It's okay? You can't hear, all right. Put your hand up to your ears. That's what Ricky does. Because I can't really tell with the stream, you know. In Choson, people just at the back of the cabin can't hear because of the stream going right by. Can you hear, Betsy? First, I'd like to tell you something about Rudy, whose name is here on the altar. He was killed about a week ago. Most of you don't know who he was, I think, but he was a very good friend of Buddhism in this country. And he was flying his own light plane

[01:01]

and with two passengers and somehow they hit a tree and the two passengers were thrown free and are all right and Rudy was killed. His actual name is, he's told, I kind of got him to tell me his name once because he always went by just Rudy. I don't know why he told me. I just asked him, what is your actual name? He told me. Something Rudolph. Do you remember, Peter? You were there, I think, when I asked him. I can't remember. I have it in my old address book. I met him first when I was in New York, maybe with Suzuki Yoshi, but I think on a trip before that.

[02:34]

I went by this store, and there were just many Buddhas, more Buddhas than I'd ever seen before in a store. And this was over on the west side. And so I went in, and not only did he have more Buddhas than I'd ever seen before in a store, and many big ones and good quality, but he had a warehouse full of them somewhere. I don't know where. In New York. And he immediately... He's not a Buddhist. He wasn't exactly a Buddhist. But for some reason he had this feeling for Buddhist statues. So he collected from all over the world Buddhist statues. And the minute he found out, he actually knew immediately that I practiced Buddhism, And immediately he started making arrangements for me to have Buddhas for free or for very little money and etc. I was quite amazed. It's usually, there's no sense in stores in New York which have Buddhas, that because you practice Buddhism, you maybe should have a Buddha more than someone who can just pay for it. Rudi had just the opposite feeling, that if you practice with a Buddha, you should have it. The money is not important.

[04:06]

His mother doesn't entirely agree with him. But anyway, she's very nice, too. She's more businesslike. Anyway, I talked with him several times, and then I told Suzuki Roshi about and when he went to New York, I think it was Silas maybe, must be, he went to the store and liked this enormous metal Amida Buddha that was there, that for a while we were going to try to buy, and actually most of us were against it because the importance of getting figures when we had other things to

[05:14]

Buddha figures, statues, and we had other things that were more, seemed more immediate problems. We were rather against, but he convinced us. And he wanted it, so I agreed. And then afterwards, I went back to Japan, and he decided it wouldn't fit. It was too big. But for a while, it was going to be placed in grasshopper flats outside. And then someone said to him, oh, but it'll rust or something, you know. So Suzuki Ueshi was always unbelievably agreeable. And he said, oh, then we can't put it outside. But of course, he knows much about Buddhas in Japan and that they're outside. But because one person said it will rust outside, he said, all right, we won't. But anyway, on that kind of way, it ended up not being in Grasshopper Flats and is now sitting across the lake, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Lake there, in Taisan Edo Roshi's group, and they bought it. So it's sitting outside there and looks quite wonderful. But I, he

[06:42]

arranged for many of the Buddhist groups and many Buddhists in this country to have Buddhas. And he sent me this Samantabhadra, this short-trunked elephant. As Peter said, the Chinese and Japanese couldn't believe elephants really had that big a nose. They couldn't believe Americans have that big a nose, let alone elephants. So that's one short trunk. So Rudy sent that out, and Paul brought it. You went and saw Rudy, I believe, and Paul carried that out. And the great big red dry lacquer Manjushri at Green Gelt was given to us by Rudy. Actually, we're paying $2,000 for it, but it's worth, I don't know,

[07:44]

In Japan, it's worth $30,000 or $40,000. How much it's worth here, I don't know. Quite a lot of money, anyway. And we've only paid for half, because we don't have any money for that kind of thing. And Mrs. Rudolph sends us letters, always. And finally, I'll call Rudy, and Rudy will say, oh, you don't have any money? All right. Don't send it to me. He showed me a picture of himself once. He had his own group in New York. He really was amazing, because he was quite fat, and he looked like one of those Buddhas, you know, that happy yōtei, that guy who's with a big tummy and like the guy who's in front of the cabin and his arms up. And he had a picture of himself leading this group. And an enormous Buddha, three or four times his size, and he's sitting in full lotus on the lap of the Buddha. And his head doesn't come to the chin of the Buddha he's sitting on, you know. And from there he lectured.

