may prevent you from directly knowing what these guys, old guys, were about. And it's useful to be a little perplexed by them, Maybe it takes quite a few years of vaguely wondering what exactly was going on. comparing your understanding to theirs, or comparing those personages to each other.

[01:16]

It will open up your own eyes to what people are doing, so you don't see things so much always in the same manner. not to look for some hidden meaning, but to see the meaning before it's there. One of the commentaries says, quoting from some Sanskrit sutra, Inga quotes and says, When one whose understanding surpasses birds, birds' understanding, captured birds, one whose understanding surpasses wild beasts, captures wild beasts, one whose understanding surpasses human understanding, captures men.

[02:29]

how your responsibility precedes you. As Suzuki Ueshiba used to say, the spirit of practice is the spirit to accept everything that comes to you as your own problem. Anyway, the poem of Setsuo's on this story is seen right through, seen right through, seen right through the first time, seen right through the second time, piling frost on snow. Near, close, near to a plunge from the cliff, the leader of the flying horsemen is nearly captured in the intent of his enemy and yet escapes, alive and unhurt.

[03:40]

One running away, the other holding on, sitting together high on a solitary peak in the grass of the valley below. That's Setso's poem about the whole story. Gensha comments on the story, saying, the autumn moon in the lake, the temple bell sound or vibrations meet the silent ripples These guys, you know, Setso and Engo and Toksan and Isan, are always trying to fool you until you know without a doubt what is happening.

[05:11]

So they always say both sides. Toksan is the winner, Isan is the winner. Who let go? When Toksan, when Isan, in the end of the evening, later in the day, asked his Jisha, where did that young man go? He took some. Engo says, drawing the bow after the thief has gone. And Setso says, holding on. Does he mean he's committing adultery? somebody at Tassar committed adultery with a snake. He wanted to offer the snake to the gardener, so he captured a snake and brought it to the garden and released it. And somehow, later, he felt he didn't properly offer the snake to the gardener, so he went back and

[06:22]

offered the snake again, and it bit him. Anyway, so it is... Issan caught by what Tokusan did. What does Setsuo mean by holding on? There's an interesting story about Ryutan. Rutan, when he was a young boy, he used to live near Tenno-dōgo. And Tenno-dōgo had him deliver rice cakes, I guess rice cakes, I don't know, maybe dim sum. Philip found yesterday that the characters for what the lady served to, woman served to, Tokusan, when he was carrying the Diamond Sutra.

[07:25]

I mean, dim sum, isn't that right? Yeah. And it... D.T. Suzuki says it means to point to the mind or punctuate the mind. And there's some other meanings, but I'll float down. Anyway, this lady, as far as I know, was serving rice cakes. Maybe... I mean, this boy was bringing rice cakes, but maybe he was bringing dim sum. Anyway, he brought these rice cakes to Tenno Dōgo, and every time he brought them, Tenno Dōgo gave him one back and said, what comes from you must return to you. And the boy would accept it. When he grew up, when he was, I guess, a teenager, He said to Tenno Dogo one day, who was quite a venerable distant teacher, you know, he got up his nerve and said, why do you always give me one rice cake back?

[08:37]

My family is in the rice cake business. We don't need one rice cake back. He said, don't think about it. Yes, I'm just giving you back what belongs to you. So then, sometime after that, Rūtaṃ became Tenno Dōgo's disciple. And when he received ordination, Tenno Dōgo said to him, Up until now you have practiced common virtue and respect. Now you must see into the Dharma. And Rūtaṃ served Tenno Dogo for some years. And then he asked Tenno Dogo, he said, Now I am your attendant.

[09:39]

You never give me any formal instruction. I miss receiving some formal instruction. And Tenno Dogo... If you're going to see it, you must see it directly. Don't think about it," he said. Later. I think it's Rutan again.

[10:44]

Oh, yes, Rutan said... I can't remember. Anyway, Bhutan has some insight or some feeling, and later he says, how do I hold on to it? And Tendodogo says, just trust your intuition and act according to circumstances. Think about it. Just directly do your task. If you think about it, it's too late. I think it's Ison, which I was thinking of before. These are all stories related to the same thing.

[11:55]

teacher, Yakujo, said to him, do you have any fire? Which is quite a common request in a temple because they often had, I suppose they had charcoal burners. Do you have any fire? And he said, his son said, yes. And Yakujo said, show me your fire, bring me your fire. And he picked up a twig from a wood pile and blew on it. And that's actually a rather interesting answer. And Nakaja said, that's like wormholes in wood. It looks like calligraphy, but it means nothing. And later, he was stirring the hibachi, looking for some coal.

