I want you to know that our practice is very realistic and practical. And as someone said last time that how I was describing the story of the Dharma and the Emperor was way beyond. Maybe so, it's something new to you anyway, but the beginning is never way beyond. You can always begin, the beginning is always right here. So there's nothing really that's way beyond except as you

[01:03]

Imagine it. So just to keep beginning is all you have to know. If you just keep beginning, it will be always stretching out, maybe. Yesterday we talked too much about the stick, so I should say something, too. And I don't like being so serious. I would like you to understand the stick by being hit. That's all. You make me be serious.

[02:16]

Maybe that's my job. If serious or gravity or grave means teacher in Sanskrit, maybe I have to be grave for you sometimes to remind you not to be caught up in petty things. Sometimes I think we're rather like one of those early three-speed record players. I don't know if you had one, but they didn't have it worked out yet and they would sometimes drop three records at once and play them 45 and they're supposed to play them 33. Various things kept getting mixed up. Anyway, somehow Sometimes we don't, I don't, we all don't strike each other as perfect beings. Something's wrong, I don't know. But we confuse one thing for another.

[03:44]

We confuse what changes for what's absolute. We mix our deepest urges into our most petty concerns. As long as you do that, especially as long as your consciousness cues from itself, You're like a tape loop with feedback. A lot of troublesome, unnecessary noise. But I think it's silly of you to worry about the stick, actually. It's not very serious. Actually, if someone asks about the stick, what is the meaning of the stick, you should hit them. If they ask again, hit them again. And continue. Finally, they will understand the meaning of the stick, or they'll leave.

[05:02]

Also, you know, we need to have some respect for things bigger than ourselves, unless I don't like to... let me just say that much. I don't want to qualify. So, to try to make sense of things in order to protect ourselves. To try to make sense of the teaching, accepting what parts of it seem adequate is simply foolish.

[06:51]

or to read a sutra and say, but such and such sutra says this. Why do we do that? If you're asking, it depends how you're asking. To doubt the teaching without respecting, being able to respect something bigger than ourselves is foolish. To doubt as a way of understanding completely is our practice. That's a different kind of doubt. In other words, when you see something or have some experience or are presented with some teaching, you should know when you are just accepting it, or when you understand it completely. And that gap – there'll always be some gap – means you are trying to understand completely. That doubt is very necessary to practise. But the kind of doubt which tries to protect our idea of the way things should be is foolish.

[08:31]

And David, yesterday, said someone had asked him about Uchiyama Roshi's book. All in all, it's best not to Anyway, let's say I'd prefer you don't ask questions about living teachers, because I don't want to have to praise them or criticize them. There's no reason to. If you want to go study with someone else, please do. It's not that I feel they do or don't deserve to be criticized, that's not the point, but you have to understand the person's teaching in the whole context of their teaching. You know, even if you come with something from the sutras, still, actually the sutras are written about our practice. It's not really the other way around.

[10:10]

You understand the sutras through your practice. As Dogen says, you turn the sutras, the sutras don't turn you. And this teaching, this practice, is much wider than any sutra. Through this practice you can understand any sutra. As the Sixth Patriarch said, oh, just read it to... I haven't read it, just read it to me and I will tell you what it means. The sutras aren't any different from our own mind. So to overlook what's right under your nose, questioning it, is this good enough or is that adequate or does it compare to this, is no way to

[11:12]

live here or anywhere. Let me say about Ujjamra, she is... I know him quite well. You know, he's quite a good friend of mine. And I sat at Antaiji for quite a long time. And he doesn't use the stick, it's true. He's maybe the only person in Zen who doesn't. And it's rather a... for him, in the context of a reaction against Japanese Buddhism, which... or Japanese inclination to overdo the use of the stick. There's no comparison between how the stick is used in Japan and here. As David said, when Shojo-san got the stick, he was a demon. And Uchiyan Roshi knows that tendency in Japanese people, so for him, he doesn't use the stick. But also, there are many other reasons

