With your support, I'd like to begin by offering a precept. The English word precept has the roots of pre, which means before, and I think prae, which means to take. So, etymologically, precept means to take something beforehand. And so it's a warning. A precept can be a warning or a teaching that you take beforehand before you practice. a religion, for example, you can receive these precepts, which are warnings and teachings. And the precept that I offer at the beginning of this retreat is the precept that

[01:01]

It's a warning that you will be given words. You will be given teachings. You will be given doctrine. And you will be given dogma. Dogma, I believe the word dogma means a teaching or an opinion. or a view, but particularly religious teachings. So I will actually be giving a dogma. The title of the retreat is A Special Transmission Beyond the Scriptures. So there's the dogma There is the teaching in the Zen tradition, and I should say in the Buddhist tradition, there is the teaching that there is a transmission beyond the scriptures of the tradition.

[02:41]

So that's an example of the dogma that I will bring up here. But I warned you beforehand about dogma. And did I talk about crisis last time I was here? Don't remember? OK, well, I've been emphasizing the word crisis. Crisis means that the first definition in the dictionary for crisis is what? What do you think it is? Emergency. Huh? Emergency. It's related to emergency, yeah. What? Collapse? Did you say collapse? It's related to collapse. It's related to culmination.

[03:48]

Anyway, the first meaning of crisis is turning point. And it could be a turning point in a religion. It could be a turning point in a disease. where it suddenly becomes much worse, where a person goes into a collapse, but it also can be the point at which you get much better. Crisis is usually used for acute illness rather than chronic. The time of sudden turning. So I... I... I offer you the dogma, I offer you my opinion, that there is a reality in which we are turning all the time. As the saying goes, in the subtle round mouth of the pivot,

[05:00]

The spiritual work turns. There's a suggestion in the Zen tradition that spiritual life lives in a turning. There's a turning place. And that's where spiritual life is actually living. It's a place of crisis. the center of spiritual life is a place of crisis, and to find the crisis of the moment is to find the place where your spiritual life is living, is turning, is leaping. As Dogen says, the Buddha way is basically leaping. That's basically what the Buddha way is.

[06:05]

It's leaping. It's living a life of leaping. Leaping and turning. But I also unfold the interesting Chinese word for crisis, which is a word made of two Chinese characters. And one of the Chinese characters, the first one means danger. And the second Chinese character is a character in my name, . It means energy. It means opportunity. It means the force, the function. It means the way the universe is functioning all over the place. So crisis is made of two parts in the Chinese character.

[07:11]

One side is when there's danger and opportunity. When you hear dogma, when you hear religious teaching, If you stay away from it, if you stay away from the turning point of the teaching, if you stay away from the crisis of the teaching, if you stay away from being in crisis with the teaching you're hearing, then you can stay away from the danger to some extent too. But you also stay away from the opportunity of the teaching of the dogma. If you enter into the actual turning point of the teaching, which is where the opportunity of the teaching is, you're also open to the danger of the teaching.

[08:21]

And the main danger of teaching, the main danger of dogma, is what? Not being able to leap. Yeah, not being able to leap. And what do we call it when dogma can't leap? What is that called? Unleaping dogma. What's that called? Right? Yeah, so what do we call it besides attachment? Using the word dogma. Dogmatic. Dogmatic. Right. When you get attached to dogma, then that's called dogmatic. When you receive a religious teaching and become attached to it, when you receive a religious teaching and you don't leap with it, then you fall into dogmatism. Dogma is doctrine.

[09:27]

Dogmatic is dictation. is dictatorship. So if you look for synonyms for dogma, you look under doctrine, teaching. Look for synonyms for dogmatic or dogmatism, you look under dictator, dictatorial. Does that make sense to you? that teachings and people are opportunities. Does that make sense? That people are opportunities? Teachings are opportunities. People are opportunities. You're an opportunity. I'm an opportunity. I'm giving you a warning

[10:32]

Also, teachers, teachings, people are also dangers when you live in crisis. And also, if we can receive dogma and open to the danger of becoming dogmatic, we can also open to the opportunity of not being dogmatic. And not only not being dogmatic, but not being dogmatic about people who are dogmatic. And help people who are dogmatic to become free of being dogmatic. Now, I asked, what's the danger of dogma?

[11:45]

And the answer that I gave, that came up, is dogmatism. To make dogma into an ism. But then there's another danger that comes after that. What comes after dogmatism and religious dictatorship? What follows from that? Something else, kind of familiar. Suffering. Suffering, but what kind? And what is that? That's the same thing, right? What follows from that? It's a popular term. You're concerned with it. Yeah, but then what follows from that? Type of picture. Dogmatism. Huh? War, yeah, war. War follows. Religious war follows. Violence. Religious violence. religious war. Have you heard about that?

