This class was advertised as having how many meetings? Six? Huh? So the way things have worked out is that there's a session scheduled in the middle of the class, sort of. Not in the middle exactly, but in the middle of the class. So the sixth meeting will be after the session. All right? Which means the sixth meeting will be in April. but there'll be a week break during which time we'll have a session which you're welcome to come to probably talk about koans there too another thing is oh I have some copies of a commentary on the Bodhisattva initiation ceremony I'd like to say something about this class, and that is that I tried to go through this book, this book of serenity, a few times.

[01:27]

I'd start with number one and I would go forward, and then somehow people would drop away after a while. And so then at a certain point in history I said, I'm going to keep going no matter what. I'm just going to go through this book. And so part of the reason why people dropped away was that I didn't let new people into the class. So I started with a certain group of people and then it just gradually dwindled to a very small number. So then I said, this time I'm just going to keep going. I did that about five years ago. I just said, I'm just going to keep going. There are some people, I think, who were in that original group who are still in this room tonight, besides me. But that group did dwindle. There's not very many of them left who are still in the room. Some of them come back, go away for a while and come back. Like, they do that. Some of the people in this room have sometimes mystic series of classes and come back.

[02:34]

So we're actually, we're almost halfway through the book now. We're on 44, as you know. And... I'm telling you this because I want you to know that part of what's going on for me is that I'm going through this book with people, studying it together, right? Some people are going to go all the way through, maybe, some not. So I keep letting new people in to keep the spirit up, but new people, of course, aren't so familiar with the stories, so it's a mix and mix. But, you know, there's something... I mean, I'm concerned with many things, right? I mean, I... But the main thing I'm concerned with is a kind of... a kind of... maybe I would say integrity or a certain kind of...

[03:47]

quality or taste, some kind of like thing that is developing. And it's possible that some new person can come in and get a taste for it or not. I don't know. But I'm kind of keeping this thread going of this something, this kind of intangible that was there at the beginning and is actually getting, I wouldn't say exactly stronger, but clearer or more settled or something like that. And this, in some sense, doesn't have that much to do with understanding the stories on a certain level or not. But there's something which I'm kind of like... kind of tending to or nurturing through all these classes.

[04:51]

And I'm telling you this, the people who've been in for a long time probably have a sense of this, but I'm telling this to all of you so that you know sort of what my essential, fundamental agenda in this class is. This is something that's happening through all these classes. There have been classes when I think I probably forgot about it, partly because sometimes I get so excited about the story that I forget the point of the whole thing. But sometimes the stories are so uninteresting to me that I have to remember what the point is again. This is not an example of that. Anyway, I was just thinking about this big class and lots of new people in it, and in one sense I... I'm a little concerned that you might be struggling to try to understand what's going on, but in our sense, because of this thing which is actually quite readily available, you do have a chance to connect with it.

[05:54]

So newcomers have a chance to connect with something that's You know, just something. And this story in particular, I think, is very much about the particular quality that's being developed. I'll point to it a couple times as we go through it. Okay, so let's see. I mentioned in the Wednesday night class that I was very happy that we had Monday night and then there was Tuesday and then there was Wednesday. And on Monday and Tuesday, I realized from conversations with people that some people anyway were doing their homework or their homework was being done to them or something like that.

[07:02]

In other words, the koan was actually happening for them. They were keeping it in mind. They were thinking about it. They were going over it again and again throughout the day, on Tuesday and Wednesday, which I really recommend. If you're teaching the class, it's not so hard to think about it every day. And in fact... I don't have very hard time thinking about this particular story or a lot of the other ones. It's easy for me to remember them. Now, this one particularly easy to remember because the imagery, the metaphors that are being involved here are so colorful and so, you know, so, you know, alive in this valley because this is Green Dragon Temple, you know, and we have Garudas circling all the time here. So it's not that difficult to remember the story. But in general, one of the advantages of koans is that the language is so clearly metaphorical in a lot of cases that it reminds you of the way your mind's working.

[08:11]

And if you use the images, it reminds you of the way your mind's working. And if you think about the way your mind works, it reminds you of the koan. Whatever the case, anyway, people have really been working on this one, keeping it alive during the week, which I really think is good. I don't hold you to that, but I highly recommend that you utilize the opportunity of these stories to live them during the week. That's what they're really for. They're interesting just to go to class too, but to live them during the week is really great. Okay, so let's just read the story again here. A monk asked the master, a dragon king comes out of the sea.

[09:19]

Sky and earth are tranquil. How is direct presentation? Dragon king comes out of the sea. Ocean and heaven, I mean heaven and earth are calm. Meeting him face to face. Then what? And the master says, the guru, the king of the birds, takes command of the universe. Who can stick his head out here? The monk said, suppose someone suddenly appears. Excuse me, suppose one suddenly appears, then what? Xingyang said, it's like a falcon catching a pigeon. If you don't realize, check in front of the tower. Then for the first time, you'll know the real.

[10:24]

The monk said, if so, then I'll fold my hands on my chest and retreat three paces, Cheng Yang said, you blind turtle under the seat of Mount Sumero. Don't wait for another scarring from a wrap on the head. Okay, so... So I've been asking people off and on during the week, have you been meeting the dragon? And have you seen the dragon? And I propose to you that if you're really expressing yourself just as you are, the dragon will come to meet you. or the dragon will manifest in front of you.

[11:39]

The dragon will manifest all around you. If you really express yourself, if you exert your sense of yourself, if you exert yourself through your actions throughout the day, you will be met by this king of dragons. Then, meaning face to face, how is that? So that's the question. Is the dragon anxiety when you're expressing just that person? I think so.

