Hi everybody. Anything left over from last time that you want to bring up? No? Did anybody do the homework assignment? Yeah? Maybe we'll talk about that later. See how that went. Yes? I think it's spelled, believe it or not, with a C. C-T-H-O-N-I-C. And I think it means something like earth-based, aboriginal, shamanistic, that kind of thing. Ron, you look like you're about to say something somehow.

[01:06]

But no. Okay, well, why don't I introduce another case and then we can... I am anxious to hear what your experiences were with the exercises I suggested last time. But let's save that for later. This is case 12 of Mumonkan. Every day, this is the case, every day Ruiyan, it's hard to say his name, Ruiyan, R-U-I-Y-A-N, I forget what the Japanese reading is, it's no doubt easier to say. Every day, what? It's much easier to say Zui Gan than Rui Yan. Every day Rui Yan would call to himself, Master, Master.

[02:09]

And every day he would respond, Yes, Yes. Then he would say, Be awake, be alert. And he would answer himself, Yes. And he would tell himself, From now on, don't be fooled by anything. And he would say to himself, No, I won't be. woman's comment. Old Rheon sells himself and buys himself, playing out so many spirit heads and ghost faces. Why? Listen. One who calls, one who answers, one who is alert, one who is not fooled by others. If you cling to fixed identity, you are not sound. And if you imitate another, Everything is wild, foxy interpretation. And U Man's verse, those who search for the way do not realize truth.

[03:14]

They only know their old discriminating consciousness. This is the cause of the endless cycle of birth and death, yet stupid people take it for original self. So this is one of the great cases of Mu'min Khan, and I like it because it's so practical and so straightforward and so easy to appreciate. And I think that it's actually literally meant to be what it seems like it is on the surface, a practice that you can actually make use of. And I use it all the time. Anytime maybe during your Zazen time or some other time, you can actually call out to yourself. Then, when you hear yourself, you can answer yourself. Yes, here I am.

[04:16]

I'm here. You'd be surprised at how effective this can be to kind of bring you back and cut off your sort of spinning stream of consciousness that you identify with as yourself. When you call yourself, call out to yourself in the midst of that and answer yourself, suddenly you kind of bring yourself back into the present moment and realize that usually you're slightly daydreaming. So that can be a very beautiful and significant moment, the moment when you just stop all that and feel the feeling, here I am. I'm just here. That's how I often think of Zazen. When we sit in Zazen, we're really kind of making a special space just to feel. Here I am.

[05:19]

This is living right here in this place. Collecting oneself. Recollecting oneself. recalling oneself from whatever you've been lost in. In recent years, I've been quite astonished to find this exact kind of practice in the Bible. If you study the Bible, it's really pretty noticeable. In the Bible, in the so-called Old Testament When the main characters are summoned to their destiny by God, the same thing happens in every case. God sort of calls forth this person, Abraham or Moses or whoever it is, and they always say, here I am. And it's a very famous phrase in Hebrew, hineni, here I am.

[06:25]

Very much like Master Uyghur, are you here? Yes, here I am. And then be alert, be awake, be aware, be present, be completely alive. Yes, I will be. Don't be fooled. No, I won't be. If you consider the range of Buddhist practice and Zen's place within the totality of Buddhist practice and various Buddhist traditions, you might say that Zen is Buddhism in slang. Taking a very complicated high culture philosophy, psychology, and reducing it down to something very simple and very pithy, streetwise, and with very little pretense.

[07:30]

And this was a pretty conscious effort on the part of the Chinese Zen teachers to cut to the chase and go to the heart of Buddhism. So I think that if you could practice like this, really and truly returning as often as you could, maybe almost all the time, to this, here I am, just presenting yourself straightforwardly in the world, here I am, and letting fall to the wayside all of your complications and pretensions and problems, then I really feel that all of Buddhism would be included in that, you wouldn't really need anything else, it would all be extra. So they say that Master Ruyan used to actually practice like this. Maybe he practiced like this in Zazen.

[08:32]

He would sit up straight like we do and find his breath in his belly. He'd concentrate his mind on his breath strongly. And then when his mind was calm, he would begin this process of calling out to himself and responding to himself. and he would hold his mind alert and critical, looking, inquiring. And this kind of intent emphasis on being present with inquiry and alertness without assuming anything and with releasing everything that comes and always inquiring, What am I? What is this? Where am I? Until the whole world crystallizes into this very place and time, this very moment of consciousness, this is the kind of pared-down practice of Zen.

