in our discussion here, the subject came up about communication, and we talked about communication for a while, and someone brought up, came up that there was, someone had some doubt about whether meditation, Buddhist meditation promoted communication. And the thought came up that maybe it didn't. And then that got bandied around for a while, and I thought about it, and I thought, this is a very complex issue. It's very simple, but it's very complex. because when we talk about communication, what are we really talking about?

[01:05]

And so then it came to me that there are many divisions or categories of communication, but basically we're dealing with two categories. One is called communication, The other is called communion. And when we enter into Buddhist practice and meditation practice, what we're interested in is communion. Communion is like the first principle. In the Catholic Church, it's a kind of technical term. for communion with the deity. In Buddhism, I've never heard it used before, but, or as a technical term.

[02:11]

But, you know, in the Sandokai, I mean, the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which we chanted this morning, says, communing with the source and communing with the process. There are those two lines. communing with the source and communing with the process. So I want to talk a little bit around those two lines in connection with this. But communion is to be one with. Communion is like intuition. Intuition means to directly connect. without an intermediary. In Buddhism, you don't need a priest for communion. You can do it yourself. You have to do it yourself. And so, communion has this feeling of entering into

[03:28]

the first principle without anything in between and without any idea, actually. Ideas throw us into the second principle, which is the area of communication. Communication, in this contrast, is When you have more than one, you need communication. So communication exists in a kind of dualistic realm. Communication takes place in the realm of duality. When there's more than one, you need to communicate between the more than one, whether it's two or 20 or 10 million. So, as human beings, in the realm of duality, good and bad, right and wrong, this and that, you and me, we need to communicate.

[04:44]

Because we're all individuals. Mental telepathy is rare. So, we have to find ways to communicate words. We use words a lot, but words are very inadequate. Words will communicate ideas and feelings, and sometimes very accurately. But when you get into certain realms, words don't communicate so well because they don't fit. It's hard to fit all the ideas into words. Some people are very creative with words. Dogen Zenji was very creative with words. Usually in the realm of Zen, words are used to communicate, but not

[05:51]

in their usual way. In order for a Zen teacher to communicate with words, they have to use the words in a different way. They have to use words in a non-dualistic way. They have to use dualistic words in a non-dualistic way. So when you read koans, they always sound very strange. And they make you very angry. Because they insult your intelligence. That's not logical. It's almost logical, but not quite. So to use dualistic words in a non-dualistic way, you have to have communion. What the words are pointing at is communion. But what we are used to is communication. Communication is necessary. I'm not knocking it.

[06:54]

But in the realm of meditation, or in the realm of non-dualistic understanding, communion is the foremost. And it's called the first principle. It's not talking about something, it's talking from some place. So, you could say, you know, communion is the basis. Communion is like being one with everything. When we sit Zazen, we let go of thinking mind. We let go of comparative mind. We let go of dualistic thinking. And sometimes communication becomes very crude.

[08:03]

But also, there's often not so much need to communicate. So, you know, in If you only exist in the non-dualistic realm of communion, then it's easy to kind of let go of the structural process of the world. That's possible. We call it getting spaced out. That's right, because you lose all your structures. You let go of your usual structures and you get kind of spaced out. And this does happen, even to the most structured of us. We start, you know, wandering around a little bit, both in mind and body.

[09:11]

But we realize this is happening and we have a good sense of humor about it. So this is one reason why Buddhist practice, especially Zen practice, has so much structure. Because when you start losing structure, then you start dreaming and getting lost in the empty side of things. But this is the world where we live, and this is the world where our activity takes place. So we have to stay in this world and live together with all beings in this world, rather than to escape into the world of non-form.

[10:19]

So monastic practice is very structured so as to keep you down to earth. And our communication is very structured in order to keep your mind alert and focused. So spiritual practice takes place in the realm of the mundane, the ordinary. So that you don't even recognize it as spiritual practice, necessarily. As soon as you start to talk about spiritual practice, you have to go and wash your mouth out with soap and water. This is, you know, if you mention the name of Buddha, You need to go wash your mouth out with soap and water.

