How are you feeling? I've been, again, talking about reconstructing your actions and thoughts. And today I'm talking about reconstructing your personality. More than that, but The life of the Sangha is, part of it is aimed at reconstructing your personality or redoing your personality. And your individual experience, even in a communal situation like Zen Center,

[01:31]

Your individual experience, even in this communal situation, is unique to you. It's not Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, whatever. It's unique to you. In this way, we can also echo Katagiri Roshi saying, settle yourself on yourself. And the essential life of the sangha is the schedule. is making our common schedule your own, or being able to construct the events of the day, to see the vitality and reality of a schedule, of obviously a conscious construct, this schedule. We get up at a certain time and so forth.

[03:03]

Again, it's not some magical identity, just we make a schedule. And then you, you know, it's important that you didn't make it at the same time as you make it your own. So you settle into this schedule. Not like my cartoon story about Dark Destiny, attached to one appearance or another appearance or identifying your soul as some form or style or something intrinsic to you that you can't change. But there is just this schedule. Can you make it your own? Can you, in a sense, pour yourself into it? settle yourself on this schedule, to be just exactly here. The other day, or yesterday I guess it was, I went into the office and someone was sitting at the table working like this.

[04:35]

And I said, How are you? And this person said, I'm depressed. They weren't so depressed, but anyway, they said, I'm depressed. They should have said, I've decided to be depressed. It would have been much more accurate. I've decided to be depressed. Because, you know, over and over again we're practicing and we're talking about mind and body. If not exactly one, you can't say two. Maybe we can say exactly one. And yet you don't

[05:40]

You know, maybe you think you're sitting this way as an expression of being depressed. That posture is the depression itself. Your posture is your depression. That's why we sit, you know, why Nagarjuna said, to make a snake straight, you put it in your backbone, in bamboo. So if you want to be depressed, fine. I don't mind if you want to be depressed, but I did mind the inaccurate statement. How are you? I am depressed. I would have preferred it if this person had said, Oh, I've decided to be depressed. Then I would have thought, Ah, a very realized person he is here. Okay, you've decided, fine. But they were sort of complaining like they didn't want to be depressed, pretending they didn't want to be depressed. If they didn't want to be depressed, please sit up. Don't encourage your depression. You can still express your depression sitting up,

[07:07]

you can feel quite depressed, you know. But it's more, maybe we can say, pure expression of your depression, not encouraged, indulged in depression. So your body and feelings, your posture, are exactly what your moods are and so forth. Your depression isn't something separate from your posture. So we In Zen practice and in Sangha life, we experiment with posture and conduct and schedule and getting up whether we feel like it or not until across a scale. You know, the schedule makes a kind of grid or scale by which you can see the play of your moods and depression.

[08:29]

and you can more and more see how they're constructed. I said to someone a while ago, it's not the building blocks I was talking about, valuing your life. It's not the building blocks that are the problem. Building blocks are okay. It's how you stack them that's the problem. And a statement like that, you know, I make a statement like that, not to further explain it, but because it's maybe something you can remember. Again, I'm talking about that kind of thinking, koan thinking or practice thinking, where everything is an example. And many koans are pretty simple, you know. Nansen comes before his

[09:52]

group, and says, "'If I were to sell myself, would anyone buy me?' And one monk says, "'I'll buy you.' And Nansen said, "'Without paying either too much or too little, what will you—can you buy me?' The monk didn't know what to say." And the commentary says something like, can I do anything for you? Shall I rub your shoulders? Makes me think of the story of Kadagiri Roshi's teacher, which I remember, always remember, and it comes up in various circumstances.

[10:53]

This is nearly the same story. He went to the bath with his teacher and each time he said to his teacher, shall I scrub your back? You know this story, many of you. And his teacher didn't say anything or maybe said no sometimes. So each time, shall I scrub your back? And one day, He just started scrubbing his teacher's back without asking. And his teacher, oh, good. That's a very simple story and you can take it as, in a pretty simple way, you know, just to, not to bother asking, just do it if it's clear. But a story like that has much more significance if it becomes something that rises as an example in this koan or practice-type thinking. So many times it may occur to you, this story, just to do it. Cho kye.

