know, or more exactly what this practice is really all about. what it's useful think about this practice you know there's a famous Zen koan or story that I think all of you have heard about the flag and the wind.

[01:14]

You've all heard that, right? No? No? It's almost the most famous Zen story. the sixth patriarch goes to visit. He's a layman. It's very important, interesting, that the sixth patriarch is a layman. As Mumon Roshi said, Zen is layman's Buddhism. And the sixth patriarch, at the time of this story, received ordination But it has nothing to do with whether he understood Buddhism or practiced Buddhism well or anything. It was just he did it as some way to practice with other people. Anyway, he went wandering about as a layman.

[02:28]

he received his robe from the fifth patriarch. and was visiting a man named Yin Sung. And when he arrived at... He was called a Dharma master, not a Zen master. And he arrived at his temple and two monks were arguing.

[03:31]

I guess he sat down and listened. And the two monks were arguing, is it the flag, the temple banner thing, is it the flag that's moving or the wind that's moving? And they argued back and forth. And the sixth patriarch said, Oh, it's neither the flag nor the wind, it's the mind that's moving. It's a pretty simple story. You all understand it? Well, I thought you might think you did. And you might, actually, because whenever you read about Zen, for instance, if you read Nancy Wilson Ross's books, Visiting San Francisco, that story's always there.

[04:44]

And everybody who... I think most of the people who write the story down in books think they know what it means. And it is quite a simple story. But because it's a simple story, I want to use it as an example of how we think about Buddhism. I don't want to explain the story completely, so it's not useful to you. Actually, I can't explain it completely. But I don't want to explain it so much that you think it's explained completely. But I do want to use it as an example. You can't use your mind to figure out such a story. But you can use your mind to get all the background, all the preparation.

[05:51]

And it would be useful to know, at the time you're thinking about the story, everything the Sixth Patriarch knew, and everything the Two Monks knew, and the historical situation. If you knew that, it would be useful. At least you should know something about it, right? So, first of all, Let me talk about the mind a little bit more. The sutra we chant every day, the Heart Sutra, mentions the five skandhas, which you all should understand pretty well, and form and feelings and perceptions and together-makers, or impulsors, or pulses, or clusterers, and consciousness.

[07:18]

And mostly, you know, the mind is treated in Buddhism as one of the senses, by seeing or hearing, It's the way we perceive things. And then, of course, our mind is more complicated than our eye, so our eye does very definitely organize your perceptions. And if you, as Abimassal, Abimassal, Abe Maslow, You just got an insight into the workings of my mind. Anyway, Abraham Maslow says about glossing, he talks about glossing and deglossing. You know, the way you perceive things is a gloss.

[08:27]

And Castaneda thinks, for instance, he says he thinks that Don Juan was deglossing him and re-glossing him with a new gloss called being a sorcerer. So you perceive things in terms of the new gloss. But Don Juan thinks that he was unglossing him, so he perceived things directly. We don't really know what Castaneda thinks. And Zen thinks, doesn't think it's re-glossing you, thinks it's de-glossing you, so you perceive things directly. I think that's true too, pretty much true. to talk about Castaneda a little bit in reference to this story.

[09:36]

The Sixth Patriarch, you know, we don't... Ian Polsky's done a pretty good job of showing that the Sixth Patriarch, we don't like Buddha, we know more about him than Buddha, but we don't know much about him at all, and the stories are made up afterwards, and this incident with the flags may have never happened, But whether it's apocryphal or not is irrelevant, as it's irrelevant as Time magazine doesn't see when they did their one foot in the door expose of Castaneda. But it doesn't make any difference whether Castaneda is... Don Juan is real or not. The genius of the book is that it's useful to you in your life situation, whether you find Don Juan or not.

[10:38]

It's like Milarepa is useful to you, whether you sit in one thin cotton garment up there in midwinter, next winter, or not. The fact of the snow in the cave is rather irrelevant. The genius of such works is that it works for you in any situation. And the genius of this Sutra, the Sixth Patriarch, is the same. So, actually your eyes are glossed. And you the way your eyes organize perceptions is already influenced by your mind and the way you want to see things. It's much more true in your mind.

