Good evening. Very nice to see all of you this evening. They always are kind enough to bring water and I always forget to drink it, so I'm going to drink it. In a lecture that he may have given at Tassajara or he may have given in this room. Suzuki Roshi said this, a monastery is not some particular place. Whether you can make Tassajara a monastery or not is up to you. It may be even worse than city life, even though you are in Tassajara. But when you have the wisdom of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, even though you are in San Francisco, that is the perfect monastery. This point should be fully understood.

[01:12]

Kind of interesting. I thought this was interesting. He said this in 1967. Let me read it again. A monastery is not some particular place. Maybe he was at Tassajara. Whether you can make Tassajara a monastery or not is up to you. So the monastery is not exactly the physical place of Tassajara. It's something else. What is that? It may even be worse than city life even though you are in Tassajara. Well, that's kind of discouraging. How many of you have been to Tassajara? Okay. So I'm talking to the initiated here. So he could have been saying this to you at Tassajara. And here you are in the city. So I suspected there might be a crew of you for whom this would be relevant.

[02:15]

But when you have the wisdom... of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Heart Sutra. Even though you are in San Francisco, that is the perfect monastery. Actually, what I wanted to talk about tonight is another lecture on a similar topic that Tsukiroshi gave on a story, the important Zen story, Everyday Mind is the Tao. This is one of about 40 or 43, by my count, commentaries that Suzuki Roshi gave that we have, that we know about, or that we've recorded. So I consider these the oral teaching of this lineage, of this house, about the tradition.

[03:18]

And in my sense of teacher training, some of which you have to master these 44 or 45 cases and some other things. But this is one of the most important and important for Suzuki Roshi. But before I get to that, let me give you a little context. He starts the lecture not about that. Suzuki Roshi's way, part of what this story elucidates is his way of teaching koans. And you never know at the beginning of the lecture that it's going to go that way. The lecture starts out, he's talking about some particular person at Tassajara. The first thing we hear about him is that it was winter and he came to the Zendo in a very thin shirt. Have any of you tried this? Nobody's admitting to it. I did.

[04:19]

It's important to try everything in Zen, and that's one of the things you try. You know, you read the Zen literature and you hear stories about people who have braved the heat and the cold. You have stories like Tozan's No Cold, No Heat. So anyway, this person came in the wintertime with almost no clothing. And Suzuki Roshi asked him why he was doing that. And it's not clear that part of the story. But anyway, this is the person, this person. And then a little later on, he comes to Suzuki Roshi and asks if he can leave Tassahara. And this is what Suzuki Roshi says about it. Now I want, this is his English, so I'm going to kind of help him along here.

[05:23]

Now I want to come back to the discussion between a student and me. He said he wanted to have vacation or go to see someone, and he wanted to leave Tassajara for one week. He doesn't say this, but the sense is the guy was very upset about having to leave his practice, that he would be leaving Tassajara. real Zen practice and having to take this unfortunate detour from real practice. And Suzuki Roshi said, I wanted to know why he feels that way. And at last I found out he had a rigid or strictly, he was strictly attached to or strictly observing the Tassajara way. He observed strictly with the idea that Tassajara way is the right way and not even to, for one day, not to be a Tassajara is some lapse or some mistake. You get the feeling of this. So, Suzuki Roshi said, his practice, in other words, was involved in right or wrong, right practice or wrong practice.

[06:27]

So, that's the prelude to his beginning to talk about everyday mind is the Tao. So, the koan emerges... It comes to mind in the teacher's talk out of an actual encounter that could have been with any one of us, any one of you. Very familiar... kind of practice issue. What is right practice? What is practice anyway? What is doing good practice? And so it sounds like, as the lecture goes on, that he's starting to talk about some Zen story, but actually the Zen story has already happened. It's already in in the situation. And the actual Zen story is about Nansen, the teacher, and Joshu as a young student, just like this Tassahara student, but the actual story is the young Tassahara student and Suzuki Roshi.