[12:49]

I think the dragon is anxiety. It's not that the dragon is anxiety. It's just that meeting the dragon, you feel anxiety. You meet the big... The big presence comes to visit the little presence that's fully expressing herself. The little presence that has the courage to be herself completely gets met by a big thing that she can't do anything with. And then she feels threatened in many ways. And this is what it's like to meet the dragon. It's like that now... Xin Yang says, the Garuda is on the watch, is on the prowl, is in command of the whole situation. The Garuda is not really what's challenging you.

[13:51]

The dragon, I would suggest, is what challenges you, what meets you, what you can meet. The Garuda is more like the monitor and the guardian of true meeting. So there's the monk, there's you in your smallness, in your limitation, in your uniqueness. And then there's the issue about whether you're fully present with that. And if you are, you get rewarded by being challenged and threatened In your individuality. Your individuality is threatened. Not your life. Not your life. Your life is much more than your individuality. But your individuality, which is what you... You cannot express your life. You, individual person, cannot express your life fully.

[14:56]

But you can express your individuality fully. Because you made it. the way you think it is. And then if you do that, then you feel threatened around that. Your individuality feels threatened. And we confuse our individuality being threatened with our life being threatened. So then we have some problem adjusting. We freak. And then we think we either overexpress ourselves or shrink back. Do you want to say something? No, this is just your hand and your foot. I was just thinking. What were you thinking? I was wondering about just exactly what you were talking about. When the monk asks, when the monk has appeared and said what he wanted to say, and then he says, suppose one suddenly appears, then what? And I was wondering then what was. Is that because he wasn't willing to fully be there?

[15:59]

Yeah. Somebody pointed out to me that in every case the monk is speaking hypothetically. He never really puts himself on the line. He's always, and then what? And if? And what if? How is it is not so much of a cop-out question, but this what if, then what? That kind of mind. Okay, so just let me finish the story and then you can have your questions. Okay, so we go through, we have this Garuda which is the guardian, the guardian of Dharma, which means the guardian of meeting. Dharma is meeting. Meeting of self and other. Meeting of limit and the unlimited, which challenges the limited. It's this kind of meeting of And there's a Dharma guardian which punishes us for insufficient meeting.

[17:04]

Incomplete meetings that we have. We get punished by the Garuda, bopped on the head. Sometimes Garudas manifest as men or women. Sometimes they manifest as pine trees. Various things can bop us on the head to tell us that we weren't present for the big meeting. Then the monk says, well, what if suddenly, another what if, and then the guy says, you know, in some ways I would paraphrase what he said by saying, it's like, you know, you've just been caught. You've just been, you know, penalized. And if you want to understand what come around in front of the tower, or in front of the house here, and check out your corpse, or check out your injuries. When you see your injuries, you'll understand.

[18:09]

Then you'll know something real. For the first time. So far you've been fooling around, and maybe your whole life you have, but now at least... you just got bopped, you got a Garuda bite, or you got a Garuda bite, if you bring your injured presence out in front and look at it, you'll know something real now. Because that's real. To actually, like, come forth at the right time in the right way, that's real. But you don't know about that. So at least you can know what happens to you when you do it wrong. That's real. So the monk goes into another what-if, backs off again. If so, then blah, blah. So he says again, now you're really hiding. You're blind, you've got a shell over you, and you're hiding under the biggest mountain in the universe. Don't wait for another one.

[19:17]

That's the story. All right? So now we can have questions for a little while, and now I'd like to go on to the verse. So, Corinne, do you still have a question? Yeah. I was thinking about when we feel comfortable to express our individuality is when we are at a time that we don't realize that people are judging us or when we feel comfortable enough with someone that we don't think they will judge us or criticize us. So I was wondering if the threat to individuality is other people's judgments or criticisms about the individuality that we're expressing And if that's the case, then the dragon that you have to meet is either the stuff that's coming at you or the stuff that's coming

[20:33]

or the reaction that you're having to the stuff that's coming at you? Okay, that's kind of a complicated question. I think I can handle it, though, if I break up in parts. First part was, you said something about that you, I think you were speaking for yourself, that you maybe feel more comfortable expressing yourself under certain circumstances. Well, I was thinking actually more as children. As children. Young children, when we don't realize that we're being judged, and often we're not so judged when we're children. When young children are not aware that they're being judged or they're not being judged, or perhaps they're being judged positively, like perhaps somebody's looking in their eyes and saying, you are the greatest, come on, do it again. Maybe that's what it looks like, kind of like, wow, this is fantastic, come on, come on. That kind of situation that we feel encouraged to express ourselves. Somebody's looking in our eyes and saying... It's like, you are the most wonderful thing in the world and you're just like me. Okay?

[21:39]

Under those circumstances we feel like we can express ourselves. Just pretty much whatever is, then that's also often, we get back that that's good too. Even just by going to the bathroom. Yeah. So there are those situations. when we feel like we express ourselves then. But now we're in situations where we do not... But as we grew up, though, that very person who may have told us how great we were starts to tell us that some things are not so great, and that we're not acting just like her or just like him, and therefore we're not so cute. And then we have the question of whether we express ourselves anyway. Sometimes we do. We get some heat for that, or they tell us that we're ruining their life or whatever, or we think that's what they're saying, so we stop expressing ourselves. That starts happening. I'm actually not talking about that kind of relationship. I'm talking about a feeling that I have, I think a lot of people have, that trying to find a place where you're comfortable enough to express yourself fully...