[11:38]

And so we have this... D.T. Suzuki translates, interestingly, as confection makers. Confection. With our food trips, it seems to fit in pretty well. Anyway, our mind puts things together a certain way. And the sixth is consciousness. And then we can talk about pure awareness. But the purpose of mind in Buddhism is the same purpose as your eyes or ears, is to bring us information. And we're warned by Buddhism that the way the information is brought to us by our eyes and ears is very deceptive. And over and over again. Letting your life come into it and letting the story into your life

[12:51]

bringing your own situations. Somehow, if you keep at it pretty soon, just what you're doing will appear in terms of the flag and the wind. Then you can begin to see its usefulness. before that as a problem, like as I said the other day, you do your zazen and you come to a problem and you get to the edge of it and you put it on a plate and say, this is a problem, without going into it. So if you treat a koan that way, as something that's, oh there it is, a problem, it has no life and it has no meaning. If you do this, you know, you actually, if you ask yourself questions in this way, why am I feeling tension? Or whatever it is, you know. What is my practice? What question can I have? What's a fundamental question for me in Buddhism?

[13:55]

Some question will arise if you ask yourself that. Enough. Where is my practice lacking? Where is my practice lacking? Is my practice lacking? Anything can happen. You don't know what will happen, what will arise. The more you do that, you learn how to do that, this process goes much more quickly. So, first of all, you have to be able also, what generally we do when we think about things, All of us, partly because we're lazy and partly because we don't have a trained way of thinking. Again, our school system emphasizes brilliance or something and not training. And it's training that counts. By training, I mean just as we train doing the bowls, taking care of each bowl.

[15:00]

When you read a koan or a Zen story, you have to look at every aspect with the same care. You don't overlook, well, that's just the introduction and you skip that. Okay, what's important is then that these are two monks who are anonymous and you have And it precedes the Dharma master overhearing the discussion and his ordination. So we can know from that that the story as it's first told is rather simple because it's told for these two anonymous monks. And he's a layman and he's not particularly interested in being discovered as the Sixth Patriarch.

[16:02]

So he just says some casual remark. It's your mind that's moving. A kind of deceptively simple statement. Then we know he went in to see the Dharma Master, and he gave a more detailed explanation because the Dharma Master said, you are no ordinary person. And he arose and bowed to him and said, explain what you mean. So he explained. Also, we know that the story has lasted for nearly 1,300 years. And though it looks like kind of a silly story, stories that last 1,300 years are usually not silly. So you know for some reason it's lasted for 1,300 years. So let's just take...

[17:11]

very simply. First, these two guys are talking and they're talking about the flag in the wind and the flag in the wind and the flag in the wind. Without even going through any process, you can ask, why bother to talk about the flag in the wind? Why bother to talk about the flag in the wind? Why bother to talk about the flag in the wind? So the Sixth Patriarch says, don't bother to talk about the flag in the wind, talk about your mind. It's the mind that's moving. And that's very true in what I meant yesterday when I talked about doksan. When you present your self-induction, or when you present yourself to yourself, or when you think about anything, you don't think about the object of mind, flag or wind, you think about the mind itself out of which flag and wind arise.

[18:19]

Do you understand what I mean? So in Buddhism we're always talking about the big mind. We also know, you know, this is not a scientific discussion, So we're not concerned about actually the flag as a cloth object. We're talking about... It's a spiritual discussion, and a spiritual discussion at the base... One of the things that Buddhism feels is that you can't talk about reality just objectively. at base reality of spiritual. And so, and all Zen stories are about you. So, first off we know, I mean, I think the most important thing I want to convey today is that we don't talk about the objects of mind, we talk about mind itself.

[19:29]

So, at the beginning again of this sasheen, I asked you, notice how the objects of your mind are produced by your breathing, or your activity, and how your breathing is in turn influenced by. Further, we have to give the monk some credit, you know, They're not drunken sailors looking at a flag. Geez, is that the flag moving? I mean, the monks, we have to give them ... they may be anonymous and they're not as smart as the Dharma Master, but at least they're not drunken sailors, right? Because it is rather silly to say, is it the flag moving?