[09:36]

Radically dwelling within the present moment and not taking that moment for granted, assuming anything about it, but dwelling within it as if it were the only moment, the eternal moment, the ineffable, inconceivable moment. So this is how Master Huryon used to practice that, and this is essentially our practice as well. They say too that Huryon would practice this way not only in his own private practice, but also publicly, that he would actually demonstrate this. He would get up, get a dharma talk, and he would sit up on the seat, and he would say, Master Rewan, and he'd say, yes, here I am. Don't be fooled by anything. No, I won't be. And that would be his dharma talk. It would be kind of great to be able to give the same Dharma talk like that every time.

[10:40]

Make life a lot easier. And, you know, we may think it's kind of ridiculous, but in Zen, you know, a talk isn't exactly what we think of as a talk. The word in Japanese for Zen talk is Teisho. which means presenting the shout. So a Zen talk is not supposed to be an explanation about Zen. It's supposed to be a demonstration. It's actually more like a ritual or a play than it is what we usually think of as a talk. So maybe Master Rewan, feeling this, would come up and enact this little play for his dharma talk, and maybe he would then just sit down after that. Possible.

[11:41]

On the other hand, one thing I've noticed in studying koans is that they kind of tend to exaggerate a little bit for effect, mythologizing these probably real encounters between teachers, mythologizing them on purpose to make a point and create a certain style of the house. You can see this if you study a story and you trace back its other versions. The further back you go, the more commonplace the story seems. Every time they change it, they make it a little more stark and a little bit more elliptical and a little bit more dramatic. So probably this is true in this case, and that if Master Rhyan did do this, sometimes in Dharma talks, maybe he then would go on to say other things, or maybe he would not do it all the time, anyway. But I bet he did.

[12:44]

I bet it was. He was well known, I bet, for this practice, and people heard it from him, and he kind of inspired people to take it up themselves. So the next question is, who is calling who? When Master Rewan calls out to himself, who's calling who? Who is the master and who is the person answering? Now, when we read the case, we think that it sounds, I mean, why it's funny in a way is because we think, well, why would you call out to yourself? I mean, it seems ridiculous in a way, odd. Because we think that Master Ruan is calling, it's Master Ruan's ordinary conditioned self calling out to his ordinary conditioned self. It's his ego calling out to his ego. When we consider who we are, any one of us, not that we spend a lot of time on this, but if we really were kind of to deeply consider who we were,

[13:58]

I don't think we would take that question very far. We would say, well, here I am. I'm who I am. I'm, I don't know, I'm my history, my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my character, my personality, my desire. I don't know. I'm just me. But beyond all of that, who one actually is, it becomes perplexing, not so simple, not so easy to discern. And that in itself is a really great koan. Who am I? Who is this sitting here? Am I the body? Is that the limitation of myself? Am I the mind? Am I my history, my habits, my dreams, my aspirations, my vows, my relationships?

[15:02]

And what about when all of that is gone? Then who am I? The story is told of one of Master Ruyan's disciples who went to Master Gensha for instructions. And Gensha said to him, where have you studied before? And what method did you use for your practice? And the disciple told him about Master Ruan and how the practice went with Master Ruan. And Gensha said, why don't you stay with Ruan? Why are you here? And the monk said, because the Master Ruan died. And Gensha said, well, If you called out to him now, Master, Master, don't be fooled by anything, would he answer? So, the person who's calling out and the person who's answering in this instance is not exactly merely the ordinary me and the ordinary you that we would all

[16:22]

think about if we were to investigate who we are. Obviously this is a pretty important point. Maybe it could be the only point that's important at all. If we are moving around in this world and if our understanding of who that is, that we are, is limited it would be a pretty important point to know who one really is. When Buddha is awakened he stands up, not when he's awakened, in the legendary story of his birth, when he's born, he stands up, as you know from seeing the little statue of the baby Buddha on Buddha's birthday, which depicts this moment pointing up to the heavens and down to the earth, the baby Buddha saying, in all the heavens and all the earth, I alone am the world-honored one.