[12:22]

As everyone came to lecture, when they were gathered, he said, please, everyone bow to, he asked someone like Mark, come up here. No, don't come up here. Come up here. No, that's not it. Anyway, he said, come up here and The monk came up and said, he said, everyone bow to this monk. So everyone got ready to bow and he said, what kind of merit does this old monk, this monk have that you want to bow to him? No one knew what to say. Yet Chökyi is just pointing out, you know, Buddha or Mark or each, things are just what they are. You can't ask what kind of merit exactly.

[13:23]

And Mark is Mark, so we bow to him. This is, you know, contradicts this kind of story, contradicts usual scientific and Newtonian and Hegelian and so forth, ideas of causation, whether it comes from the past or future. So again, this kind of story. Why should we bow to this monk? Because what merit does he have that we should bow to him? What merit does the eating bulls have that we should bow to them? What merit does anything we do, any particular thing, have that we should respect it, you know? So we say something, so it becomes If I say memorable, it's too much like a Hallmark card. So it retains some receptive vitality for us. So when we tell a story about Suzuki Roshi, we may trim the story, trim it down,

[14:56]

so that it's no longer exactly what happened. For instance, you know, Peter Schneider went to Japan, and when he was with Suzuki, in the evening time, they made coffee, especially for, you know, All in the city, everyone drinks coffee in the kisa tents, in the coffee shops. But in a country temple, they don't drink coffee very often, at least not when I was in Japan. Almost always green tea or bancha. And, you know, but because this foreigner Peter Schneider was there, they made coffee for him. So they gave him the coffee, and Peter put too much sugar in it. So he said, knowing maybe Japanese people like sugar, he said, oh, I put too much sugar in it. Do you like sugar, Tsukishi? Tsukishi said, oh, yes.

[16:22]

No, Peter passed the cup out to Suzuki Roshi, and Suzuki Roshi passed his cup out. They were going to switch. And then Suzuki Roshi reached out and took his own cup back and tasted it. Oh, very good, he said. And Peter didn't know what to do, so he took his cup and drank his too-sweet coffee. Suzuki Roshi had it both ways, you know. He liked sugar and had coffee without it. Next day, Tsukiyoshi thought, well, he just, you know, he put out his cup and then I put out mine and then he took his back. Maybe he just made a mistake, you know, because Tsukiyoshi always looked a little bit Sukhirishi is interesting. He had the feeling, simultaneously, that you could get away with anything in front of him, and at the same time that you couldn't get away with anything in front of him. It's a wonderful experience. Caught you up, got you caught up, you know, numerous times.

[17:54]

Next morning, but the next morning they had breakfast and Sukhirishi said, Oh, Peter, would you like some sugar? So I may tell this story, you know, now, so Peter doesn't recognize it. Peter might say, No, that's not what happened. It is what happened. You're wrong, Peter. In other words, the way I want to tell it, has its own truth, you know. I think I've got it right, actually, but I don't care whether I have it right or not, you know. What I want is for you to understand what happened. So I want the story to happen to you. So to have it happen to you, I may tell it a little differently. Obviously, I can't recreate whole context, so I must make the story. So it happens to me. The more you understand this principle, the more you can understand Lotus Sutra and Huayen Sutra too.

