Jao, Jao Zhou was told once by a monk about meeting a woman on the road to Taisha. And whenever she was well known for when people would be going to Taishan, which was a site of many temples, practice places. And so the word itself became, to me, practice. She was on the road, to Taishan and when people would stop maybe she had some kind of shock.

[01:05]

And they would ask her, which is the road, what is the way to Taishan? And she would say, straight ahead. And after the monk who she told this to would start start out in the direction she said, then she would say, geez, he looks like a fine monk, but he goes on just like all the others. And no one could quite understand what she meant by this. Rather well-known Zen story. And anyway, this monk brought the story to Zhao Zhou, so he said, well, I'll check that old woman out. And he went, dressed as traveling monk, and asked the way to Taishan. She said, straight ahead.

[02:21]

And as he started out, she, as usual, said, he, gosh, he looks like a fine monk, but look, he goes on just like all the others. Daishan came, Daishan came back. Jaljo came back to his monastery and the next morning gave a talk and said, well I checked that old woman out. That's the whole story. Hakun says, Hakun Zenji says, she checked him out too. But I'm always talking, you know, about the same thing. Recently, especially, I've been talking about the same thing, our relationship to the phenomenal world as path.

[03:29]

And this is a pretty old, you know, idea for us, you know, First World War, or older, you know. This idea has been in our culture for some time. certainly longer than we have been, as in this body. So we're pretty familiar with it. But still we don't get it. And it takes quite a while to get it. And no matter how often I say it, point out this, what Spinoza called, tenseless being. He translates early Hebrew, Jehovah, Yahweh, as meaning tenseless being.

[04:40]

It's a good pun, too, I think. without tension, tenseless, and without past, present and future. Tenseless being. I can keep in various ways pointing out this shimmering being, tenseless, shimmering being, but it's up to you in your each moment to act in such a way. to prove or manifest this. So I can't, you know, do it for you. It's in your each minute moment. This is, you know, someone calls Dogen mystical realist. I think this is a pretty good description of Dogen, because he emphasized the

[05:45]

the total exertion of the present moment, or to manifest, to actualize present moment. We've talked about this before. And this koan says, you need the eye that settles on heaven and earth, so thoroughgoing that not a thread can slip through. And so we're also talking about a shared experience. And science is one of the great modes, powerful modes of shared experience, so convincing that it's nearly swept the field. And we can see science as basically an experiment in language because, you know, you do a certain experiment and the rat or hamster or, you know, electrode or something behaves a certain way.

[07:12]

It's always behaved that way. And if you do that to it, it probably, at least in the last few centuries, it would have behaved that way. So it's not that behavior science discovers anything new. It just discovers that our descriptions are wrong. So you're quite surprised. I didn't know a hamster would do that. I guess you can, for example, take a hamster and only activate the part of its brain which wants food. So you can see it as just this creature that wants food, but then if you just draw a line in front of the hamster, it won't cross it, when its brain only wants food, supposedly. That kind of thing.

[08:16]

We suddenly have to describe hamsters' behavior differently, or the way the brain works differently. So science always is causing us to change our descriptions. And we always want to do something about the world, you know. We do, you know. See what Nancy last night called the rising tide of violence in the world. We'd like to think the world is going to be free of terrorism and so forth, but I don't think so. It will go on like it is, and maybe worse or better. But as a child, I think, when you see how crushed you can be, could have been as a child by the death of a sibling or your parents, or you see many difficulties people have as you become aware of it, you want to do something about the world.

[09:53]

And this koan asks this question, what do we do? What can we do about the world? And teacher answers, what is this world? And this is a question we are all involved in. Now, just how you sit right now, How you are sitting, whether you are sitting in a very relaxed way, easy way, or stiff way, or many habits in your posture. If your body tends to tense up or have built-in hardnesses. This is all what you think the world is. It's not, you know, it's the material of thought. the material of your experiences, the material of your attitudes. So there's no way we can practice, really, settle your eye on heaven and earth so thorough-going that not a thread slips through.