[12:47]

It seems to be happening now in this world. Anybody receiving any religious teaching, any dogma, if you get close to it and you open to the crisis the turning point of that religious teaching to the real life of it. There's an opportunity of realizing the real life of it. But there's also the danger that you become dogmatic and that you will join the causal conditions for dogmatism and religious violence. On the other hand, there's the opportunity that you will actually receive the teaching, and in particular, you can receive the teaching of leaping, and leap free of holding on to the dogma, and that you will become part of the practice, which will start relieving you yourself and your friends who are practicing with you, but also spreading the teaching of not attaching to teaching,

[14:07]

to all the people who are receiving teachings. Spread the force of undermining dogmatism all over the place. And undermine the conditions for religious war. So my warning, my precept, is that we, here, receiving dogma and being alert to the possibility that we're attaching to it. Once again, when you receive dogma, when you receive teachings, and you hold to them, you believe them, and you hold to them, that's another danger there, is that you will not be open to conversing with people who do not agree with the teachings which you hold to.

[15:14]

Or if you give a teaching, if you're a teacher and you give a teaching and you hold to it, you may not be interested in explaining to people or proving to people what you're giving to them because there's no need to prove it. Because you're holding to it. It's absolutely true. Or it's absolutely true and you hold to it, so you don't need to talk about it. Conversation is precluded. So, one of the main antidotes to dogmatism is conversation. And telling that is another dogma. Because it's a teaching. I'm giving you a teaching that if you want to work to undermine dogmatism, fundamentalism, and so on.

[16:30]

But I actually like dogmatism better than fundamentalism because if a person could be a fundamentalist and not attached to being fundamentalist, If they could let go of their fundamentalism, even though they're still maybe saying, I'm still a fundamentalist, but I'm letting go of it and I'm willing to leap with it. So I'm suggesting, I'm giving the teaching, I'm giving the dogma that it would be good if the fundamentalist and the non-fundamentalist were not dogmatic about their ways. So the fundamentalists, who were leaping free of fundamentalism, could help those liberals, or whatever they're called, the non-fundamentalists, maybe simplists, they could help them, and the non-fundamentalists, who leaped clear of being non-fundamentalists, could demonstrate the way to be free of dogmatism

[17:44]

So that's a dogma I'm offering to you. But as I offer it, I warn you that I could be dogmatic about that and so could you. We could become the dogmatic anti-dogmatism, anti-dogmatic. So we can, and if we are anti, if we're the dogmatic anti-dogmatist, Guilt. There's a possibility of leaping clear of that. By opening to the dangers of our situation, and when you open to the dangers, you open to the opportunities. And again, opening to the dangers, the eye that opens to danger is the eye that opens to opportunity. The eye that opens to dangers are the eyes that open to the opportunity of the way the world's working.

[18:48]

The way we are leaping together, actually. The way we're actually not at war. Or the way of actually being at peace with each other. The vision of that opens when you open to the vision of the dangers of war. But not just open to the dangers of war and become frightened, but open to the dangers of dogmatism of religious self-righteousness, of attachment, of not leaping, opening to all those dangers and seeing them and their consequences and violence, seeing it all, just seeing it, seeing it, seeing it, without being afraid, and not be afraid of it. And I think, become afraid of these things. Be aware of the dangers and the opportunities and look at them the same way, including not having a preference for the opportunities over the dangers.

[19:53]

That's my warning, my precept before I start talking about the special transmission. There's a possibility of being dogmatic about the special transmission, a danger of being dogmatic about the special transmission. And there's the opportunity of not being dogmatic about it and realizing it. And I propose the dogma that the special transmission is very much about not attaching to the special transmission itself. transmission of leaping and freedom and non-attachment. And then to take good care of this thing, this wonderful special transmission to take care of it, at the same time not attaching to it.

[21:05]

It's like taking care of a child, a precious child. without becoming attached to it. Take care of the child when you leap with the child. Keep up with the leaping of the child. And another thing I wanted to say is kind of a warning to me and you is that to some extent, when I'm doing a retreat, it's kind of nice for me if the people in the retreat are kind of nice. Nice is not necessarily good. It's kind of easy for me, or simple for me, if the people at the beginning of the retreat just go all the way through the retreat, or if new people don't come into the retreat, in some ways it's easier because

[22:13]

If new people come in, they don't know what we already talked about. And in some sense, you feel like you can go deeper. You can progress along some line of dogma if new people aren't coming in. But this week, new people aren't going to be coming in. Like this afternoon, a little wave is going to come in. And on Friday, there's another wave that's going to come in. Saturday morning another little wave might come in and go back out. So I think, well, what's going to happen when these waves of beings come into this situation? How will they be able to follow? So one way is that you tell them about what happened before. But that has a problem because the people who have already heard it say, I don't want to hear that again. So I I warn you and I invite you to consider supporting the reiteration of what I just said as these new waves come in.