[13:04]

And he said to, this was some months later, I guess, he said to Yakujo, it's out. And Yakujo went over and stirred very deep in the ashes and blew and came out. This is fire, hot coal. He said, quoting from a sutra, he said, our season, our circumstance are necessary to see into our nature. It's the same statement that Ingo used in his introduction of bright sunshine, blue sky, etc.

[14:06]

So these guys are all weaving Something to make you see directly. Yesterday I was speaking about your area of familiarity, making your area of familiarity stronger. But to do that, it means you can't be discriminating. You can't be involved in right or wrong. or past or future, present, even. Just what's familiar, what's there, and you accept it. By that, your area of familiarity will become stronger, and your Zazen and your life can begin to include more and more without disturbance.

[15:26]

So that's why our Zazen practice is so unprogrammed, why we don't discriminate. One reason we don't discriminate our practice is because your practice should include all ends, your final Zazen at the end of your life, and your first Zazen, and your most ordinary state of mind, and your most condensed pure, burning state of mind, not now incandescent and now mixed up. That's no good. So you keep enlarging your area of familiarity, always some pressure on willingness to Not a protective, you know, keeping out the strange, but confident enough that anything can come, that your responsibility extends in front of you.

[16:37]

Ready to accept everything as your own problem, something you've called forth. When you have this confidence, then you can Some other activity, some other kind of motivation or energy will move you that you don't have time to think about. This energy which sometimes destroys people, you know, and which is sometimes activated by various circumstances in our life. does outlandish things unless your area of familiarity is strong. And you are creating it by your own stomach or your own energy. So this is more precisely what I mean and what

[17:54]

Toksan and Isan were about. Engo comments on the last word of such a poem, There, capital There, and says, drawn swords or crossed swords are sharpened. Walking along in twos and threes, one singing, the other beating the rhythm, Then come the blows. Anyway, that's enough. of that story.

[19:24]

You're only area, realm of familiarity. That way, when you stray out of it, you become anxious. Your own area of familiarity, you should develop some confidence in knowing exactly what you are, sitting sudden, or exactly what. You don't mean exactly know what you are. For instance, when we have that image in Buddhist an image of your body sometimes.

[20:40]

It's not an image we're imagining, you are the image. So as you become more familiar with your area of familiarity. And you are it, you know, without question. Then when something disturbs you, you know, you can meet it in some friendly way. When some story about Tokson is mixed up for you, you can make Toksan part of your area of familiarity. Until it is, you should not, it's no reason to leave anything outside your area of familiarity.

[21:46]

If Toksan doesn't make sense to you, then you press on Toksan. Until you absorb Toksan, So something that disturbs you or you doubt is very important, and when you doubt or are confused about Buddhism, to press on it. We want to know Buddhism, your life from the inside. Through and through, Buddhism is nothing but the study of you, your path, your own path. So, to know Buddhism from the inside, you know, after Togsang and Isang,

[23:22]

Buddhism, more and more, became two different schools. There was some controversy about it, Buddhism as a social institution, and there was some controversy about it. It's very interesting, Toksan and Rinzai are almost exactly contemporaries. One died, Tokson died a year before Rinzai, I believe. And it's possible that Rinzai, we don't know, but it's possible that Rinzai studied with Tokson, or met him, or spent time with him, or vice versa. We don't know. But Rinzai's way is almost exactly like Tokson's. Anyway, that's Buddhism from the outside.

[24:32]

But for Buddhism from the inside, Rinzai and Tokson and Ison are all one, walking in harmony in twos and threes. Sometimes granting way, sometimes grasping way, they respond according to circumstances. This is the second principle. The first principle is just to sit. I don't know. From Buddhism, from the inside, we are very familiar with Siddhā-Joshi, and Adobe, and Togsang, and Isang. And all find of Buddhism. And we know this from our what we call great activity.

[25:56]

Which comes alive when you have accepted, realized your area of familiarity? Which extends to everything you meet when you stop discriminating and accept things without past or future. And then you can penetrate directly You don't need any special instruction, just see directly by your activity that comes out before you have time to think. I think I'm telling you too much, and you should forget it.

[27:00]

That's what I'm saying. It's quite simple, just become familiar with what you seem to be. And accept that on each day. There's something you'd like to talk about. Yeah. But I mean that.