[09:13]

to his students. I'm afraid I wouldn't have the nerve to do that, but... Rudy could do it, you know, and he had a tummy just like the Buddha, and he'd sit there. And almost a loincloth, too, his tummy and muscles. He liked Peter very much. Peter and I went once, and we... to talk to him about the big metal Buddha. And never after that, when I'd speak to him, he'd ask about how Peter was. Then he met... not Bhaktivedanta, but... What? The one who stayed in a hotel next... in the adjoining hotel room with Allen Ginsberg in Houston for a month, and who... Baba Ramdas travelled with for a while.

[10:17]

Was that Muktananda? It was? All right, Muktananda. And he became a disciple of Muktananda and took the name Rudrananda. And then I think he went off on his own. When I came back from Japan, he came to Tencento and we had quite a nice time together. And he... It was starting groups in Paris and Montreal and New York and Florida. And he'd fly between them as Rudranatha. And he would call me up and tell me that some new unfolding of the thousand-petal lotus was about to occur and I should be ready on such and such a day and do such and such. Anyway, he was one of the most interesting people. practicing in this country. And he somehow, like a combination of maybe Milarepa and the Bon priest, was able to keep one foot in Buddhism and one foot in Hinduism and one foot in the business world and offer more Buddhas to us

[11:46]

and to Buddhism in America than any other person I know of. It's really too bad that he has died. He also was the lead to the two Gandharan Buddhas, this one and the one in the city. He found out and told someone who told Rev, who told me about them. I'd like maybe to do one bow.

[12:51]

While we're here at Tassajara, I'd like us to try to practice with some more physical composure. And what I would suggest, but not as a rule, but as a suggestion, that when you're wearing robes, sitting robe, that you walk this way, in chashu. back and forth to the zendo. Actually, it's very helpful to your overall concentration if you have some way to physically concentrate. In this way, your energy is rather pouring off you. I think it's rather strange in Western clothes to do it, actually. But with this kind of sleeve, it works okay. And I'd like you to, more consistently when you greet each other, you know, to bow to each other as you pass. I don't think if you're working in the kitchen you have to do it every time you pass somebody. And, you know, it's, you're going back and forth. It's not necessary, maybe, but

[15:16]

some space and pace like this, I think, would be helpful for the practice here. Tsukiroshi, in a lecture, said, offer you a glass of water or some teaching. Before I offer you, I feel rather good." Then he said, like I had some secret. But after I offer you the glass of water, I don't feel so good. I feel like I'm offering you snake oil." And then he went something like, like an Indian, you know, saying, here's snake oil. Anyway, he had some feeling he was offering you snake oil. And I had the same feeling, you know, because

[16:44]

If it doesn't make any sense, you know, it's almost sure to be misunderstood what we talk about in Buddhism. What we can always come back to, the easiest way to practice, is to come back to our zazen. This easiest field maybe of practice is our zazen, in which you have some harmony of breathing and body and mind, and in which you can notice the difference between a rough state of mind and a calm state of mind. and between yourself as caught in activity or free from that activity in a kind of enveloped by your zazen practice. Kind of envelope or sheath, though. Well, let's say at first it's a kind of tactile awareness that's bigger than your body.

[18:18]

and some sheer, united, bright experience, not mind or body or breathing, some sheer kind of light experience. That's maybe beginning, it doesn't. feeling. When you can experience that as a contrast with your regular activity. I know a number

[19:26]

of you, I felt how a number of you get worried when I say, if you don't do such and such, this is not Buddhism, or if you have such and such, you're not practicing Buddhism. When I say that, I'm making a distinction between our practice, which we can call Buddhism, but practice which is still in the realm of worldly activity, and our practice which is free from worldly activity. and to be free from worldly activity.

[20:34]

I'm having my third, my second rerun, replay of The Flu. This time it's only about a third of the first rerun. And it's about, I think it's exact, Peter's rerun was 11 days, and mine is just about 11 days, I think, between each time. And each time it's been considerably less, 50% or 30% of the preceding time. So I suspect about 11 days from now, I'll have another rerun. Maybe 100 years from now, I'll still be having a very tiny rerun. Every 11 days. To be free from worldly activity, we say all the time, and it's maybe not so useful a phrase just like that, so I'll try to talk about it a little differently. To be free from worldly activities doesn't mean you can't participate in worldly activities. It means that you're not interested in

[22:29]

worldly solutions. Do you understand what I mean? Worldly solutions would be, you know, you want to be a professor or to have a certain house or to have people think of you a certain way as a teacher, or as a good person, or as an intelligent person, or as an accomplished person. These rewards or solutions to our problems, our life, which everyone, actually, particularly our families, want us to resolve in this way, our life, are actually not real at all. They just exist in your head or the people's heads who are reading your magazine.