[07:34]

Let me read this initial passage just one more time. I think it's very interesting. A monastery is not some particular place. Whether you can make Tassajara a monastery or not is up to you. Well, let's just stop and consider that for a minute. When you go to Tassajara, as you know, there's a very careful, strict way of doing everything, the schedule, how you do things, how you eat, you eat with ariyoki. There's lots of regulations and lots of forms. So it may seem as though if you can just manage to master those details of monastic life. That should be good monastic practice. But somehow it's not quite so in Suzuki Roshi's mind. He says whether or not you can make Tassajara a monastery or not is up to you. It may be even worse than city life, even though you are in Tassajara. But when you have the wisdom of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, even though you are in San Francisco, that is the perfect monastery.

[09:00]

Well, you're all in San Francisco, so I ask you, have you found this perfect monastery of which he speaks? Clearly, the point here is the actual monastery is not something external. It doesn't depend on, exactly on the situation. Although, if we take that, if we start sticking to that side, then why is it important to go to Tassajara? Why should it matter? should be able to just do it here or anywhere. But no, obviously, Tassajara is extremely important. It's a great treasure. And Suzuki Roshi put a lot of energy into making that monastery happen and spent most of his time there. So obviously, it's very important to be there. And yet, it may be even worse than city life. I found this passage from Dogen. It's from the Zuimonkei. that I'll also read because it speaks to this similar point. Dogen says, Although the precepts and the eating regulations should be maintained, you must not make the mistake of establishing them as of primary importance and of basing your practice on them, nor should they be considered a means to enlightenment.

[10:18]

Since they suit the conduct of the Zen monk and the style of the true disciple, they are observed, To say that they are good, however, does not make them the most essential teaching. This does not mean that you should break the precepts and become dissolute, but if you attach to them, your view is wrong and you depart from the way." Very similar, I think, to what Suzuki Roshi said. A little more like Dogen, the way Dogen speaks, but still. There's something about the true monastery that isn't exactly fully contained in the external features of the monastery. I think that it's important as we develop Buddhist practice and Buddhist understanding in the West that we are conscious and remain conscious of our own heritage and our own deep assumptions, which, let's face it, are basically Judeo-Christian.

[11:24]

And there is, although it's almost extinct, a very old tradition of Christian monasticism, too. The Benedictines, for example, still practice a monastic tradition. And one of the three main principles of Benedictine monasticism is stability. That means you don't leave the monastery. You take a vow to stay there and you never go. So it's really the place that you practice in becomes essential to your monastic life. I don't think it would make sense to say that a Benedictine monk can be a Benedictine monk anywhere. They have to be in the cloister. Obedience is another important Christian principle. You have to strictly obey the rules and regulations of the monastery. Poverty is the third great vow for Christian monastics. Suzuki Roshi said more than once that he was concerned.

[12:27]

I think the way he put it was, if he left us alone too long, we'd turn this into some kind of Christianity. That's what he said. So he had his own sense of what Christianity was, and I never really got a chance to hear in detail what it was. He was married to a Christian who became a Buddhist when she married him. But, I mean, certainly there was Christianity in Japan, and he was very familiar with it. So maybe he was speaking a little bit to the kind of, you know, we bring, very few of us are born into Zen, although my son was, but we mostly were not. So we come to this with already some fairly established assumptions based on our reading, our heritage, and actually our psyche, the way we look at things and the way we understand things. So getting back to this encounter between the strict Tassajara student and Suzuki Roshi, Suzuki Roshi felt there was something not quite developed or not quite right about the person's understanding of Tassajara.

[13:44]

And I'll read you in a minute what he says. But I think it would also be a mistake to criticize this person too much. The spirit is very good. I probably knew the person. I don't know who it was. I wish I did. There were several people that did the thin shirt thing and other sorts of aesthetic stuff, sitting on the big rock all night out by the creek there behind the dining room. That was a favorite thing to do. I won't tell you some of the things that I did. Anyway, you probably have all done things, too. It's part of the mischievous and also intense quality of monastic life. And actually, it's pretty okay. That's part of what it's there for. And you can try those things out. And I would venture to suggest that probably when Suzuki Roshi was young as a monk, he did those sorts of things, too. So he's partly speaking about himself. But yet there's something, this notion that, well, if I'm a Tassajara, I'm really doing practice, but if I'm not, something has slipped.

