The next Blue Cliff Records story is Sun-Faced Buddha and Moon-Faced Buddha, and it follows directly from the first two, and it concerns great activity. It starts out, the When you look for it, the Absolute is nowhere to be found. But what about great activity? And then it talks about getting the jewel from the mouth of the green dragon. Anyway, I would like to talk about that some other time. Maybe I can talk about it a little, but that's a whole other session. We practice Buddhism because we are a human being.

[01:28]

Buddhism is some wonderful teaching designed for human beings. And as you practice, you will find our life is some wonderful life designed for human beings. If it were anything else, there wouldn't even be a word like suffering to describe it. The poem I tried to remember yesterday by Wang Wei goes something like, When there is nothing to give up, then truly, you have returned to the source. When there is, when you no longer, when there is no void to abide in, that is truly the void.

[02:58]

when, or let's see, quiescence or maybe quiescence is transcended by non-action, by non-doing, or rather creation, creativity is true activity. or a great activity. I'd like to try to talk a little bit more about non-action or non-doing. There's also Layman Pang. There are three interesting statements by his family, which you may be familiar with. Layman Pang is

[04:35]

studying or something, and he suddenly exclaims, oh, how difficult it is, how difficult my studies are. It's like drying a thousand, the fibers of a thousand pounds of hemp in the sun on a tree. And his wife says, oh, my study is quite easy. the tops of the buds themselves or the tops of the flowering plants themselves reveal the truth to me. And his daughter says, Oh, my study is neither difficult nor easy. I just eat when I'm hungry and sleep when I'm sleepy.

[05:36]

Anyway, you may know the story, too, about how she died, the daughter died before Lehmann Pang, which is kind of an interesting story. He said he was going to die, and she went out and arranged everything and sat down and died instead, in the chair. So he waited two weeks. Like many stories like that, that's not to be divided into three people. It's this practice from three points of view, that's all. Maybe relative and absolute and transcending relative and absolute. Seed and flower and ground.

[06:49]

Understanding these stories reminds me of a story someone asked me, not a Buddhist story, but someone asked me a few weeks ago. And the question is, if a man goes up a mountain on one day and to have a picnic, say, and it takes him all day to get to the top. And so he has a picnic. And he spends the night. And the next day, at the same time, he starts down the mountain, but this time he's going down and not just walking along, he gets down the mountain in only about one hour. And the question then is, can you show me, simply, that he either was or was not at the same point, ever at the same point at the same time?

[08:23]

Anyway, as long as you separate it into that kind of thing, it's a little difficult to figure out. But if you just imagine two men doing it, one starting at the top at eight and one starting at the bottom at eight, they would, of course, cross, even if one did it in one hour and one did it in six or seven hours. Anyway, that kind of rearrangement of the categories is necessary in looking at these stories. Maybe I shouldn't have told you the answer so quickly. Or it's like seeing two people at a table, you know, talking. And you, if you look at the space between the two people, you can tell whether they're arguing or in love or

[10:19]

whatever, by the shape of the space between the two people. It's like Don Juan saying, look at the shadows or the spaces between the leaves. or Linda asking if everything is mudra. As soon as you see that the spaces you create with your body affect people and affect you, then there's no, you can't, you can

[11:20]

It's like zazen then is a way of practicing with our mind by using our body. And the more you can, you directly experience that kind of continuity, then if you change your posture in a room, it affects everyone in the room. It doesn't mean not to be natural, it just means just as you practice with body, speech and mind, you know, and you notice when you say something mean to someone, it affects them, when your body does something mean, it affects them. No, Don Juan, most of that chapter on Don Juan in that book called, I think, On Not Doing, is almost identical to Buddhism. And Suzuki Roshi speaking about waiting for things,

[13:13]

is almost identical to what Don Juan is saying. It means to have some kind of soft mind. We say, stop thinking, and Don Juan says, stop doing. And the idea of a mudra or seal isn't just some one act. The ten ox-herding pictures, for example, are a mudra or seal like that, or the relationship between teacher and disciple. In the ten ox-herding pictures, you know, it starts out and he sees no trace.

[14:17]

like in the end there's no trace. First he sees no trace of the ox. Then he has some sense of relative and absolute, or he sees the point of practice. but he can't enter the gate. And then he hears something in his, he hears his ear, you can say. He hears a bird singing or something, it says. And then he sees the ox and hears the ox. And then one picture represents the process of practice and another dropping body and mind, etc. But in Buddhism, the whole process is what is meant by a mudra of recognizing and holding and realizing and dropping.

[15:46]

So there's no, in this sense, there's no choice. Whatever you do is either, in Buddhism we say, an upward path or a downward path, or again, Don Juan says, you either make yourself miserable or you make yourself strong. Or if you try to do nothing, you just are half alive. There's no inactive, or it means the blown hair sword. Anyway, it means to see the continuity of our actions, getting rid of distant or near or big or small, which are created by our mental activity and by our doing.