[23:23]

Because my point of view, from my experience, I'm redoing this all the time to different groups around. Because they haven't heard certain things, I have to tell them. So I'm spinning round and round in these teachings. But I invite you to also experience what it's like to see new people come in and be included in a process. And one way to do it is you can just be doing something, and then they can say, well, what are you doing? And you can tell them. But another way to do it is you know that they don't know it, and you tell them. It's like jumping a rope, you know? When you have two people holding the end of a rope, they're swinging a rope, and somebody comes and joins in. The person's watching me.

[24:25]

People are swinging the rope, and the person's watching me. One, two, three, and they jump in. And so if you people get into the jump roping, then when new people come, we have to not have people. We have the opportunity and the danger of including them in the process. And I tell myself that to kind of make myself feel comfortable with this phenomena of people coming in and thinking of how to include them. So, again, teachings, I suggest when you hear them. I suggest when you hear teachings. What do you think I suggest when you hear teachings?

[25:28]

What do I suggest as the path of the Buddha way when you hear some teachings? I mean, what have I just already suggested to you? How to relate to that? Leap with it. Yeah, leap with it. Leap with the teaching. Or another way I suggested it to relate to the teaching? Yeah. Enter the crisis. Use the teaching as an opportunity to enter into the crisis of the moment. Use anything you experience as an opportunity to enter into the crisis of the moment. When you hear a telephone ring, what's the danger? What's the opportunity? It could be bad news.

[26:28]

But it might be an opportunity to help the bad news. An opportunity to hear a message. And there's a danger of getting angry at it. That's a suggestion of how to relate to these teachings. And also, part of the danger to watch out for in teachings, watch out for the danger of dogmatism. And watch for the opportunity of conversation. See if conversation is allowed. And if it's not allowed, if you feel it's being inhibited, Of course, that's a sign that there may be some dogmatism. But then how can you converse with the apparent refusal to converse? How can you dance and leap with the resistance to converse about the teaching?

[27:35]

But I'm inviting you anyway to converse about any of these teachings. Particularly watch out for any kind of rigidity that you sense in the space with regard to these teachings that may appear. And that's one of the nice things about Zen traditions. We tell stories, which we call stories. Some traditions tell stories which they don't call stories. For example, sometimes they tell stories which they say are history. And they miss the point that it's his story. They say, that's not a story, that's history. Or that's not a story, that's my story. And my story is history. And you say, well, you're history.

[28:37]

Or sometimes they say, toast. So it's nice to say, OK, these are stories you're hearing. And stories, I suggest here's a story, or is it story and dogma are almost interchangeable to me. I have the dogma that stories are not what they're about. If you tell a story about this morning, or if you tell a story about this retreat after it's over, I'm fine to tell a story. But I tell you the story. I give you the dogma. The story you tell about this retreat is not the retreat. But it's fine to tell a story about this retreat and then see if somebody says, that's not what happened. And you say, of course not. That was just my story about it. What was your story?

[29:43]

And then they tell their story. And you say, now, that was your story. Now, do you think that's what happened? And then we say, uh, no. I wouldn't do that. So why tell stories about what happened? Why tell stories about interactions between Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and between Buddhas and Buddhist students, between Zen masters and Zen students? Why tell stories if they're not what happened? Why tell stories about what happened if the story's not what happened? Why do that? What's the reason? What's the good of it? It's a good thing, Pat. It's good to tell stories about the retreat if that's not what happened. Yeah, I think it's good for conversation and to break the dogma. It's good for conversation and what? To break the dogma. To break the dogma, yeah, right. You can tell a story about the retreat to break, because some people are going to leave this retreat with a dogma about this retreat.

[30:49]

And some of them are going to be attached to the dogma. Some people are going to maybe walk out here attached to their dogma, to their story of the retreat. So it's good if they tell a story about the retreat so we can converse about it and help them become free of their story of the retreat. Stories are there to help us understand. They're not actually what happened. They never are. But if we don't put our stories out there, we can't find out where we're stuck. So that's my introduction, which I'll do maybe again. And it's an introduction to this phrase, a special transmission beyond or outside the teaching. I like beyond somewhat better because because it doesn't really mean outside or inside.

[31:56]

In other words, the transmission can occur while someone is speaking a scripture. You can have a teacher speaking something which is later called a scripture, or speaking a scripture which the person's already heard, and while they're speaking the scripture, There can be the special transmission, which is beyond the words that the person is speaking. But also the person can be doing something besides speaking the scripture. And the special transmission can be realized. And this phrase, the special transmission beyond the scriptures, is supposedly, again there's a story that that was said by Bodhidharma. the Chinese, I think it was an Indian monk who went to China. There's a story that an Indian monk went to China and his name was Bodhidharma.

[32:59]

And he said that there is, or I have, or I'm part of, or I'm bringing you, a special transformation outside the scriptures. A way to directly point to the mind and see its nature and realize Buddhahood. Supposedly he said something like that. Of course he didn't, really, because he didn't speak English. And it's pretty funny, he probably didn't speak Chinese very well anyway, because he's Indian. So here he is, an Indian guy who's speaking Chinese with an Indian accent. I don't know what that sounds like. Or speaking Chinese and getting translated. Or maybe it was the English, although English wasn't very well developed at that time in the sixth century. It wasn't like English, right?