[28:27]

It takes time. That means it takes time you don't calculate. It takes uncalculable time. Not time long or short. Time you penetrate completely. Right? Just now. Begin. Don't worry about when. If you worry about when, when will you begin? or you'll give up easily. Why? I started yesterday. It's exhausting. I was bothered when you actually said you couldn't live without him. I didn't think you would. I was bothered when you talked about the people that you had. Like the dentist, and the physiologist, and the psychiatrist, and his wife. Because, I could have been one if I was him. I mean, I still, I feel like saying, you haven't even been in the house.

[29:28]

You haven't even been in the clinic. But I may find the dentist kind of nervous when he realized that you knew that he was How he got nervous? Yeah, when you... when you felt it. Yeah. I mean, I just thought, I haven't heard it from other people. Like, sometimes we act like we're distracted, but we do the right thing. Mm-hmm. And it bothers me, you know, that we have that feeling. Yeah, I didn't mean to... I was concerned about that afterwards. I didn't mean to, uh, slight the dentist. Oh, hi. He's British. He's very interesting. He's a philosopher. Of course, you know, I have been and still like that woman.

[30:40]

And if I'm doing something like that and somebody sees me directly, I get nervous. Same way he got nervous. It can't be helped. Of course, you know, I have been and still like that moment. And if I'm doing something like that and somebody sees me directly, I get nervous. Same way he got nervous. It can't be helped. Sometimes you don't Sometimes we don't notice what people are doing to give them some space, you know?

[31:45]

Perhaps I was hasty in noticing what he was doing, but he had all these hammers in my mouth. It was banging away. And I could feel something wasn't going so well. But he, it's not just that, you know, he became nervous and looked at me to see if I noticed. I actually tried to calm him down a bit. It's all right, just finish this. But the question I was posing was how to This doctor, he has a family and some life, some respected way.

[32:52]

Someone pointed out to me the other day in the movie Wild Strawberries, if any of you saw it, how the doctor in it has a nightmare about being charged with malpractice. or look at what's happening to Mr. Nixon right now. So it's a very delicate matter for him to make some mistake. How to be kind to him, and yet also respond to be kind to the people who he's working with. very complicated problems. I said I could make fun of it.

[33:57]

I did make fun of it. But I meant to say that's not what I feel. It's easy to do that, but that doesn't solve the problem. To completely pretend it was okay is not appropriate either. I don't know. That kind of problem comes up in our life fairly often. We've had it with insurance people who want to cheat on the insurance to benefit you. Do you say, we don't want to cheat? You know, please just do it the most correct way, because then he will feel like he's a crook.

[35:01]

He'll feel lousy. Do you say, okay, cheat for us. Very complicated problem, that kind of thing. And I'd like to know, what do you think? The jumping experience? Physical movement, you mean? No. Some kind of a mental thing, or jumping, or emotional thing.

[36:03]

Taking a forward movement into a complete, if not a movement, the next stage is Probably I should know you, but you never realized you were, like, familiar with that space or something. Yeah. Well, if you can, do. If it takes you over or separates you. I've been trying to talk about this in various ways for some weeks, this fascinating thing. I talked about it in relationship to the deity, that in some way we create a deity. What? What? What is it? What has a pronoun in it? Who? I've tried to express it that way.

[37:04]

And when you respond to something, you respond to it as a being, but you don't embrace it or become one with it if you worship it. You turn toward it. That's why I talked about turning toward something, its value or meaning, so the word worth comes. I explained it that way. I mean by that you take your area of familiarity with you. Maybe that doesn't make so much sense. Sometimes you'll find your world disappears, and you'll feel a physical sensation. You won't know. You're like passing through a small hole, and it can be quite scary.

[38:09]

Or you can just assume you will wake up in your area of familiarity. And it may be completely new, but there's an expression, go through the whirlpool and land on your feet. I spoke about this first as an area of familiarity in talking with people who had physical movement which took them over And one way is to just go into it, you know, and allow the movement to thrash you, or spiral you, or twitch you, or whatever. There's various ways it comes upon people. One way is just to go into it. But usually, when people go into it, they don't take their area of familiarity with them, and it takes them over. They're separated from their usual state. So a more traditional way to practice good movement

[39:13]

Which, going into it is okay, too. But the more traditional way, which also we should try, is to stay in... We're not always moving. Sometimes we're sitting in the office and we're not crashing or spiraling or twitching. So, maybe to have that state of mind in which you're sitting in the office when you're doing nothing. So, not completely, but so that you're in the... just before you move. So you're always extending that. into the movement without movement, and when you start to move, if you get too much, it takes you over, you move back into a more familiar space. That kind of... As I said yesterday, that way you always... your area of familiarity widens from the center. I think some of you may not have heard what she said, but I think you must have understood what she said from what I said.