[12:13]

why he chose not to. And his sashins are the sleepiest sashins in Japan. For seven days, everyone sleeps. And that's all right. Actually, one of the difficulties with the kind of zendo where no one dares sleep, even a molecule, because you're liable to be physically thrown off your cushion or hit. is too alert, maybe. It's like you were sitting on the end of an arrowhead, and you never have some chance to explore that twilight zone, or before dawn zone. But Zen practice is very pared down, you know, it's most pared down form of Buddhism. And what exists in it, as we have it, is almost everything that's been eliminated, everything that can be eliminated has been eliminated. And I think the stick is necessary.

[13:46]

At first, probably, when a person is a new student, we don't do it here, but a good practice is actually to hit regularly, every period, several times, until you get over caring or having emotional reactions to the stick. I don't deserve to be hit, or I shouldn't be hit, or that person shouldn't hit me. Those are completely irrelevant considerations. And until you're through that kind of consideration, you should be hit regularly, actually. What does it matter if someone hits you? What scale are you concerned about? After you don't have those considerations, the stick can be very useful. When I was starting, I always asked for the stick, every period, several times. I don't suggest you do that, but anyway, that was... It was there, so I used it.

[15:13]

And it's also a way to help other people, you know. If you find somebody who has some problem with the stick, they're scared to carry it, or they're aggressive, or they're unsure of themselves, maybe you should offer your back to them to practice on. You want to know, should the people practice who carry the stick? Yes, offer your back every period for practice. That's all. Why not? Oh, please practice. That's all. It doesn't hurt, you know. What is it hurting? To give you just a perspective on scale, I have mentioned this before, but some of you are new. At Daito-koji, you are hit from the front, and you're hit four times on each shoulder with a stick about twice the weight of our stick, and you hit all the way, taking it from your buttocks forward, with your full weight.

[16:22]

And at first you swell up a ways, but eventually if you just relax. And they hit everywhere. They don't worry about where your backbone is, or which bone is here, or they shouldn't hit on the bone. They just hit everywhere, all over your back. So you get hit eight times every hit. And when you're new, you maybe hit five times a period in 30 minutes. So that's 40 hits. We don't do anything like that. I think that's too much, probably. But anyway, you discover pretty soon it doesn't matter. If they use the silent stick, silent stick means you hit this way. You can't hear it. But this way is quiet, I mean noisy. No, this is illegal. But sometimes they will do that. But more important, you know,

[17:44]

is that actually the stick is some way of some affectionate practice. And so far any Zen students I've seen who haven't practiced where there's not much use of the stick are rather rigid. Now our practice, this practice can make you rather rigid if you make it, use it in that way. And the purpose of practice of Zen is not to learn how to sit. It's how to have an imperturbable state of mind. So anytime your mind can be perturbed, we should perturb it. The point is, if you're perturbable, let's perturb you. So if we discover you're perturbable by the stick, we should perturb you endlessly.

[18:49]

So sitting straight or sitting well is not... that's some sport, you know. What you can depend on is not zazen but an imperturbable state of mind. So here we should perturb you by various ways. Because you will find out, you know, even as Huey Newton found out in solitary confinement for so long, even though no one was there, everybody he ever knew was there perturbing him. It wasn't any different from being with people. So it's a bit more realistic to be perturbed by real people than to find some way to exist with each other. And in a community, or in a practice place, we have to have some way of correcting each other, of suggesting something to each other, of helping each other's practice.

[20:13]

And if we don't, there will be some hostility or encounter group atmosphere which will occur. If we only are nice to each other, you know, and saying, good things with each other, something unrealistic will happen. There has to be some way we can be tough with each other, and tough with ourselves, and to realize. how to help each other and how to help yourself and how to help someone else. There's no such thing as independence. Independent of knowing what dependency is. So you should be able to have people dependent on you and you dependent on others and within that be independent.

