Good morning. I want to say how much I appreciate the opportunity to join with you in this practice in this way. Although it's inappropriate, I'd like to take a chance to whine a little bit about my life, which is, of course, too busy. My practice kind of finds itself everywhere except here. And so it's very... I feel touched to be invited to come and join with you. When we discuss mindfulness practice, we often refer to what's known as the four foundations of mindfulness.

[01:08]

Mindfulness of the body. Mindfulness of breath kind of falls under mindfulness of the body. Mindfulness of feeling, which, strictly speaking, is simply the sense that It's good, it's bad, it's in between. Mindfulness of thoughts is the fourth, third foundation, and mindfulness of dharmas, which are the elements, basic elements of experience. I'm thinking that perhaps a fifth foundation would be useful. And, you know, I'm not really sure it should be the fifth or whether it should be the first. I haven't quite figured that out yet, but I was thinking of a fifth. The reason this comes up for me, well, I kind of have to talk about my relationship to a Zen story over the years. And it's the story about Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma.

[02:15]

which if you're not familiar with it, the story is in sort of a simple account is Bodhidharma, who is transmitting the Buddha Dharma from India to China, arrives in the court of Emperor Wu. And Emperor Wu, Buddhism has already been in China for some time, hundreds of years perhaps, And Emperor Wu has worked very hard to, being a devout Buddhist, has worked very hard to support the Dharma, to build temples, to support the ordination of monks, and is a sincere practitioner himself. And so Bodhidharma arrives, and The emperor asks him, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths?

[03:21]

And Bodhidharma says, vastness, no holiness. And for that, he asks him, You know, I've built all these temples. I have devoted my life to Buddhism, to supporting Buddhism, and to propagating the Dharma in various ways. And he asks me what merit there is in this, this idea that, you know, there's something good about this, that he's a good person, that he will receive some reward at some point in the future. Some idea like that, and Bodhidharma says, no merit. And then he asks him about the holy truths and receives this other answer. And then the emperor asks, who are you?

[04:26]

And Bodhidharma replies, I don't know. And the story goes on, Bodhidharma. leaves and goes across the river, sits facing the wall for nine years. And the, although the emperor wants to go get him, his wise counselor says, don't do it. And there is much commentary in the story and the story is alive for me largely because it gets repeated every time there's a Shuso ceremony or Dharma inquiry ceremony where the head student at a practice period sits before the the rest of the assembly and answers questions in the beginning they normally read this story or part of the story and sometimes they read something else which is going to have a nice break but often they read this story again and again and so naturally I began to think about it and I found myself

[05:36]

Um, although, you know, I kind of, at first I thought, well, you know, now Bodhidharma's here and he's trying to help this guy, but the poor emperor, he just doesn't get it. You know, you know, I'm really, I'm really looking out for Bodhidharma here. I really want, I really identify with Bodhidharma. But then, then I began to see that where I was really interested in was the emperor. And I was interested in what, what, what is with this guy? You know, why doesn't he get it? You know? And I began to appreciate his really sincere effort, the emperor, to support Buddhism and to practice and to look into himself. But he just didn't get it. But I came, so I was, I felt I was finding myself in this story, in one aspect of this story that had to do with trying to practice and not really understanding what this was about.

[06:48]

And this went on, you know, for 10 years or so. And then, And, you know, I didn't think about it all the time by any means, but every year or so this would come up again, or every six months or something. It stayed with me for a while. Then in 1983, I went to Nassahara to serve as the shuso, the head monk, for the practice period. And during the sashin, which occurred in that practice period before the ceremony I described, Baker actually asked me to consider this story, right? A week or so before the session, he said, I think you should consider this story. So every morning, you know, I was sent for. I go to Doug's son. Who are you? I didn't have a clue.

[07:52]

I, I didn't get it because I was in the Emperor's shoes. But I struggled with it. I really tried to figure out who am I? I kept asking this question. Then it began later, a year or so later, six months or something. I started to see how evocative this question was. Let me bring it up. Who are you? Who are you? Then my story jumps ahead a few years. I've always been interested in the relationship between Zen practice and therapeutic work.