[11:30]

But knowing that, we can talk about Buddha, spiritual practice. So, we have to live our lives in the realm of communication. But, communication What is our communication based on? Communic... Communion is also a kind of communication. These words are actually interchangeable, but we use them to specify one side or the other. So, in communion there is communication, and within communication there is communion.

[12:33]

But often our communication is not based on communion. Our communication is just based on ideas. So we get into the world of ideas and the world of information. And information becomes the most important thing. Because we lose touch with communion. If we lose touch with communion and there's only communication left, then we're stuck in the realm of ideas. And we have to know more and more. How much do we have to know? How much information do we actually have to have? It's an interesting question. This is the information age, where we get further and further away from communion, and we have to have more and more communication.

[13:39]

Communion is actually very simple, and communication is very complex. Reams and reams of paper. Forests of paper. Forests of paper. So it may be true that Buddhists who practice meditation are not so good at communication. I may even grant that. But I hope that they're good at communion. Although our communication skills, as we call them, should be based on the first principle.

[14:52]

In our practice, this is called Genjo Koan. Genjo Koan is applied to communication. On the one side, we have communion, which is being one with Buddha nature. where there is no right or wrong, good or bad. Everything is just as it is. And this is razen. On the other hand, we have the world of communication, in which there's right and wrong, good and bad. This is the human world. We live in Buddha's world, and we also live in the human world. Buddha's world is no right and wrong, no good or bad, no dualities.

[15:53]

Everything is just as it is. Human world is good and bad, right and wrong, yes and no, this and that. But Buddha's world is the human world, and human world is the Buddha's world. Right in the middle, right where those two meet, if you want to call it meeting, is a koan. Is it Buddha's world or is it human world? This is the basis of Genjokoan. And this Genjokoan, which is called the koan of everyday life, the koan which rises up on each moment, and which we have to deal with on each moment. And there are no rules. There are guidelines. We just recited 16 Bodhisattva precepts, which are guidelines for our life.

[17:00]

But there's no rules exactly. There are rules, but the rules come out moment by moment. Let me say, this way. There are no rules, but there is the law. There's the law of the way things go and the way things happen. But every moment's activity is different. So there's no rule that covers every single activity. even though everything is controlled by law. How do we know what the law is? So we don't know what the law is, actually. It's very difficult to know what the law is, and yet it's very simple. So what we do is we go by the rules. In order to make life livable, in order to make sense of life, in order to have some

[18:12]

order in our life that works, we have rules. But the rules are close to the law, but the law cannot be grasped as rules. So, If we don't have the intuition to understand what is the law, then we just rely on the rules. And when we just rely on the rules, we lose our way, because we're cut off from the law. And if you look at what's happening in our country, you can see that because we're cut off from the law, we're depending on the rules, and we keep changing the rules all the time, according to how people think it should be.

[19:21]

There's a gatha in Soto Zen for monks, which goes something like... It's for waking up in the morning. It's what you're supposed to say when you wake up in the morning. As I wake up this morning, I vow with all sentient beings to Recognize everything in the world. Recognize all created things without giving up the world. Recognize is not quite the right word, but to be one with things, without giving up the world.

[20:56]

So that's kind of a vow. It's easy. It's not so hard to give up the world, especially if you have a good practice. It's kind of easy to content yourself You know, if you practice sincerely and long enough, you'll find some self-contentment and you'll feel that you don't need the world so much. When you go to sleep, just leave it all behind. You don't wake up thinking about, worrying about things. It's just like, it's easy to let go of things. So, it's important to make an effort to stay in the world, actually, for many people.

[22:01]

And that effort has to be there. Also, it's too easy to get off into just being self-satisfied with practice, being self-satisfied with your own attainment. And then meditation practice or Zen practice becomes egotistical practice. So it's very important to stumble about, for us to stumble about in the world of communication, trying to communicate, making an effort to communicate in the dualistic realm. And how do we do that?

[23:07]

And I think we should all As a practice, learn how to use words. Not try to avoid words, but really learn how to use words to communicate, how to be articulate, and how to use our body to communicate. In Zen practice, body language is just as important as verbal communication. Often we study the teacher's movements. In Zen practice often the student-teacher relationship is for the student to study the teacher's movement and then the teacher communicates That's a very close kind of relationship.