[22:47]

And feeling like wherever you go, there are judgments and criticisms. So I'd rather that it wasn't connected to the person who was originally saying it. Okay, fine. Thank you. So now, you have to feel comfortable enough to express yourself, right? So, at a certain point, I hope we all feel comfortable enough to express ourselves, and then when you express yourself, and you feel comfortable enough to express yourself fully, And I recommend doing it quickly because you might get negative feedback as you're working up to expressing yourself. And the negative feedback you get is your interpretation, of course, whether they agree with you or not, of negative feedback. However, this is not the real dragon. This is a derivative of the real dragon. The real dragon is objectless. But you can convert that real dragon into objects like people and animals and so on, institutions that are threatening you or, you know, disapproving of you.

[24:01]

In that case, you feel afraid. And that's not the real dragon. The real dragon is before you even convert it into some image. But it's true, you have to feel enough comfortable to express yourself to get that feeling. You have to have enough comfort to feel the discomfort. You have to have enough comfort... If you're uncomfortable enough, you cannot experience anxiety. Really uncomfortable people do not know anything about anxiety. They're not going to expose themselves to the awesome, objectless... threat that individuality is subject to if they're basically uncomfortable. That's why part of practice is to get fairly comfortable, first of all, and if you get comfortable enough, you can open up to the big, [...] big discomfort, the big threat to individual existence, which is logically implied by individual existence and is existential reality for human beings.

[25:07]

Most human beings are not comfortable enough to open up to it. That's why meditation is good in itself, but then also it's good because gradually as you become more and more comfortable and relaxed, you can open up to a basic discomfort, basic anxiety. Okay? Now, what further question did you have? What's the threat once you've expressed yourself then? What's the threat once you've expressed yourself? You feel your being is threatened. You feel your individual being is threatened. But not by something? Not by something, no. You can convert it into some object, like some person. You can say, this person is what's threatening me. This person is threatening my life, or threatening my reputation, or threatening my livelihood, or threatening my state of mind. You can say that.

[26:08]

which people do, then you're afraid of that person or that object. But that's not the thing that fundamentally comes, and always comes, to personal expression. And again, if you don't express yourself fully, that means, again, that you're pretty uncomfortable and scared, so you're holding back, and if you hold back, then the dragon doesn't come. Holding back is another way to keep the dragon away. Over-expressing yourself is another way to keep the dragon away. Scream and holler all the time, run around, busting everybody else out of the way. That'll also distract you from the fundamental anxiety. But if you just express yourself, which means you're completely present and upright and not getting ahead of yourself or behind yourself, then the dragon will come to visit. And first of all, it comes before you make it into objects. We can't stand that usually, so then we convert it into objects. Then we can be afraid, and then you can meet that fear with courage, which is good, and you can vanquish that fear, and then you feel comfortable again, you come back to be yourself, and then the anxiety arises.

[27:20]

Which again, you can immediately convert into an object and distract yourself from the anxiety, or temporarily allay the anxiety. But in order to overcome the anxiety, it has to be faced uprightly, for a certain period of time. And you have to fully inhabit yourself to get the full measure of dragon confrontation. If you halfway express yourself you don't feel the dragon because you create this buffer in your incomplete expression between yourself and what threatens you. Now, as a little break, before I take the next questions, I'd like to tell you a little children's poem. It's called How to Paint the Portrait of a Bird.

[28:22]

Okay? And it goes something like this. If you want to paint the portrait of a bird, I'll just tell you beforehand, this is how to paint yourself into self-expression. All right? If you want to paint the portrait of a bird, first of all, get a canvas and some paints. And then take the canvas outside and lean it against a tree. And then sit behind the tree or near the tree and wait for the bird to come. And then the bird won't come. So then go back and start painting a little bit. Paint a cage. A bird cage. Nice one. With the door open. And inside the cage, paint some things for the bird. To attract the bird. Paint something pretty. Something simple.

[29:22]

Something useful. Something beautiful for the bird. And then go and wait again. And don't worry about how long you have to wait. It's another part of self-expression. Don't worry about how long you have to wait. The amount of time it takes for the bird to come has no rapport with the quality of the painting. Some people take a long time to get the bird into the cage. Other people take not so long. That's part of the thing. It's who you are. It takes different times. Anyway, you sit there until the bird comes. Don't even be sure the bird will come. Anyway, when the bird comes, if the bird comes, then again, when it arrives, at that time, observe the most profound silence. Otherwise, don't get excited.

[30:26]

You'll scare it away. You've been waiting all this time. Be quiet. Be really quiet when it comes. And then let it go into the cage. When it gets into the cage, take your brush and gently close the door to the cage. Now you've got the bird in the cage. That's basically about self-expression, but there's a little bit more, and that is now paint the bars of the cage away. And then under the bird's feet, the bird maybe was on a perch in the cage before, now paint a tree under the bird, a branch of a tree. You put leaves on it, you paint the sky in, you put insects and stuff up in the sky for the bird to eat and so on. And then wait a little longer and see and wait to see if the bird sings.

[31:30]

If the bird doesn't sing, it's not a good sign. If the bird does sing, it's a sign that you can sign the painting. This is the part that people have a little trouble with. You can go to the bird and take a feather out of the bird and use it to sign. People say, isn't that mean to the bird? This bird is you. Don't worry. This is a singing you. Now, when you do that, this wonderful thing of having the singing you there, in a beautiful summer day, all right? Now is when the program starts, really. Now the dragon comes. That's not for children. We should give children enough confidence to, you know, to be, to inhabit themselves and sing. And if they do, gradually the dragon will come and they will We'll see how they do.