[20:35]

We know it's the wind moving the flag. We do know. The tail isn't wagging the dog. The flag isn't waving the wind. So it's sort of pointless to say, is the flag moving or the wind moving? Unless they're talking about something else. The fact that it doesn't make sense at that level, unless they're drunken sailors, means that the monks are talking about something else. So that allows you to bring the question to another level. What else could they be talking about? Well, they can be talking about, does one thing affect another? Or, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does rubbing the tile produce a jewel? Does your practicing enlightenment change society? Or is it your situationment, the wind, which changes you?

[21:42]

And then it's also useful to know something about the six patriarchs' own teaching. And he says, as I said yesterday, all the ten thousand things are produced by one mind. So that means, he's saying, the flag is mind, wind is mind, Dogen says, everything you see is mind. We don't just mean some theory like the tree that falls down in the forest no one hears. What do we mean by big mind then? The whole thing raises the question of what is big mind. And is the flag, does the flag have any, in a world of a non-repeatable universe, the flag waving, coming, flashing?

[23:22]

Does it have any existence, aside from your giving it existence? Flag is flag, wind is wind. So what at base is moving everything? Anyway, that much you can, by thinking thoroughly about it, present to yourself. Willing to spend the time, I think some of you, occasionally I give you, some of you, some story to work on. And in the best sense you do, you work on it. One year later, it's still coming up, consciously and unconsciously, in your conversation, in doksan. But many people, when I do this, find they don't have time to think about it in the next few weeks.

[24:29]

Other things are more important. Or it's too much trouble. You don't see the point of it. But anyway, first you can present this much to yourself about it, and then you just have to bring it into your consciousness. Flag and wind, and two monks, and the Dharma Master, and the Sixth Patriarch, and what the heck are they doing? Why bother with all this? So until everything you see is flag and wind, You can't begin to enter into how this story can break through our concepts, in which we think one thing affects another, in which we think Zen exists as some isolated practice of ourselves.

[25:39]

Zen is a social institution and a cultural fact as well as your individual practice. And you have to, you know, Zen isn't something created for your convenience. and it isn't just what you want it to be. Its power is that it exists at one with and interdependent with society. Over the door of most monasteries in Japan and China, it says something like, everything we do is with other people. It doesn't mean in the monastery only.

[26:44]

It means in the cave or wherever you are, actually everything you do is with other people. Everything we do must be with other people. But that's the fact of our existence, like the fact of the animal or this tree here in this Tassajara. The tree is completely independent. Its own health and strength are its trunk and leaves, but it's also a Tassajara Valley tree. So we can't separate out. one thing from another. I think I said enough about this story.

[28:04]

Because I hope what I mean by how we think about such a story or about our practice is... I made myself clear, I hope, maybe. Yes? We're told, when you listen, just listen. But I find that if I'm to listen to what you are saying, At the same time, trying to take the trouble of saying, now I'm going to do the introduction and this and that, you know, trying to look at different aspects of what you're saying and why you're saying it, that doesn't tie up with my understanding of what it is to listen, just listen. And similarly... One thing at a time. Can I go on? I want to. I know.

[29:11]

That's why you had trouble listening. Now you can go on. I'm sitting here and I have difficulty giving priority to my state of mind paying some attention to some body consciousness. And yet, listening to what you're saying. Yeah, I know. That's because you're easily distracted. that level of absorption or perception or intelligence which isn't our thinking mind, you don't have to put it together with your thinking mind, then it goes in you and it's all right.

[30:14]

Whether you know half an hour later if someone says, what did he say? And you don't have a single idea, you know, maybe that's good. When you can do that, you know, it's all right if you sleep in the lectures, you don't mind. The Sixth Patriarch also talks about two practices. He doesn't just... Our way is to realize this mind, this big mind. And the Sixth Patriarch tries to give us some... Since I'm talking quite long, if you want to change your position, please, it's okay, sit comfortably. he gave us two practices too, which is one is the samadhi of oneness and the other is the samadhi of form.