[17:30]

In other words, for the Buddha, as for each one of us, our subjectivity is without bounds, it's all inclusive, it's inconceivable. Whatever problems one has don't entirely matter all that much because they are the problems of the limitation that we have imposed on ourselves, shrinking down our vastness into this person wearing clothes and getting haircuts. What's truly marvelous is the fact that the vastness cannot appear in any other way than through my little life and your little life and through all the things of this little world that we're living in. So this means we need to take care of our lives and of the lives of others, but not as something small and limited as they appear to us.

[18:48]

But we need to recognize that each life, each moment of each life, includes everything. Each moment of each life is, I alone am the World Honored One. And it's for lack of appreciating that, that we are really struggling all the time. And I think that's why we go to our cushions to learn that point and to really experience it and really feel it. So, the master calls out and the master answers. The master is the unnameable, immeasurable vastness of subjectivity. And, at the same time, an ordinary Chinese Zen monk named Rion, who was born in some day, grew up, ate meals, practiced Zazen, gave some talks,

[19:52]

died. We're the same, both sides of that equation, the vastness and the ordinariness, and we forget what we are. We forget a million times a day, if we ever remember at all. So, practice is not a mystery. I think it really comes down to this, remembering what we really are. It's not complicated, it's not difficult. In a way, practice is just remembering to practice, remembering who we are, because we have such a strong habit of forgetting. And Master Ruwan had this method of remembering who he was, a great method, and I really recommend it. You could try to practice this way. So there's lots of ways besides Master Ruan's method of reminding yourself as often as you possibly can of who you really are and what your life is really all about.

[21:01]

And it's actually kind of necessary that we have this intimate training of the body, mind, and spirit so that we can transform our lives little by little, lifting them up, so to speak, to the level of dignity and reality that they deserve and need. And as I said, it's the lack of that lifting up and really appreciating what our lives are that ultimately makes us feel dissatisfied and causes us suffering and causes others suffering. So as most of you know, I'm sure, this is the kind of lifestyle in Zen monastic life, is to have a million reminders all throughout the day of what we're really doing and what we really are. And what this amounts to is using the power of the human imagination to illuminate every small action of the day to make it into a cosmic action.

[22:12]

an action that is, at the same time, ordinary and simple, just what it is, and cosmic. And when I say cosmic, I mean by that, resistant to definition. Because we have so many unexamined, unconscious definitions of things, and definition limits us and makes us small. And really, when you think about it, our life is those definitions and those conceptualizations which are just sort of projections onto what is going on. Our life is so much more than we will allow it to be. And our life really is indefinable, the more you look at any one aspect of your life, the more you see that it's not what you think.

[23:15]

What you think really doesn't hold up, it doesn't hold water, the more you look at any one moment or any one aspect of your life. So in Zen monastic life, there are a million reminders of this. If you go to take a bath, you have to stop before you enter the bath and make prostrations and recite a verse that tells you that you're not just taking a bath, you're going to wash away all the impurity of the universe in the act of taking a bath. When you brush your teeth, you're not just brushing your teeth, you recite a verse that says that in brushing your teeth, you're preparing your teeth for the activity of gnashing down and grinding down all the delusion and confusion of the world. That's what you're really doing when you brush your teeth. When you eat your meals, I'm sure all of you know the meal chant, when you eat your meals, you're not just eating a meal, you're dedicating the eating of the meal to many noble purposes, especially awakening of oneself in others.

[24:32]

So, in other words, every little action of the day, by virtue of these practices of remembering what we're doing, and recitation, and imagination, we're lifting up these ordinary actions into immense actions. One of my favorite practices is a practice that we always practice when we come into the Zen Dome, but you could practice it anytime you come into or out of a room. That's the practice of walking over a threshold. If you think about it, the word entrance is the word entrance, right? You're leaving one trance and entering another trance every time you change locations into and out of a room. The word threshold comes from the word to thresh, you know like in threshing grain, which transforms an ordinary plant into a miraculous food substance, precious food.

[25:54]

And threshing was done with the feet, so the word thresh, you know by treading on the grain, so the word thresh has the word tread in it, having to do with stepping. And so the threshold is the stone as you enter a house over which you tread to enter the house. And it's a sacred place. That's why you carry the bride over the threshold. It's a big deal to enter this sacred space for the first time. In some cultures, the bones of the ancestors would be buried in this place, so that every time you entered and left the space, you were actually treading over the bones of the ancestors and recognizing that. And I think that's where the custom came. If you go to Europe and visit churches, although there's too many saints to be buried under the threshold, but they're buried under stones in the churches.