[23:52]

The only solutions that make any sense, that are actually real, are those in this realm of possibilities, now. And to practice we can keep bringing ourselves back to this actual realm of possibilities. Working on the stones, walking about here. If you can concentrate on what you're doing and limit your thinking and ideas about the solutions to yourself or your life to this realm of possibilities that's before you each moment, then there won't be any idea of you or another person. This is what Tozan meant in his poem when he saw himself in the water. What you see, what you saw, the reflection, the reflection is not water,

[25:36]

and it's not him, what is it? His experience was that reflection is his real self. So in that kind of activity, your real you is there. There's not much, you know, there's just dirt, and you walk along in the dirt, and maybe you have some kind of shoe which gets you out of the mud. But life isn't much other than that, maybe fortunately. To want it to be something more than that is seeking some worldly solution. So if we go back to what I call the five concurrent causes which make practice possible, strict practice of morality,

[27:14]

Regulating or having enough food and... Regulating comes later. Having enough food and clothing and having some tranquil place inside you, if not outside you. And stopping causal connections. breaking your causal connections, or worldly activity, or actually means wanting to solve your problems in worldly terms, so that you're content to remain in a quiet place. And fifth, your friends with whom you share your practice. Brother David, you all know who Brother David is? Some of you don't. He was a Viennese psychologist who came to this country and he's now a Dominican? Benedictine. He's a Benedictine

[28:47]

monk whose monastery is in upstate New York, I believe, who's practiced with Taishan's, Edo Roshi's group in New York, and has practiced here for three months, about. And he looks very young, but he's not so young. You know, he looks 30 or so, most people, and I think he's maybe 45 or nearly 50, I think. He was quite a good friend of Thomas Merton. Maybe Thomas Merton and Brother David are the leading Catholic monastics in this country who were interested in Zen and interested in reforming the Catholic monastic system. Anyway, Brother David is in San Francisco now. visiting some people at Zen Center. And he gave a lecture two nights ago in San Francisco in which he said, as did Ted Bastin, the physicist from England, that the necessities for a spiritual life are chastity,

[30:17]

a tranquil place, and obedience. One thing that Ted Bastin felt, I don't know how Brother David feels, I'll see him Monday, so I'll ask him. But Ted Baston felt that monastic life as conceived by the Christians is a calling only for certain people, that it's not something everyone can do. So that the idea of being in a tranquil place forever, is okay because other people will take care of the business of the world whose calling it is to take care of the business of the world. And that outside a tranquil place you can't have the kind of thinking that's necessary for a spiritual life. This is a little different from our way because we feel the tranquil place can be whoever you are

[31:44]

and that our practice is not in the realm of thinking. Anyway, I'll ask Brother David if he feels the same about this point from a Catholic point of view. But he said something quite interesting. Of these three that he mentioned, chastity, solitude, and obedience, obedience he talked about the most as really meaning to completely hear. To obey comes from to hear. So obedience to the rules and to the teacher and to the monastic situation or to life, doesn't mean obey in the usual sense, but the ability to hear. This is very close to or the same as our practice. And as in the teacher who responded to in the discussion about

[33:14]

How do you hear the discourse, the teaching of inanimate objects? He said, you do not hear it, but do not hinder that which hears it. Anyway, the fourth, in the five concurrent causes of giving up worldly solutions is very important for you. Because as long as you try to think, you have that habit of thinking of your practice in those terms, even if you're here, not involved in any worldly activities, if you think of your life, the solutions to your life,

[34:16]

In worldly terms, your practice can never be really subtle. We can say that that practice is non-Buddhist practice in a way, because it's practice aimed at improving your worldly solutions. So in order to practice the various stages of meditation, first we have to have, first we experience four subtle changes in our experience of ourself.

[35:26]

which Suzuki Roshi pointed out at various times. One is, we can say, we're roughly abiding. We can't stay with our concentration or in our sheath, or our practice which we first feel this tactile awareness of that's bigger than our body. We can't stay and we can practice with what prevents us from that or why we choose not to practice or sit still or why we enjoy thinking more. One thing, when you're following up on some good thought, you know, something that pleases you, maybe some worldly solution, and you're thinking, oh, well, if that happened, that would be very nice, and I don't really need it, but it would be nice to have it anyway, and so... I deserve it, certainly, but... After everything I've done.

