Yesterday, Catherine talked about the 100-foot pit. Today I'm going to talk about the 100-foot pole. This case is one that everyone knows. And it's from the Mumon Con, a collection of stories, a collection of poems by Master Mumon. It's called Proceed On From the Top of the Pole. Sekiso Osho asks, How can you proceed on further from the top of a 100-foot pole?

[01:04]

Another eminent teacher of old said, you who sit on the top of a 100-foot pole, although you have entered the way, you are not yet genuine. Proceed on from the top of the pole, and you will show your whole body in the 10 directions. And then Mumon has a comment, and he says, if you go on further and turn your body around, no place is left where you are not the master, or mister. But even so, tell me, how would you go on further from the top of a hundred foot pole? He darkens the third eye of insight and clings to the first mark on the scale.

[02:08]

Even though he may sacrifice his life, he is only a blind man meeting the blind. Everybody in the world knows it so I'm going to use it all the time. People are saying, get off that hundred foot pole. Get off of your hundred foot pole. The hundred foot pole is like the pinnacle of accomplishment. When you reach enlightenment and nirvana, this is the pinnacle of Buddha's practice. And if you stay there, then you start to rot.

[03:14]

And so you have to keep moving. So this case is about coming down off a pole, coming down off a weak spot. And one way of looking at this case, which is the usual way, is after you have great enlightenment, when you see that subject and object are exactly the same, that the whole Dharmadhatu is completely empty, and you have attained great freedom, birth and death, It's not real enlightenment until you step down into the world and muddy your clothes.

[04:27]

So it's called practice after enlightenment. And it's called not thinking of enlightenment. and wiping away all traces that make you look like you still have it. But another way of looking at this koan is you may never get to the top of that pole. Who is this koan for anyway? In another sense, it's talking about before we get to the top.

[05:50]

There actually is no top to this pole, even though it talks about a top. Looks like there's a top, but this pole is more like a circle. And everyone is, at some point, on this circle. And you may be close to the ground, you know, and pulled somewhat off the ground. I think we should look at it that way. If you're, say, two inches off the ground, that's the top of your pole. Wherever you are is the top of your pole. And if you're only two inches off the ground, you don't have so far to jump.

[06:52]

But you have to jump anyway. It's harder, you know, to jump off the pole when you're only two inches above the ground. I mean, it's not such a distance, but you don't have so much to work with. When you're 100 feet high, you really have a lot to work with. And when you get that high, you feel kind of secure, you know? Why should I do anything? Why should I slip off this pole? That's what makes it so high. The thing that makes the pole so high is that you really have a place to abide. And when we find a safe place, We don't like to leave it. So, getting on the pole is also, if you look at it the other way around, standing on the ground, we look at the pole and we say, that pole is really hot.

[08:07]

And so, something about that pole is very attractive. So we hop on the pole, and we start to climb the pole. And when we enter into practice, we're hopping on the pole. And little by little, climbing the pole. So if you look at a practice from two sides, one side, climbing the pole, is something we do for ourselves. That's our Hīliyana practice. It's practicing to reach some attainment. Our practice includes both that, both Hīliyana and Mahayana. And the Hīliyana side of our practice is that we do something to attain something. We do something to, we enter into practice for some reason.

[09:13]

And it's for ourselves, to do something for ourselves. And getting off the pole is going out in the world, as an ordinary person, and helping other people. That's Mahayana practice, Mahayana side of practice. The two practices are really one practice. But you can talk about them in two different ways in order to emphasize the meaning. So when we enter into practice, sometimes we feel very secure, even though it's difficult. Sashin, when you sit sashin for the first time, you can't believe it. I can't believe that anybody would do this.

[10:16]

I always admire people who sit sashimi for the first time. It's great. We all feel encouraged by you to practice. Because you're so naive. And yet, you don't know what's coming next, because there you are. Another day? So that kind of beginner's practice encourages everybody. So you should feel good about yourself, even though you're having a hard time. But when we enter into Sashim, we come to, there's nothing else in the world. After six days, there is no other world. And this is the world of, even though we don't feel it always, it's really the world of realization.