[26:57]

It's a kind of extension of that very ancient idea. So the point is that when you enter a room, for many reasons, you're entering a sacred space and you're passing over a sacred marker. And when you think about it, I'm reading this fascinating book about architecture where they talk about it. The idea is that, it's kind of complicated, but the idea is that the spaces that we inhabit co-create our lives. And it's true, when you move into a space or out of a space, the person that you are is different at that time. You change, you know, with the spaces that you enter and leave. So imagine if you recognize that, and every time you entered a space, an enclosure, and left an enclosure, you marked it with a moment of awareness and you recalled what an immense thing was now taking place. You are in entering some enclosure, completely letting go of what has happened before, and now entering a space in which you have no idea what will happen.

[28:14]

A new life is beginning as you enter or leave a space. So wouldn't it be good to pause right there, and it doesn't have to be for five minutes, but just to mark that, to note it every time, to use, in other words, every time you enter a doorway or leave a doorway as a marker, a moment of mindfulness. And not just awareness of your body, but also awareness of the immensity of what's actually taking place. And I try to do that every time I enter into a doorway. I take that as a moment of reflection on what my life is. You know, some of you know they have this very practice in the Jewish tradition. They have a little box, you know, Jews, many of you know this, a box that is placed in the threshold of every door. And in the box there's a little prayer that basically says, whenever you enter a door, you should remember

[29:21]

the immensity of the universe. Basically, that's what that prayer says, and it's a little prayer, it's written on a piece of paper and stuffed in this little box, and every time you walk in the room you're supposed to reach up and kiss the box, pay homage to it, so that you recognize this very thing that I'm talking about. And that's why when we enter the Zendo we have the tradition, because we're entering a space entirely dedicated to this immensity. And so you wouldn't just sort of stumble into it, you would walk in remembering that. So I'm talking about different kinds of reminders that we need throughout our day to train ourselves. Another one that I like to use is the reminder of just walking. Just walking. I've practiced a lot of meditation for a long time, as have many of you, and lots of Qin Hen, and lots of other kinds of walking meditation.

[30:31]

And so you're going to get the feeling in the body itself of what a profound thing it is to walk through space. Just that. Every step you take Really, it's as if the earth comes up to meet your foot and gravity holds you to the earth. We all know that the earth is spinning around in space at a rapid rate and by rights we should all be having a very hard time hanging on to it. But we don't. It's very easy to maintain our position on the earth because the earth is working with us to keep us in our place. And that is actually happening, you know, all the time. And every time we take a step, it's a kind of an amazing miracle as we take a step and fall forward and then are caught by the body's motion and by gravity.

[31:35]

And then we fall again, we're caught again, and then when we take many steps and walk along, there's a beautiful rhythm that comes to arise in the body of the breathing and the steps And it's as if we're transported by that rhythm. There's a wonderful feeling in the body that occurs, the feeling of living, the feeling of this immensity that occurs just by walking. So I'm always walking like that. It doesn't matter if you walk slow or fast. Whenever you walk, you could actually recall this amazing practice of walking. it's a real blessing and in the last few years I've had injuries in which I could only walk with great pain and when I was walking with great pain, you know how these things go, you look around and you see how many people there are who also are walking with great pain and you realize what a blessing it is to just be able to walk

[32:39]

And it's a beautiful practice. So I think you can think about this, anytime you walk anywhere, just when you go up from your desk at work to go to the bathroom, I had a job like that where I would go to the bathroom and that would be like walking meditation, you know, and I would really use, and then not only that, I'd leave my office room and go down the hallway and enter you know, the restroom, and use the restroom, and leave the restroom, and walk down the hallway. It was a really, really, it was an immense time of practice. And when I came back to the office, I felt like I had been, you know, everywhere. Completely different universe I was entering. So I really recommend that kind of practice. It's really kind of great. then it saves a lot of anxiety, too, because when you go somewhere, then you don't have to go through all that you usually go through trying to find the closest possible parking spot.