[34:01]

It was mostly Anglo-Saxon and Latin. Anyway, I don't know what he was talking. And I don't even know if there was a Bodhidharma. I mean, whether there's a story that there was a Bodhidharma who came from India, went to China, met the emperor, sat cross-legged, and said, I got this special transmission outside the scriptures. Now, some people say that that is Zen, that what Zen is. And Bodhidharma is the big founder, that what Zen is is a special transmission outside the scriptures. I would agree. Yes, that is what Zen is. But what I also propose to you is that a special transmission outside the scriptures is what the Buddha Dharma is. Because Shakyamuni Buddha did the same thing. He was an Indian person who didn't go to China. And he also probably didn't speak English. Maybe he did. He probably didn't speak Chinese, but maybe he did.

[35:01]

I don't know what he did. But most people don't think he spoke Sanskrit either or Pali. But his teachings were written down in Sanskrit and Pali. And then later they were translated into Chinese and Japanese and Korean and English and French and Russian. So there was apparently somebody in India, and he, I would suggest to you, was conveying what was part of, he was working for, he devoted his life to, a special transmission outside the scriptures. He wasn't reading scriptures to his students. He was just talking to them. He'd meet somebody and talk to them. And then they would, so later they would recite and what they heard him say. And then they wrote down what he said. But what I'm emphasizing here now is that there was a special transmission outside the words he said.

[36:08]

He used the words and he used his face and his body before speaking. That situation in the mountains, in the Indian heat, in the jungle, and the student's body, and the earth, and gravity, all those things together, and then there was words coming from this faith. And in that situation, there was a special transmission. And then they wrote down the words that he said, and those words became scriptures. But also they wrote, they didn't just write down the words, They also wrote down where he was and when it was and who was with him. So they said, Thus I have heard at one time the Buddha was in a certain place and there were certain people there. And sometimes they tell you the time of day and they tell you his posture.

[37:09]

And then they tell you somebody came up to meet him and asked a question and then they say what he said. And then sometimes at the end of what he said they tell you that this person received this special transmission outside of the scriptures. They don't say that literally, but they say this person understood Dharma. The Dharma was given, was transmitted to the person, and the person understood through this interaction. And I'm pointing to the special transmission that occurred under those circumstances. And then another word that we use for this transmission besides the special transmission outside the scripture is face-to-face transmission. And the Chinese character for it is, the Chinese words for it are two characters, men, jiu.

[38:13]

Men is faith and jiu is to give. but also could be to entrust, to convey, to transmit. So it's faith, transmission, literally. And the word for transmit, or give, has two parts. One part is hand, and the other part means receive. So both have, the word for give has both Hand and receiving. There's a giving and a receiving in the word giving. There's a handing and a receiving in the word giving. And then the face is there. So what you just read Dogen's words, translated into English, on menjū, on faith transmission.

[39:30]

And he emphasizes the faith, the Buddha faith. The Buddha faith meeting the student faith, which becomes the Buddha faith meeting the Buddha faith, and not meeting the special transmission may occur. And it also occurs in both directions. And in no direction. And then there's another crisis there. That's another crisis. It's the crisis of face-to-face transmission. There's dangers and opportunities. When the transmission is working fully, it is aware of the dangers and aware of the opportunities.

[40:37]

And realizing the opportunities doesn't eliminate the dangers. One of the opportunities of the special transmission is that you're steadily hopefully constantly aware of the dangers that are involved in this special transmission. Dangers, again, of not leaping, of identifying with it, of thinking it's yours or ours and not theirs. So I'll be telling you stories, probably, in addition to the ones I've already told you. So again, when you hear these stories, these stories are situations in which there can be and has been this special transmission.

[41:39]

So some stories are stories about the special transmission. And some stories don't seem to be stories about the special transmission. But every story is an opportunity for special transmission because the special transmission is a special transmission beyond the story. So whatever story you hear has the same opportunities and dangers. Again, I'm proposing to you that even in the time of Buddha, or even in the time of the Shakyamuni Buddha in India, or you could say especially in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, especially in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, especially at the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, you actually had Shakyamuni Buddha.

[43:07]

You actually had the Buddha faith in India. People could actually go see the Buddha faith. And they could actually have face-to-face transmission with the Buddha, our Buddha. And at that time, he was not giving people written texts about Buddhism. There weren't any. It was all face-to-face, finger-to-finger, word-to-ear transmission. And at that time, and even when there was text written down, I suggest to you that the written text is not the proper medium for transmitting the Dharma. The proper medium for transmitting the Dharma is face-to-face transmission.