[11:33]

Where heaven and earth meet with no gap. Even though you meet through a gap, the gap is there. You don't know what your practice really is, always. And you may feel that you're not doing so well, or that you're not really doing it, or it's not really it. But you don't know. In all of your difficulty, in all of your hard times, The enlightenment is shining out, but you don't see it. If you have an easy time, it may not be so good, actually. So it's hard to tell.

[12:42]

You may see someone sitting, and they sit very calmly, peacefully. I can't say which is best. There's no way to compare it. Everyone is just doing what they're doing. Each person in a different place, working it out. So most people have the most difficult time and get the most benefit, actually, from practice. But we enter into this practice, into Sushumna, and enter into this world where heaven and

[13:55]

with no gap. And then after seven days, we go out the door into the world where heaven and earth are miles apart, seemingly miles apart. And this is stepping off the pole. Wherever we are is the top, and we have to step off into that realm. taking with us whatever it is that we have, whatever kind of practice we have. So how do we step off that pole and enter into that world where heaven and earth are miles apart? You tell in the middle. Let's say we enter into six worlds.

[15:00]

Hell is only one. There's the realm of hell, and heaven, and human beings, and hungry ghosts, and animals, fighting demons. And we transmigrate through these worlds. Every day you become one or another of them. Sometimes we're a fighting demon and we start getting angry and yelling at people even if we don't say anything. Or we become a hungry ghost when we want so much and yet we can't eat it, digest it, take it in. We become a demon in hell through the retribution of our acts, the result of our acts.

[16:02]

And sometimes we're in heaven, you know, looking this way or that way. Sometimes we're an animal. But in each realm is the Buddha, is the Bodhisattva. And the Bodhisattva is the one who is practicing through all of those worlds. No matter what realm it is that we step into, the Bodhisattva is there. And that's the one that knows what practice is, doesn't forget what practice is. down across your legs. You have to just get out there and do what everybody does, and be just an ordinary person. So, this is the big zendo, where we all come to practice together.

[17:15]

But when you go out of here, you have to have your own zendo, your own, the world becomes your practice place. And it's an extension of real life. And we actually create our world out there when we step out the door. So practice, you know, is training. This is training, but it's also real life. And the world beyond the door is also training, and it's also real life. We say, when I get out into the real world, I don't want to say that it's backwards, but in a sense it's backwards. This is the real world. And that world is less real than this world, even though that's also the real world. So our life starts from here, from zero.

[18:26]

It starts from right here. And how do we start, how do we proceed from right here? So in our training, when we come to, when we enter the zendo, we bow, we don't bow at the door yet, I'm confused as to how we enter the zendo. But there's a sense of coming in the door, and when we come to our seat, we bow to the Christian, and turn around, and bow. And that's a sense of ourself, an activity. A certain sense of doing something, really doing something. First we bow, when we bow to the Christian, we bow to all the people that came before us, who made this Christian possible. And then we turn around and God is the whole world.

[19:27]

So we're mindful of what came before us, and we're mindful of where we are, and we're mindful of what's out there that surrounds us. And then we adjust ourselves in a way that balances our whole body and mind, harmonizes our whole body and mind with our surroundings. And when we get off our seat, we adjust our cushion, and we adjust our seat, our xyliton, so that it's right in the center of whatever area we're sitting in. You know, when we get off of the Zavaton, we arrange it. We arrange, put our cushion right in the middle, put our Zavaton right in the middle, so it's harmonized with the space around us.