[40:22]

You're not satisfied. That's all right. I'm sorry. How does the, in a deep way, how does this, not to use the word experience, but when a person, the universal nature of it becomes so open, Is it possible for him to forget about the temporal world? Isn't it possible for him to? Does he want to? Yeah. Do you think he does?

[41:27]

Is there some advantage to forgetting about the temporal world? Well, I don't think so, but I'm pretty sure that some of the studies I've read say that the opposite is true. The pressure is on you. The opposite of which? Of saying, well, freedom versus detachment. Well, when you explore it in words and it doesn't make sense so much, it's better just to go back to our own experience. If we talk about nature or Buddha nature or big nature or something like that, what does that mean in our own terms? It's not just... it's just something from a sutra or some freedom or time or change

[42:36]

Those things don't mean anything, except through your own experience. Well, what it meant when after Buddha came to enlightenment, he decided to return to teaching versus to do something else. What was this choice? What do you think the choice was? I think the choice was to

[43:38]

Maybe he meant there's no choice. Choice isn't really a choice. There's no... Change, as I said, is giving. It's not change or abstract truth, as truth really means trust and change means giving and receiving. That's all there is, if there's something. Those sutras, like the Lotus Sutra, which seems the most far out, is actually very exact and precise, but you can't understand it from the usual sense of big whirls and whirls over there and things like that. But it's very exact about our nature. When you don't try to figure it out,

[44:53]

If you try to figure out what Toksan is doing or Isan is doing, you can't understand it. Without discriminating Toksan and Isan, even without any idea of others, of separate people, it becomes familiar. Then it's very difficult to say we act in the usual space-time. So our actions, we can't even say are creating space-time. So, we have another way of speaking about it. But you have to begin from your own area of familiarity. There's no point in speculating beyond that. Just what is actually familiar to us. Is anything familiar to us? Even as I've pointed out, if I say to you, follow your breathing, let your breathing lead you, most of you will become quite scared. Where will my breathing take me? Oh my God! We don't want to give up control even to our breathing or our heart.

[45:59]

So, first we have to find out if there's anything we do feel familiar with. Our heart, our breathing, our area of familiarity. Is there such a thing? What could I mean? Karma and conditioning and ego, pretty much the same thing. More or less. This picture?

[47:05]

What it is and why it's there? Both. It's saying, you're not serious enough. Shape up. You're not considerate enough of your own life. We put it there because it's in Japan called buddha-ryo. The other name is achara. It's a fierce form of arjuna. Actually, I've done Rudy gave that to me at my distillation ceremony, and I gave it to Huey Newton.

[48:09]

And Huey kept it a long time, and he used to read Gary's poems about Achala to everybody. He'd get all the Panthers together, any visitor, he'd get Gary's poem out and put everybody down in front of it. and read him Gary's poem over and over again. And he'd talk about it for hours. He was incredible. He'd go on about this. He liked it very much. And then he was in his new house. He was starting to build. We were going to help him build. He had a special place made for him above the door. And when the police came to his apartment, destroyed everything. They cut the rugs and shreds and busted up the furniture. ransacked everything, except this picture they didn't touch. I don't know why. Maybe they didn't notice it. Anyway, Giri left instructions for it to be sent back to me.

[49:24]

So I had it next door in the house, and when His Holiness Karmapa came, we got all the Tibetan pictures and Tibetan tantric type pictures out we had to hang here. We hung two there, and we put this five forms of Manjushri there. And this here. And by popular demand, I have not taken it down. It's rather unusual in a Zen Buddha hall to have a buddhomyo. But in Shingon-shu Buddha halls, they have him on the right side usually, I think. At least in the temple side, he's been on the right special altar. In Sotoshu temples, they often have a fox spirit on the right. in Japan. Many country temples have a fox shrine instead of Buddha. So he's there.

[50:28]

I don't know how long he'll be there. And that wonderful Monde Shri. I'll take them away if you want. So I have to go to the dentist again.

[50:47]

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