[32:33]

But we've got to, first of all, get the people into the bodies and the minds of the people and get them into the right person. Okay? This is an example of how you have to cleverly, you know, kindly, gently, beautifully, lovingly get yourself into yourself. And when you do that successfully, you get this big reward of anxiety. direct experience of exact, which is the work of all, of all the great ones, of all the bodhisattvas. They all kind of like open up to what life's about for a person who lives as a person. This is hard, what happens after that. Okay, now there's other questions. Martin and who else? Martin and Adam. Yes, Martin. I was surprised in just reading this again. I haven't been one of your excellent students by picking around every day, but it struck me that there's two levels of discourse happening.

[33:39]

Yes. The monk asks a dragon, comes out of the sea, sky and earth, relative world, what we were talking about last Dharma talk, and the master said that Garuda, king of birds, plays command of the universe, and we're talking about the ultimate here. So while the monk is asking about the relative, the master is talking about the ultimate, and if the monk is afraid to meet the dragon in the relative world, how much more afraid would he be to meet the Garuda who could stick his head out here in ultimate reality? And so what I like the idea of the fear and the dragon being my anxiety, I just kept thought that perhaps we were also talking about the real fear is the ultimate, and that we'd like to play with the dragon, but we're even more afraid to actually meet the ultimate, the universe. And it's all kind of catching a pigeon against two different levels of discourse, because they're two quite different worlds of the state.

[34:45]

Well, that's, I think I see what you're saying, but I have a little bit different way of breaking it up. I mean, I just saw this. And that would be that for me, I would agree that the Garuda represents the ultimate, the ultimate point of view. Okay? But the Garuda is actually your friend. The Garuda is your friend because what the Garuda is, is the Garuda punishes, what do you call it, unbalanced meetings with the dragon. The Garuda is guiding you to the true meeting with the dragon. Where you understand that from the ultimate, the dragon is guiding you to realize that what's threatening you is actually what gives you life. But you first of all have to face the threat to your individual self before you can realize that the threat to your individual self is actually what gives life to your individual self.

[35:56]

In other words, your life is not limited to your individual self. But before you understand that, you feel threatened by your whole life. The wholeness of your life threatens you. But you have to meet that threat. And the Garuda is guiding you to meet, to properly meet and to properly position yourself in an upright and balanced way with what is threatening you as a limited, it was threatening your belief in your partial existence. Which is also, that's what the dragon is doing. But the Garuda is coaching you to meet this threat uprightly so that you can see the threat is actually your support. What threatens your small life is hinting at and promoting your large life. And the guru is guiding you to the relationship with what threatens your small life so that you can be there for when the transformation occurs.

[37:04]

if you lean forward or backwards, the Garuda comes in there and breaks it up, you know, bops you in the head to get you to meet the dragon properly. So, I agree that Garuda is representing the ultimate, from the point of view, the Garuda is representing the ultimate goal of the whole process and is guarding and guiding the whole process to its ultimate goal. And if you've got Garudas operating in your life, that means you've done a lot of good work even feel the confrontation. But once you feel the confrontation, you still have to keep balanced and keep expressing yourself, but now you have to be balanced. You could express yourself in a somewhat unbalanced way and still get a visitor. But then when you get the visitor, now in this face-to-face meeting, now you have to start really being balanced. You've expressed yourself, now you have to balance your expression. So that's the way I would change it a little bit. And if you don't do your job, you're going to get punished.

[38:10]

You're going to get bopped. The falcon's going to come in and take a bite out of you. But even then you can learn. If you bring your wound and bring your pain that you got from your imbalanced response out in front and look at it, that's got message for you. That will be real. It's not the reality of your success. It's the reality of your failure. But you learn by that failure if you bring it out and look at it and see how it works. And it should be the real thing, not a fake one. Not a fake one. The real bruised you. And then you have integrity again. There's integrity in that. That's good stuff there. But it's, you know, it's gouged flesh too, so it's difficult. Adam? Back a little bit to someone asking if the dragon represented anxiety.

[39:12]

I wanted to run by what first jumped out at me when I read the column. which is similar to how yours, the medium that you were explaining to it, but slightly different. It seemed to me the dragon represented an anxious thought, or some sort of thought that there's something horribly wrong with being a human being, a quick human being. And the Garuda represents true mind, or sort of the fact of existence. I just have done Zazen right before, the first time that I read it, I think, and it reminded me of something that happened in Zazen a lot, where the thought comes up, something needs to be done, or there's a problem with some person, and then by staying with a sense of being, it seems like just a manufacturing of the mind. And the monk's trying to convince the master, well, there's a problem, and the master's saying, there is no problem. And the monk said, well, what if there's something? That's the way the story first jumped out at me in terms of an experience I just had and how the story spoke.

[40:19]

I'm wondering if you could comment on that. I couldn't kind of get the flesh of it. I couldn't quite get the point at which you're trying to distinguish what you're saying from what I'd been saying, in other words. I didn't see the difference. So could you show me the difference so I can get it? It seems like... In what you're saying and the way it initially struck me, the Garuda means two different things. The Garuda... What are the two things it means? As I understand what you're saying, the Garuda is something that ensures that we meet life in a full way. Is that an accurate summation of what you're saying? Uh-huh. And so what do you say it is? Like, I used to have a saying from the Bhagavad Gita on my wall, fear not, that which is real can never be destroyed, and that which can be destroyed is not real.