[33:48]

You know, it's so exasperating. I thought he was pulling out. You know, what's the matter? They didn't pull out. Or, oh, somebody got in there before me. And you go all through all these anxious things because you don't kind of go two or three blocks away. and just find a parking place and then realize, oh good, now I get to walk to where I'm going so that I can arrive in a beautiful state, happy and calm because I've just practiced walking. So it's a really kind of great practice. There's a practice with the telephone. Maybe you know about this, I think maybe Thich Nhat Hanh made this famous, the phone rings and reflect on how you actually feel when the phone rings, it's a little disconcerting usually because you weren't expecting the phone to ring and when you pick the phone up you don't really know who it is. Some people now have a little machine that tells you who it is, but even if you know who it is, you don't really know what they're going to say.

[34:55]

Sometimes people will say some very surprising and shocking things. This happened to me the other day. the phone rang, you know, and I picked it up and somebody told me one of the most shocking things I've ever heard in my life, completely unexpectedly, never would have imagined, and even if I knew who it was, it was a person I knew, I never would have, you know, ever would have imagined that. Sometimes that happens, and every time the phone rings, potentially that could happen. So why not take a moment to let the phone ring once or twice and let the ringing of the phone be like the mindfulness bell or the zazen bell, bringing your mind to peace and attention, alertness, because that's just like Master calling out to you, Master, Master, yes, answer the phone, okay, don't be fooled, I won't be. So take a moment to breathe like that and when you reach out for the phone to do so deliberately and mindfully, when you pick up the phone,

[35:57]

to respect the fact that there's another human being on the other end of the line with consciousness and a heart and a mind and a soul and needs, and you have no idea what they're going to say. And whatever it is, it's going to be something important. So if you could answer the phone in that way, that would be really great. It would really be a help every time the phone rings. It's a meditation practice. When you wash your face, why don't you not do so mindlessly, but take a moment to center yourself, collect yourself, and then splash water onto your face, whether it's cold water or warm water, with attention about this miracle that you turn on the tap and water comes out from the mountaintop comes through this tap.

[37:00]

And then you can feel what a miracle it is that you have sensation. I mean, it's an exquisite feeling, you know, to put a little water on your face. It's amazing how if you pat a little water on your face, it changes your whole mind and heart. When you wake up in the morning, you'll do it and do it. Or any time of the day, if you're feeling a little bit exasperated or worn out or something like that, it's amazing. If you go in to the bathroom and put some water on your face, with awareness, feeling the sensation of the water on your face, and maybe even taking a moment to consider how beautiful is the sensation of water, the feeling of water on the skin, and also massaging your face a little bit as if, you know, kind of appreciating what a beautiful face you have and giving yourself some loving kindness for a moment with your fingertips on your forehead or on your cheeks. So that would be a lovely, lovely practice.

[38:06]

Why do you think we do all the things we do in a session? Bowing to our cushion. Why do we bow to our cushion? It's the same practice, isn't it? To recognize that this cushion is this immense place where so much is happening. So we bow to the cushion and we bow to the room, acknowledging the room. When we eat a meal with orioke, we take care of each and every utensil and each and every gesture of eating in the same spirit. This whole business is the primary practice in Soto Zen, but we think that it's confined to the zendo. And then we don't realize that we should be extending this practice into each and everything in our lives, and we don't have to be around the zendo or in the zendo in order for that to be true. and how much of a difference it would make if we trained ourselves like this all the time. And that's exactly what they do in Zen monastic life, in a real well-trained, sincerely trained Zen monastic as someone who exactly is cultivating this awareness with everything in their lives.

[39:17]

And it's made easy by the fact that they're living in an environment in which that's explicitly the practice and all the details and rules of the environment are that. But you can use your imagination and use your personal discipline to create this, literally in your own life, regardless of what your work is or what it is you're doing. You can do this. So I could probably go on like this for a long time, and so could you, inventing or recollecting different practices that are possible. But I think you get the idea. And you really do have the full permission and almost the obligation as practitioners to invent some of these practices for yourself, so that you can recollect yourself, recollect your real self throughout the day, so that you can cleanse yourself of the buildup of unawareness that gets crusted onto you during the course of any day. You can, during the course of the day, kind of slough it off a little bit with these practices.

[40:21]

And I think that we need to do these things long enough until they really become second nature. It's a matter of training, really. And then, in the end, in a way, all the practices disappear as special practices. We just have the practice of living, of doing whatever it is we're doing in that same spirit. And then what we're doing feels like it's something always deeply satisfying and profound Although you don't have to go to the trouble of thinking, gee, this is profound. That's the quality of your experience. Now, having said all this, we need to bring up another point that the case makes, which is that you have to be careful here, what you're doing, because the temptation with all this is to begin to identify your spiritual practice with a particular kind of activity or feeling.