[36:55]

but of course I'm not caught by it, but anyway... If you have that, if you indulge yourself in that way, enjoying yourself, you know, and you can't cut it off, actually, when you have some real difficult time in your life, some problem which you would very much like to cut through to the calmer base of your life, you won't be able to do it. If you indulge yourself with pleasant thoughts, you won't be able to cut off unpleasant thoughts. All the channels or something will be open. You can't sort of have it one way one time and another way another time. So you want to bring yourself back to this more sheer experience, light experience of yourself.

[38:27]

And as you try to let everything happen without interference, you'll find you can't do that if you have unkind feelings about yourself. If you're criticizing yourself or criticizing other people, you actually can't follow your nature. You can't go with your thinking in the realm of what Dogen called pure thinking, non-thinking. thinking that's not concerned with worldly solutions, but there's some mental activity. Anyway, some warm, kind feeling towards yourself is essential in your practice, or you can't stay with yourself, because rough things will happen. Oh, I don't like that part, or I don't like what that person did. If you have such gross

[40:01]

reactions, it makes you very heavy. It makes your physical experience, mental experience of yourself very heavy. As you can begin to give that up, you begin to have a very light experience of yourself. And you begin to be able to treat your friend or children or Treating yourself in that way is like treating your mind as a child, rather considerate, not too critical. Anyway, as you begin to do that, then you'll know how to take care of your friends, too. So we practice. in this way, giving up rough thinking. What some people translate as roughly abiding. And then there's more smooth abiding. You can stay with your experience more. And you have a quite light feeling. And maybe the third is you

[41:33]

feel like the sky. That sheath is very big, you don't know. Maybe when you first start experiencing it feels like something's coming from outside you or something's going out from you. You can't say which. But eventually there's no boundaries. But still you'll have some sensation of your mind and body are experiencing it. And then your mind and body will drop away. But still there's some consciousness left there. Anyway, this is the preparation, this is the kind of practice which leads to the first In this practice you give up the observer who wants to control your thinking or control your state of mind or worries if your thinking stops, who watches you in the mirror. So in the field of zazen, you know,

[43:36]

You can have this kind of experience and can give up the observer. That's not so difficult, actually. Much more difficult to give up the observer, to give up controlling in your life activity. Not only to give up causal or worldly solutions, But finally, as you give up the observer in zazen, you give up the observer in everything you do. Maybe you have to have an observer in order to participate with people, but it's some figment. So although you can practice always in your activity, still it's so easy to wander and get caught and very hard to give up. So you can always come back to your zazen. And here make, in your zazen, an effort to have calmness or to let calmness

[45:07]

be there, without worrying about controlling your state of mind. Oh, this is too much, or I want to interrupt this with some good thought. When you can give up doing that, you can begin to have real calmness in your dozen, I don't The Sanskrit terms for this kind of beginning practice are... I'm not very good at these words. You know, there's the Pali version and the Sanskrit version and, you know, of course, Chinese and Japanese. I get... I'm afraid I'm not very good at names, but it's samatha, S-A-M-A-T-H-A, I think, and vipasyana, V-I-P-A-S-Y-A-N-A. And that's in Chinese, qi and kuang, c-h-i-h and k-u-a-n. Anyway, qi means serenity or calmness, and kuang means insight. So the first, the fourth kinds of roughly abiding and more smooth, etc., that I gave you, are the way in our zazen we achieve serenity or calmness in our zazen.

[46:35]

what the four, five concurrent causes are meant to make possible for us. And Kong means to see clearly, insight. And the more you can stop everything, to be so calm that you're moving so completely with everything, evenly, that everything has the view that it's stopped almost, like two trains going along, the side of it. Anyway, this is some way of dividing up our practice, which actually can't be divided up, to encourage you and to give you some sense of assurance. At the base of all this, again, must be bodhicitta, the thought of enlightenment. Maybe that has three aspects. One is, you must be convinced that enlightenment is possible, or that we're all enlightened. You must have some convinced feeling about that. If you don't believe, if you believe enlightenment is some

[48:09]

carrot or just some technique or, you know, I don't know what, which you might think, something that's not possible. You have to believe it not only exists but it's possible for you. So the first is that it exists or that it's possible for you. The second is the decision to dedicate yourself to it, to dedicate yourself to enlightenment practice, giving up worldly solutions to your life, actually giving yourself up to everyone, for everyone. And the third is not just seeing the path, but entering the path, doing it. traveling on it, practicing. And this practicing involves calmness and insight as the beginning way

[49:25]