[24:16]

But sometimes it doesn't have to be so close. It's close even though it may be distant. Often you can watch somebody and you can see how they walk or act or something and you feel some affinity or something with that person or you feel turned off There was a famous teacher who came from China to Japan. Everybody wanted to go see him. This is around the 15th century. Another teacher, famous teacher, said, well, I'll go see him, too. And when he went, he saw this famous teacher from China walking off the boat. And as he saw him walking off the boat, he said, he doesn't have it.

[25:23]

I turned around and walked the other way. Yogan Sensaki wrote one time about a woman who... I think someone had died and she wanted to offer incense. And so he... helped her to set up the offering for her. And when she offered the incense, he said, I passed her understanding. In other words, I agreed with her understanding by the way she offered the incense. So this is kind of very subtle. communication that takes place in practice.

[26:28]

Sometimes it has to do with verbal communication, but very often, and mostly, it just has to do with the way we move around each other. It has to do with mindfulness and carefulness and respect for things. And it has to do with where our consciousness is. So, in the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, there are these two lines, Communing with the Source and Communing with the Process.

[27:37]

Communing with the Source is like the first principle. That's communion. It could have been translated, Communing with the Source and Communicating with the Process. That might be a better way to say it. Communing with the Source and communicating with the process. The process is our visible life as it goes, as a process. So, right there is Ginjo Koan, our practice. Communing with the Source and communicating throughout the process. And within the communion, there is communication. And within the communication, there is communion.

[28:39]

So to communicate without communion is just dry communication. You can't just say something without being one with the object. There's a transference of information. but that's kind of low form of communication, just transferring information from one vessel to another. When we do have communication, what do we communicate? Anyway, you may have something, this may bring up something for you, if you have any question about it.

[29:55]

Could you clarify a bit that point you made about the law and the rules? Yeah. The problem being that we always change the rules. Well, I didn't say we always change the rules. The rules are always changing. And the law, you know, I did say that we continually change the rules, right? What I meant by changing the rules was we change them to fit our convenience. What is that law? The law is the way things actually are. The law is like something you can't change. It's like, well, I hate to say the law of gravity, but that's a good example. You have to, as long as we're living on this earth, we have to continually live our life in conformity with the law of gravity.

[31:11]

That's the law. Although we do various, you know, we try to get out of it in various ways. We do try to get out of it. And gravity has many forms. It's not just the pulter of the earth, although that's the great one. But there's gravity between each one of us, you know. And sometimes we try to lighten the gravity by various means, like escape. We try to escape the gravity of life by drinking, right? Or, you know, putting our mind in some other space. So that gravity, we don't feel the pull of gravity.

[32:17]

It's also called, you can also call it responsibility. We have to be responsible to gravity. We have to respond to it correctly. So, and whatever we're responsible to is a kind of gravity. So, sometimes we think by changing the law, by changing the rules, we can change the law. But it doesn't work. Even though you change the rules, it doesn't change the law. Things will just still go on the same way, except that they will be... give people more pain. Some people will benefit, and others will have more pain. You know, I don't want to bring in instances, although I could say like the abortion rules, right?

[33:22]

Here we're talking about the law and the rules. And it's very complicated. The law is just the law, you know? People get pregnant and have babies. That's the law. The rules is how we deal with all that. Okay? So that's the difference between the law and the rules. The law is the law. There's nothing you can do about it. But the rules are how we try to manage ourselves, given what the law is. But we call the rules the law. That's why our use of language makes us think in certain ways. So when we talk about the law, we're really talking about the rules most of the time.

[34:26]

Civil law, we say that. So that's qualified. This is civil law. This is religious law, you know. This is scientific law. So we have to be careful to realize, to remember when we're talking about law, what law we're talking about. And a lot of laws that we're talking about are really just rules. There's a dualism I hear in the way you were talking, which you undermine and deny, but I still want to bring it up. And that is And although you came back and forth and said communion and communication meet each other, communion is the first principle and communication is lower in the hierarchy.