[14:52]

This triggers in Suzuki Roshi's mind the more formal teaching part of his lecture, which I'll now read. Anyway, he said, I'm going to explain this koan. Now, you can read this koan. It's case 19 of Lumonkan, but I like to read it the way Suzuki Roshi told it. It's always interesting to see it told orally rather than to read the way it is, because it originally was just an oral story. Joshu asked his teacher Nansen, what is the Tao? What is the way? And his teacher answered, everyday mind is the way. And Joshu asked again, how do I accord with the Tao? How do I follow the Tao? That was Joshu's question. And Nansen said, if you try to follow the Tao, the more you try to follow the Tao, the more you will lose the Tao.

[15:56]

Then he laughs. And Nansen continued, the true power of practice does not belong to the matter of attaining it, the matter of whether you are aware of it or not aware of it, or whether you attain it or not attain it, if your practice goes beyond the matter of attaining or not attaining, your mind will be like the boundless blue sky, and you will have no problem in your everyday life. What is the Tao? And Nansen answered, everyday mind is the Tao. It's very important in studying these koans not to be too facile about the language. it's important to read enough commentaries to understand what's really being said.

[16:58]

There's a couple of ways the story is usually understood. One of them is, oh, well, just the ordinary way I am is the Tao, so everything's okay. I can just live my life, be who I am. I don't need to waste too much time on that understanding because I think most of you are beyond that, but that's one way to understand it is a kind of... beats in or something. You know, everything's okay. Everyday mind is the Tao. A more yogic way to understand the story is, oh, it's everyday mind, not some samadhi mind or not some special zazen mind or some enlightened mind, just ordinary mind. So this speaks more... The reason I say it's yogic is because... those of us who practice Zazen, particularly in the early years, you go to the Zendo, you sit Sashins, and you feel different there than you feel when you go out into the world.

[18:03]

And so you think, well, out in the world, that's my everyday mind, and how I experience in Zazen or Sashin, that's my Zazen mind. So what he's saying is the Tao is that everyday mind as opposed to the Zazen mind, as though there were some difference. That's a common understanding or misunderstanding of the story, too. In the Shibuyama commentary on this Muang Khan case, he says that more literally the Chinese means the everyday mind that isn't involved in discrimination. Maybe a better translation might be basic mind or fundamental mind or mind in its ordinary in the sense of just fundamental before you start thinking about something.

[19:14]

So everyday mind, everyday mind in the sense that the mind that's always with you every day, not just your distracted or emotional mind, but some, well, you know, Suzuki Roshi gives us some guidance about how to look at koans. He said, and this is his particular, I think, way of approaching these stories. So I think it's important to understand that. The koan, he said, is not something to explain. Why we talk about it is to give some suggestion about how to practice zazen. It is a suggestion. We don't talk about what the koan means directly. We give you just a suggestion, and then you work on the koan. That is how we explain koan and how you listen to the koan.

[20:16]

So you must not think, if you remember what I said or if you understand what I said, there's no need for you to solve the koan. I'm not trying to explain what everyday mind is or what is Tao, but through this koan, I want to give you some suggestion about how to practice Shikantaza. So suddenly Shikantaza comes up. You all know this term. It's usually translated just to sit. Shikantaza. is a compound word in Chinese that means just or only, and za means sit, like zazen. And ta doesn't mean anything. Ta means ta. It means like... It means to hit or something. It's usually in the dictionaries, it says it's an intensive. So ta just makes it more like that. So ta-za is like, wow, you know, really za. You know, not just regular za, but really za. So tazza. But we have to be a little careful because I know some of you are studying some of the meditation texts like Fukanzazengi this practice period.