[31:22]

And what he means by that is samadhi of form is to abide in the world of perceptions, of form, without being caught by any form. And samadhi of oneness means always to have pure, direct, undiscriminating mind. When you have that, you can concentrate on what I'm saying, or on your zazen. And everything is just a part of that. Different from what I just said about the samadhi of one form? You're caught immediately if you stray from the samadhi of one form.

[32:45]

Yeah. And after I do something like that so well, I find that I can't remember what I'm supposed to do next. Like if I'm walking and I'm thinking about walking, then if I happen to remember where I'm going... I can't remember what I'm supposed to do when I get there. It's just people observing. I can't remember that I'm supposed to serve when I get to the end of the route. And I get very confused. That doesn't sound like practicing for other people to me. I don't take time to know the people I'm going to meet. Well, I'm not so sure, but why we create this safe place at Tassajar is so we can be addled together.

[34:02]

So you can give up, you know, that kind of usual behavior which you might get hit by a car in the city, right? So you can wander. I often, I'm doing service and suddenly I don't know where I am or what I'm supposed to do next, anything. And I have to quick look around and say, oh, it must be. But that has something to do with your ability to know what you're doing by your deeper than thinking consciousness. And that comes about, believe it or not, and here's the catch. That comes about, the most effective way is to learn to follow the rules of a monastery absolutely.

[35:11]

So we set up a situation where you can learn to just follow the rules without your ego, to get rid of your small self. A lot of rules which interfere with the way you want to live make your small self very visible. It doesn't want, this is ridiculous, to do this. Well, it's pretty impossible to do that if you don't If you're in a non-Buddhist monastery situation because you're afraid that you're going to contribute to the war effort or to some destructive thing, you know, you want to be concerned with the goals of the situation. But here we have not much point for being here or existing. The rules are rather harmless to give up to. You know, it's not like giving up to the rules of a fascist government or something like that.

[36:20]

It's just giving up to the rules of a fascist monastery. Some of you think that. But anyway, even so, it's quite harmless. So you just do it, right? And just do it. And eventually your small self, if you're persistent, gives up. It sort of goes into the bleachers and waits until you return to the city. It doesn't give up, but it waits. But what's supposed to be going on during this time is you're learning to pick up clues about what to do. In other words, if you get out of that complex mode into a more subtle mode, your situation constantly clues you.

[37:22]

But we normally, because we think about things and we're proceeding from our ego and our desires, our small self, we don't notice the actual clues. So when you notice the actual clues, you know that the flag is mine. So to follow the clues, part of studying a story like this is to follow the clues. Not like a private detective, you know what I mean? But to, as we say, to hold up one corner and know three. I don't know if this point is... if you see the relationship between giving up to just following the rules of a harmless situation, you know, like this, until you just do things without thinking about them.

[38:23]

Well, let me give you a rather amusing example. Suzuki Roshi, yesterday I listened to one of Suzuki Roshi's tapes. I have these various tapes of Suzuki Roshi, lectures he gave while I was in Japan. And when I had some time, I put it on. Often I do other things, but Suzuki Roshi's talking away in my ear. Yesterday he cracked me up. He was talking about the fact that you have to develop habits of just doing things without thinking. if you're going to be able to operate in that realm without thinking. If you carry a notepad around with you, for instance, all the time, you'll never learn how to recall things without the notepad. Well, here's an example of dialing a phone.

[39:28]

The only way to actually learn how to do something is to really put yourself out on a limb. So, you think you recall a number, right? But you aren't quite sure, but it happens to be a $15 long distance call. You just pick up the phone and you start dialing. Sorry, wrong number. If you do that, that kind of way, taking a chance on your mind producing the right number, it will begin to produce after a while. It may cost you a little money at first, but it's worth it. That's just a kind of silly example. If you're going to give up thinking and operate out of some deeper way, you've got to be willing to get to the end of the aisle, sometimes, and not know who you're supposed to serve next or where you're supposed to turn. but you should be able to instantly get the clues from the situation.