[44:14]

That's a story. If the Buddha had to appear in the world, it could have been text, which wrote down what he said. But people cannot pick up text and read them and understand the Dharma. If they pick up text and the face appears in the text and they meet that face and that face meets them face to face, then it could happen. But a person by herself cannot pick up any sacred Buddhist text or any text that any beings have written. They cannot by themselves pick it up and see the Dharma. They have to receive it through this special transmission, face-to-face, unproposalness to it. So the stories of the special transmission beyond the teachings have become, excuse me, the stories of the special transmission outside the scriptures have become the scriptures of the Zen tradition.

[45:39]

Zen tradition particularly has stories of when the transmission occurred outside the scriptures. And then those stories have become our scriptures. And then it becomes stories of people who study the Zen scriptures and again realize the transmission beyond stories they read about the realization of the Dharma outside the story. On and on like that. So, and I'm suggesting again that the special transmission occurs in the medium of menju. It occurs in the medium of face-to-face transmissions. And when Dogen says in what we chanted here, I vow from this life on through countless lives to hear the true Dharma, my understanding of that would be he means I vow to hear the true Dharma in the face of Buddha.

[46:41]

I, Dogen, the Zen master, I want to hear the true Dharma. But when I hear the true Dharma, it's not like me, the Zen master, sitting here in the woods hearing the true Dharma. For me, the ancestor of the Soto Zen lineage in Japan, sitting in my lovely temple in the mountains, and me sitting here and listening to the true Dharma, he doesn't mean that. He means me, Dogen, sitting here, meeting Buddha face to face, hearing the true Dharma. I propose to you that we cannot hear the true Dharma by ourselves. We hear the two dharmas in a special transmission face-to-face. That's the dogma. Now, you can test to see if it's dogmatic. And the way to test it is conversation. See if you can converse with me and I can let go of everything I said. But before you have a chance, I'm leaving.

[47:46]

See you later. I have a date in Austin to go right now. But I would have been willing to talk to you about it. And you would have been able to test me. And you would have found me very flexible. And I had no attachment to what I said. OK? Really? Can I combine that? Go ahead. Converse, if you like, with whoever you want to. Do you have cell phones in your Zendo? Is there policy about that? Well, I just thought people might want to take out their cell phones and call some people and talk to them about this. Have some conversation. Or you could have conversations here if you want to.

[48:50]

Yes? When you said a few minutes ago that the only way to have the conversation was in face-to-face? I didn't quite say that, but I'm saying that the only way to have the transmission is in face-to-face. The transmission doesn't necessarily have a conversation. But I'm just saying that once you start contemplating this special transmission, the dogma of the special transmission and the dogma of the special transmission and the special transmission of the dogma. Special transmission transmits dogma. It transmits teachings, and there's a teaching of special transmission. That won't necessarily be a conversation. But once you have a dogma that you think is very helpful to you, that you really want to devote your life to, once you have a teaching or a doctrine that you want to study and teach, then conversation will be a way to test to make sure you're not becoming dogmatic about the teaching which you're devoted to.

[50:05]

Actually, I think I see what you said, that the only way to receive the teaching is faith-to-faith. But then there is this So you're saying you could read and have a powerful, and then you could have a conversation to verify the reading? Yes, so you read the document, face-to-face transmission, and it's powerful, yes. What I'm saying to you is that what the text says, what the document, face-to-face transmission that you read says, it says that, I'm saying it says this, it says that as you're reading this text, in the situation of reading this text, if you receive the Dharma, actually, if you hear the true Dharma while you're reading the text, it will be face-to-face.

[51:11]

If you're reading this text and you think you hear the Dharma, but you don't think it's face-to-face, it's not the true Dharma. Now, you don't have to think while you're reading the text and you hear the Dharma. When you hear the Dharma, you don't have to think that it's face-to-face. But if you think it's not face-to-face and you believe it, that's wrong. That's what this text is saying. In a later part of the text, there's examples of some people who thought they could receive the Dharma without meeting face to face. So if you're reading the text and you hear that you're Dharma, that means you're hearing the Dharma in Buddha's face. We can only hear the Dharma in Buddha's face. So if you read a text, if you're in the phenomenal experience of reading a text, and you are actually meeting Buddha's face, then you can hear the true Dharma. If you do hear the true Dharma, you must have been meeting Buddha at that time, whether you think so or not.

[52:18]

Because again, your idea of who Buddha is or what Buddha's face is, is not Buddha's face. But the text is saying you must be meeting Buddha when you hear the Dharma. It's through meeting Buddha that you can hear the Dharma. The meeting with Buddha, the meeting with Buddha and Buddha's disciples, the bodhisattvas, those meetings are the environment in which you hear the Dharma. And you could be reading a text or looking at a stream and hear the true Dharma as you're listening to the stream. But you don't just go up to the stream and listen to the true Dharma. You can go up to the stream and listen to the stream, But if you don't meet Buddha, you won't be able to hear the true Dharma of the sound of the stream. And usually we don't have to say that Zen is a special transmission outside the sound of a stream. But it's true. That's also true. We more emphasize the special context because a lot of time when Buddha was talking, Buddha's face was there at the same time.