[35:31]

And I know you get it, but let me just continue for a second. And then you suggested changing the possibility of changing the translation, communing with the source and communicating with the process, and again, the process became lower in the hierarchy than the source. And I find this harmful. I don't find it harmful, but in order to be consistent, I would say it that way. You can say it the other way. You can say it either way, any way you want. Because you can say it any way you want, I can change it to say it that way, in order to look at it from that perspective. So nothing's that fixed. The words are not that fixed. Communion, yeah, communing with the sort, with the principle. That's absolutely right. But you can also say communicating with the principle in order to show the contrast between communion and communication.

[36:34]

Nothing's fixed. Communion and communication are not fixed. The first principle, the second principle is also an expression of the first principle. So, you're right, I'm talking about it in a dualistic way. But I know I'm talking about it in a dualistic way. Isn't that first principle always first in Zen? No. It's always first. If you want to talk about first and second. First principle is foundation. Second principle is once removed. First principle is something. Second principle is about something. So that's why we say first principle and second principle. But we don't say that second principle is bad or wrong. It's just that we should recognize that the second principle is dependent on the first principle.

[37:37]

Will it be too much if I go on one more step? Okay. You used that phrase that stuck in my mind, stumbling around. It's important for us to stumble around trying to communicate. And when you said that, I thought, I had this wonderful image of stumbling around. And I had wonderful fantasy, which I was considered enacting, and I guess I won't right now, of getting down off my seat and stumbling around and enacting it, and saying, see, this isn't stumbling around, this isn't less than sitting still. That's right. It's right in this very stumbling around, right? That's what I said, yeah. That's what I meant. Yeah, stumbling around is, you know,

[38:40]

He says, the greatest eloquence is like stuttering. Thank you. Well, expression, you know, it's like, it's not that you're expressing your true nature, it's true nature is being expressed.

[40:06]

So there's nothing in between. You're just allowing something to happen. You're just kind of standing out of the way, you know. our discriminating mind stands out of the way. Discriminating mind is also true nature. But discriminating mind stops operating as discriminating mind. And complete nature, we say true, whole nature, or nature expresses itself wholly, completely. without being divided. Because the nature of discrimination is to divide. Discriminate means to divide. So let me say, no discrimination means not dividing up things into this or that.

[41:18]

Non-discrimination is non-dualistic. Discrimination is what creates the duality. So we're always discriminating. We're always creating this and that and dividing and making choices. But to express your true nature means to allow the wholeness of nature to be expressed. And you do that after Communicating? After Communicating? In what? Yes. In words. You can do that when you're communicating. The main thing is to realize that if it's a person, the person that you're communicating is also yourself. So you have to be careful how you talk to yourself, and how you see yourself, and how you express yourself.

[42:25]

And you also have to see that the person is different from yourself as well. So, we always see the differences. That's what we see, mostly. But we don't see the sameness. So, when we realize that the other person is ourself, that's communion. Then you can communicate on the basis of communion. And you always treat the person as a human being and you don't lose your temper unless you want to. You always have faith in people in their Buddha nature because you're addressing their Buddha nature. We don't just see either ourselves or others as objects. Education has the same, very similar kind of feeling because education is not to put information into, stuff information into your brain, but it's to bring forth what you already know.

[43:59]

We already know the basic, you know, what we need to know we already know, but we don't know it because it's not brought forth. So in education, how do we bring forth? A teacher should help to bring forth, to educate, to bring forth basic understanding in whoever is being educated, and especially in Buddhist practice. A good teacher does not give you anything. A good teacher will not give you anything. And giving you something can be a kind of disservice. Although, you know, we do tend to feed, but it can be a mistake. So a good teacher stimulates the student to bring forth, to express true nature.

[45:07]

That's called education. And then you learn to have lots and lots of patience. Even if people spit at you. Well, one reason is that even though we may have practiced, we don't always have maturity.

[46:20]

People think, well, you're a Zen student, you know, you've been studying Zen for a year, how come you're not like this and how come you're not like that? But it's like asking a doctor, you know, well you've been studying medicine for six months, how come you don't know this and you don't know that? So, it's one thing to have practice and it's another to have maturity. Please subscribe!

[47:07]

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