[21:45]

To be afraid of dependency is weak if you're interested in being strong. So the stick is some wondrous stick of enlightenment or of charity or of compassion. Without the stick there'd be some fighting between us. Not because we need some way to be aggressive through the stick in substitution for some other kind of aggression, but we need some way to be serious with each other. Some way to communicate more than just hello. So ultimately between us anything should be available. to communicate to each other. We're not stuck to saying hello or using words. Between teacher and disciple, anything is possible that communicates. Why exclude something? So there should be also physical contact.

[23:17]

not just words, but actually reaching out and shaking someone or hitting someone. You know, All of our precepts have various levels of meaning. Minimum, middle, maximum, et cetera. And don't kill, for instance, our first precept means, of course, don't kill. That's the minimum meaning. The second level is don't harm anything. And third, deeper level maybe, is don't assert yourself, which means don't argue, don't make some statement which denies other statements and hence this causes arguments. This was a point I had great difficulty with for quite a while, because I felt confrontation or argument was necessary with people. It took me a long time to

[24:47]

realize how people actually argue with themselves, and you don't have to add to the argument. That argument is there without your arguing. Anyway, this, I think, is a little bit... last statement is a little bit hard to... you can't do it, it just comes. If you try to do it, you will maybe be namby-pamby or something. I don't mean you shouldn't be yourself. Anyway, it's hard to say what I mean, but Dogen says, too, don't argue. But that's a further meaning of don't kill. Don't do something which denies something else. And... but then we can take that and make it positive. Well, or next meaning, excuse me, is... fourth level meaning is don't kill Buddha nature. For us in our practice, mostly it means don't kill Buddha nature, don't stray from your Buddha nature. Or what Banke calls in the New Eastern Buddhist, your unborn nature.

[26:13]

more than those four is the positive side, which is to encourage another person's buddha nature, to discourage their petty nature, their small nature. So now we're back to kill the small nature. So we use the stick to kill the small nature. You're thinking. You're wasting your time. Or even the person who's carrying the stick. When you hit somebody and it's wrong, you realize yourself, I hit from my small nature. I hit with some thinking going on which made me hit his ear. You know? feel that much more than the person whose ear was hit. You'll see his ear all red and you'll feel extraordinary for having hit his ear. Sometimes your ear may be hit on purpose, though. It's rather startling. We want to only be hit on the shoulder if we're going to be hit.

[27:39]

So we don't expect to be hit in the middle of the head or on the ear. Tsukiyoshi once took my ear off. I was quite startled. Sometimes he'd just clip your earlobe. Quite startling. So Our practice here is to maybe encourage people not to stray from their true nature. So in the zendo, the atmosphere is, we should be practicing, not doddling on a cushion, not polishing a tile endlessly just for some calm

[28:41]

state of mind which is very vulnerable. Anyway, I think that the stick is very affectionate. kind of practice, even though it often arises in us as something angry. Those kinds of feelings should be provoked, and in Zen eventually you should know your most ruthless feelings. What are we like when cornered? Most of us aren't so calm when cornered, aren't so nice when cornered. And you should know that side of yourself, too. So just a very small taste of it is to be hit when you don't want to be hit.

[30:07]

I wanted to talk about a couple of other things. One is... One of the most common things I see people doing is finding as their point of reference, their own needs, and sometimes their own perceptions. And in this, again, it seems to be a kind of mistaking the changing for the absolute. You think something and you act as if it was real.

[31:25]

was going to last forever, or your perception was right now, a description of the way things will always be, or the way you will always feel. And somehow you're unable to remember that your own consciousness is changing, that just a week ago you thought the opposite, or two weeks from now you'll be depressed. I can't imagine why you forget it. But you do. But it seems to be our need to maybe relate most deeply to the Absolute. And so we're mistaking everything for it. So in some way you have to, maybe first you have to take reference to your own body, which at least is more consistent than your state of mind. and take reference to your consciousness over a period of time and knowing its history of ups and downs and vulnerability. And as long as you're queuing on your own consciousness, you are very vulnerable and unstable.

