This morning I'm going to present a koan from a blue cliff record and follow that up with a commentary on a talk of Suzuki Roshi's. So, this is a case number 89 in the blue cliff record, which is a kind of difficult koan, but actually it's not. You know the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteśvara, is sometimes depicted as the Bodhisattva of

[01:13]

a thousand arms and hands. You may have seen this figure, a statue of the Bodhisattva with a great circle of hands and arms. Sometimes it's a thousand, sometimes 80,000, 80,000 though is a much more difficult figure to make, so they limited it to a thousand. When I was in China, on Mount Tiantai, I walked down the street, which was lined with little shops, and at the end, way down the line was a little factory where they made these figures. I had a wonderful talk with this young Chinese guy who spoke a little English. But anyway, this is a very well-known figure. Each hand of the Bodhisattva has some kind of implement that he uses or she uses to help

[02:21]

people. So, this koan is about this Bodhisattva, sort of. So here's the end goes, introduction to the case. When the entire body is the eye, while seeing, you don't see. When the entire body is the ear, while hearing, you don't hear. When the entire body is the mouth, while speaking, you do not speak. When the entire body is the mind, while thinking, you do not think. Putting aside the entire body, if there are no eyes, how do you see? If there are no ears, how do you hear? If there is no mouth, how do you speak? If there is no mind, how do you think? If you are familiar with this point, you are in the company of the ancient Buddhas.

[03:23]

However, putting aside being in the company of the ancient Buddhas, with whom should you study Zen? That's the introduction. So here's the main subject. Master Ungan asked Master Dogo. So Ungan, Ungan Dongjo, Daisho, and Dogo, these are two very well-known Tang Dynasty masters. So Ungan asked Dogo, What use does the Great Bodhisattva of Mercy make of all those hands and eyes?

[04:23]

How does he use them? Dogo said, It is like a person straightening their pillow with their outstretched hand in the middle of the night. It's like searching for your pillow in the middle of the night. You can't, you don't know where it is. It's all dark and you have to put all your effort into finding the pillow. Ungan said, I think I understand. Dogo said, How do you understand? And Ungan said, The whole body is hand and eye. Dogo said, You have had your say, but you have given only eight-tenths of the truth. Ungan said, Well, how would you put it? Dogo said, The entire body is hand and eye. This is the body.

[05:26]

So, This is a talk of Suzuki Roshi's. We edited it as, edited it as Find Out for Yourself, as the title. But it could be another title. So, So he says, In your zazen, or in your life, you will have many difficulties or problems. When you have a problem, see if you can find out for yourself why you have a problem. Usually, you will try to solve your difficulty in the best way as soon as possible.

[06:35]

That's normal. Rather than studying for yourself, you ask someone, help someone else to help you solve a problem. We're always looking for help to solve our problems. This kind of approach may work for your usual life. But if you want to study Zen, it doesn't help. So, this is an interesting approach. This is the difference between logical procedures when we want to know what to do. That's normal life. But to study Zen, we don't approach it that way, as trying to figure out what to do. This is why Zen is more based on koan.

[07:37]

With koan, no one can help you, and your teacher will not help you. You have to find out for yourself what the koan is. He's talking about the difference between our ordinary life and our approach to Zen. Master Dogen studied many koans. When you read his Shobo Genzo, almost every fascicle presents one or two koans of the ancient Buddhas in China. Dogen took all of those koans, the understanding of the koans, and presented his understanding as Genzo koan. This Genzo koan is the koan of our daily life.

[08:45]

We think about our ordinary life in logical terms, in dualistic ways. But koan helps us to understand our life not just in a dualistic way, but also in a non-dualistic way. Usually we fall into one side or the other, good or bad, right or wrong, like and dislike, and so forth. So Dogen actually presented his Genzo koan, the center of Genzo koan, as Zazen, which is different than many ordinary ways of meditating. Genzo koan is to totally open ourselves to the koan of Zazen, not try to figure it out, not try to get something from it, not falling into good and bad, right and wrong, like and dislike, but just to see reality as it is, without falling into duality.