[11:11]

There's no way you can do this without always responding to what the world is. What is this world? And it's a kind of science, we can say, I guess, the way a scientist makes a big effort to be alert during an experiment. Ah, what is going on? What does the hamster do? And how is my description that I start the experiment with changed? So you have to change your language after the experiment. But we need that kind of freedom all the time, and what the

[12:16]

What is in front of you, the observed moment? Three and three in front, three and three in back. That's another calling. Front threes, back threes. What is just before you, the object of your observation? Always with the kind of alertness and freedom from description. flexibility of description that scientists must have. So Buddhism is a science like that, you know. And Zhao Zhou, with that in mind, went to examine, old lady. The story makes me think of one member of Zen Center, who grew up in Holland.

[13:22]

And during the Second World War, when the German troops were occupying Holland, whenever they would ask directions, they didn't know Amsterdam so well, so they would often ask this student's grandmother. which is the way to such and such.' And she would always point straight toward Germany, go straight ahead that way. And the rest of her family would say, you shouldn't do that, one of these days you're going to get in trouble, you know, always pointing straight toward Germany and saying, go ahead, straight that way. But she would say, I'm an old woman, I must tell the truth. What is straight ahead?

[14:28]

What is object of observation? What is the world? What are you seeing? And just as ideas, you know, it is amazing, always, it continually amazes me that such a few ideas and so few people can influence our society so much. And I'm speaking also of Dr. Konsei.

[15:45]

As I told you this morning, Edward Konsei died yesterday, and his wife called us to tell us right away. And as I said this morning, I'm quite touched that she thought to call us right away. because we do have a pretty close relationship with him, even though he was a very difficult person. His autobiography, which he's written, is so slanderous, even vile, that no one will publish it. Maybe on his death I shouldn't say such things, but everyone Everyone fought, he made everyone fight with him, or at least he fought with everyone. Nations, universities, individuals, professors, students.

[16:53]

But somehow, I don't know, I always found him, even though he wrote me some really insulting letters occasionally. I always ... I have a very warm feeling about him. Even funny things he'd do, like one day he was ... I remember lecturing at Zen Center, he gave a course for us. And he had a ... seemed to have a special feeling for Zen Center, and often said, you know, you're the one group I'm interested in. And, you know, he'd often, almost implied, despite what I say all the time, you're the one group I'm interested in and I'll always help you. And I always tried to help him, too. I wrote him... Once I wrote him that... how important a 25,000-line book is, and that if I had to be without any book, I think I'd take just that one, you know, to his proverbial desert isle.

[18:05]

And also that we... if he wanted to, any books of his that no one would publish or that were out of print, you know, not being reprinted, We would try to keep them in print if he'd give us permission. Of course, the letter I got back just said, what's wrong? What's already been? No, no, no, no. He wrote a big, angry letter about what we should have done or somebody was supposed to have sent him something and we didn't send it. We got it wrong and we typed it. All those things. But still, some correspondence always continued. He always asked about how we were doing. And then he would write some letter to someone else, and the person he'd just criticized a while ago, he would write something rather nice. But anyway, back to, I remember him giving a lecture at Zen Center.

[19:09]

He did a special course for us, several times. He began ranting against the Japanese and how they couldn't learn anything and their Sanskrit was so bad and they never understood Buddhism anyway. And then he looked down and he saw Suzuki Roshi's picture on the back of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, looking at him. He said, oops! And he put his hand over the picture and then turned the book over and said, excuse me, and I don't think I can give my lectures here anymore. So he had to move to his house where he felt free to insult anyone. But even though he ranted against the Japanese, still it was Suzuki Daisetsu which turned him around. And he's part of that era, you know, that end of the world cycle that

[20:14]

that he said he felt, and Heidegger felt, and Wittgenstein, I think, felt, and I think is also a Nazi Germany, Hitler. And Heidegger, as Nancy points out in her book, I believe she says in her book, later said, Zen, that's where I've been trying to get to, something like that, in all these years. And Konsei, Dr. Konsei, Fritz Schumacher too, another German, trying to rethink, what is this world? And Konsei was the one among all that group of extraordinary persons who took on the Orient and establishing Buddhist Sanskrit.

[21:16]

I think he was, finally, it was his work which made Buddhist Sanskrit clear. And we could hardly practice Zen the way we do without his books. And he also, being a person of great energy and passion and intelligence, he also did other things. I don't know how how you could verify its truth or not, but what I understand is that when he graduated from Heidelberg, I believe, with something like fourteen languages, he took on a plan to overthrow Hitler. worked out a plan for the Communist Party to overthrow Hitler.