[41:29]

And that's sort of an anxiety-allaying thought. Like, even if my individual life, like someone tried to shoot Gandhi and he just put his hands together and said, wrong. He wasn't scared of dying because he knew that... You're getting a little bit too verbose from him losing you now again. Well, just that there's no grounds to fear. What's the difference between that and what I was saying? They seem different. What's the difference? I mean, different words, but what's the difference? I said that the root is like there to help you, you know, to guide you towards your realization. To push us towards living fully, where the way it struck me initially in something that dissipates anxiety by saying that there's What dissipates anxiety? No, it doesn't dissipate anxiety at all. Not at all. That's why I'm saying there's a difference in terms of how it first struck me and now... Oh, you think the good is to dissipate anxiety? Is that what you're saying? I'm saying that's how it first struck me.

[42:31]

Okay, yeah, so I disagree. I think the good is definitely not to dissipate anxiety. This whole Zen practice has nothing to do with dissipating anxiety. Not at all about it at all. Okay? So I disagree. Okay. But you can do... It is allowed. A lot of Zen centers, they sometimes advertise it's okay to come and try to dissipate anxiety here. We allow that. So you can do that. That's nothing to do with Zen practice, though. Anxiety is used in Zen practice for realization. We don't dissipate anything around here. Well, dissipation in terms of fully experiencing or fully meeting, which in a way takes away the power of it to run the person. What? Dissipated in terms of fully experiencing or fully meeting. I don't understand what you mean by dissipating in terms of fully meeting. Not dissipating in terms of ignoring. What dissipating? In what sense dissipating? In terms of when fully experiencing an anxiety, it loses the power to have a person back down from what they're trying to accomplish.

[43:38]

Did you say in fully experiencing the anxiety, it loses its power to what? Stop a person from what they're trying to accomplish. At least that's my experience. In fully experiencing anxiety, the anxiety loses its power to stop the person from accomplishing what they want to accomplish? Right. That's right. But there's no dissipation of the anxiety. Right. I mean, work means, I guess, different things than how I was using it. Yeah, okay. But there's no dissipation. If the anxiety dissipates, then what are you going to do when it comes back up? Zen's not about the waves coming down and getting kind of, like, well-behaved. Zen's about what are you going to do when the big one comes? What are you going to do then? Like, you know, there's these little ones, you know, and there's the bigger ones that you maybe, like, work up to coping with the big ones. But what are you going to do when the big one comes? Well, this is not about fighting back this stuff.

[44:40]

This is about facing it. And if you face it in the right way, you can go with whatever. So, let's not ask for trouble, but if we're honestly expressing ourselves and it comes... Let's work with that. Now, of course, if it's a big one, we think, well, maybe I made a mistake, so I'll back off. Well, okay, fine. But if you're telling the truth, then maybe this is actually something worth facing, rather than let's kind of dissipate something. No, it's not about dissipating, but it is about, as he says, finding a way to meet the anxiety such that the anxiety does not make you back down from what you want to accomplish in this life. Bodhisattvas want to accomplish the highest welfare for all beings before themselves. And the question is, how are you going to do that when anxiety comes?

[45:45]

Because you get up, you want to do this, you want to accomplish this, right? That means you're going to express this thing. You're going to like, okay, try to help people. wholeheartedly express that. Well, as soon as you start expressing that, you're going to get challenged because who do you think you are? Blah, blah, blah. Well, that's going to happen. And saying, well, I'm trying to be good, blah, blah, blah, that's not going to make it back down. You can meet it. You can dance with it. You can sing with it. Because you made it happen too, you know. It's happening to you, but you also made it happen. It's not a separate thing. It's got something to do with you. You can work with it. But you've got to be close to work with it. Like I said last week, it's like this, you know. You have to get in there.

[46:52]

If you try to squash it down, you're going to lose that energy. You've got to work with this energy. You need it. That's hard. First of all, you've got to dance yourself into your hand. You've got to paint yourself into your hand. Then you get a companion. This is what you first do, yes? Andrea? Andrea? Yes. No, Marsha. I know you've done some yoga. Are you familiar with that pose called Garudasana? Eagle? The eagle? No, short tours. Well, I'm not dressed right. Take your clothes off. And then you do the same thing with the legs? Yeah. So it's a balancing pose. Yeah. But you have to be rooted in the ground so you don't fall over. But you also have to be soaring up at the same time. And it just seemed like there's such a connection with this con. Yes. That's really exquisite, and I, you know, I just couldn't get it out of my mind.

[47:54]

Thank you. Sure, that was pretty cool. It is cool. Jonathan. Yeah, I'm having a little bit of trouble with the second half of this case, because... Let's go after the second half of the story, yeah? Yeah. Yes? Jingyang tells him to check in front of the tower to see if whatever, his head is hanging there, his corpse is there, etc. The monk says he'll fold his hands and back up the tree. What? Yes, uh-huh. Wouldn't the monk want to stay there and sort of be there in that and really facing that? Wouldn't he? Yeah. Yeah. Well, he might, but I think what he was saying was, if I've committed a mistake, then I should humbly retreat. That was his, I think that was his, but still, it's kind of a hypothetical way to put it.

[48:55]

So. And the last thing is, can you say more? Yeah, as a person who mentioned the hypothetical quality of his responses, she said, he's an unnamed monk. Usually in these stories, not always, but usually in stories, unnamed monks, the reason why they're unnamed is because... We usually only mention the name of the people who do well. Both names are mentioned, basically. But, of course, it's also the case that the monk is doing well, okay? But he's doing well by, you know... Basically, I think I'd like to go on to the verse now to talk about Deng Tong's... Henry? I just had a whole different... Do it, let's hear it.