[09:59]

That's Zazen. We know it's Zazen, to gain something. It's simply to share all of our assumptions, so that we can see very clearly reality. So the moment you are told something by someone, and you think you understand, you will stick to it. And you will lose the full function of your nature. When you seek something, your true nature is in full activity, as if you are searching for the pillow in the dark. If you know where the pillow is, your mind is not in full function. Your mind is acting in a limited sense. When you are seeking for the pillow, without knowing where it is,

[11:02]

then your mind is open to everything. In this way, you will have a more subtle attitude toward everything, and you will see things as it is. We probably all have had experiences where you think you know what you are doing, and then suddenly everything changes, and you have to do something. And you are not prepared for doing something, but you respond. It's beyond seeing, beyond thinking, beyond feeling, beyond any of our sensory input. You just respond, like that. I've had several experiences like that, and I'm sure we all have. I remember one time when I was at the Sahara in the winter, I think it was 2005,

[12:05]

and it was raining really hard. It just rained every day, pouring down. The Tassajara has pretty good flood control. The water tends to flow off pretty well, but there's a creek, which we know is called Kabarda Creek, which runs under the road coming into Tassajara. And then it goes back into Tassajara. Everybody is going about their business, and I was walking, I can't remember where I was going, I was going somewhere, everybody knew where they were going, and then suddenly I realized all this water is rushing down the road. So I walked up to the main gate, and the water was piling up two or three feet against the gate.

[13:12]

And what had happened was, there was a landslide under a creek, and a big boulder fell into the creek and stopped up the creek, so it came down the road instead of going down the creek. And so, I told people, everybody immediately stopped what they were doing, and started doing something else. It's like we were all going in one movement, and we all suddenly had to do something, and we didn't know what to do, except that we knew what to do. But without being told, we just responded, and we made everything work. Everybody started getting shovels and digging ditches. So this is spontaneous activity. When we think of Zen, we think of spontaneous activity. We don't have to have an emergency to think about spontaneous activity, because we're always responding to something, all the time.

[14:14]

So how do we respond with that same clear mind, and letting go of all our assumptions, and letting go of all of our ideas and theories, and simply respond? Where do you come from when you just respond? I'm not talking about reacting exactly. Sometimes we call it reacting. Reacting is different than response. But how do you respond to everything that you meet? With a clear, open, fundamental mind. So, if you want to study something,

[15:20]

it's better not to know what the answer is. Because you're not satisfied with something that you're taught, and because you can't rely on anything set up by someone else, you study Buddhism without knowing how to study it. Suzuki Rishi gave a talk once about you think that Buddhism is something that is already taught to you. That's kind of what he's saying here. You think that it's something that you can put into the refrigerator, and then when you need it, you open the refrigerator and take it out, and it's preserved there for you. It's not rotting. But actually, that's not true Buddhism.

[16:27]

We have all these books and systems of Buddhism, but actually, that's just a support for the dharma. It's not the dharma itself. So, in this way, you find out for yourself what we really mean by Buddhist practice or enlightenment. So, we make a big mistake all the time, but we have to talk, we have to teach, we have to orient students and so forth. But the teacher does a disservice by teaching. So, a good teacher will not tell you too much. And this is very important.

[17:30]

When I first came to Zen Center, when people came, what should they do now? You just walk in, nobody tells you anything. And you come in, you look around, and you wonder what you're doing, and you see people sitting, and you think, okay, then you can start. That's full function. You're finding your way, finding your way in. Nowadays, we are more accommodating, because otherwise there'd be not so many people. People say, oh, they're so austere or something, they're so unfriendly. People are always complaining about pastry. San Francisco, you walk in and everybody is so unfriendly. The first thing you learn is about Dharma. As soon as you enter the gate, you learn the first lesson of Zen, without knowing it.

[18:35]

And the first lesson is, you have to find your way in. You have to make the effort to find your way in. So, effort is really important. Effort, and without being told too much. So, you know, in Asian Buddhism, or Japanese Zen, I'll say, Chinese, you're not told too much, and you're expected to learn by observation. You learn everything by observation. When I was ordained, I've told you this story many times, when I was ordained a Suzuki Rishi, I said, well, now that I'm a priest, what should I do? He says, I don't know. I understood exactly what he meant, but then I asked Katagiri as well, he said, I don't know. This is the most fundamental.