[19:17]

So this is a kind of interior truth. Now we, Rambo has a poem, a line, it begins, is it possible that she, capital S, Is it possible that she will have me forgiven for ambitions continually crushed? Is it possible that she will have me forgiven? Is it possible that she will have me forgiven for ambitions continually crushed? Or that a day of..." He goes on, "...or that a day of success will lull us to sleep on the shame of our fatal incompetence, or that a day of success will lull us to sleep on the shame of our fatal incompetence. And then he says, O palms, O diamonds, O joy and

[20:50]

higher than any joy or success or any joy or fame. We have some interior person for whom we are ambitious or for whom we do things a capital she or he or something. If you look at yourself while you're asking how you do this or what kind of person you are or so forth, you'll see there's someone in you that you're measuring yourself by. you want to be forgiven by or accepted by, some observer. In practice, we want to make a friendly relationship with this observer or to get rid of it altogether. And also, partly from

[22:20]

a scientific, such a scientific world we've grown up in, we have the idea of causation as meaning consistency and predictability. But the causation of suffering has a cause, and Buddhism isn't a matter of predictability, that always A equals B, or something like that. So we say, stone maiden, speaks. Or someone asked, what is the, asked Mumon, what is the origin, what is the place of origin of Buddha? And Mumon said, the eastern mountain walks on water. The eastern mountain walks on water. an iron maiden speaks, or a stone maiden speaks. To here, I don't like to talk about interior and exterior, but this practice of example, everything is interior.

[23:50]

The five skandhas are interior. Form and emptiness are interior. To be able to hear your interior and not be afraid that it isn't consistent with the exterior world. You know, again, like Wittgenstein says, we can apply the same idea because we don't see how phenomenal the phenomenal world is, we think something else is special. But because we don't see how phenomenal the phenomenal world is, the exterior world is, we constrain our interior always. And because we're afraid of where things will lead, that we think in causative terms, Either everything came from somewhere like in a psychological sense or in a Hegelian sense, everything is leading somewhere. And intention, which is so important in Buddhism, in fact everything is intention. It's not a teleological kind of intention.

[25:12]

in that enlightenment is guiding us. If you keep thinking, I will be enlightened, you will become enlightened. That is not the activity of intention. The activity of intention in Buddhism is better described by the word recognition. So, Ketu's cart. I use the story fairly often of Ketu's cart, maybe because we come from scientific engineering background. So we're interested in machines and so forth. And Kei Chu is a master cart maker from ancient China, supposedly. So again, it doesn't matter if the story is true, was he really a cart maker or so forth. But every aspect of the story is important. That he was a master craftsman. It means training or experience in zazen. So Kechi asks—excuse me, I forget who asks. Getan, I think. Getan asks,

[26:43]

made a cart of a hundred, with wheels of a hundred spokes, taking away front and back and axle, what do you have left?" Shibayama Roshi quotes the poem of taking apart a house, grass house, thatch and so forth, and you return it to the empty grass field. He says, this is how people often understand this story, as meaning emptiness. Emphasis of Getan in this story, when he says, take away front and back and axle, what is it? His emphasis, what do you have then? His emphasis is more, and if I can use this word, an epiphany. can show it's like an epiphany. Epiphany comes from to shine, to see the shine of things, or to see divine nature of things, or to see, to recognise in a flash. So Ketu is saying, you know, Getan is saying, recognise Ketu's cart in a flash.

[28:08]

It means interior logic and exterior logic are the same. If I say, you know, it's more like the story of Keichu's cart, it's more like if I say, take away Jane's head and body and backbone, what do we have? It means subject and object are gone. We don't see Jane as something exterior. It means to give up your fear of being inconsistent. of being repeatable. Upaya, you know, skillful means, means we live in a unrepeatable universe. Scientists think you can isolate some aspect and study it. But actually, you can't isolate.

[29:38]

you can't, really you can't stir a flower without disturbing a star. So always, even if an apple falls, it's quite predictable, but still all, not just Earth and Moon, but all the planets are in some different arrangement. and in our life the subtle. The subtly of circumstances are very important. You can't find your balance. This is a little difficult to explain what I mean, but

[30:46]

You can't find your balance separate from other people. Or your relationship with other people are part of your body, part of your sangha, part of your balance, part of your ability to allow your interior vision freedom. This kind of koan or practice thinking. If your relationships to people are not clear or you feel some qualification, you know, you actually can be knocked over easier. When you come to dotsan, your bowing will be more unsteady. You may not stand in the middle of the teppanyaki. when we bow, you know? We're bowing with many people. We say we're bowing with Buddha, and Buddha is standing on our hands. It means we are bowing with everyone. And the quality of your relationship with people is in that bowing. You can't separate yourself out from Sangha, from all people. And you can see it in your dreams.