[53:29]

So because Buddha's face was there and Buddha's body was there, around, you know, under his face, because of that situation, if he happened to be talking, the people heard the true Dharma. So if you don't see Buddha and you're reading a text, whatever the text, but let's say it's a text on face-to-face transmission, and while you're reading the text on face-to-face transmission, you hear the true Dharma, that's because Buddha's face was there. Then you verify it by going and having a conversation. Test to see if you're stuck in your understanding, for example, of the true Dharma that you heard. And I'm not saying it never happens that somebody would hear the true Dharma in a face-to-face meeting with the Buddha and that later they would pass all tests.

[54:31]

I won't say that. I will not say that. I'm not saying that. When you hear the true Dharma meeting Buddha's faith, at that time you are initiated into the Buddha path because you have actually heard the true Dharma. But that's not the end of the path, that's the start of the path. From then on, you're enlightened, but you haven't finished your enlightenment course. So if you look at, for example, the first scripture of the tradition, the Buddha was talking to five people. And at the end of the talk, one of them understood. All of them saw the Buddha's face, but one of them saw the Buddha's face and received the special transmission, which was outside of the words that the Buddha said.

[55:32]

All five heard the words of the Buddha. which become the first scripture of the tradition. One of them heard the true Dharma. All five of them saw Buddha's face. They were all five in the right situation, namely, in Buddha's face. That's the right situation for hearing the Dharma. So one of them heard it and entered the path. Would you say then that only one of them actually saw Buddha's face? No. I wouldn't necessarily say they all were like, I'm not going to oppose that either, but I think they all could have seen Buddha's face, but the other five weren't ripe. So Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, come in the room now, we all could see the Buddha's face, we all have a chance, but perhaps none of us were really ripe enough. for this transmission to occur.

[56:35]

But maybe one of us would be. And so I will tell stories. This is a story of five. One of them was ready. One of them was initiated into the way. However, over time, all five got initiated. Within a couple of weeks, all five were initiated. However, then he gave further teaching, and then he took all five from the initial introduction, initial hearing of the true Dharma, which they had in his faith, They all got initiated, and they took all of them for the rest of the path to liberation within a month or two. So that's why it's possible to be initiated into the path, actually, to hear the true Dharma and be initiated in Buddha's face, though. I'm not saying. I'm suggesting to you. I'm suggesting to you. And this is the part where you can get dogmatic. I can get dogmatic. is that the tradition saying that through meeting a Buddha that you actually hear the true Dharma and then enter the actual practice.

[57:42]

However, if you get tested to see if you have any attachment after you've heard the true Dharma, you probably would fail the test. And in other words, you would not finish the course. So was not He did not finish the course of study when he entered the path. He became the stream enterer. He entered the stream of the path after that first talk, which probably took two minutes. But over the next few weeks, having Buddha's face there pretty much day after day, all day, this intensive face-to-face transmission, he completed the course to our hardship in a few weeks. And all of them did within a couple of months. But you would test it. That would be the idea. If you heard the true dharma, it would follow naturally that you would test yourself.

[58:49]

You would enter into conversation. You would want to do that. And you would need to do that. And you would maybe fail the test a few times. And your failing of the test would be your further training And if you failed the test and knew you failed the test and failed the test and knew you failed the test, that being tested and failing, that's further meetings of the Buddha, which leads you to further development. Leaping. Leaping. Further leaping, yeah. And further testing to see if you're really leaping. You leaped? Yeah, you leaped, but now you're stuck. That was a good leap. That's not a good loop. That's not a good loop. Now you stop. And in that dialogue, you can also test the teacher, too, to see if the teacher's looping both directions moving forward. So the Zen people emphasized the special transmission.

[59:54]

They did not hear this term so emphasized. The Buddha doesn't say, you know, all these people who entered the way had to enter the way by talking to me. He doesn't say that. But if you look at it, if you look at the text, they don't tell you how to enter the way. They don't tell you how to get right view in the 30 texts. They tell you the first step in the path is right view, but they don't tell you how to get right view. But if you look at 30, you see the way that the people got right view, God is by talking to Buddha. And it's kind of, people don't want to say that because how could we get right view if we don't have Buddha? That'd be part of the problem, right? At that time, it wasn't a problem because all you had to do was go talk to Buddha and if you were right, you could actually realize right view by having a face-to-face meeting with him. So later, as you know, maybe later presentations of the Eightfold Path say that you start at the third phase. The first phase is right view.