[50:02]

The beginning of Dragon King comes out of the sea sky and Earth of Triangle. To me that's like an image of a Zen archer, you know, the tranquility and then the explosion of activity. And so this is... And so what happens then with the Garuda, it indicates the harmony of things. And then when he says, who can stick his head out here, I thought that not necessarily what dragon can stick his head out here, but who can put themselves into this? What personality can be at this level? And the person says, no, well, what happens if somebody tries? to get the personality into this realm. You know, it's just not possible. And so then at that point, the monk says, well, if I had stuck my head out, I just couldn't act. So I wasn't necessarily thinking of the Garuda as eating the dragon.

[51:04]

You weren't thinking of the Garuda as eating the dragon? Right. You're thinking of the Garuda as... What? Well, I actually, that the Garuda would just, when the dragon appears in that way, then the Garuda takes command of the universe. It's not necessarily that the Garuda is eating the dragon, but this is what generates the Garuda. There was a dragon coming out of the triangle, so he creates the Garuda. And if there's not an opposition between the dragon and the Guru, then the dragon is not an anxiety, but a complete expression, a free expression. The dragon is not anxiety, the dragon is a complete expression. I don't know how to say it. Something completely emerging out of a tranquil sea. as I think might be seen from the verse, when there is self-expression at the right time, when there is emergence from calmness and presence, and it's at the right time, then things will go well.

[52:45]

And the Garuda will respond accordingly. but no matter if the dragon or whatever it is comes out of the water even if it comes from you can come out of calmness and presence and still maybe be a little early that's part of what the verse is going to point out however you come out the dragon is a response to that. I mean, the dragon and the Garuda are a response to that. So the dragon brings on the Garuda whether the timing is right or not, whether the meaning is right or not. The Garuda is something in response to that. I think that the monk is saying, you know, coming out of coming out of calmness and in that situation so let's give him credit for like he's present enough so that this has some meaning so that the teacher is not criticizing him for that and to say personality is fine you can say to stick the head out is to put the personality in the situation that's fine

[54:10]

But another way to put it is that if your personality isn't completely settled in itself, then it starts to get in the situation. If the personality is completely settled on itself, it doesn't get in the situation. So it's... I feel, I don't want to minimize difference, but I feel like what you're saying is sort of in the same, slightly different angle in the same process. I think the verse might bring a little bit more of this out. We can look at the verse. The imperial decree comes down. The commanding orders distinct.

[55:14]

Within the heartland, the emperor. Outside the borders, the general. Without awaiting thunder, to rouse the insects. How could one know the wind stops the coursing clouds? A continuous wave under the loom. Naturally, there's a gold needle and jade thread. Before the seal is wide open emptiness. Originally, there's no writing. So I'm sorry to say that this verse might take more than a half an hour to do, but anyway. So part of the imagery here is that, you know, the Chinese emperor or the king, right, within the palace or within, you can either, there's different ways of translating this.

[56:27]

One would be like within the fortress or within the boundaries of the country. You know, like China, China always was like pulsing, you know, its borders are all pulsing back and forth, right? The influence of Chinese society was often much greater than the actual borders of the country. So within some realm, anyway, it's the emperor. And then outside that realm is the general. And I think it's interesting to say that the imperial orders descend, but the general's orders, it says distinct, but I think also you could also translate it as the general's orders disperse. The imperial orders descend, the general's orders disperse. Within the fortress, the order descends.

[57:29]

It's more like be yourself. But outside that, there's a kind of dispersion. And there's a difference in those two realms. So these first four verses are about this dynamic between the descending order, the command to be yourself within a certain perimeter, and then outside that, kind of dispersing order, but still very important. And there's some discussion about that, how the emperor, you know... What the emperor says is very important. That's part of it, you know? It's very important. But at the same time, when some generals were going off, the emperors would, like, kneel down at the chariot of the emperor, you know, and push it. Because it's very important what happens outside, too.

[58:32]

So again, you have this dynamic of being yourself, but also it's very important, this feedback you get on the self. This dynamic, you know. That's the basic kind of dynamic of the story. Now, partly in a hurry, I go on to now, without awaiting the thunder to rouse the insects, how could one know the wind that stops the coursing clouds. Now, the imagery here is, as you can see somewhat from the commentary, dragons, when dragons, both inside the water and up, both... Dragons live in the ocean, but they also loom up out of the ocean, right? They fly up out of the ocean and dive back in the ocean. Dragons, Chinese dragons, mostly are ocean-going vessels. But they don't just stay in the water.

[59:35]

They fly up and plunge back in. They go... When they fly up, they bring a lot of water with them. And they create clouds and thunder and rain and all kinds of weather. So these clouds and stuff are coming. The dragon goes with the clouds. The dragon bounces off the water, flies into the air, supported by the ocean, bringing the ocean with her and back down. This is dragon land. The Garuda is wind. So basically what's happening here is that not waiting the time in the second month when insects are stirred up, he already rouses the dragon's head. Okay? This monk is not waiting to the time in the second month when the insects are naturally stirred. he raises the dragon, in other words, the dragon with the thunder and the clouds, he raises it up too early, a little bit offside, didn't wait, not realizing that the wind's going to stop him.

[60:50]

Now, there is the possibility, and I think we should, if we had time to look at that, to look at this non-dualistically. Okay? But in a dualistic sense, what the verse looks like it's saying is the monk came out too soon. He roused the dragon too soon. And the Garuda, the Garuda wind came in and stopped him. But now everything changes in the last two lines. See how everything changes in the last two lines? Now they're suddenly talking about a continuous weave under the loom.