[21:28]

Is that right? Yes? No? Yes. The text that I like the most is the Zazengi, which is a much simpler, shorter text, but Dogen later expanded it into the Fukanzazengi. There is a line in both texts which says that Zazen is beyond sitting or lying down. Have you encountered that line? Do you remember that? Maybe it isn't in the Fukanzazengi, but it's in the Zazengi. It is? Okay, good. Beyond sitting or lying down. What this is referring to is that, you know, in Theravada Buddhism, there are the four postures, sitting, standing, walking, and lying down, which essentially are supposed to describe the entirety of human life. You're always in one of those four postures. So the true disciple of a true practitioner is, is thoroughgoing in practice in each of the four postures. But Dogen says, essentially, zazen is not one of the four postures.

[22:33]

Shikantaza does not refer... The za of shikantaza doesn't refer to one of the four postures. So what is that all about? Obviously, you are sitting. We're all sitting. We're sitting, not standing, so how can it not refer to one of the four postures? So something about this story of everyday mind is the Tao, is the path, is the way to practice. It relates to this sense of Zazen is not one of the four postures. You're not sitting or lying down. I think Suzuki Roshi felt that this... You know, he had certain early Zen masters and certain stories that kept coming up in his teaching again and again, and this was one of them. He talked about Dogen a lot, and... I know we're not in Tassajara now.

[23:43]

And he... often sounded like a regular Soto priest talking about Dogen and Japanese Zen. But actually, when he really lit up is when he was talking about the first three or four generations of Zen from the Six Patriarchs. So Joshu, Basso, the horse master. He loved Isan, the cook. He loved... Nangaku, and he talked about those people like they were his family and like they were his buddies or cousins or something. He was very keen. And he even says in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, that after the Sixth Patriarch, Zen became more and more impure. I don't know if you remember that passage of his. And so he really liked the pure quality of these early teachers. And so this story appealed to him greatly because... it is universal and it comes up in the life of Zen practice universally.

[24:49]

So this story about the student at Tassajara is everybody's story. It's your story. All of you have been there. It's my story. Even though he's been dead for 30 years, he's speaking to you directly. He didn't give this lecture in Japan. He didn't give it in India. He gave it here in this center, in this place. So he's talking directly to all of you. And it sounds very relaxed and very kindly, but actually there's some strictness and some real fire underneath the surface of this talk, if you can feel it. It's actually rather tough medicine to say that... as he does, that even if you're in the city, in Tassajara, it can be worse than the city. And even if you're in the city, you can have a perfect monastery. It really puts it much more on you. And the story about the guy with the thin shirt...

[25:54]

What happens in the actual course of practice is that over and over and over again, we form some notion of what it is. You know, and you think, oh, well, gosh, you know, last year I didn't have any, I was totally wrong, but now I'm really settling in. Now I've really got it, you know. And then the next year you think, oh, well, I thought I had it, but, you know, that was, I was so deluded. Now I'm really getting it, you know. And that happens over and over again. We're trying always to turn it into something conceivable. And it's natural, it's human nature to do that. I remember once myself, maybe it was the second or third year of practice, I got a few moments alone with Katagiri sensei at that time. teacher at Zen Center, and I poured my heart out to him and said, oh, you know, Katagiri, I just, I don't know what to do.

[27:01]

I don't, I don't have, everything I thought about practice has collapsed, and I'm totally confused, and I just, I don't have any idea about anything, and I don't know what's going on. Something like that, you know. Anyway. If none of you have ever said or thought anything like that, then okay. But anyway, that was pretty much what I said. And he just smiled at me. And that was all. But it was a specific kind of smile. It was like... Good. Okay. Now you're starting to get somewhere, kind of thing. And maybe a little bit, I know exactly how you feel, you know. Yep, that's the way it is. Keep at it. It's going to happen again. It's okay, you know. So there was some, I mean, it was a very complicated smile and part of it was certainly my projection, but there was a quality of appreciation

[28:07]

of my effort. There was a quality of you silly boy. There was a quality of encouragement. And also the fact that he didn't try to add anything to my confusion or try to clear it up. All of that, you know, just, yeah. Like that. And it was very encouraging. I felt like after I left, you know how it is when your first few dokusans you feel all charged up and then you leave and it takes you a while to figure out what happened. I felt pretty encouraged. And I felt like basically... what I had expressed was just okay the way it was. And of course, that was only in the first couple of years. As time went on, that experience happened many, many times over and over.