[20:35]

And with the cushion on this side, and with the Zavaton on this side. And it just comes to this line. And doing that means that we're creating a world, we're creating an environment, we're creating a way to think and a way to act with each other, with the world. It's very simple. And then, we like to put our Oreos in some place. Well, where do we put our Oreos anyway? Well, there's a place to put it. Right back there. It has its place. So we put it there and arrange it. And somehow it makes us feel in touch, or in tune, with our ariyate, with our zafu, with our babakan. It's our whole world. You know, when we're sitting here, day after day, we say, this is our whole world.

[21:39]

And if you're living as a monk in a sodo, a sodo is where you sleep. You sleep here, the next person sleeps there, and that's, this three by six is your world. So how do you live in your world? When we eat, we take our oreo out, and put it in front of us, and arrange it very nicely, and go through all these wonderful motions, and we see it as an offering. We see the food as an offering. And so we harmonize with the person who's offering us this food. And we practice, we feel that this offering is something that is coming to us because of our mindful practice, our desire to do something, to develop ourselves so that we can help other people.

[22:48]

So when we know how to flow with the procedure, harmonize our state with other states, harmonize our mind with other minds, then what looks like ritual becomes life. If you just go about the movements in Zendo in a mechanical way, and it becomes death. I can't stand this. Why do they do all these Japanese things? But, when we can move easily, we bring it to life. We bring life to life and it helps us. It trains us. There are many ways to get trained, you know. There's the Burmese way, and the Chinese way, and the Thai way.

[24:10]

So this is the Japanese way. You say, well, there are other ways, but this is a wonderful way. And while we have it, appreciate it. It's very Japanese. It's very wonderful. It's not just Japanese. It's pretty hard to separate out the Japanese from the Japanese, because if you try to separate it out, the two things you get are nothing. So our training is very simple. And it's all right here in the bend of an eye act. It's really all right here.

[25:16]

And if you really pay attention, and allow yourself to flow, and put yourself into the way to do things, it becomes very simple, very simply to reveal yourself. And you realize that turning around, turning to the right instead of turning to the left is one of them. You don't bump into each other. Everybody turns to the right, you don't bump into each other. And the spirit of that practice, the spirit of how to do things, is what we take with us off the pole.

[26:22]

Not some special activity, but just the spirit of how to harmonize with things. How do you know where to put something? When you take your and you put it on the tray. How do you know where to put it? What determines where to put it? You don't think about it. It's mindless. Put it some place. Well, there are other people that are going to put their Tamasio cups on that tray too. They have to think about it. How are they going to do it? How are you going to do it so they can do it? That's a big lesson in my life. How are you going to do something so that someone else can do something?

[27:29]

But so often we just think about ourselves. How am I going to do this? And I say, we don't have any way of to think about how to place something. How do you put your clothes on? If you're a priest or a monk, you're always fiddling with your clothes. That's how you learn how to take care of things. But a well-trained priest

[28:39]

You can tell. You can tell something about a well-trained priest. It's about the way they handle themselves, the way they handle objects, the way they relate to people and things. I see certain Japanese priests who are in training and in this kind of marvelous way that they link to everything. They have nothing. They own nothing, except a few clothes and some gold. But they relate to the whole world as if it belonged to them. And the thing that always impressed us about our teachers

[29:40]

Japanese teachers, especially Suzuki Roshi, it was just the way he moved. Just the way he handled things and moved. That was about 80% of his teaching. He didn't do anything special. He didn't do anything in a marvelous way. Just ordinary. Ordinary way. So without doing much, just entering into ordinary activity, there's just something extraordinary about that ordinariness that everyone can see. It starts from height to kill, right where you are. And then you extend that to try to take care of it. This thing that's closest to you, on this side, on this side, on this side, and on that side.

[30:47]

So, you have eyes that see all the way around. And then you extend that further, even further. So training for Zen students is should be and is how you take care of this spot. And then how you extend that to everything you do. But it's gotta be, you can't reach over and take care of that without taking care of this. Otherwise, you may be looking over here, but your feet will be stumbling because you're not looking where you're going. I'm not taking care of this spot. So, sitting here seven days, all we're doing is taking care of ourselves on this spot.