[62:03]

I don't know if anybody knows about looms. I don't really. But another way to talk about this is that the lower warp is continuous. What's a warp? You know what a warp is? A loomed warp? Anyway, it's like there's some underground thing that's going on that's continuous, right? There's a background pattern or fundamental pattern that's continuous. On top, there's like new kinds of designs being put on, right? As you're going along. But the basic underlying thing is going on continuously. And then there's this stuff happening on top. Right? A continuous wave under the loom. The loom's lower warp is continuous. This is not referring to the functioning of sharp wit. This continuous working of the loom is not referring to sharp wit.

[63:13]

It means that under the weaving of brocade, there must be a skillful housewife's thread and needle. So I guess that when they weaved, when they wove the brocade in the old days, that they brought some artisans in to do the top work. And they had maybe less skilled housewives doing the bottom work continuously. while the artist would come in and do the top work. Okay? And then he says, my late master said, as soon as the narrow-eyed golden needle shows its nose, the long top jade thread goes finally through the hole. And then he says, this is the bloodline of the Dengshan succession. Unless you are one with it, it's not easy to know. And then, the next part.

[64:20]

Then he says, before the seal is wide open, no, before the seal, in front of the seal, is wide open emptiness. Okay, so you've got this seal. You know, like seals that they, particularly seals that they stamp calligraphy with. You know, the seals are oftentimes square. Everybody seen all those seals? And the characters on the seals, even today, the characters on the seals are often more ancient style than regular modern characters. You know what I mean? Anyway, they put these seals on. Okay? In this case, before the seal is wide open emptiness. There's some kind of vastness before this, okay? And there's no, originally there's no writing. And then they say, using a seal, you don't set it on the wind. If the seal stamps space, it doesn't show any mark.

[65:27]

Song Jie gazed at the round, curved form of a constellation of stars above, examined the markings of turtles and forms of bird tracks below. He collected myriad beauties from all over and put them together to make writing. Do you understand? This guy, Song Jie, he looked up at the sky, okay? And he saw the curved patterns of the constellations. And then he looked down at the earth and he saw bird tracks. And what else did he see? Turtle markings. The markings on turtles and bird tracks. And these curved shapes of the star of the constellations and the patterns and the markings of birds on the ground, he used these things to make Chinese characters. So the early Chinese characters looked like shapes of stars and bird scratches and turtle markings.

[66:34]

That's what they looked like. That's how he made them. And then... And then, oh, let's see. So he gathered the most beautiful of these shapes that he found, innate on earth and in the sky. He gathered the most beautiful ones and put them together to make writing. Later, two forms of writing were modeled on pollywogs. You know what pollywogs look like? If you look at early Chinese characters, and also particularly on the seals, they look like little pollywogs. just all these little poliwogs, but slightly different poliwogs to make these different messages and different names. And then later, more, let's see, the historian Zhao of King Wan of Zhou created the large script for writing, and Li Shi, the prime minister of Qing, made the small script for writing. Nowadays, the seal script is called square and dense. Now tell me, did...

[67:34]

Xingyang, carve or not. The pure jewel is originally flawless. Carving a design ruins its superior quality. So, all this is about to finish the picture. Think about all that. And it's kind of, you know, this is kind of a lot of information to get it, but see the images being brought in here is now this image of creating, creating, writing. out of the universe. Now, did the teacher in this case do any carving? So you can incorporate all this into the story. This is quite a new piece of, these last two lines, a tremendous amount of new possibilities have been introduced to the story. which I think bring it to its unique and difficult to taste flavor.

[68:47]

Is that Maya? The beginning part of the verse about within the borders of the empire, is that within the borders of the self? Yeah. The emperor's command is to come down. You know? Command yourself to be yourself. How are you doing? So what happens outside? What is outside? What is outside? Not you. Not you is outside. Have you noticed that? So, the imperial command is, be yourself, completely. And within the house, there should be rigorous instructions and imperial decrees about how things are done within this realm.

[69:58]

And these should be followed through with great sense of decorum. And you know about the imperial commands in China, right? They're very serious about this stuff. There should be that kind of rigor in being good old you. In fact, people are capable of being rigorous about being themselves and they kind of naturally go for that because people are not that sloppy about being themselves. I shouldn't say they're not so sloppy, but they do care about it. It is a big deal. That's the point. This is a major issue for us. So listen to the command. Listen to the decree. It's coming down. It's coming down. But check it out. Feel it. But that's not the whole story. The rest of it is, what's outside? Not you. Not you threatens you. So, you got the general out there relating to that.

[71:06]

Now, what's the general in relationship to the self? What's the general? Huh? The general's a dragon? Well, I'll try that on, but I'd like to say the general's what meets the dragon. The dragon is all those wild people out there that are challenging the empire. that want to overthrow this very sophisticated system. The general is what meets them. The general is the process of taking care of the borders and dispersing and meeting what's coming to threaten the borders, isn't it? Is it self-protection? Well, is that a good general? Yes? Is the general also executing the orders? Executing what orders? From the emperor. No, that's the point.

[72:09]

In this story, in the Chinese system, the generals had not, had, didn't, actually, in the Chinese system, the military were very low class. Generals were very powerful. Oftentimes, emperors were previous generals. Generals were looked down upon. In the Chinese Confucian system, it was like, I think it was the emperor, the aristocrats, the scholars. Then I think came the artisans, the farmers, and the warriors. I think that's the way it was. The warriors were the lowest, partly because they looked down on war in China. They didn't like it. So the warriors were powerful but low class. Even the generals were down. In Japan, when they took over the Confucian system, this is the Confucian system, they moved the warriors up right under the aristocrats and put the farmers at the bottom.