[08:58]

and I haven't really done much therapeutic work on my own at all, although a few years ago. My wife and my son and I, well, primarily we went to, for my son Ryan to do some work with a therapist who specialized in children and birth experiences, some prenatal experiences, that kind of thing. and my son is adopted. Both my children are from Korea, so we don't really know anything about what went on in the very early part of their life. So we, but in any case, we went to do this work with him. And then in the middle of it, it seemed like, well, we should really get involved and sort of do some of this ourselves because it's what's coming up for our son. You know, the whole family's in there together. Let's try and get it sorted out. In any case.

[10:02]

this type of sort of, I guess it's called, in some sense called rebirthing therapy, I found extremely fruitful. And I found that I kept following that. Some gestalt or pattern would come up in the session, and you keep following that thread, and it goes into, the pattern comes up here and there and there, and then you you start to see how incredibly deep that pattern might be, where it's coming from, maybe before you had any understanding or any ability to verbalize or talk. In any case, I could really see the connection between my practice and doing this work. It was very clear. However, when I got back in my cushion, I couldn't see the connection. I couldn't grasp, I couldn't find the path to this material, this stuff that I've been working with that seemed to open up so many doors.

[11:13]

I couldn't find the path to that when I was sitting Zazen. And so I sort of I began to wonder about this, you know, what's really going on here? Have I been making some fundamental mistake all these years? And I came back to this story again, this question, who are you? And it occurred to me that I'd gotten the whole thing backwards. That when I was sitting with Baker Roshan Duxon 10 years earlier, he was asking me to be in Bodhidharma's shoes. He was saying, who are you?

[12:14]

I was, I was, I was interested in Emperor Wu, but he was asking me to respond from Bodhidharma's place. And that in asking the question, I didn't realize that asking the question myself, asking myself, so to speak, who are you, is not the same as receiving the question. And when you receive the question, then it all comes up. Bodhidharma received the question, who are you? What is it? Who is it? I mean, can you possibly put your finger on it?

[13:22]

Can you possibly say, oh yeah, this is it? Is there a little, no. It's just vast. Who are you? So this is how I saw the connection between this therapeutic work and this story, which is to understand the correct position to receive that question. In a story, Bodhidharma receives the question. He's the one who gets asked, who are you? So to understand the response to that question, Nobody down there says, I don't know, which is another interesting aspect because in the last five or six years, I don't know has been very interesting to me. I don't know, not grasping. But again, I was receiving that question as Emperor Wu.

[14:24]

So, what comes up? Many things. All the things that we can possibly imagine and more. And how do we proceed in our practice under these circumstances? How do I practice mindfulness. Often, you know, what comes up is there's a body there. Usually there's a body and usually there's breath, so mindfulness practice seems like that might be a response to this sort of, you know, how do I tell you? There's a line in the song of the Jewel Mirror Awareness, it's like a mass of fire, touching and turning away are both wrong.

[15:33]

There's nothing you can do with it, it's just, you know, the awareness of who you are is boundless and you can't kind of get a handle on it and work with it. But perhaps, as I say, there's almost always a body and breath. And maybe it's not the body you sat down with. Perhaps it's your five-year-old body. Or perhaps a few bars from a song evokes all the passion and craziness of your youth. Suddenly it's all there as real as it ever was. And I think What I wanted to kind of address today was that dimension of wholeness, of the Gestalt, the self that presents when you ask and receive the question, who are you?

[16:52]

It's the self that occurred to me a little while ago. It's the self that's really going to rise up and do battle when it's time to die. It's not going to want to let go. It's that, you know, that you, who you think of yourself. We can kind of, in our traditional mindfulness practices that have been transmitted to us, we find ways to break this apart. You know, like the mindfulness of the body. Body's falling apart. Body isn't exactly what we think it is. Mindfulness of our breath. Mindfulness of feeling, thoughts, and see how that's kind of, we see how we construct it. You know, we can see the different elements. But there's a, this dimension of the whole is not the same as the construction.