[31:50]

Seven days without going anywhere. We eat, we take care of our bowls, we take care of our seats. Take care of your clothes. When you go back to a room, take care of your room. Arrange your things in some way that harmonizes with your space. That's consistent. And then you feel that wherever you go, you're harmonizing your space. And you're taking your practice with you, wherever you are. He says, proceed from the top of the pole and you will show your whole body in ten directions.

[32:56]

express your enlightenment in the whole world, where you see the whole world for what it is. There was a teacher, I think it was Gensho, and a monk came up and asked him about a mirror. He said, when your mind is like a mirror, You have a great mirror of wisdom. What do you do? He says, smash the mirror into 10,000 pieces. Each piece reflects light. Frankly, a mirror has 10,000 pieces.

[34:18]

Nothing, no smallest detail escapes your attention. You don't stay in one place. You don't stay in some form, some special form. You just assume your forms that you enter. So you can take any form. When you sit in your zazen, it's like sleeping on the floor rather than sleeping on the bed. When you sleep on the bed, the bed, when you sleep on a mattress, the mattress conforms to you. But when you sleep on the floor, you have to conform to the floor. Your body conforms to the floor because the floor is not going to change.

[35:25]

And the sun then is like that. It's not like sleeping in a mattress. It's like sleeping on the floor. You're constantly conforming to whatever is happening. Your body then becomes very malleable and takes on the form of whatever is happening. Therefore you always feel comfortable, right? But that's how you do it. You let your mind conform to whatever's happening. If you resist, there's a lot of trouble. So you become very soft and malleable. Soft mind, which is like grass. Grass bends in the wind, but something brittle snaps. Self-mind is the ability to enter into a situation and find your place.

[36:31]

Don't let the wind. The wind can blow you over, but it can't let you back up. And then he says, if you go on further and turn your body about, no place is left where you are not the master or mistress. Turning your body about means the ability to conform, the ability to find your place in any situation. This is the kind of expression he's in. turning around, being able to turn around. When you get cornered, how do you turn around? And how are you the master on this particular situation?

[37:39]

It doesn't mean that you necessarily change the situation to suit yourself. most people in the world and trying to change their situations to make life more comfortable for themselves. So they'll go to any lengths to do it. But then the student changes himself to fit the situation. And then the situation will come forward to fit them, to fit you. letting the world turn you, and then you start to turn the world. So you and the world are turning each other. This is called practice, turning and being turned. Dogen talked about this, turning and being turned.

[38:48]

How to harmonize without losing your integrity. How to give yourself over without losing yourself. And then Mufan's verse, he says, He darkens the third eye of insight and clings to the first mark on the scale. Well, this goes back to the beginning. Darkening the third eye. The third eye is the eye right here. We have these two eyes. And this is the third eye. But you don't see that eye. That's when the two eyes are one eye. When heaven and earth, when right and left, when up and down, where everything meets. He darkens the third eye of insight and clings to the first mark of the scale.

[40:01]

The first mark of the scale is sitting on top of the hundred foot pole. So, sitting on top of the hundred foot pole, he has that. third eye, but unless he steps off, he darkens the third eye, he becomes obscured. The enlightenment is not real enlightenment until it's actualized. And then he says, even though he may sacrifice his life, he is only a blind man meeting the blind. Blind man here actually means enlightened person. Enlightenment is a kind of blindness. Even though you see But it also has the meaning of not knowing, completely open and empty, and not relying on knowledge, not relying on anything except trust in the true self, that spiritual awareness.

