I used to encourage everyone to practice. And, of course, I still do. But there's a slight difference, maybe a pretty big difference now in my emphasis. And I'm finding it out for myself. You know, I listen to my own lectures, the way you do too, and try to figure them out. I listen to my own actions. What am I doing? Anyway, I see I'm changing my emphasis. And I find myself talking to you both as if you were beginners, maybe more than you are, and also as if you were more experienced than you are. The difference in emphasis I can best express by saying, before if someone came to see me,

[01:26]

or I encountered someone who wanted to practice or is interested in practice, I made every effort to find out with them what was the opportunity to practice, just them. Even they may not be so ready, but I tried to be more ready something like that. Now I find myself, by necessity, I can only practice with people now who are really ready. I have time only to practice with people who are quite ready. So people who aren't quite ready or who haven't yet found a way to make it clear that they're ready, my feeling is more to plant seeds or give you, you, anyone, not just you in this room, something that will occur to you later.

[02:55]

And I want to try to express more of what I meant yesterday Some of you understood it, I can see that you understood what I meant. Some of you didn't understand what I meant. It's always so, of course, but usually I can make it clearer if I want to. But I don't know if I can make it clearer because, as is usual in sesshins for me, I find something coming up which I don't yet know how to make clear. You may get it directly, but if you don't get it directly, I don't know yet how exactly to make it clear. The koan of the Blue Cliff Records, number 86,

[04:33]

Hase is an expression, too, of what I have been saying this session and yesterday. In it, Uman says, everyone has their own light. What is your own light? And no one answers and he says, the triple, the kitchen pantry and the triple gate. And then he adds later, a good thing is not as good as nothing. And another place he is quoted as saying, as of old

[05:36]

And from old times, everyone has a light shining from their feet or shining from under them. But when you look at it or when you are asked about it, you can't see it and it grows dark or it's dark and dim. And that part is in the koan too, the main case. When you look at it, it's dark and dim. Everyone has his or her own light, but when you look at it, it's dark and dim. And Engo introduces the story with, take hold of the world and stop all leaks. Cut off all flows

[06:44]

and to retain not a drop. Take hold of the world and stop all leakage. Cut off the flows, all flows, but retain not a drop. Open your mouth and you are wrong. Hesitate in thought and you miss it. What is the barrier penetrating I? Engo says. So I will present this old case. The case is... Uman says, etc. Everyone has his or her own light and he answers. kitchen pantry and a triple gate.

[07:47]

Now, we're just starting. One reason I'm talking about we are just starting to practice is because, of course, some of you are pretty soon going to Tassajara for the first time, and you're finishing the city two-month study period. But more importantly, Buddhism is just starting in America. We are just finding out the occasion for practice. And although we usually say Zen is doing the dishes, you know, it's your everyday life, it's ordinary life. Today I want to say, and yesterday I was saying, as some of you understood, Zen is not ordinary life. Is doing the Oriyokis ordinary life? I don't think you did the Oriyokis before you came to Zen Center. Is sitting for seven days on painful legs ordinary life? I don't think it's ordinary life. Sitting in the dishpan for seven days.

[09:58]

our shoes out there. If we can, I'd like to, we can't, with Zen tradition, ancient Zen tradition really, is you turn your shoes, when you come to a door you turn around backwards and leave your shoes for a fast getaway. So that when you leave you can step right into them and go. But we would be rather crowded, fan of Now, the way it's done in a monastery in Japan, usually in a place like this where you'd come up in slippers of some kind, is there'd be a little board, retaining wall or something, and you'd turn around, take your shoes off, and then you'd pick them up and put them in a shoe rack, because there's too many. If you have a hundred people or something coming into a Buddha hall, there's not room for all the shoes. But we don't have that either, a shoe rack. So I'd suggest at least we turn our shoes sideways if we can. Can't we do that? Just as easily as this way. So the shoes would be on that side of the door that way and on this side of the door this way. Anyways, Zen has many details like that. And actually, as Dr. Konze and the sutras and

[11:29]

commentators and sutras point out. Buddhism turns on such things as wisdom, insight and trance. Trance or some deep experience or some concentrated experience or some experience like not having any boundaries or on Maybe we can say grace or unmerited grace or on ritual, like turning your shoes, bowing before you go into the toilet at the small altar. This is not ordinary life, trance. Though some of us, as children, fell into trance with the help of fear, writing a term paper. But still, it's not exactly ordinary life. We're trying to give up our home, though it's hard to do. When you first come, I talked a little bit about this at the Green Gulch and Tassajara, and I don't think I talked about it here, but it's especially important at Green Gulch. Did I talk about home?