[32:50]

So what you want, of course, is to know that state of mind or consciousness or reference point, which is... I can't give it some name, but... or describe it actually like that, with an arrow pointing at it. Well, the technical definition of delusion in Buddhism is something which ends, something that isn't always so. So suffering has an end. But your true nature, we say, doesn't have an end. So in suffering, if you really know this, then in suffering you

[34:15]

find, or anger, or any kind of state of mind, you find your true nature expressed there or transferred there. If you remember this, you know, there'll be some much more whole feeling. And if you deeply know that everything is ending or changing or a kind of delusion, illusion, you will soon develop or enter what we call an imperturbable state of mind. What comes and goes doesn't bother you. It's just another manifestation. And eventually, it's only a transforming light. The other thing I wanted to mention is the opposite, the tendency to generalize.

[35:45]

It seems like the opposite. Instead of not knowing that everything changes and remembering how your consciousness goes up and down, you stabilize your consciousness or your state of mind by generalizations. You find some, you have some either from your Some from many years ago and some right now. This kind... a person with this kind of nature tends to create them right now and make a generalization, some place of safety. And they always do things a certain way. This kind of person can't be trusted either, because they are always queuing again from this place of safety, not knowing what's happening right there, not ready. The Lotus Sutra says somewhere, a bodhisattva is someone who sees no rules, who finds each moment no constituents of reality, no rules to follow or not to follow.

[37:11]

So you don't bring generalizations or habits into your activity. And we have some opportunity here, of course, because we do things carefully, to notice. I always do it this way, or I tend to do this kind of thing. And if you can notice it in small, you'll see that usually that generalization covers large portions of our activity of our days and months. What is it that's before you? What does mankhe mean by unborn nature? How can you find yourself residing peacefully, undisturbed, every moment, in every situation?

[39:50]

even in disturbance, not by avoiding disturbance, even in disturbance, even disturbed, still a residue of being completely undisturbed. Eventually disturbance is the residue of your habits. I have to leave today. I'm sorry. I always hate to go. The week... I have the week sashin. You know, San Francisco has two one-week sashins a year, and the first one of this year starts Saturday. You don't know what today is, do you?

[41:10]

Thursday, I think. Anyway, because of the weeks I've seen and some other things that have to be done before the end of February, this'll be the longest time I'll be away, this practice period, maybe about two weeks. I don't like to stay away that long. Of course, once I get there, I hate to leave there, too. And there are many reasons. You actually are quite comfortable compared to the problems. You have no problems. Don't create problems. But in the city... Now, more and more, as encenters, appearing as a place that looks like it can help people. If it was just a warehouse, we would have no problems. But because it is getting a reputation of a place that will help people, more and more people are coming who are quite disturbed or upset, and they don't know completely, of course, how to take care of the problem.

[42:43]

Recently we've had one young man who we started a correspondence with in Tennessee or someplace. He began writing us letters for some reason, saying he had two personalities and one of them was going to... He's a very complex person and his awake personality is the one that's suicidal. So it makes it very complex, because he reads lots of Hinduism and Buddhism and stuff. And his awake personality, which is quite sharp, is a dangerous one to him. And he keeps threatening suicide, or has tried several times. So we tried to put him in touch with a suicide clinic in Tennessee or wherever. We found out that there was one near the town he was in, and wrote them to get in touch with this boy. At that time he must have been 16 or 7, 16 maybe. Present time he's 19, and he came to San Francisco about six months ago, and since then he's been writing me letters regularly.