[19:38]

People say, what is a priest? What is a priest? And I thought, well, you know, a priest does this, a priest does that, but that's not what a priest is. I don't know is the correct answer. So you always have to find out. You have to find out moment by moment. It's not like there's some formula. You know, you wear the robes, and you sit in Zen, and you teach in Zen, and there's that formal aspect. That's not what a priest is. You do the service. You have to find out what you're doing moment after moment. You have to bring out that fresh life. Let life unfold in a fresh way moment after moment. We talk about rules. There are no rules. When you practice here, and then you go to some other place to practice, you say, but they're doing it all wrong.

[20:39]

That's because you're comparing the rules that you think you're following here with what you think the people are following there. That's all. There's no way. There's no special way. It's just that because of time, the place, and the forms of practice, and the weather, and the teacher, and the place takes on the personality of the teacher, actually. And then that's the way the practice forms itself. And it also forms itself on the basis of history. History is important because each age practices with what they received from the last generation, and then that generation transfers

[21:41]

their knowledge to the next generation. But it also keeps changing because no place stays the same. When Japanese priests come over and say, oh, you should do it this way, that's just his idea because of where he practiced. And people say, oh, that's the right way. And I remember at Tatsahara, the practice is changing suddenly all the time. And then a Japanese priest would come over and say, oh, no, no. And everybody would say, oh, he must be right because he's a Japanese priest. But he just has his way. That's all. So there's no need to say that we're doing it the right way or the wrong way. We just do it the way that makes sense to us. So Suzuki Roshi says, you seek freedom and you try various ways. Of course, you will sometimes find

[22:42]

that you have wasted your time. That's possible. If a Zen master drinks sake, you may think the best way to attain enlightenment is to drink sake. But even though you drink a lot of sake, as he does, you will not attain enlightenment. It may look like you've wasted your time, but that attitude is important. The attitude of trying to understand your teacher. This is also a very important point. To know the difference between what to follow and what not to follow of your teacher. So Trungpa was this kind of teacher I remember being invited to the Dharmadhatu. I went to a talk at the Dharmadhatu one time and they invited me upstairs.

[23:42]

They were waiting for Trungpa to arrive, which he never did. But they were serving glasses of what looked like water. But it was vodka. And everybody was drinking vodka. And I don't drink. So I drank a little vodka, but Trungpa drank vodka all the time. So his students all drank vodka. Everything he did, they did. It finally ended up in a mess, but the Dharma was strong enough to save itself. You should know I'll follow this part of this teaching of the teacher, but I'll leave that part alone. That's his thing. So don't follow. You have to be able to know

[24:45]

which is which. So he's saying, it may look like you've wasted your time with this kind of teacher, but actually the attitude is important. Making the effort. Making the effort is important. Suzuki Roshi, I read, told his students, Trungpa Rinpoche drinks alcohol like we drink water. But you should know that he's totally devoted to your practice. Yeah, that's right. Tatsugami Roshi, with whom I was in Sahara in 1970, used to smoke, constantly. A lot of people smoked at those times, but he was always smoking. And people would question him, and he said, well, you know, you can be enlightened through smoking. But we all questioned that.

[25:48]

Couldn't we? So, when you do something with a limited idea, or with some definite purpose, what you will gain is something concrete. This will cover up your inner nature. So it is not a matter of what you study, but a matter of seeing things as it is and accepting things as it is. So, we want to know. We want to be certain. And we want to have purpose. But, he's saying here, when we do that, we limit ourselves. And we're always limiting ourselves. In order to do one thing, we have to limit ourselves to not do something else. And you will gain something

[26:51]

concrete by doing that. And so that's our usual life. But that covers up our inner nature. In other words, one example is, because we live in the information age, as it's so called, and we think that information is the most important thing in the world, we cover up our intuition. Intuition takes a really little place. But intuition is our true open mind. We truly open our true mind with intuition. We don't open it with information. Information clogs our mind. Of course, we use it, and it's great. It has wonderful potentiality, but it covers our intuition. That's why, when we sit with us, information mind

[27:51]

is put aside. Information mind, knowing mind, thinking mind is put to the side. So we have pure intuition to open ourselves completely. So some of you may study something only if you like it. If you don't like it, you ignore it. That's me. I admit to that. This is a selfish way. And it also limits your power of study. Good and bad, big or small, we study to discover the true reason why something is so big and why something is so small, why something is good and why something is not so good. If you try to discover only something good, you will miss something, and you will always be limiting your facilities and faculties. When you live in a limited world, we like the good part and we don't like the bad part.