[73:11]

But in China, the farmers were not at the bottom, the warriors were. Inside the country, the warriors were not powerful people. They were powerful at the borders. They were powerful when it came to the Tibetans and the Mongolians. That's where they were powerful. And that's their job, is to keep those Tibetans and Mongolians out of China, which they sometimes failed to do. But that was their job. Their job was to meet what threatens the empire. Within the empire, it was straight down from the emperor. And the emperor didn't carry around big swords. He hung around with, you know, it was a he and he hung around mostly, almost all the time, with women. And then he was supposed to show up for court early in the morning and listen to his scholars tell him what's happening. But he didn't use force on the people within his country. There was no war inside the country, really. There were strict rules, however, and if you didn't follow them, there were severe consequences.

[74:15]

It was just all on the level of etiquette, you know. So, in this model, I would suggest you look at it as the generals are about how to relate to what challenges the self. The emperor gives orders about being the self. And very careful orders that do come down, and that's it. You take those orders. And if you follow them, again, another characteristic of China is that when the imperial command was followed well, naturally, China was a place that people wanted to invade. Do you understand? Does that make sense to you? Hello? Why would people want to... How is it that people would like to invade China if the imperial commands were well obeyed? Why would you want to invade it? What?

[75:18]

Pardon? It looks like a docile country. It was a well-behaved country. It was a peaceful country. It was a country where women could walk around the streets without lots of guards. It was a beautiful, harmonious country. luscious place. They weren't spending a lot of time fighting with each other. They were having beautiful gardens and music and poetry and clothing and painting and architecture. It was like one of these great places at that time. When the emperor's commands were not upheld, well, you know, not so attractive because it was a wreck. So when things were going well, that attracts a wreck. Then how do you have harmony in that situation? That's the thing. How do you have harmony? That's the question. How do the generals meet the other armies? And there's many stories about the generals meeting the other armies. And sometimes the way they meet it is not in a self-protective way.

[76:20]

Sometimes they meet it in a very wise way and there was no fight. There's these stories about these generals meeting and no fight because there was such skill and integrity and authenticity Harmony came out of some of these meetings. And when there was war, not so good. There was something off there. And that has something to do with how well the imperial command was working. So it's all this balanced stuff, right? All this stuff of being something, you attract... Threat. Okay? If you attract threat to be something, then how is this threat telling you something about how to be and what you really are and what's really going on in the universe? Can you meet that and learn? If you can, then there is understanding and wisdom and compassion and peace, not just inside, but also all around China. in Mongolia, in Tibet, in Southeast Asia, all around, if this is balanced, if this is understood.

[77:27]

So this is like bringing this story up to the level of the whole East Asian continent, acting it out on that level. The same processes go on. But we don't have to worry about that right now, you just bring it back to yourself. But that's just the first part of this verse. The next part is about this business about the loom and the seal in the space and the creation or non-creation. The creation or non-creation of writing. The carving of the seals or not the carving of the seals. And I thought we'd finish tonight, but there's that thing, you know. And I don't know if you feel capable of working on these last two lines, but these last two lines, I think, are like... There's something for you to do. But just in case you don't want to work on this anymore next week, I would suggest now I have your assignment for you in the next case, if you can cope with this.

[78:34]

Case 45. Now this case, as you may have noticed, is not a story. It's not a story. Most of these stories are stories, right? Have you noticed? They're almost all stories, almost all narratives with people in them. This one's not a story. However, in the introduction, it says something that's true of all the stories, but which they mention explicitly in this case. The presently forming public case. The presently forming public case here, not story, but this case is forming. It's forming presently. is just based on immediate presence. The fundamental family style does not aim beyond the fundamental.

[79:42]

If you forcibly set up divisions and foolishly exert effort, it's all drawing eyebrows for the chows, putting handle on a bowl. How can you become peaceful? So I would suggest to you that in studying this story, just to help you, you know, is that this story is something that should be studied as something which is presently forming as you study it. How can you make this a presently forming public case? Well, it says it's just based on immediate presence. So to test... you know, just to give you a hint, or not a hint, but just a suggestion about how you can test in terms of how you can become peaceful, I would suggest you look for, to see if a story forms, that you make a story, if you can, about this case.

[80:44]

Make this case into a story. But concentrate when you read this case on how it's presently forming and only use immediate presence to do it. And also watch the warning about forcibly exerting effort. So study this case, these sentences. with immediate presence and without any forcible effort and see what happens. But just listen to me say, see if a story can come. A story not about this case, but a story that just comes through immediate presence without forcing anything. And if so, write it down and bring it, please. If you don't want to share it with people, I'd like to see it. But as I said, I think that although I said that, I kind of feel incomplete on these last two lines.

[81:55]

So, I got a problem here. Do you? There's something kind of like another dimension got opened up in those last two lines. When we're ready to go on to 45, can we get copies? You can get copies even before you're ready. You can get copies right now, whether you're going to do it or not. Where are the copies? So the copies will be up here on the table, so you can come and get them. And it's up to you whether you want to go on to 45. You could go on to 45, just like you're going to go on to everything else in your life. but still keep thinking about these last two lines of this verse, because I feel like there's something important there which we really haven't got out here in the room yet, unless somebody else could just tell us right now what it is. Well, a lot of times you go on to the next thing in your life and you're not quite finished with the last thing.

[83:04]

Right. At least speaking for myself. to do it already this year.

[83:19]

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