[41:34]

You have no techniques. Also, helplessness. Helplessness and blindness. There are more techniques, and you have nothing, and you can't see straight, and you're an idiot. What an idiot. So this is the blind leading the blind. He says, even though he may sacrifice his life, which means dying a great death in order to come to life. He is only a blind man leading the blind, an enlightened person leading others. So the sense of this also is

[42:43]

no spiritual pride, no sense of accomplishment. If you have a really accomplished person, there's no sense of accomplishment. If you have some sense of accomplishment, you should be careful. It's okay to have some sense of accomplishment, but you have to let that go. So you always find yourself knowing nothing and not knowing how to do anything. Even though you may know how to do a lot of things, you may know a lot. You let it go and you don't stand on it. You're off of yourself. There's no accomplishment, no techniques. What do you have? Good question.

[43:47]

At the end of the... I hope there was a line, so we can't... but with great confidence. Yeah, a few minutes. Well, consciousness, we only have a few minutes.

[45:15]

Well, you don't see anything. In seeing, there's I, there's an object, and there's consciousness. And when you say, I see something, you're talking about consciousness. So, there's I, and then there's the object, and then there's the consciousness, and it takes all three of those for cognition, for awareness. So, the I is one of the doors. The first six senses are doorways. They don't have anything, they have no judgment. comes from the sixth consciousness. But it's one of these doorways, if you look at it scientifically, you can see that it's just a mechanism.

[46:21]

And there's a response in the brain which we call consciousness awareness. of the object. What we see, actually, is just a picture in our mind. You're looking at me when I'm looking at you, but that's just, we just say that. Actually, the sixth consciousness is discriminating and saying, this is jinn. And allowing the seventh consciousness to say, this is jinn. But that's just something that a picture in my mind, an image that I have. What is in front of me, I really don't know. But I have to, you know, create some kind of story. And so I say, oh, there's Jim Carlin. By the time you say, I see that, you're using

[47:30]

I consciousness and the sixth consciousness and the seventh consciousness. Well, the seventh consciousness is the one that makes up the story. The seventh consciousness is the consciousness that makes up the story and says, this is Gene Powell and he's coming back for a reason. And I have a certain relationship to him. And that's the beginning of the sense of myself and the sense of thin self. But, you know, I'm not sure about the subtleties of what the sixth and seventh consciousnesses handle as far as creating a story. I don't know about that, which way they overlap, what their boundaries are. Strictly speaking, the Seventh Consciousness is the ego, the one that creates, that takes the information and creates the story about what I am and calls this me and that you.

[48:39]

So this is the subject. The Seventh Consciousness makes me the subject and you the object. And when the Seventh Consciousness is no longer there, There's nothing that stands in between you and I. Because consciousness just makes itself. So you don't make up a story anymore? No. You just see everything as it is. And at that level, your functional level is consciousness? I think you need the Sixth Consciousness in order to make sense of it, in order to function. Without the Seventh Consciousness, well, yeah, because Seventh Consciousness, there's some reason for it.

[49:48]

There's reason for ego. Oh, I see what you're saying. To just eliminate that seventh consciousness, yeah, it's laying low. In other words, it's not prominent, dominant. Seventh consciousness, I think, is necessary. It's necessary that you make up a story about life. Like everything else, it gets out of hand and creates a fantasy out of life, so that you lose sight of reality, when it becomes so dominant. When it has its place, it keeps its place, then it gives us a direction, because we have to make up a story in our life. Well, when the 7th and the 6th work together, and when the 7th is too dominant, it obscures the function of the 6th.

[51:30]

So that sin isn't just sin, it has something behind it. And hearing isn't just hearing, it has something behind it. So, to just leave it alone, to just let things appear as they appear, without creating such a story, is to be able to see things as they are. Because we're always making up such a story about things. Yeah, like the rope, seeing the rope, the old Buddhist analogy of when you see a rope in the dark, you come upon a rope lying in the road, but you think it's a snake. And then you make up this story about the snake. I can't remember the rest of the analogy. It's a snake, and you think it's a rope?

[52:35]

No, that's just a rope line. Who left that rope in the room? Well, poor vision, poor consciousness. Anyway, it's time. I don't want to keep on going any longer. God bless.

[53:37]

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