[28:53]

That's human nature. We like what is good and we like what is bad. In this case, there is a lot of trouble, a lot of problems. So if we want everything to be good, do you want everything to be good? Then you have to see everything is good. That's the only way that you're going to have the good. Because the good is created by the bad, and the bad is created by the good. You have to accept the bad as the good. If you're going to have everything good, you have to accept the bad as the good. If you want things to be good, you can't do it because good exists in the bad, bad exists in the good, and they continually create each other. So pain goes along

[29:58]

with pleasure. Pleasure goes along with pain. Within pain is pleasure, within pleasure that's pain. If you want to have everything one way, you have to give up your dualistic thinking. You have to give up your discriminating mind. That's the only way you're going to have because the good has to contain the bad. Otherwise it's not good. It's no good. It's just sort of good, partially good. So you accept the pain. You know, when you pick a partner and say, I love you, you see only what you think and you know that there's something else, but you ignore it because you want that person so much that you ignore

[30:58]

all the other parts, even though you know they're there somewhere. But what you get is the other side as well. And then you start arguing. And then, how did I ever get involved with this person? Because when you have what you don't supply for the other person, the other person has to supply. And then you say, well, how come you're so mean to me? You're taking over all this. That's because the other person has to come up with a partnership. It's two entities making one thing. In order to make the one thing, if you don't supply your part totally, the other person has to supply that to make the situation work. And then we wonder why we're quarreling. We don't understand it. How come something so wonderful

[31:59]

turned out to be so awful? That's because we're always involved in the dualistic thinking. So, partnership has to find its adjustments continuously. It's not like it's always going to be the same. It's never going to be the same as you thought it would be. So, the living precept means every moment you have to adjust. So, even if a Zen master has two or three students, he would never tell them away in detail. The only way to study with him is to eat with him, talk with him, do everything with him. This comes from a culture of apprenticeship. In apprenticeship, this is the way you actually study Zen. The best way is you just practice

[33:01]

with the teacher all the time. The teacher is not telling you, educating you or telling you stuff sometimes, but you just observe and you just harmonize with the teacher. And then the Dharma unfolds. And so, that's how our practice is. So, you help the teacher without being told how to help. Mostly, you will not seem to be happy and he will always be scolding you without any apparent reason. This is a very typical Japanese way in which it bothers Westerners. How come you scolded me? Sometimes the teacher will scold the person next to you instead of scolding you. So,

[34:03]

because you can't figure out the reason, you won't be happy and he won't be so happy. If you really want to study you will study how to not please, use the word please, but how to take care of how do you take care of your teacher and how you make how you make your life happy with the teacher. Japanese priests, when they come to America, they don't understand how come you're not taking care of the teacher? Because taking care of the teacher is how you take care of yourself and how you take care of the Dharma. That's how you learn something. Teaching is how you take care of somebody. That's why you have a jisha and an anja. The teacher has an anja and a jisha so that the anja and the teacher can learn something. I mean, the anja and the jisha can learn something, not because the teacher needs that.

[35:06]

It's really hard for a jisha to help me because I always do everything myself. It's really hard for me. But that's good for the jisha, for the anja, because they have to figure out how to help me. How do you do that? How do you help somebody that doesn't need anything? Sorry. But that's practice. You may say that this way of practice is very old-fashioned. It may be so, but I think you have this kind of life in Western civilization too, although not exactly as we did in Japan. The reason why people had a difficult time with their teachers is that there's no particular way for us to study. There's no curriculum. When the Zen Center starts doing its curriculum, that's when I leave. Because curriculum

[36:07]

is not the way to study Zen. You study Zen like hand-to-mouth, like moment-to-moment. Breathe. This is, you know, Avalokiteśvara has a thousand arms and hands, and each one, but where is that? When when Dao says 80%, what about the other 20%? The other 20% is the vital hand. It's the hand that is not prescribed. It's the hand that comes forth spontaneously without any designation. That's the practice. Without a designation, you don't have a way. You don't have anything to rely on except your inner being.