[29:14]

So this is a story like that, too. Suzuki Roshi is fairly explicit, actually, about how he felt about the person. So he said this person was involved in right or wrong, right practice or wrong practice. This is not the right place. I didn't agree with his idea, Suzuki Roshi said, or I didn't agree with his rigid practice. What is true practice? True practice is not in the realm of this is true practice and this is not true practice. True practice is beyond the idea of right and wrong, beyond experience, beyond any human suggestion.

[30:18]

It is not something to describe. Maybe we call it emptiness, or sometimes toilet paper. There's a koan about that, you know. Someone once asked Uman about Buddha and he said it was toilet paper, or actually what he said was pretty much more raw than that. Siddhartha said, sometimes cats, sometimes Spocks, whatever it is, you know, it's another name of something which cannot be described. That is true enlightenment. When you have it, you may say everyday life is the true way. Even toilet paper may be true way. Part of what this story and this koan is about is about the conceivable and the inconceivable. I'm beginning to feel more and more as I see the world and see our country and see how people think and feel and how they respond to things that there's basically two ways to go in religion the conceivable or the inconceivable and most people go for the conceivable because it's conceivable and

[31:51]

It's almost impossible to even talk about the inconceivable, but sometimes we try. Sometimes Nansen tries, sometimes Suzuki Roshi tries, sometimes I try, sometimes you try. Zen is squarely on the side of the inconceivable, but as a consequence of that, we're constantly falling off that narrow cliff into some form of conceivability. Maybe something fairly elementary like Tassajara good, city bad. I mean, it comes across that way a little bit. But when you live there, I remember the first time I came out from Tassajara after the practice period, and I'm sure many of you had the same experience. It was unbelievable to drive out that road after three months in that valley and notice that there was smog and cars, and noise, and the 20th century, and the whole show.

[32:56]

And, you know, I absolutely felt the way this person did. I'm leaving the most marvelous place in the world, and I'm coming back into big-time samsara, and I just want to go back. This is what he's talking about. That's a kind of big mistake, actually. But it's okay, too. I mean, there's something very beautiful about that. And we start, the reason there is Tassajara is because it's very hard to even have that experience or have that feeling or make that kind of necessary mistake if there isn't some place like Tassajara. So it's absolutely necessary. And to say it's a mistake is even a mistake. It's just one of the terrains of practice that you go through. I want to come back a little bit to this question about the feeling in the zendo and the feeling on the street.

[34:13]

it's a similar kind of issue. You have the feeling, well, the feeling in the zendo is the taste of practice. And if I could just bottle that feeling and be able to sip it when I'm on the street and get it back, or if I just said zazen enough, I'd be able to be that way all the time. And I wouldn't have to going in and out of that. Just if it were more stable, I can. Then it would be perfect. Maybe one way of understanding this lecture is to think, oh, what he's saying is that if your practice is strong enough, if your zazen is strong enough, you can bottle it and carry it on your back and douse yourself with it every so often and be okay. Um... Not quite so. Not quite so. Um... The everyday mind, the basic mind, let's call it basic mind, the basic mind that you always have, everyday mind means the basic mind that you always have every day, doesn't need to be bottled.

[35:33]

You are the bottle. And so you're always walking around inside that mind wherever you go. So that's why Shikantaza, which looks like it says just to sit, doesn't really have anything to do with sitting per se. It has to do with the basic mind, which it just so happens... begins to emerge when you cross your legs and straighten your back and put the tongue on the roof of your mouth. It's not that anything emerges or comes out. It's that the other things that are distracting you from the Tao, that are taking you far from the Tao, can drop away. And you can come to rest in the place you already are. And that is the perfect monastery. If you need to be in Tassajara to have the perfect monastery, what will you do when you're dying?