[17:50]

And in some of you it's the feeling of wanting to... Feeling you're stuck to a way of seeing. Some feeling you're overlooking something and you reject it as unimportant or something. but you have some intuition about that rejection. I don't think I can explain it any further without

[20:17]

making it look ridiculous but you should be aware in your practice and in your zazen of a realm of activity which you can't call activity, or you can't do it, or you can't think it. but by zazen or by trying to just let your breath guide you, as I suggested last night, which is so difficult to do. You forgot almost immediately.

[22:03]

is a way to try to let this, you know, as I expressed it yesterday, this is two and this is one, and if everything was continuous it would be zero. And how to act in that zero? It's like, I don't know if You must have learned something about sleep and wakeness, this seshin. But we call sleep resting, but we can't rest during the day in the same way. We have to turn off our mind in order to rest, so we wait till it's dark, and we turn off our usual thinking activity. And what happens, if you remain conscious and notice, is that all your body rhythms coordinate into one rhythm, and once, if that happens, even for a short time, you're

[23:36]

And it's because during the day in activity our various rhythms get out of phase with each other that we become tired. So the more your rhythms during the day are maybe non-doing, that kind of, or wave following wave, wave leading wave, the less tired you are. You're actually resting all the time. I don't think it's possible for anyone to do it perfectly, but you can. Some people whose aim is this actually stop sleeping. I think it must limit you to non-disturbing activity. And also dream, so there's two characteristics of sleep. One is this rhythmic activity of our body, and the other is dreaming, which I might call keeping the precepts, because during the day you're not so truthful with yourself, but at night you're more truthful, and your dreams coordinate, your

[25:09]

desires and frustrations and history with what happened during the day. So the more your activity during the day is a keeping of the precepts, the less you dream. So dreaming and those two functions, if you practice zazen, occur in zazen. And after one or two or three years, occur in your daily life. And you don't need so much sleep, except it's quite a nice pleasure to sleep. So our practice is to bring our You have no choice but up or down or something. So our practice isn't just, you can't describe it as just being honest or doing what's natural or something like that, as I always say. It means to actively create yourself, to see that responsibility,

[26:38]

And that is our practice. And if your sights are one way, you may end up in a brothel. And if your sights are another, same motivation, you may end up to Tassajara. I'm... You sense this as the more you're on the path, you know, as the first picture of the ox herding, there's no trace of the ox. And the second, you sense something. and in the third you've heard your ear by that time you're on the path and we can begin to practice together and then everything speaks to us and it's not so strange sounding and everything practices

[28:11]

gesture, and your breathing, and your activity, and your thinking. Each thing has its karma, and its responsibility, and its effects. And you, it's not something you can control. So once seeing it, you have to just let go of everything. You know, Joshu, someone came to Joshu and said, what would you say to a man who possessed nothing? And Joshu said, throw it away. You have to have some feeling like this, of throwing away your life, throwing away your usual way of thinking and doing, and yet doing what you do as it occurs to you on each moment. It may be just your old habit, but that's what you're doing, and you don't discriminate about it.

[29:34]

If it's false, you do it. If it's true, you do it. Those distinctions of true and false are not important anymore. You just do completely what you find yourself doing, but your decisions or activity is in something minute. And you think, maybe, you see, oh, I don't have to do this, or I could do this, as in the three purifying precepts, or I could do this for someone else. You see that possibility, but you think, what small effect it will have if I do it?

[31:00]

just one, and my habit is such. I'm caught in this habit that I'll never get out of. This is only one small act." So you give it that kind of importance. But if you do it, when it occurs to you to do it, or to not do it, to refrain from something, when it occurs to you to refrain, it's not one small act. It's fifty percent. because you're in another world when you decide to do that. It's not like one more step on the same road. It's like one step onto a different road.

[32:02]

And then the next decision is something original, even if it's to do the old thing again. So maybe the path is to step each moment onto a new road. So there's no end to the originality and creativity of this kind of practice which looks so routine. As you see from the various teachers how different each one was. It's like Buddhism is a time capsule. What do you call those pills? Spanchels? Isn't that what they call something like that? Time-release pills? Yeah, it's like Buddhism is a great big time-release pill, and we're each given one. And it will go off at various times in us according to our situation. So,

[33:31]

Suzuki Roshi passed me such a pill, and I'm passing it to you. But I don't know what will go off in me and what will go off in you. I'll pass you the same pill, but maybe different parts of it will go off in you, so you'll have your own originality from birth. And then you'll have Buddha's originality, because different parts of the pill will go off. Even though I pass the same pill, the pill is infinite in variety. This description is straight from the Lotus Sutra. It's actually so. That's what the Lotus Sutra means. So there's no dimensions. The Lotus Sutra is a wonderful sutra because it's the sutra that mainly concentrates on practice and the actual realms of our practice. It tells you much more about what to do and what not to do and where and how to practice than any other sutra.