[22:19]

And they were ready to go. That Stalin, at the last minute, instead of supporting them, signed an agreement with Hitler. But socialism, I may have pointed out, The world is divided in this whole question of what is self. The root of our governments, of Marx's dismay at industrialized England is, can we trust the self? Capitalism tends to trust the self. Socialism distrusts the self. Government must limit people. And Buddhism wants to get rid of the self. Buddhism also doesn't think government or even Buddhism can do it. You, by your individual, just the way you're sitting now, how you find by your experimenting, watching white ox on open ground, how you do exist.

[23:34]

And existence, you know, and substance, you know, as I said yesterday, Spinoza came to the conclusion like Buddhism, that there aren't multiple substance, there's only one substance. I think we could say that's close enough to Buddhism. But the word substance and existence both come from the stence part, means to stand up. What stands up? Reality maybe is what stands up. In your case, what sits up. And Russia and the United States, too, play some role just by their land mass at joining East and West. And we are part of many agendas. Dr. Consey is one. Just how you're sitting is one.

[24:38]

Dr. Consey or Wittgenstein's own experience. Or socialism or capitalism. These are all agendas. which are present in just how you sit. Wittgenstein, you know, led to studying Wittgenstein, which led Paul Wienbach to Zen and Wittgenstein. Paul Wienfall's teaching at Santa Barbara, which led to quite a number of people practicing Buddhism, including, as you know, Joanne Kiger, Gary Snyder's wife at one time. And she was, I believe, the first person to come to see Suzuki Roshi carrying a flower. And as you also know, I've told you before, Sukhirshi said, I have such a short time here in this country, I must meet students who are well prepared already without knowing it.

[26:00]

And he felt New England Transcendentalism was perhaps that mode of that preparation in this country. And Dewey, you know, to many, much… Dewey's idea of a transactional relationship to the world is much like this Buddhist idea of phenomenal world and you. But William James, you know, and Russell, for instance, Wittgenstein's in between Russell and a view closer to Buddhism. But Russell believed in still a world of object, just very recently, you know, only a few decades ago, still believed in a world of fixed particles, objective world, that you could study and produce facts about.

[27:12]

And I think most of us still think that, actually. You still think you have your nature. You don't realize the extent to which you're born from intention. Certainly, Buddha is born from intention, not from genes, or your particular heritage, or background, or education. I can remember how struck I was by intention once when I was... I don't know, maybe I wasn't... I hadn't gone to first grade yet, so I was in kindergarten age or something, probably just before first year, before first grade. I asked a woman who lived somewhat near... I lived pretty much in the country. I asked her about her son, who must have been, I don't know, third or fourth or fifth grade or something.

[28:18]

I'd heard that when you go to school you could fail. School was the beginning of failure. So when you went to school was the first time you could fail. And I asked her, I said, I heard you can fail when you go to school, and I didn't have much idea. No one ever told me anything, you know, about these things. And I had the idea that maybe you failed one year and passed the next and failed the next year and passed the next and failed. I didn't know what the pattern would be, you know, so I asked her. I said, uh, how often does your son fail? And she said, oh my God. She said, I would, would destroy me if he failed. Something like that, she said. And I was It struck me, I remember very clearly how struck I was that it wasn't really her son, I think his name was Leon or something, her son's brains, you know, or ability, that was really meant he wouldn't fail.

[29:24]

It was that his, this intention his mother had, that mold, that wedded her to him, him to her, that was more whether he failed or not. Joseph Needham tries to prove that Whitehead's, you know, organism-type philosophy comes from Leibniz, and Leibniz got it from reading Zhuangzi, reading Taoism. Whether it's true or not, you do begin to see this idea, though I also see it coming up in a kind of undermined, not undermining, but undermined as overmined, of Western culture, surfacing in Neo-Platonism, surfacing in Blake, poets, other people, in LSD, in our interest in Buddhism.