[36:47]

What will you do when you're in great pain? What will you do when someone you love is in great pain? What will you do when you have a stroke and you can't think straight? I mean, this is worth thinking about. You might say maybe Tassajara is a practice gym for the main event. And the main event doesn't take place in the practice gym necessarily. It takes place where it takes place. So we should honor the great opportunity A lot of people worked very hard and donated a lot of labor, money, and all sorts of things for Tassajara to exist. And in all likelihood, it will exist for a long time. But it may not. It may burn down tomorrow. It almost did once.

[37:51]

And we should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for anything to happen. And if it disturbs us, if we feel that something's being taken from us, that's just a good signal that we need to release more of our conceivable notions about practice and come to rest in the inconceivable. But even though I say so, and if I were listening to myself talk and saying these things, I wouldn't get it. There's no way to In the end, there's no way to express or describe this round except like Katagiri did with me, just to smile and encourage you to go forward. That encouragement is basically what I think Suzuki Roshi was trying to do in this talk.

[38:57]

And I guess what I'm trying to do as well here. it's hard to recapture after all this time how much he cared for all of us and how much he respected us. And what I feel, and even though he supposedly criticizes the student with the thin shirt who couldn't bear to leave Tassajara, I can sense the deep respect that the teacher had for him, just like you can sense in the story of Nansen and Joshu. It looks like maybe Joshu doesn't know and Nansen does. That's one way of looking at the story, but that's not exactly right either. So I think at this point I'd like to hear from some of you I've met many of you and I've talked to you, but not in this way. So do any of you have anything you'd like to bring up or add or discuss?

[40:06]

Yes, Ren. Do you think, is there a difference between the use of the word shikantaza and the use of the word zazen? Are they interchangeable? Can you explain shikantaza with the word zazen? She asked about Zazen and Shikantaza. Well, Shikantaza comes from the Chinese Zen tradition. Dogen didn't make it up. And he didn't actually use that term very much. He liked another term better, which is usually translated as dropping away of body and mind. The first sentence of Zazengi says, the practice of Zen is Zazen. Now, it's easy to skip by that and not notice that it's a very interesting opening gambit. The practice of Zen is Zazen. Well, what is the word zen in that statement?

[41:12]

What does he mean? Is zen something different from zazen? And the word zazen is just the word to sit, and then the word zen. So sit, zen. So the practice of zen is zazen. It doesn't actually say anything, if you look at it closely. So he's using the word zen almost like the way that, in this story, they use the word dao. Tao, you know, they took that from Chinese spirituality. Tao means the way or the path. But... It actually means something more like Bodhi or Nirvana or enlightenment or something like that, Tao. So the Chinese Buddhists took their own spiritual word and kind of crafted it, re-crafted it to translate words that in Sanskrit seem too abstract to them or too intellectual. And Tao means like the water flowing down, the way water flows. You know, it means a path, like a gully or something, you know.

[42:15]

So to practice Zen is Zazen. It's like the Tao, the practice of the Tao is Zazen. But the more he starts to open up, and it's true in the Fukanzazengi too, the word Zazen also starts to disappear and it ends up meaning something like Dao also. It doesn't just mean, you know, it's not just the sitting posture. It means something inconceivable, you know. So I don't know if that approaches it. Shikan Taza also doesn't mean anything. It just means really, truly, completely, utterly, really sit. But not sitting posture, but just really sit. So these words are kind of... They're Joyce-y, and they're kind of almost playful when you actually penetrate them. And I think what it really means is it just encourages you to go do it. And the doing of it is it, not the words.

[43:18]

So none of these words mean anything outside of the actual experience of doing it. And then when you do it, If somebody asks you to talk about it, it's hard. You know, the deeper you go, the harder it is to actually say, you know, what your experience is. And that's part of why the entire Koan literature is a kind of, you know, it has a flavor. You can't quite get your hands around, you know. And that flavor is the language that emerges when you sit first and talk later rather than try to talk about it and then come to sit. I don't know if that makes any sense, but, you know, something like a poem. You know, you can't really understand a poem unless you... are willing to enter the inner space of the poet and kind of replicating your own body or something, what the feeling was.