[34:54]

And it makes clear that the Bodhisattva is vast and is just you and is all of us together. And how the Bodhisattva transcends time and space. How you're changing your posture changes the whole world. So this is why Buddhists are not into political activity so much, or big generalizations, you know, or maybe they're, if they're a communist or something. It's not as a world plan, but as some tiny act. Because it's, for a Buddhist, it's in these tiny acts that

[35:57]

Our life and reality are one. In many transmission gathas, the pill is described as seed and ground and flower. And it's everything at once.

[37:08]

when you learn to act in the one or act in the zero, in the utter darkness. Or as Don Juan says, stopping the world. Okay. Want to talk about something? Yeah. Okay. I probably won't remember. What? Yeah.

[38:18]

I think all of these things are just reflecting on the mind, and it's a thing of self. That's because you realized you were the daughter of the, what, dragon? The daughter of the dragon king? That's you. What are you?

[39:30]

To say something more about it, I'd have to read the chapter. Like the Sixth Patriarch, I'm illiterate, and I'd have to look at it. The practice which goes on and on and on and in the Daughter of the Dragon King is instantaneous. Both are true. As Dogen, that's what Dogen's talking about when he says practice and enlightenment are one. Or what the Lotus Sutra has to be understood in the way I was talking about going up the mountain or the three. All of that is simultaneous. And it describes the activity of a bodhisattva, you know, if a bodhisattva is

[41:14]

meets a timorous person, he comforts them. If he meets a thief, he becomes a thief. If he meets someone who needs another week of life, he supplies him with a week or an eon. Whatever people need, he gives them. Which it means, too, that each one of you is a thief or timorous or a thief and timorous simultaneously. So it means to understand our activity together as one being. Yeah, there'd be no story if they weren't surprised. How could you tell the story? So you read it and you say, why are there Bodhisattvas? And then you realize it's you. The Lotus Sutra is you. The Lotus Sutra is wonderful because it's so fanciful and so absolutely true.

[42:42]

at the same time. But I wish I could talk to you more about the Lotus Sutra, but I haven't studied it much, because I never liked the current translation, and I attended many lectures of Suzuki Roshi's on it. But the new translation, the Suthill translation, I haven't had time to study. What? The soothill? It's not new, but it's done with more modern Sanskrit, Buddhist Sanskrit. Pardon me? I can't hear the name. Soothill. Soot Hill, if you're under it. Anyway, and then Dr. Kunze is coming out with a new one,

[43:59]

Why are you so interested in that? You want to know what happens after you die? Just deep sleep, that's all you're interested in. But you are the one who's in deep sleep. You are there, aren't you? We'll have somebody sit by your bed and check. There goes Miffin. If you look for the experience of deep sleep in your ordinary consciousness, that's the opposite. Ordinary consciousness is not deep sleep. So you have to understand deep sleep through deep sleep. Okay? And maybe you have to understand everything through deep sleep.

[45:52]

Excuse me, but when I said Miffin disappeared, I immediately thought of a Miffin hunt. I'm sorry. I was looking for you. Anyway, this session is almost over, and we're barely getting started. I don't think we should have one continuous session from now on for one or two years, but I do wish we could continue and awaken

[47:38]

more this feeling day after day from now on and not have it dependent on a session. If your mind is awakened it will be so. If you hear things with your inner ear if you act in deep sleep if you're not so caught by categories or surfaces which lead you into expectation patterns. And then you feel discouraged or right or wrong. But to take refuge in just what's in front of you. And to not, and to see the, and be one with the continuity of things. And minutely responsive.

[49:06]

And as soon as your world jumps up into here, you're lost. And many years will go by with your being unconscious. If you look back into your childhood, there are many incidents which will jump out to you with some clarity. And you can't remember what happened before or after, but this particular incident, standing at a particular street corner or seeing a particular hillside or hearing something said, it means that at that time you were hearing it as if you'd never seen it before. It usually came to you when it was a first time you noticed something. So your mind and body saw it. And then you lapsed into unconsciousness until you started to practice, until you heard again something.

[50:36]

saw a trace of the ox and now your practice is to awaken that mudra form which is emptiness or emptiness which will bring you back to consciousness So everything has that clarity, cloudless clarity. please, in the rest of the session, maintain that, maintain whatever continuity you can, embracing over and over again your breathing, trusting your breathing, following your breathing, not thinking of anything. And if it starts to lead you and you get scared,

[52:19]

Where will it take me? Forget about that one who is being taken. It's your own breathing. Just be one with your breathing. And let's finish this sasheen in one long, mutual, rising and falling breath. and then have a good sleep tonight.

[52:53]

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