[41:24]

It's supposed to be like this, it's supposed to look like this, it's supposed to be very mindful and so forth. That's not right. Practice is really just a matter of being present with our lives, whatever our lives are, whether they're deep or shallow, mindful or unmindful, interesting or boring. So it would be a great mistake that would eventually cause us trouble to think that practice is like this and not like that. And the reason for this is something that I was saying earlier, that as soon as we start to define and identify, then we're right away creating the conditions for nostalgia. which is to say the conditions for holding on to some moment that we think is really nice and sweet and Zen-like, as we're simultaneously running away from another moment that is not so nice and not so sweet and not so Zen-like.

[42:31]

And when we have that attitude, then our practice gets into trouble. And this is what Master Woman is talking about in his commentary to the case when he says, Old Rean sells himself and buys himself, playing so many spirit heads and ghost faces. One who calls, one who answers, one who is alert, one who is fooled by others, if you cling to fixed identity, you are not sound." So these lines are telling us that we have to be careful here with these practices. The one who calls and the one who answers are both conceptions, limitations. to be fooled or not fooled, to be alert or not alert. We are all these things in an endless shifting succession. And if you cling to one of them as a fixed identity, you're sunk. Just remember where you are and remember what you're doing.

[43:35]

That's all. Don't make up standards of good or bad. Don't think you're anybody when you call yourself. recognize your you as the you that it is right now, and let go. The limitless self, the original self, and the limited self, the discriminated self, are not two different things, and also not the same. you appreciate your discriminative self, discriminated self as it is, knowing it's limited, but recognizing that through this limited self is the only way the limitless self can appear. So you honor yourself, you take care of yourself, but you don't overestimate yourself or mistake it for something that it's not.

[44:42]

and you see how the self is constantly changing and flowing all the time. My favorite line from Gertrude Stein, she has many great lines, but my favorite line is, I am I because my little dog knows me. I am I because my little dog knows me. Because I was born in such and such a place, and had such-and-such parents, and ate such-and-such kind of food, and spoke such-and-such a language, and was educated at such-and-such schools, and read such-and-such books, met such-and-such people, lived here, lived there. I am what I am, and that always is changing because my experience is going on. I am a wide network of ever-shifting relationships and events swirling around me and recreating me slightly differently every moment.

[45:54]

If I want to find something in all that, that is mine, that I can take credit for, that I can hoard, define, I really won't find it because my me is something fluid and ungraspable and unique in all the world. You could never be me and I could never be you. So you better not try to imitate me and neither of us should try to imitate Master Rewan. If we want to do the practice that he does, we can't do it imitating him. We can only do it absolutely standing on our own ground, not his. Each one of us has the job of making our practice real, and to do that we have to reinvent it again and again. We can't just follow someone else.

[46:57]

It's impossible. If we receive instruction from someone else, the only way that it works is if when we throw away it as instruction and absolutely make it as if we invented it ourselves, we created it ourselves. It comes right out of the nexus of our own experience. Those who search for the way do not realize truth. They only know their old discriminating consciousness. This is the cause of the endless cycle of birth and death, yet stupid people take it for the original self. So we don't search for anything, we don't look for anything as if we're incomplete, as if someone else has something and we're trying to imitate them and get it for ourselves. We just come back, here I am, not looking for anything, just being what we are and reminding ourselves as often as we can, here's what we are. Our knowing anything,

[48:05]

can only come from the discriminating self. That's because that's the nature of knowing, is separation and discrimination. That's where knowledge comes from. We can know many things, but we'll never know unity with ourself and with our experience. And we long for unity, oneness. And we all feel in our hearts that that's our home and that we're in exile from it. We're lost in the endless round of birth and death and we want to come home. And we can come home and we do come home, but not in the way that we would like to. Not in the way of searching and seeking and grasping for something. Once you grow up, your mommy will never be able to hold you in her arms like she did when you were small.