[32:19]

If you have a dream in which your relationships with people are somewhat, you know, something twisted is happening, you'll wake up feeling unbalanced. If there seems to be some clarity, definition of yourself and flow, you know, with people in your dream, you'll feel balanced or centered. Many people ask me about masturbation. And we almost have a order from our society to masturbate. In the Victorian era it was said you got diseased and twisted from, you know, so now these people say, no, it's not so. So you are supposed to masturbate. But also that Victorian era was, we can't say completely wrong, also true.

[33:48]

Both are true, we can say. It doesn't make any difference, particularly, like a sexual dream. But when it's involved with something, when you're involved with something, you can't tell others, or isn't a clear relationship with others, it leaves you feeling unbalanced. So from this point of view, for someone who is, whether it's spiritual practice or someone who is defining their reality, taking charge of their life, giving definition to their energy, it's rather unbalancing to do something others can't know about or isn't realistic. So you can find out. By your tiny actions

[35:15]

how others are included or not, and how you feel, clear or not clear in relationship to others, and how this is expressed, not just in sangha life, but in you, you know, your own expression or recognition of everyone, how balanced you are. So when you give up, again, the need to have everything consistent or predictable or to fit with the exterior world, to become a priest means many things, but it also means you are not worried about your behavior fitting the predictable world, the exterior world.

[36:35]

You have the courage to dress according to your interior vision. It means to release your interior vision, to release intention. You can experiment and should be experimenting with intention. You can, I would, too bad you don't, You know, if you have a cut on your left hand and your right hand, you can experiment. Take the cut on your left hand and concentrate your healing power on it. And on the right hand, say, don't heal. Faster. And, you know, if you've been practicing and you have concentration, the cut on your left hand will heal much faster than the cut on your right. I mean, you... Your body has the ability to heal your... heal your... heal a cut, right? We know that. That we can agree upon. And healing sometimes goes... It must not always... It must not be a rigidly controlled rate. It must go sometimes a little faster or slower. So you must be able to... Your body affects...

[38:04]

So you worry about the mechanism. You think, well, some people are born as seers, mystics and sensitives, and they have this special mechanism. They will dial under their arm and turn it, and healing power goes... But it's not so. It's just a matter of intention or concentration. And there is some mechanical means, something is going on in your cellular structure, but your access to that is your intention. You decide, please, get better, faster. And you remind yourself of it, and you develop the ability to keep

[39:05]

putting some warmth or intention or energy there. And you'll find it gets better. And you will improve. If you experiment like that with intention, you'll improve. So again, intention, you know, it's not like the flower gets white and has pistils and stamens and so forth because it knows a bee is somewhere around and it's going to attract a bee. It's... You know, we don't in any way understand it that way. Flower is flower, and because flower is flower, bee you know, gets with the flower, and flower, you know, and so forth. It's more a simultaneous idea of causation, more a matter of recognition. There's a movie out, which, if you have a chance sometime, called Awe.