[60:55]

The second phase is right intentions. Third phase is right speech and so on, right livelihood and right action, right? So a lot of people say these days that you start the Buddhist path with ethics and then go around and come into right view at the end. But the first scripture doesn't start with ethics. Now, these people already were practicing ethics and concentration. which is part of their rightness. The Buddha started the first teaching as a teaching of right view, a teaching of the middle way, a teaching of the eightfold path, and formidable truth. It's right view teachings he gave first to them. That's how he started them. And it was face to face. So again, the Zen people emphasized the face to face. Buddha didn't emphasize it. He just was doing it. But the text don't say, please notice how this happened.

[61:59]

They were in Buddha's face. That's how this happened. It's there. He's talking to them. But they don't say, do you see that they're meeting and talking? See that? And they say, that's the situation in which this thing is occurring. And part of what the Zen people are saying is, well, we're also saying, we need Buddha. But where is the Buddha? So we've got a problem. Where is Buddha's face? So there's a problem for us. Because Shakyamuni Buddha doesn't seem to be around anymore. So some people say, well, since Shakyamuni Buddha is around, we're not going to be able to practice. Or we should just change it so that we don't need Buddha's face, and we can practice without it. Well, we have . We have a story about Dharmakaya.

[63:00]

Right. And we have a story about Buddha's face encountering Buddha's face, too. We have that story. We have some Lotus Sutra stories. We have quite a few more stories which Mahayana will bring forth to help us understand how face-to-face transmission, how the special transmission could occur after the departure of our founder, Aaron G. So in a way, what I'm saying is, this topic, an implication of this topic for me is, don't lower your standards so that you can practice by yourself.

[64:01]

And don't raise your standards. Just accept that the standards of this tradition are that you can't practice by yourself. You have to practice in Buddhist faith. we need this face-to-face transmission. And I'm proposing that it was totally what Shakyamuni Buddha was up to. He didn't have any scriptures. He just met people, and then he started talking to them. And then the special transmission occurred, and they wrote it down. And they remembered what he said. But it was kind of like a baby in the bathwater situation. They wrote down the bathwater. to take care of the baby. Does that make sense, Kathy? No? You made this face-to-face thing to me. I got a face-to-face transmission from Kathy. It's like this.

[65:05]

It's kind of like... For the recording device, it's like, crinkle your forehead and look towards the ceiling, and then tighten your cheekbones there, and then when he says to you, does that make sense, say no. And then last, the bathwater is the Buddha was at such and such a place. And these monks were with him. And then so and so came and asked him. And he said this. And that's the bathwater. So we take care of the bathwater. We write down the bathwater. And we don't mind because the bathwater It's bad that it's bath water because it's the bath water around the baby. It's like we love the bath water because that water touched the baby. It saved all the water. The transmission is so wonderful.

[66:09]

We saved the dirty water that it was conveyed in. Like there's this, my daughter has this outgoing message on her answering machine where she says, say hello. Hello. Say leave a message. Say goodbye. Bye. So it's like, you know, it's like a recording that's about three years old, you know, but you don't want to throw it out, right? That beautiful little message of them. And pretty soon his voice could be like, hello. Hello. If you want to save that little voice, that's just bath water around the baby. That's just the sound of the baby. So, in one sense, Buddhist speech is what the Buddhist, you know, is the sound of the Buddhist voice, but the real, the actual thing inside there is that when Buddha talks, an inner thing happens to us, and we hear the Dharma inside,

[67:20]

But you can't write down the Dharma you hear inside. You can't write that down. It's silent actually. No words reach it. So you write down what the Buddha was saying at the time if you heard the Dharma in your heart. You say those words because at that time you heard the Dharma while he was talking. I one time heard a Japanese Zen teacher talking and he was having some difficulty speaking English. And, you know, I was at that time and other times too touched by his effort to try to speak English. And he would occasionally whack his head, you know, that's not what I meant to say. You know, he kept trying to speak English and give this Dharma talk, you know. He's just, you know, just like a little guy there kind of like, trying to, you know, give this talk. Meantime, the Dharma was coming.

[68:27]

Even though he was struggling, the Dharma was coming. I thought, I think I hear... I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I heard something else is being said here. I don't know what it was, but it was like, something's going on here, and I don't know what it is, but it's happening, and it's really... well, I don't know what to say, really. Because what I say again is like, but it's there, you know. So part of what we need to do is make ourselves a right as part of our job. Like the people who heard the Buddha's first talk, these were yogis who were on a par with the Buddha. They were his yogi pals who were just about as good at concentration as he was. And so they were really ripe. And one of them was ripe enough to, in the first talk, be initiated.

[69:30]

And they were all ripe enough to get initiated quite soon. Part of the reason why we sit is to ripen ourselves, to hang ourselves on the tree of sitting and ripen, get softer and more tender and open to the dangers and the opportunities of meeting the Buddha's face. opportunity, the crisis of needing the teaching and hearing the teaching. And meantime, we take care of the bathwater. I email Gay Lynn some bathwater from San Francisco. She prints it out in this morning with chants of the bathwater about face-to-face transmission. And while you read it, you might feel like, hmm, something's happening here, something powerful as I read this. Okay, fine. But it's not you sitting there by yourself reading it if you're hearing the Dharma. It's that Buddhist faith there.