[49:14]

But if we work with our practice sincerely, give ourselves to it, use all our imagination and creativity, we can be, our life can be touched and inspired by oneness. And we can have a real sense of that oneness, not only in those wonderful transcendent moments that pop up every now and then in retreat or when we look at the sky or when something fantastic happens, but we can know those moments of oneness also in our ordinary time. So it's not that we know our ordinary discriminating consciousness only and now we want to know something beyond that. that we're striving for that. That's not it. It's that we take the discriminating consciousness for all that we are, and being dissatisfied with that, we're looking for something else, not recognizing that the original face, the immense mind of vastness, takes the shape of that very ordinary consciousness.

[50:31]

Once we appreciate this, not as a point of doctrine or an article of faith, but as a felt experience in daily living, something that we can absolutely rely on, no matter what, without defining it or possessing it, then we are really making our own and fully embracing this great practice that dear old Master Wee Wan is teaching us in this case. So that's my talk on Case 12 and now let's take our little short break and then we'll get together and talk about things. Thank you. I'm interested to hear from those of you who We're working with the case from last week, what your experiences were. So, we have about 25 minutes or so.

[51:39]

Can we hear from a couple of reports of what happened? Some people over there were saying that they... What was the homework? I've forgotten. Well, someone who did it will tell you. Yeah. Well, I think what I remember you saying last week is that the question would be, by what authority am I living my life? Yeah. And that you could kind of go, you could kind of change that question, you know, the wording if you thought it was too awkward. Yeah. And that you would start with, you know, regular zazen, meditation, and then once you were sort of established in your breathing, that you would bring that So I've been doing that at home and it's very interesting because I think part of it is, for me, when asked a question like that, I want to have an answer. Yeah, right. And so trying not to even have an answer because then the next breath comes and there's actually no time for a real answer.

[52:43]

Yeah. So just to kind of sit with the question was very interesting and then also Like, what answer would come? And so different answers would come. It's just not even sitting with any of those answers, really. It's kind of more sitting with the question. And it's been really good. I think it's something that probably I need to sit with for a lot longer than a week. But I can see, even at a week, I can see that it's a very deep question. And how much deeper the question is than any of the answers you come up with. How obvious it is that all the answers, no matter how brilliant they may seem, are so trivial compared to the power of the question. Did you notice that? I mean, you were saying that the answers just sort of fell away. Well, one of the answers that came up was God. Like, what if this was an answer?

[53:48]

What does that mean? Yeah, exactly. God is a three-letter word in the English language, after all. And that's what it is, right? Yeah, well that's wonderful, yeah. Thank you. Any other people have other different experiences or the same experience? Yeah? I also found that one week was not enough. Yes, I'm not surprised. But that was a particular moment. Yeah, so anything like that, there would be no answer that you could carry over to the next moment. I talked to him and he turned out to be a Tibetan Lama.

[54:54]

And in the course of our conversation, he made it very clear to me that rather than being a big important ceremonial Lama, he was a plain old ordinary worker Lama. So I sort of thought about the broom and the priesthood. And I said, what do you do? And he said, I do social work. So I spent a week kind of dwelling on, by what authority does he do that to these orphaned children? It was very humbling and enlightening at the same time. And sometimes such a meeting like that becomes its own kind of authority in your life, right?

[56:07]

You probably won't forget that moment and it becomes some seed of something is created in your life and it has its own life from the authority of that meeting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what a great outcome. Yeah. What else? Any other reports? Yeah. I was working on this question, and at first I was thinking about that way of saying, if I withdraw, do I lose my life? And at some point, it kind of dawned on me that Another sort of more subtle question for me was, by what authority am I defining my life? And I just noticed how much I was giving all kinds of people authority to define who I was and what I was doing.

[57:15]

So that was very... it helped me to be able to let go of those things. Yeah, that's fascinating. It's possible that almost all the conflicts that we have with other people have their source in that. That somehow we feel in a particular relationship or encounter that someone, and not that we think this way, but in fact someone has asserted authority over us or stolen our authority for our own lives away. And we're mad at them for that, even though we're mad at them for some petty thing, but actually that's what we're really mad about. It's interesting how that goes. So that if we did have clarity about our own authority in our own life, we would have very few reasons to be in conflict

[58:19]

with other people, the kind of wrenching conflict where you hate somebody and you're really upset and you're obsessed with it. One can have differences with others, but you know what I'm talking about, so that's fascinating that you could see that. By what authority do I brush my teeth? How do you mean, say more about that? Well, I think it allows the question to drop away.