[30:28]

That our practice is involved in these agendas, and I see again, Dr. Konze, as part of this Meeting trying you we're trying. You know we don't know by practicing buddhism. You are also trying to you're involved in this meeting of With the orient with alternative which isn't exactly the orient, but an alternative to the west You know after Perry After Perry black what the Japanese call the black ships of Perry in about, what, 18, I forget, 53, maybe something like that, sailed into, you know, Tokyo Harbor or Yokohama. After that, after the signing of the treaty, some Japanese came to the United States and they were actually paraded through the streets

[31:38]

to the greatest parades, the New York Times says, New York had ever known. They were just objects of curiosity. And Melville has the great mysterious white whale sought in the early 1851, he starts about. Anyway, Melville himself was there in the 1840s. And no one could land on Japan. It was a very mysterious place. you couldn't restock your ship in Japan. And he seeks Melville as the whale sought in the Japanese ocean, Japanese seas. Melville also talked about As I've mentioned before, there was Mediterranean basin culture and then Atlantic basin culture, and he said in mid-20th century there'd be Pacific basin culture.

[32:49]

Anyway, Dr. Panzey is one of these pioneers to make, to to change our thinking, to include another, this other way of life. Also Ezra Pound, who led to my, probably, I think, led to my practicing Buddhism. And Gary Snyder says led to his practicing Buddhism. But I think Ezra Pound is the first attempt. Fenollosa actually tried it before, in a rather not very good poem, I'm told, that he wrote for the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society, after he returned from Japan. Just after Whitman died, and Whitman talks, Whitman, I believe, saw the parades of the Japanese in the streets of New York, and he began writing about Japan and Asia.

[33:57]

Asia is the Ur matter, and Goethe sought the Ur plant. Maybe we're still seeking the Ur matter. Anyway, this effort to change our language, to change our experience, Wittgenstein and Heidegger approached it through Western philosophy. It came to a point very close to Buddhism. I don't say that thinking, oh, Buddhism is the real truth for the world. I don't know. I think it's truth for me, but it seems to be the point at which many of the currents are coming at, it may be what we need to do now, at least. It may not be final truth or the way to live, you know, for everyone.

[35:05]

But it's certainly what we're involved in. But Konsei, you know, didn't do it through Western philosophy. He had the courage, I think, with the failure of his attempt to make Germany socialist, he used his ability, language ability, to clear up Sanskrit and straighten out what was Buddhist Sanskrit and translate great Prajnaparamita emptiness literature, which sweeps away conceptual thinking, Western thinking, Japanese thinking. And when it's swept away, what do we have? This is the point of this story. You go straight ahead, just like all the others. What is shared experience? Science tries to establish what is shared experience.

[36:08]

This story points out some shared experience, although you don't know what happened. Same thing happened to Zhao Zhou as happened to other monks who spoke to the woman. Is it different or same? What is shared experience? Computer doesn't hear insects or see, evoke the sunlight. Rilke somewhere, Deweyno Elegy, Seventh Deweyno Elegy, I believe, says, Your call is, what does he say, your call to something is full of a way, at the same time as your calling, it's full of a way, the word way, he says, and he says, against such a current

[37:14]

No one can swim. And at the same time, as I am saying, pointing out this phenomenal world as past. In science nowadays, they talk about the non-separability of quantum objects. The non-separability of quantum objects. Tsukuroshi used to say, Sokure, the word Sokure, detached yet not separate from. And in this koan they say, not chasing after outward manifestations, not residing in trance or bliss, not chasing after outward manifestations, not residing in bliss. But it also says, moor your boat over the silent river, or moor your boat over the deep source, silent source.

[38:28]

Moor your boat over the silent source. Don't chase after outward manifestations. Don't reside in trance. Realize also, realize you're on a donkey, but also know how to get off. Most people don't even know they're on a donkey. So we are, you know, I in my own language am trying to continue to express this point that Konsei and many people have been aiming at. that Wittgenstein turned his life around, rejecting Russell. And we are all part of this, you know.

[39:34]

We can't do it without their help. We can't do it without Dr. Komzey's help. And it's amazing, these few people, you know, Fenollosa coming back Japan, you know, I believe the same year Whitman died, and using a kind of Whitman-esque poetry to try to write his joining of East and West, and then Pound taking Whitman's manuscript, taking Fenellos' manuscript. And Pound's own attempt to bring history and experience of East and West in one poem, a kind of history in itself. and his then-showing Yeats, Fenollos's work. And Yeats from that time beginning to write plays, which were more like no-plays.