[44:16]

and sending me many gifts and boxes and packages, and mostly I returned all the boxes and gifts. And the letters I read, and most of the letters, at first they were extremely difficult to read, because the handwriting is so mixed up. So now he sends mailgrams, they're like telegrams, and he sends three and four page mailgrams. He must be spending all his ATD money or welfare money on mailgrams, but it's the most elaborate asking for help I've ever seen. You've received some too, haven't you? Somehow I got the name. By name or just Jamesburg? Zen Centre, Tassajara. Zen Centre, Tassajara. So you opened them there, I see. But he's extraordinarily intelligent, and his mailgrams are very elaborate plays on words and songs and dramatic kind of insights, with complete chaotic state of mind. And he calls himself Randy, who's stuck inside revolution number nine.

[45:40]

number nine, which is from a Beatles song. It's very much like Manson. And he sends me records, Big Pink and things like that. I'm supposed to listen to certain phrases in the records, which are a secret message about somebody who's going to kill themselves if I don't do such and such. But what he's been doing recently is he's been sending out two and three hundred of these mailgrams to Hindu groups and Buddhist groups all over the United States. So I'm getting all this mail from Per Vilayat Khan, and he threatens killing a little bit. And so all of these various teachers and groups receive these telegrams, and all of them say, get in touch with me. Who holds the secret key and will refer by vision to the meaning which will unlock it? I've had one or two letters of people who believe it and have written me and say, yes, I'm ready and should I become Randy's disciple? Well, one group recently received it and they just called the police.

[47:04]

And so the police came and took him to a mental hospital, and he's in a mental hospital, as of two weeks ago. He's been in before. I don't know. I hesitate to get involved. I would go myself, but if I go, it becomes a burden for Zen Center, because if I see someone from then on, they may come and sit on Zen Center's doorstep. And there seems to be an upper limit which the building is able to stand three or four. So I hesitate. I haven't met him yet. And I think I may try to see him this time. But I've never known anyone to send out 300 telegrams. And he does it once a week or twice a week. I have many of them. But it's quite interesting, what he writes. He's also, I guess, started drugs when he was very young. I don't know what they made of him in Tennessee, or his family made of him at 15 or 16, doing this. I didn't mean to tell you all that.

[48:34]

get started. But in the city you have that kind of problem, so it sometimes feels everything's okay down here, none of you are suffering like Randy. But I have made some, actually there was a schedule made which covers from now until September, the practice period, which I think I can stick to. So I expect to be back in about two weeks. And then the other times I have to leave for Alan Watts' hundred-day ceremony and a couple other things are very short periods of time, one or two days. When I come back, it will be maybe spring flowers. Is there anything you want to talk about? Yeah. Not exactly.

[50:03]

There are many people in Zen Center who have been at various times in their life in pretty difficult straits, and who practice has helped them see how they confuse their various natures. And of course, there are people who have tried and practice doesn't help. And there's a few people who practice doesn't help, who it hurts them. It's not good for them to do zazen. And we've found through experience pretty much how to tell when a person is... it's better that they don't do zazen. Recently we made one more change, how Dan can find out about new people who have come. who it's not so helpful for them to sit too much. But we have in the last year, I think, made it possible for a few people who previously wouldn't have been able to get started sitting, to get started. But I don't think Thin Center wants to become an

[51:28]

operate a mental hospital or an orphanage or a hospital of any kind. I think that's a good thing to do, and some Buddhist groups and Christian groups do that. But I think we should concentrate on being a place to practice. For anybody who can, maybe we should stretch the limits as much as possible. If practice can help someone, we should do it. And if, as I said in a meeting down here once, there's quite a number of doctors who have, through practicing at Zen Center, actually become interested in acupuncture, because they had no interest in it at all, but they began to experience their body differently, and discovered that their experience was very close to the acupuncture system. So started acupuncture and other things. And that group of doctors, which number seven or eight or so now, who are in various stages of practising, could easily set up a kind of Buddhist Zen centre clinic. They might do that, but I don't think it should be part of Zen centre. To stop me a little bit, as an alternative from becoming a medical unit, Zen centre become... if people continue to come, an increasing number of people...

[53:00]

Zen Center becomes some kind of a sieve to turn people on to other people.

[53:12]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