[70:30]

You're reading about Buddha's faith, and somehow while you're reading about Buddha's faith, Buddha's faith's there too? Where is it? It's somewhere around right here. It's somewhere around here in the true Dharma. But please understand that the text is telling you that when you read this text and you hear the diamond, that's because you're actually with Buddha's face while you're reading about Buddha's face. We're actually in Buddha's face. We're actually really. What really means, there's two reallys. One really is we really don't see Buddha's face, do we? That's one really. One really is, well, I see Buddha's statue over there, but I don't see Buddha's face in everybody's face. That's one reason. The other really is everything you see is always mediated by Buddha's faith. That's another reason. And that's where the Dharma will be heard. Through Buddha's faith.

[71:32]

That's where the special transmission lives. In Buddha's faith. In Buddha interacting with each of us. In Buddha's practicing together with each of us. That's one, that's the other really. That's the really of the Mahayana. It's the Buddhas practicing together with each person is the Mahayana. And there may be another teaching which looks like people practicing by themselves, right? It may look like that. But even in the early teachings, I suggest you look at the early teachings. Those people were with the Buddha. They had like a historical body there. We don't have the historical body anymore of the Shakyamuni Buddha. We have infinite Buddhas around us all the time. But still, probably have some questions about that.

[72:35]

What do you mean all these Buddhas? Converse about that. Question that. Interact with that. Don't just swallow it and hold on to it. You may even have to, some Zen people even have to throw out the bath water sometimes. Although that's really dangerous, you know. If you take the text, you know, you chant it, throw it out. Dangerous. It might be harmful. I thought maybe she was afraid that people would throw out all the scriptures that she xeroxed. Does the bathwater thing make sense to you now, Kathy?

[73:42]

Yes. Is it the case that any person, any thing, any experience can be the face of the Buddha? Or can you explain what the particular relationship of a transmitted teacher and that relationship is? is about in terms of facilitating the experience of meaning? I'd like you to raise that question again sometime, but I'll give you a short answer because people are starting to leave the room in disgust.

[74:45]

or if not in disgust, for gustatory reasons. It's not the case that everybody's face is Buddha's face. But it is the case that no matter what you're looking at, including a person's face, you can meet Buddha's face there. But Buddha's face isn't the person's face. Buddha's face isn't the rock. Buddha's face isn't the tree. But Buddha's face, what is Buddha's face? the thing through which you can hear the true Dharma when you're looking at the rock. So, if you're looking at a rock and Shakyamuni Buddha steps in front of you and starts talking to you, you can hear the true Dharma. There's something about these enlightened beings, there's something about this Dharmakaya

[75:54]

that Barbara brought up, that it can manifest a face through which it will teach you. And it actually manifests, it sometimes manifests a face which lives for several years sometimes, apparently, in history, and transmits to a whole bunch of people, that face does. But that's also, now that that face is gone, that face that lived from 29 years old to 80 years old, now that that face is gone and cremated, where's the Buddha face? It wasn't very Shakyamuni Buddha's face that was doing it. It was that the Buddha face took his face and used his face. And sometimes his face was there, but nobody was ready to receive it. And sometimes somebody was ready. The Buddha, actually, some people he very much wanted to transmit Dharma to, and they were actually having competitive feelings with him and tried to hurt him.

[77:04]

He couldn't. Some people he couldn't help. Even though the Buddha face was there with his face. His face was, in some sense, not the Buddha face. My face is not the Buddha face. Your face is not the Buddha face. But when someone needs our faith, and here's the true Dharma, then the Buddhist faith is there in our faith. So to get into what transmission means, and what a teacher means, in Zen or whatever, that's a bigger, kind of a complicated question if you want to bring that up again. So I'm not saying that everything is the Buddhist faith, but when you're looking at something, or hearing something, or touching something, and you hear the true Dharma, and you touch something, or see something, or hear something, at that moment I'm saying, you didn't do that by yourself. Buddha's face was there with you. You did it because something which has no attachment to any kind of idea and wants to help you understand Dharma is interacting with you.

[78:16]

And that's called dharma. Buddha's knowledge. Buddha's knowledge. Together with the wish to help you have Buddha's knowledge interacts with you when you hear the Dharma. And that can be while you're meeting with anyone. However, there is something to meeting somebody whose faith has been consecrated to this process, who's saying, I'm here to play this game with you all. And I'm warning you beforehand that there should be awareness of the crisis in which the realization occurs, and the dangers are there, and this opportunity is there. And we should be able to test it from both sides through conversation.

[79:17]

But I think, you know, it would be nice to bring it up maybe this afternoon or tomorrow or something. Again. Go a little bit more into it. Because now it's 11.30 or so. Maybe we can stop. All right? Okay.

[79:39]

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