[40:28]

I thought of bringing it down here and showing it to you, renting it. It's a new movie by Kurosawa called Dersu Uzala, or Uzala, Dersu Uzala. And it's about this, I guess, a Mongolian, they call him something else in it, I can't remember, a dirt, a goldie, yeah, a goldie, right? You've seen it? Did you like it? You would. So would I. Anyway, it's... Kurosawa's... It has some similarity to Ikiru, which was the movie Tsukuroshi said he liked, his favorite movie. And Kurosawa made Ikiru, too. It's this... The whole movie is in Russian. and it's beautifully filmed you can see composition very clearly the composition of Japanese and Chinese paintings in it all the way through it anyway he's this Mongolian Russian-speaking Mongolian type person with these Russian

[41:56]

map makers and soldiers. And it's a kind of, it's Kurosawa's, it's an extremely beautiful movie, rather tragic feeling movie because it's, I would say it's Kurosawa's own kind of expression of the impossibility of friendship or that the beauty of friendship can't save the world, but there's no reason it should. Anyway, it's about corruption and friendship. Anyway, it's quite a beautiful book. But in it, Dersu Uzzala, he says he's presented as a more sophisticated and more primitive person than the German, than the Russian soldiers. And You know, you often see scientists talking about causation, or anthropologists talking about primitive man as being fearful of his environment, and so he creates some anthropomorphic type, you know, explanation for everything, because he's afraid. And so he's trying to control events. And I think that

[43:24]

Kurosawa's presentation of Dursa Utsala is more accurate. He keeps saying, fire is a man. Everything, the stone is a man, the river is a man. If you say that, even as I said, fox and sundae are bodhisattvas struggling to be reborn, or bodhisattvas being reborn as Sunday and Fox for us. We may recognize Fox and Sunday more. If you say, the river is a man, it's not because you fear it or trying to control it, but you may recognize the river more. It's like telling a story the way you want to tell it. So your interior vision, river is a man. And you don't have to fear that you're going to start worshipping idols or become some crazy person, you know. Every thought you have is associated with thousands of visual and aural phenomena.

[44:54]

and you restrict yourself from knowing these associations. And if in practice or sasheen sometimes you open yourself up to them, you find 84,000 hymns. And you find you don't need... When you are balanced, you don't need to know any of the hymns. You don't need to give an explanation. You don't need to apply some consistent logic or causation to your thinking. You don't need to even know the thought, you can leave your thinking half-formed. If you're open to what I'm calling today this interior vision, if you're not restricting it with an observer or with some consistent

[46:29]

worrying about its consistency. Moment after moment we don't know in practice. World is changing. Causation is changing. Everything is changing. So we just have, moment after moment, the particular details of our day. Serving food, walking around, working. Vanya putting the chain on the stone, first the chain, then you step back, open the block. Or if you're serving, you put in

[47:53]

the serving spoon, and then you shake it. There's no causation, it's not going anywhere, just you're taking a vacation, shaking it. Each thing is very precise, no leading here, leading there, just nothing else, just that. Then you put it in. That's all. And you know the arc of the... And you're resting. Just resting. So we can... We do redo our personality. You take, like, Kei-chu's cart. or you re-recognize your personality from your parents. And if you had a messed-up childhood, you know, the Sangha gives you a chance to take apart what is joy, what is affection, what is being close to another person. Breton and Desnos in

[49:20]

wrote somewhere. Surrealists, they wrote somewhere. The dreamer... How does it go? The dreamer... The sleeper approaches the mir... I can't remember the exact wording, but it's something like the sleeper approaches the miracles. The miracles. the dreamer approaches the miracles and brings along their armor, their armor which is insomnia itself, the glass of their armor, and pausing, almost sadly, muses muses at their armor and goes on their way. I think this is an accurate statement of what I mean. We always see our armor. We always see our explanations, our need to have things consistent or observed.

[50:45]

And rather sadly, we see our armor and go on our way. We can't see. Phenomenal, phenomenal world. We can't open ourselves to I lack words for what I mean by interior vision. But you will gain entrance to it by developing concentration, physically in your body, not this, but physically in your body becoming concentrated, relaxed and concentrated. able to sit straight. And if you're concentrated, you can let go of your thinking. And in your mental and social activity, you can have something to help you gain concentration that you keep reminding yourself of, your vow, your practice.

[52:14]

your truthfulness. I said too much.

[52:43]

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