[12:57]

here for a while, one day, I don't know, Thursday night maybe. Anyway, people come, say, here and at first they find the building pretty strange and the life here and services I see. A large percentage of the new students I watch from my window before service going up the street in various directions and not coming to service. And it's difficult to find chanting and service a practice, and also it's strange and kind of boring. One of the more noisome things to do, you know. Dozen feels like you're accomplishing something, usually. But service feels like you're just, you know, puts off breakfast. So many new people anyway don't come, and some older people don't come. They don't understand how significant and deterring a practice it is. Partly just because it's just a time filler in feeling. To make it work is not so easy. Sazen works for you. You just sit there and most of us have pretty good feeling. In fact, the people who... Sazen doesn't work for them, but practice out of desperation, you know, sheer terror.

[14:24]

Or something like that. They have a very interesting time of it. They hate Zazen. Five years later they still hate Zazen. And yet, it's better than not doing it. Usually the people who stay are people who like Zazen. If we had to have the practice here of people who like service, it would be a very different group of people. That may not be so good, you know. Some people who would ... since service is so useful. Sazen, when you don't like it, is very useful too. But ... maybe ... there are ... we have one or two people who come to service and that does not ... So the new students coming here find such things a little bit peculiar. And Oryoki meals have never worked here except in Sashin, where there's a concentration of practiced Oryoki meals work. But when we schedule Oryoki meals here, everyone splits, you know. That's the night out when we have Oryoki meals. So we don't have Oryoki meals. Because you... I don't want to force something on you, you know. Too much.

[15:53]

But pretty soon you sell out and you, you know, are willing to go along with these odd ways, you know. And pretty soon it's easy, you know. And you go to Tathagata and you can do the ariyoki very well and you can live at Tathagata very well. And then you come back to the city or we see another phenomena of the city is we can't get you to set the table. reasonably well in Western style. You can do the Oryoki perfectly, but at a French restaurant, you're at a complete loss. Even here, it's hard to get a knife on the table, you know, during meals. And as we discussed at Green Gulch, and maybe here, it also comes down to how we take care of our children. When we get, and at Green Gulch, of course, it's more emphasis because we're living and working there. So at Green Gulch people, it's dawned on the community, hey, we're not just practicing and doing Yoyogi for a little while, you know, we're not at Tassajara doing a Tassajara trip for three years and then off to something else. This is our life. And as soon as they see Green Gulch as their life, it becomes much harder to practice. Many resistances. And you see the same territorial

[17:26]

sense in people who are, for instance, if I talk about politics or we talk about the relationship of Buddhism to society, the communists get upset. Many Zen Center students are communists. They complain to me afterwards, send me long letters. If I talk about psychology or Abhidharma psychology, when it's too close to Western psychology, people who are psychologists get upset. And the architects got upset about the building we did at Greenville. And musicians get upset. The people into work as practice and people into sexual relationships as a personal evolution get upset if we talk about bosom and sex. So, as soon as we get to our home base or territory

[18:27]

We think, you know, maybe we can practice or this is ordinary life, but this is the area which actually the strangeness is, the mystery is where I'm playing about, exaggerating a little. Of Buddhism, don't penetrate. Your practice doesn't penetrate. You still want to evolve yourself out of this area. So when it comes down to home, that's much more difficult. And again, this is this koan, where is this light that when you look at it is dark and dim? Kitchen pantry and triple gate. Kitchen pantry and triple gate. So I'm also talking about place. You know, when you, if you look at the use of words like a being or Buddhahood, emptiness, etc., you often can, if you look at them, place other words in the same context, place or space. There's an interchangeability of those words.

[19:56]

And place is very important, you know. Yesterday I mentioned the meeting that I was invited to with the physicist and the cybernetician and the neurologist. It's very interesting that they want a Buddhist involved in the discussion. And that nowadays in the language of science and in, as I said yesterday, in popular movies and music and other expressions, questions or instances are coming up which are Buddhist, you know. I mean, Star Wars is a samurai movie. I mean, there's no movie it's close to, really, except Japanese samurai movies. It would be a tremendous hit in Japan. And it's typical, too, in Japan, in kabuki plays, for instance, to take a fundamental theme that might be in a noh play, like the disciple-student relationship, and then clothe it in a whole bunch of adventure stuff.

[21:25]

disguise it, cover it over. And our society isn't doing it just for theater. Our society is confused, you know, the degree to which the number of Christians now involved in Buddhism is, you know, serious Christians, you know, Jesuits and Dominicans, people trying to practice Christianity as their whole way of life. Many of them are led into Buddhism. And there's a, in the language of politics and science and philosophy, now there are many questions that are coming up because of Buddhism. And you will sense those questions quicker than other people. This is not, again, ordinary life. This is something quite recent. a referral system or a reference or a mode of thinking. In mathematical logic too, I think, same thing. Things are coming up that because of some direct and indirect effect of Buddhist logic, questions are coming up which weren't there before.