[44:23]

You know, it's something... Gib, what's that phrase from T.S. Eliot about shoddy tools? Yeah, well, it said that poetry was like... that trying to reach into the inconceivable with shabby equipment. Right. I think that's very good. Shabby equipment. Language. Language. But it's such a beautiful word, shabby equipment. I mean, you know, shabby equipment can be very beautiful too, you know, like an old car or something. Somebody else? You had something. I was instructing what you said about your exchange of category.

[45:28]

And it's just because I happen to be on so much spot. And I was wondering... I was wondering if you saw that happen. You were in that kind of state many times. Sure. And I was wondering if you found something reliable. Like, yeah, yeah, that, you know, period. Reliable? Reliable or someone wanted this true monastery. Maybe it's a promise of being disoriented. And, um, um, I'm not sure exactly. Some sort of thing. I don't know. Reliable can be fundamental. You could get through those thoughts. That's just stepping. Yeah.

[46:33]

All times. Yes. Well, disoriented is kind of interesting, actually. What does that mean? I mean, what is oriented? What would you think of as oriented? I don't know. Well, I mean, think of a time in your life where you felt oriented. Just kind of say what that felt like. I guess... It was clear. Right. And so disoriented is not being like that. Well, it's really okay. disorientation is a lot more reliable than you might think, actually.

[47:38]

You know, so I guess part of what I'm saying is learn to be comfortable with it because there's a lot in it. There's something deeply true about being disoriented and you know, our tendency is to want to come back to orientation because that's where we feel we've got some place to stand. But maybe you could, going back to Ren's question, you could say that one of the ways you could discuss or define zazen is the willingness to be disoriented. More and more. Anyway, disoriented, oriented to what? You know, it's worth pursuing or investigating that, I think, more. Someone else? Yes? I'm curious about your comment of Judeo-Christian culture, how that reflects in a Buddhist, you know, I guess...

[48:44]

developing, what are those legacies or what do you see are kind of issues at hand with that? Right and wrong. Yeah, definitely. Right and wrong. I think that, and before we're too critical about that, we need to remember that there's something very orienting about right and wrong. And without any sense of right and wrong, people are monsters. They're killer apes. They do terrible things beyond belief. So right and wrong, I think, has been a very important stage of human consciousness. And it's a very important stage in a Buddhist understanding, too. That's why we have precepts. you know, it helps you understand kind of how to behave. But this whole story is about, I mean, he explicitly says this student was caught up in some notion of right or wrong, right practice, wrong practice, Tassajara good, world bad, you know, that kind of thing.

[50:05]

I think that... It's important for us to realize how deeply, deeply embedded that sense of right or wrong or cognitive thinking is in our psyche as Western people. the difficulty we have with ambiguity, with disorientation, with gray zones, with not quite knowing what's going on, with shadows and fog, all of that. This is the realm where Buddhism emerges from. And I think that if you go to an Asian country or go to a place where Buddhism's been for a long time, you just have to go there. And you get a sense that they put things together differently. And there isn't quite that same sense of, well, we know what's right and we know what's wrong.

[51:09]

Maybe that's okay for a child. Four-year-old child needs to know. No. Or a dog, maybe. No. Yes. Do it this way. It's a certain stage. But, you know... we're not practicing conceivable religion anymore here. We're practicing inconceivable religion. And so that sense of right and wrong, we have to work with that and get a feel for it. So something like that. It's easy to criticize our own tradition or think it's wanting or shallow, but it's not. You know, there are strands within our own tradition that are very much like Zen, and there are strands within Buddhism that are very much like Christianity. If you go to most Buddhist temples in the world, what you will see are people praying to Amida Buddha for a better life, just like people would go to church here, you know.

[52:10]

So what we're doing here is unusual in any religion. So that's kind of what I was thinking. Is that it? No one else? You look like you're almost going to say something, kid. No? Okay.

[52:54]

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