You have some question. You mentioned some techniques for opposing that. And the whole flavor of that essay seems to be more of control than what you just spoke of, of giving up the observer and of the controller. And when a bad thought comes up, not to say, no, I don't want this. I can't tell you the right sound to it. That's a very good question. You didn't hear it, probably. Last time I talked about the Tendai work, jhāna, or meditation for beginners, and in it, it says,

[51:15]

It emphasizes control, it sounds like. If you have bad thoughts, you counteract them with good thoughts. And how does that relate to my saying, giving up control, giving up the observer? Well, there are some... Because of the problems raised by your questions, Zen practices meditation so much more than philosophy or morality. And if you're meditating, in your Zazen you're actually following all the precepts without much effort. And how to extend that to everything

[52:20]

you'll follow the precepts, giving up things which harm you, like smoking and drinking, quite naturally, because if you don't take care of your own body, you can't take care of anything. So our practice is to take care of ourselves in the realm of possibilities, actual possibilities. But the base of our practice is zazen, Still, sometimes Buddhism is called the way of virtue, or the whole meaning of Buddhism is to practice good. Your question actually raises very fundamental problems in Buddhism.

[53:39]

For example, it has nothing to do with Freud's idea that we have certain instincts that are there, you know, or like the Christian feeling that there's a calling. Anybody can practice Buddhism. Actually, we're all very intimate with each other because we know ourselves through zazen, and so we know each other very well. And each person has this experience. And we're not controlled by instincts. aggression or hate or something. But from, like Freud's point of view, maybe the world was divided into some combat between aggressive instincts and other instincts, a death wish or something like that. When Buddhism deals with that, it says that evil or bad has no existence, it arises from perverted thinking. But actually, from the point of view of the Absolute, good thinking and bad thinking is perverted thinking. So, to counteract

[55:24]

bad thoughts with good thoughts is only to counteract one kind of perverted thinking with another kind of perverted thinking, which lets you see that both are unreal. But the first stages of practice definitely involve some control. In Zen, we emphasize all the stages at once, so we begin talking about, right away, no control, giving up, just following. If you practice Zazen a lot, you can practice this way. But if you don't practice Zazen so much, you need more control in your activity. And if you have some big psychological problem, you know, some very powerful compulsive thinking or anxiety, then the Abhidhamma psychology, which is based on using, too, this kind of way of contrasting good thoughts and bad thoughts, of finding how to find, in all of the various experiences you have, those experiences which are more conducive to your harmony, and emphasizing those. So it's a kind of technique, from the point of view of Zen,

[56:53]

Does that answer your question? When thoughts are so convincing of their reality, they seem to insist on being inaccurate. In what sense is a thought, or how can we realize that a thought is unreal? What does it mean for a thought to be unreal? He said thoughts or fantasies are very convincing in their reality and demand enacting. And how can we realize that a thought is unreal? It's a pretty big problem and it's the reason why Suzuki Roshi had the experience of when he, before he offered you a cup of water, it was water.

[58:16]

And after he offered it to you, it was snake oil. It's because your thoughts, our thoughts, are so convincing, we can't believe that maybe our practice is as simple as a cup of water or the dirt we walk on or some... I don't know how to say it. He said, if you realize how simple our practice is, you'll lose confidence So maybe I shouldn't tell you. You'll be discouraged. Because you have such fancy thoughts, you want a fancy practice with many wonderful things about it to be a more interesting substitute. Many religions say, oh, your arm is only that long. Practice my religion and your arm will be a foot longer. You can reach things. You can do things beyond the ordinary realm, et cetera. Anyway, Zen definitely isn't interested in extending your ego or your powers in this way.

[59:48]

Thoughts are as real, you know, as Tozan's reflection in the water. They're as real as anything else when separated from everything else. But your practice is to find a way, before you can do it, before you feel it, to practice with everything simultaneously, not something separated out, a thought that is separated out from the actual situation you're in. So we practice by bringing ourselves back to just the thing we're doing, and our thoughts just that. And at some stage, you may want to follow your thinking more, maybe follow your acting more.

[61:29]

But at that time, if you practice in this way, you must know how to think and act without creating karma. If your thoughts and actions create karma, entangle you with other people and things, you're in much worse trouble. So it's some strategic, actually, thing. What you know, even you may know beyond. No matter what Buddhism says, I know if I do this, I'm in Dutch. Anyway, so you have to use common sense. And for most of us, practice is still in the realm of control. Or maybe better, not being controlled, not being caught. not being tied down.

[62:55]

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