[22:56]

So this is all through our society now, and advertisements too. And they become for us simultaneously, and again I'm talking to us as beginners, and not so much beginners, but people who know beginners, they're coming up as questions which stimulate us to practice, and at the same time are obscurely closed in other non-pivotal thoughts in other messages. The way that PepsiCo, the way that Coca-Cola industries and cigarette industries, etc., hire psychologists and sexologists to design their ads so that on a flat surface, on a three-dimensional surface, What they're doing is, it used to be worse than it is now, actually. Now it's very verbal, but it used to be visual because they couldn't be verbal. On a three-dimensional surface, you read it three-dimensionally, it's just people in space standing around talking. As soon as you flatten it out, they're performing sex acts. It's quite common to do, 10 years, 15 years ago. So there's, particularly things that people have no use for.

[24:28]

cigarettes, Pepsi-Cola stuff, you know, except advertising. There's a new cigarette being advertised now, I saw. Initial campaign is 40 million dollars. So there's a great mixture of Buddhist ideas, which at the same time will stimulate you to practice coming up in your home territory and familiar, but also disguised or conveying other messages. Like Buddhism tries to deal with place and many of the things like sensory awareness and massage, the sense of massage, a lot of it was broken through into being something in America.

[25:29]

which has a positive reputation before massage was not very well known in America, through S1 and through probably the pivotal person was Charlotte Selber. And Charlotte's work and her teacher in Europe, two teachers, there's a large degree of Buddhism in there. So then you have, you know, you know, a total sensory massage of Star Wars, auditory massage, which is closely related to a sense of place, you know, but it's very different from the spatial trajectory or the space of waiting that I talked about, the opposite even, that I talked about in the beginning of the session. So place, it's interesting that the word occasion, the occasion, the place, the occasion, it comes down to down place, you know, what comes down. It really means like an expression of recent years, what's coming down. Occasion means what's coming down.

[27:08]

heaven has the feeling of what's coming up. What's up? It's interesting that we give a direction to it. What's up? What's coming down? Dogen quotes the sutra someplace. The sutra says, Earth and water go down, fire and wind go up. This is typical. Dogen says that what the sutra really means is, but actually I would say the sutra is just lapsing a bit there and saying something common. And Dogen reinterprets it and says, don't think that earth and water go down. There's no down or up. Earth and water, earth is down. Earth is down, water is down. There's no place called down which earth and water go to. This is a very different, very different understanding. And we're talking, so I'm talking about, you know, yesterday I was talking about not whether somebody's music is good or bad, but the attempt to deal with place as expression and the problems involved.

[28:37]

instead of place as definition. When Bach is going, uh-uh, [...] that's maybe expression. Beethoven is more like definition. Definition is to give boundaries, you know. To stop or stop and. An expression is to press out, and maybe utter is better. Because utter means even superfluous. It means to overflow. Beyond the limit. Ultra. Adult may even have this meaning. Beyond the limit. It's not down anymore. Earth is down. There are no limits. So if you're practicing Zen, You're experimenting with expression all the time and you're seeing your definitions all the time and you're experimenting with place. What is this place right now? How do you express this place? On one side we don't do anything, on another side we express. You can't say we're

[30:06]

more than passive, you know, you can't say, just let everything happen. Your response is necessary. You know, the environment or, you know, again, Uman says, it's not I, it's not in the I and it's not in the environment. This is what I mean by utter, beyond some definition. It's not in the I and not in the environment. So how do we, this further or other or yonder, yonder is good, it also means beyond definition, yonder. How do we give this yonder familiarity or expression? Again, what can everything as one mean? You know, if you think there's another,

[31:10]

or if you're actually acting as if there's other. And overflowing, breath's like overflowing. To do something, not just do it completely, but to overflow. To do it utterly. But there's some, even though you're making a shift, to some planned or thoughtful behavior, to more intuitive or spontaneous, before-you-think behavior. Still, that's dangerous, how to deal with place or expression. is not simple. How to bring to it turning your shoes, having your feet, that's far apart. How to bring to it the practice of conduct, of speech, of the difference between looking, watching, gazing, seeing. There's a practice.

[32:38]

and rules about looking, walking, watching, gazing, seeing, you know? Which you, mostly you find out by looking, watching, gazing and seeing. You don't explain it. You, you know, by your eyes, I may. There will be some teaching. So our environment or our yonder or further is also looking, watching, gazing, seeing, which have to do with concentration. It says in the beginning of the Diamond Sutra, we chanted this morning, reading all at once. Isn't it wonderful to read all at once? It says Buddha, after he took his place and settled himself, he fixed his attention before him. It means his eyes, his mind, his body, and then people could present themselves in that attention.