[37:09]

And when it comes from your inner being, that's the proper response. And then when it comes from your inner being, you can use all those tools that are held in those thousand hands and arms. But that fundamental practice So the reason why people had a difficult time with their teachers is that there is no particular way to study. Each one of us is different from the other. So each one of us must have our own way, and according to the situation, we should change our way. You can't stick to anything. The only thing to do is to discover the appropriate way to act under new circumstances. This is called the living precepts.

[38:10]

For instance, in the morning we clean. We don't have enough rags and brooms. This is a tazahara, or maybe it's a pastry. It is almost impossible to participate in our cleaning. So under these circumstances, it's still possible to figure out something to do. I don't scold you very much, but if I were a strict Zen master, I would be angry with you because you give up so easily. Oh, no, there's not much cleaning equipment, or there's nothing for me to do. You're just standing around waiting for somebody to hand you something. Instead, you should figure out how to make yourself useful. So you are prone to think this way and easily give up. So at least try hard to figure out how to practice. If you are very sleepy, you may think, well, it's better to rest. Sometimes it is better, but at the same time it may be a good chance to practice, even if you are sleepy. Okay.

[39:25]

So he's talking... I'm going to skip a lot here because we don't have much time. My teacher never told us anything. When I got up 20 minutes earlier than the wake-up bell, I was scolded, don't get up so early, you'll disturb my sleep. Usually if I got up early, it was good, but for him it was not so good. When you try to understand things better without any fixed rules or prejudice, this is the meaning of selflessness. You think that we have rules, but I don't think that what we have is rules. We have customs. It's customary to do things because we figured out how things work. So rules, so-called rules or customs, are formed in order to help us move smoothly and easily in our practice. It's not to hold you down. If you don't have those rules, you have some other rules. But you think you don't have

[41:02]

rules, that's the problem. But we do. Everybody has rules, even though it doesn't look like rules. The sloppiest person has rules, and the rules of the sloppy person is to do everything as sloppily as possible. So, you may set something as a rule, but rules are already a selfish idea. Actually, there are no rules. So when you say, this is the rule, you're forcing the rules on others. So rules are only needed when we don't have much time or when we can't help others or work more closely in a kind way. To say, this is the rule, so you should do it, is easy, but actually that's not our way. For the beginner, maybe, instruction is necessary. But for advanced students, we don't give much instruction. And they try out various ways. If possible, we give

[42:02]

instruction to people one by one. Because that is difficult, we give group instruction or a lecture like this. But don't stick to the lecture. Think about what I mean, really. I'm sorry that I can't help you very much, but the way to truly study Zen is not verbal. Just open yourself and give up everything. That's basically it. Whatever happens, whatever you think is good or bad, study closely and see what you find out. This is the fundamental attitude. Sometimes you will do things without much thinking about whether they're good or bad. If that is difficult for you, you are not actually ready to practice Zazen. I always think, I use the term unassuming mind, which I've used for a long

[43:02]

time to mean empty mind. You're not assuming something. As soon as we assume something, we cover it. Assumptions are, I know you, I know how you're going to act, and I'm prepared for that. That's an assumption. So if you let go of the assumption, the person may act that way time after time, but there's one time that you leave open. If you leave yourself open, there's that one time that that person doesn't act that way, and then you're open to that person. And that gives the assumption. Sometimes I assume things, but basically my effort is to not assume anything about anybody, but simply to remain open. And when you remain open, then

[44:03]

things work. When your assumptions cover your mind, they don't work. So this is what it means to surrender, even though you have nothing to surrender. Without losing yourself by sticking to a particular rule or understanding, keep finding yourself moment after moment. This is the only thing for you to do. This is the only thing

[44:31]

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