[40:38]

And Kathleen Raine saying her main teacher is Yeats. In the European Hermetic tradition That was his first name, I forget. John Taylor the Platonist? Yeah, John Taylor. And John Taylor, you know, influencing the whole Hermetic tradition too. Which, in fact, Robert Duncan's parents, their hero was John Taylor. And Duncan taught me a great deal. Gertrude Stein taught Duncan a great deal. William James taught Gertrude Stein.

[41:41]

The young woman who came here with Kathleen Raine, Sonia, her granddaughter, is the great-granddaughter or great-great-granddaughter of John Taylor on her father's side. on her mother's side, and Kathleen feeling she sees Buddhism in Blake. Whether this is all, you know, accurate history or not, exactly, is not so important, but that all these people are trying to express something, and it's very difficult to do it. The genius of our English language will have its own expression. We can't make English become Japanese or French or German or Sanskrit.

[42:52]

So English will have its own genius for expressing these things. Anyway, Dr. Koenigsegg, such a few people who really settle high on heaven and earth, so thorough-going that not a thread slips through. That kind of experiment you need to do, because I can keep trying to point out from my own experience and my own attempt to express And I can show you, remind you of William James' effort or Wittgenstein's or Rilke's or Duncan's. But you'll find it out by your own.

[44:06]

Maybe on your own, not by, on your own. Not chasing after outward manifestations, not abiding in trance. But what most of these others don't have, that we are adding a new element, is this practice. Practice of not just ideas, changing ideas, but your direct experience. We can call it nirmanakaya or sambhogakaya or dharmakaya buddha, form body, truth body, body of buddha or bliss body, body of everything in its oneness, it's all at oneness.

[45:21]

We can say those things but basically it's not something we can express. Zhao Zhou can say, I checked up on that woman, but there's no way we can describe it. What is this shared experience? Nancy herself somehow went from Northwest to New York through a book that she somehow called The Left Hand is the Dreamer, a novel, to writing books on Buddhism.

[46:30]

So we are here. to find out what our shared experience is, with object of observation, with birds, insects. You know, it makes me think of Elizabeth, you know. She does, you know. If you meditate a lot, you get so, you track sounds. Not exactly track, maybe, but you don't blot out, you don't tune out things. So, you hear, wake up bell, hopefully, while you're asleep, or insects or birds while I'm talking. And we're talking together, actually.

[47:43]

birds and to myself. I told you, didn't I? Didn't I tell you about that film that was made of an audience and a speaker? There's not even twenty-eighths of a second delay. No delay. Anyway, but most people, you know, get so they are involved in their thoughts and they don't here, phenomenal being. But noticing my daughter, who's not yet educated, she, whatever sound you hear outside, she responds to. She's running around doing various things, but if a chicken crows at Green Gulch or a cow moos or an owl screeches, whatever it is, her actions immediately show that she heard it. And most of the adults around her don't know what this little movement she does. And unless you hear it too, you don't get it.

[48:46]

And if all the adults around her don't get it, she would soon have it programmed out of her. She would soon herself not notice. Because no one else but she would respond to it. To practice the reading of many scores, the awakening, reawakening of non-selective awareness. If you do it, as this koan says, if you have this eye which settles on heaven and earth without butting, so thoroughgoing not even a thread can slip through, then you may attain a little, it says. You may attain somewhat, actually, is how it's translated. So again, our shared experience.

[49:59]

This is something we can concentrate on here at Dasara. living with this valley and its sounds and beings, living with each other, gold and manure, and living with our own experience without much chance to act on it. And people like Edward Konze have given a lot. I'm very grateful to them, given a lot to bring us to this point, to allow us to be here, to have the extensive support of our society that we do allows us to just be here and eat and sleep and practice.

[51:12]

Many people are helping you to stay here, to eat and sleep and practice. John Dewey, Edward Consey, many individuals who are thinking, yes, such a place as Tassajar should be and it should be so that you can sit here. All these agendas are present in just your easy posture. Please settle your eye on heaven and earth.

[52:01]

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