[40:35]

Now, the story I was going to tell is that if Tsukiyoshi was saying this, he says, very important is when the bell rings in the morning, just get up. Immediately get up. Don't wait around one minute thinking two minutes. Just get up. He says he has this habit. This lecture was at a time when they just put tatamis in his old cabin, and he had three whole tatamis, and he'd been living in America all these years without tatamis. He had three tatamis, he said. He felt wonderful, so spacious, three big tatamis, that he slept right across all three of them like a giant. Not just sleeping on one tatami, he used all three. And then someone told him, But he wasn't supposed to sleep that way, because you have to have your head to the north and feet to the south. That's what some Buddhist texts say. But Sukhya Rishi never pays any mind to that kind of thing.

[41:38]

But someone told him and insisted he should change, so he changed. And he slept on one tatami, head to the north, feet to the south. The bell rang, bong, he jumped up, went right into his lamp and died. Because he usually got up and went straight for what he calls the restroom door. So he got up and just knocked his lamp over and hit the wall. So, in the beginning of the lecture he was saying, you have to develop habits of just doing things automatically, without thinking. If you're going to learn to have this deeper way of operating, he said, it doesn't mean you should bump into walls, etc. And it didn't make any sense why he said that. And at the end of the lecture he told this story. When the bell rang, he jumped up and went straight to the restroom and ran to the wall.

[42:43]

So you have to take, Tsukiyoshi, you did it, and you had to take that chance. Normally, such habits help us. I want to play in the rain and keep an eye on you. All that stuff. Yeah, but I have a question. You can't... Is that what I sound like? No, I'm just saying. Okay, go ahead. Because you can't think about those things. You can't think about those things, you know. I'm thinking in the way we usually think. You can gather some information about them, right? Then you can just repeat the story to yourself. Heckle, that's two monks talking about. Why would they bother talking about the flag and the wind? In a way, when I'm doing something like that, I get really tired of thinking. What I find I'm doing all the time, I'm not getting tired of.

[43:50]

Well, part of the koan work, you know, is since our mind continues in sort of rough spurts of energy and you can't control it, give it something to do, like a koan or a mantra, and learn to develop continuous energy. and your ability to bring your attention and awareness back to it, and [...] back to it. I took one phrase once and decided I would not stop saying this phrase until I could hold it continuously 24 hours. What does that mean, holding it continuously? I took a vow like that. And it took me about 16 months. The first month or so I was pretty good.

[44:51]

I, of course, didn't do it when I was sleeping, in the first month or two, and et cetera. And then it would go away for two or three months at a time, in the middle part. And I'd think, oh, I see. And I'd stop. And then it would go away. And then it would come back and go away. And I'd completely forget about it. Then I found it was going. And then I realized one day that actually I was doing it all the time. I was able to hold it present in my consciousness all the time, continuously. That was a big change. A whole different way of energy and being present. But it was hard work. It was like digging a ditch, you know, which every time you Take out a shovel for you, look back and somebody's filled it in. And so you shovel it out and somebody shovels it in for you. It's like that.

[45:53]

Maybe, uh, I know this, um, this story about the nuns, and since we're here, maybe that's all we can do for now is just remember to think about it, to remember to remember it. Mm-hmm. It's something I have. I mean, this is like first things first. If your mind doesn't function that way, it doesn't mean you give up the problem or you force your mind into functioning that way. Before you even start working on the problem, you work with your mind until it functions that way. If you can actually do first things first and see what comes first, then you achieve everything in one moment. Does that make sense? You talk about it being alright to make mistakes and I wonder what kind of attitude you have sometimes I get confused because you can think of this situation as one that you can make mistakes in but then you don't.

[47:02]

It's like always a practice. You're never real life. What's the difference between real life and practice? I don't know where the... which way to look at it. Well, to be able to make mistakes doesn't mean the mistakes are without consequence. They wouldn't be mistakes if they were without consequence. Anyway, and also what you brought up, what's the difference between practice and real life?

[48:12]

That's a good question. What's the difference between practice and real life? Anyway, the most important thing I want to convey to you today is that we're Never talking about the objects of mind, flag or wind. Always talking about the mind itself. And your way of understanding yourself should be, this is an example of my mind. Not a thing, a real thing I'm talking about. In this way you can make some progress in your practice and you can understand how to ask real questions and really practice with others so that others can enter into your practice too. But this is the real space in which we always do everything with everyone else, with other people.

[49:27]

with all being even.

[49:30]

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