[17:57]

The dimension of the whole is kind of a, it's a kind of result of maybe ignorance, but still it's a dimension in which we act in the magical realms and the symbolic realms. And So I'm thinking that perhaps mindfulness completely occupied with delusion is a workable practice for being with this impossible inclusive dimension of self, there's delusion. Now, it's the kind of thing that we usually, you know, this selfhood I'm talking about is the kind of thing that we think we're going to wake up from when we attain realization, that it's going to vanish, you know, that's nonsense.

[19:12]

But we shouldn't discard it. But we do need to approach mindfulness of the sort of great trick that we're playing on ourselves, this sort of wonderful sort of snowball creation. So mindfulness occupied with delusion. is not impatient with this nonsense, this sort of dream. That's what it is, it's a dream. It's not... It's not impatient with the dream and accepts the dream and watches. And of course it changes.

[20:18]

It's like our body and breath change when we pay attention. So by way of inviting you to say whatever you'd like, who are you? And I have two things to say.

[21:22]

One is a piece of gossip I heard about you. At the time that you were Shuso, so it's relevant. At the time that you were Shuso in 1983, I'd heard that the whole disruption of Zen Center had just happened. And that you had sort of learned about it. So that's an interesting commentary on your story about the dialogue. My question is, and maybe you could amplify that, maybe you don't want to, but my question is I'm very

[22:28]

touched by this distinction that you make between receiving the question and asking yourself the question. And I don't quite understand it. And so I'd like to ask how you received it for Baker Roshi, but how under other circumstances in your life do you receive the question versus asking the question? Well, when I was trying to work with, when Baker was trying to work with me about this, I wasn't receiving the question. And part of the reason I wasn't receiving the question is that I was really in a different place in the story. And maybe he didn't understand that, or maybe he was suggesting that I change positions. I don't know, but I wasn't ready to actually receive it, because sometimes I didn't understand receiving the question at that point.

[23:36]

I didn't know how to listen. You know, there's this line in one of the poems we recite, inquiry and response come up together. So when you're asking yourself, that's why it's so useful to have a teacher, you know, because you can just take one position. Otherwise you may, you find yourself asking yourself, coming back to the question, who are you? And so there's inquiry and there's response. And so, good, you remembered to ask the question, but then you have to listen to the question. That dimension of the whole thing has to be there too. So there's not only remembering to ask the question, but then there's how does it... allowing the question to evoke whatever.

[24:41]

And it's hard for me to talk about it outside of the story, actually, because that's where it plays out. But the story allows me to consider that there are these two sides to it. And that we're working on some part of it. There may be another part of it we're not so aware of. I'm not quite sure how this is coming up in everyday situations. Largely this story is a kind of source of coming back to my practice. It's a way for me to come back to my practice. But I do notice that I'm a little smarter about hearing my children ask me to do something.

[26:00]

And so I noticed that I'm actually hearing that request more deeply now. And I'm understanding that that request is also an opportunity for me So I think it may be playing out in that kind of way that I'm just a little bit more open to things that I would normally not have time for. Yes? Well, I think it may depend on one's understanding of those techniques and use of them.

[27:09]

I think that for me, it's an unraveling. It's, as the Buddha says, untangling the tangle. You know, I'm not very sophisticated about all those ideas and the schools of psychology and so on. I have my own experiences, really, too. That's really all I know. And so as a Buddhist, I see great value in therapeutic and psychological, well I know therapeutic work, Western theory of therapeutic work, but it may be that I just have this idea about it that it's different than what other people think. I think that a lot of people, I know an awful lot of people that I practiced with for a long time at Zen Center, and also here for that matter, do this kind of thing all the time.

[28:17]

That's their life, their profession, and they could probably answer that question better than I could. Yes? Well, being a parent, of course, is one of those roles in life where stuff comes up in your face. When you're sitting on the cushion or you're in a sort of safe situation with your therapist or something like that, you know, you allow things to come up that you wouldn't allow to come up.