[34:07]

And that's what dosan is, to present yourself in your attention. It isn't a question and answer period. Mainly, as I have said, the usefulness of the third eye As I've said, you have only a person with two eyes and one eye will describe the world almost exactly the same, virtually the same. But the two-eyed person can go up and down steps much easily, more easily. They sense, they see space. And with the third eye, you have another dimension yet. Although your description may be the same, as your teacher. Still, there's a difference you should be able to hear. So again, I'm talking about a place and expression to press out.

[35:31]

So this surround that we are responsive within is also, the other side of that is responsibility, as I said. We are responsive, we can actually be responsive to something when we can also be responsible for it. When you can't be responsible, you can't actually be responsive. When you want to respond without responsibility, your response is in a very narrow spectrum. So then you have to be a person who can take responsibility. Not so easy to do, because the responsibility is unlimited. What I've been aware of is Sashin, and I keep being aware of him. I'm just telling you this. It's like newspaper stuff, but... First night at the Sashin, where we were sitting, there were three murders in the immediate neighborhood. And in the projects outside the Tents Association meeting room, A, which we've been helping, you know, at the Pink Palace,

[37:13]

The young girl, 19 or 20, was killed the night before last. And somebody was stabbed nearly to death up here last night and a friend of ours had to stop the bleeding and call the police. The girl who was killed was probably killed by a pimp. And a while ago they found a whole The remains of a whole bunch of young girls have been killed, buried under one of the projects. They tend to use a lot of force to keep people. As an example, they kill the girls. Where does our responsibility begin and end? As I said at Green Gulch a while ago, When you understand what Captain Crunch is doing and how you can cause a kind of revolution that way if you train people to do that. When you know that and you don't do it, where is your responsibility? A society which we may object to or not like it completely.

[38:34]

Are you your brother's keeper? What responsibility do we have to the children and infants who will be growing up in this neighborhood? What responsibility do you have to your own development? And what responsibility do you have to others for your own development? Can you, as I have said often, open yourself to the expectations of others? Are you willing to know what people expect of you? And how, once you respond to that expectation, how much more they'll expect of you? Can you get on that treadmill? Treadmill to Buddhahood. So the problem of place and our society, as I started to say, those people who invited me to discuss mind with them,

[40:07]

their attempt now to reformulate language to say something new and it grew out of bombsites, you know, very interesting, grew out of bombsites. When they tried to work out a language to make bombsites, it would track a target. The logic that they got into And the logic of how the mind works, in order to see how the mind attracts the target, wasn't Western logic. It's virtually identical with Buddhist logic. So I'm asking you to look at what, is it something unique you're doing? Is practice something you're adding to your life? Is it bringing out something else? Is it a matter of bringing out something that's undeveloped in you or is it actually something you're adding? Someone, somebody has a theory that

[41:29]

The particular, if I can remember, anyway, it has to do with the particular language you speak changes your, I don't know if it changes your brain, but causes other kinds of physiological factors which are different from people who speak other languages. Say something like that is true. What are you doing to yourself, adding a Buddhist language? Can you practice without any difference, without any experience of difference? When you do Zazen, you experience a difference. You started Zazen probably because you experienced some difference. kitchen pantry and triple dip. And when you do zazen you have a taste of another kind of mind, another kind of feeling. Maybe sometimes you feel deeply at ease and you wonder, can I be deeply at ease all the time? So by doing zazen you

[42:56]

added something to your life or brought out something? What way is the kitchen pantry and the triple gate the same? Uman means to I think of the many pictures we've seen of Vietnam in which somebody is squatting beside the road, maybe with their family or by themselves, just eating something, just squatting there. no pretensions, no time for pretensions. How different that is from a Victorian bustle, or a woman, or a man, a woman in a permanent, with a permanent dyed hair and Cadillac. One's involved in definition and the other can't even say expression.

[44:25]

We should be able to sit and go through the day and do the orioke, sit in your cushion, even painfully, with that kind of place that you may feel by seeing that Vietnamese person sitting beside the road squatting. I know when I was in the Near East and Africa, Everyone waits for buses and things, squatting. I came back here and I did it for a while in New York. It's so much easier to stand that way, to squat that way. Some people can't do it. I can do it quite easily. Then standing. You can wait for a bus much easier like that. You know what I mean? Sort of standing on your feet and your bottom is against your heels. Look at me, you know. For a while I paid no attention, you know, because I just thought it was all right. But after a while I realized it did appear pretty odd. So maybe standing at a bus is something added.

[45:53]

that it's ordinary, usual life, standing at a bus stop. Maybe squatting is not something added. I don't know. You have to decide what kind of life you're leading, whether you are involved in wisdom and insight and trance or concentration, ritual. Ritual. China, Ritual is so important. What form, as I say, doesn't express something? At what point does natural end and ritual begin? What is then consciousness of? Self-consciousness? Mindfulness? No mind, no I, no environment? Someone, an old saying, you know what's on the hook, stay off the zero scale. Don't stay by zero on the scale.

[47:21]

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