[29:20]

When you're with your kids, you don't allow things to come up, but they come up anyway. So acceptance of that reality that you're going to be presented with all the things that you wouldn't choose to be aware of in yourself or in your children is a kind of opening, it's a little crack in the door that then suggests listening. suggests, perhaps receiving that question, the experience of having to kind of admit to things that you wouldn't choose to be conscious of, and how you cope with that.

[30:25]

is to sort of, in a sense, preempt the problem by being more receptive. Because the problem is really that you don't want to listen. The asking position perhaps is more It just occurred to me to say this, but is maybe having more to do with intent. The intent to make inquiry. I said that wrong, actually. I meant that the receiving position is sort of the more open type of position at asking this. Right. Like you just said. Right. In the receiving position, it never even occurs to you to ask the question. It's all there in front of you. In the asking position, you remember to ask the question. You remember to get up and go to the Zendo.

[31:28]

You remember to stop being so crazy, you know, and take a breath. But then when you take the breath, then you enter the receiving position, you know. Yes. Oh, the fourth foundation of mindfulness and the fifth foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness occupying delusion. Sorry. Yes. Could you comment a little bit on the answer of I don't know? Oh, I don't know. I, uh, you know, he didn't have an answer. The, uh, the poor, um, um, poor emperor, that kind of stumped him. And then Bodhidharma crossed the river and sat down in a cave where he sat for nine years.

[32:37]

And the emperor wanted to kind of, gosh, I should go ask him, you know. Well, first his counselor says, do you know who that was? That was the Bodhisattva Mahasattva transmitting the Dharma to the West. And he says, oh, I should go talk to him, you know, I want to see him, you know, bring him back. And the emperor says, no, there's no way. But I don't know. For me, what that evokes is a willingness to let go, to not grasp knowledge. There is a very interesting commentary. The four foundations of mindfulness and other practices appear in Buddhist literature throughout the spectrum of Mahayana and Hinayana.

[33:41]

And in the Theravadan tradition, they're set out very straightforwardly. mind, lungs, and body. In the traditional practice, you remember the various parts of the body in largely not so complementary ways in order to understand that it's just this, you know, you're just this bag of shit, basically. But it's really, the purpose is to kind of understand that, you know, what you think of as your body is not your body. It's just a, you know, you're just making that up. It's no delusion. Now, when this appears again in the Mahayana literature, for instance in the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, it's exactly the same, except at the end it says the Bodhisattva does not apprehend any of this. The Bodhisattva does not grasp the idea of this practice or the idea of the parts of

[34:47]

In a way, I think that's what I don't know is addressing. Yes, I know all these things, but I'm not going to grasp onto them. Yes? I guess when I heard this story, I interpreted the Bodhidharma going across the river because he didn't know the answer, and so he went to go find an answer and sat for nine years. Very interesting. Very interesting. I don't know. I like that. I don't know. Yes, Grace. Oh, I did. That's where you heard this rumor. receivers of having a very grounded experience of you, you talked about a question that was asked of you, that you felt you debated.

[36:00]

I don't suppose you've forgotten that question? No, I'll never forget that. Would you mind sharing? I'll try. It was a rather long, involved question by someone who tends to present things in that way. He asked, Maybe the answer was long and involved. He talked about this story about the mouse pulling the thorn from the lion's paw. And he says, he kind of started out by putting that out, and then he says, how is a little boy from Chicago going to pull out that thorn? So stupid I said with all my strength and He said, huh what?

[37:05]

And I repeated the answer. I think I repeated it several times and said I don't know And then someone sometime later in the ceremony I Ah, Reb Anderson kind of totally spoke out of turn. I'd never seen it happen before. Somebody just kind of said, hey, you know, what about that? Is that right? Huh? Is that the truth? You know, just wasn't going to let this one go. My wife said she was there. She wasn't at the practice period, but she was there at the ceremony. She said, you know, I can see that coming a mile away. But so then I admitted that, you know, yeah, that wasn't quite right. I can't remember what I said, but it was rather shocking, this bad behavior and forcing me to admit that I'd totally blown it. But it was a very deep and important experience for me.

[38:12]

Very grateful for it. with all my heart. Thank you very much.

[38:34]

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