[59:29]

You mean applying it to small things every moment? The question disappears. There's just the things you're doing. So the answer is brushing your teeth and walking and standing and lying down. That's the authority. That's beautiful. I'm staying in a house for a month that's quite beautiful and has built in to it all these kinds of reminders that you were referring to, almost like a temple. It has it dedicated to Tommy Zendo. is take some extra time at threshold. In fact, in one instance, I took a long, long, long time standing at the entrance.

[60:33]

Yeah, that's wonderful if you can do that. Wonderful. Did I hear or see some other? Yeah. I noticed a whole range of authorities seem to pop up. Part of the time it seemed like I was living my life according to my dedication to gratifying that next desire. So I'm proud to say I have as many as the next person. And then I was with my 8-year-old, she's being you know, a strong-willed child. She is. I felt like I was living my life by her authority. I'm very happy to be living my life by her authority. The phrase from Iken Roshi also kept coming up, which was, not nothing but the uncreated charged with possibilities.

[61:40]

That's a good koan too. Other comments? I felt that I got in touch with my authority and then I didn't trust it and I let go and I tossed a coin instead of trusting my own authority. To make a decision. Yeah, I did make a decision and I felt that my inner authority, which is eternal and knows the right way, You know, I checked in with that and got the answer that I was really comfortable with. And then I thought, well, I better just check on that and flip a coin. So the coin didn't come up the way I had originally decided. So I went back and trusted her again. Was that the right thing to do? Yes. It's hard to trust in it, even though I found it. Yeah, well I suppose partly what I was saying tonight in my talk was that it's a cultivation.

[62:47]

It's an ongoing cultivation that we move in that direction and little by little by little I think there is more trust. I think that's one of the fruits of practice is an increase in that trust. Anything about the case we were talking about tonight that you'd like to, you're thinking about or on your mind? Yeah. Yeah, where is, where is the vegan in all this? Is he caught by this or is he not caught by dividing himself up? And how would you know? Or does it matter? I think not. I think this is his practice, his way of finding himself. So I think he's not caught by it. But I guess I would say that in terms of the story, there's a tradition around, because sometimes you read one of the cases, and like the question you're saying implies, is there anything in this story that tells you

[64:03]

that Zui Gan is an enlightened Zen master, or could this be some schlemiel confused about who he is?" And I think the answer to that is that there's a kind of tradition of commentary to the stories that is outside, that's not written down in the story themselves, but basically it's clear that the story is this way or that way. In other words, the commentary to this story makes it clear that this is a story about a great Zen master who is demonstrating a practice of awakening. So I suppose you could look at the story and argue otherwise, but the commentary, the tradition is that that's what the story means. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I would think that too. It seems to me that there's a dynamic there of... I don't know what the word is. What I had an image of when I was thinking about it was like photography with a negative image.

[65:08]

That he's presenting something which you could take either dualistically or not, or not dualistically. And he's presenting it in a way that appears to be dualistic. I see what you're saying. But the negative of that is that it's not. And that seems to be the tension that's in that case, that there's a kind of a tension there that is what they're throwing at us. Yeah, well you know when you say that it makes me think of like in my practice, and maybe your practice is like this too, sometimes when I'm, say, officiating at a service or that kind of thing, I'm opening myself to the absolute, to the big boss, you know, and submerging my relative self

[66:19]

at that time, although the relative self is there, but I'm not engaging that at that time. And then the service is over and I can let that go and then the relative self becomes the first foot in the walking. So that may seem like two different things, like very dualistic, the relative self, the Absolute, but in fact it doesn't feel that way, it just feels like entering and leaving different rooms. and recognizing that you're always in the same house. And that's how I think it is with Masters Vigan. One way to look at it is, when he says, Master, yes, don't be fooled, okay, I won't be, that the person who's calling is the Buddha in Masters Vigan, straightening himself out. And even though on the surface of that practice it's very dualistic, he projects a Buddha and then he projects a Master's Uyghur, somehow or other it doesn't feel dualistic in the doing of it.

[67:26]

It feels like... Because the way he's doing it is not dualistic. Yeah, right. The way he's doing it is not dualistic. But I suppose it could be. I mean, somebody could do it dualistically, right? Somebody could do it schizophrenically too, you know? I also have this idea that it's a kind of a Mahayana counter to the sutras. That what he's basically saying is just upwards of the sutras. Be mindful, be awake. Yeah, yeah. And so he's just stating that. So why isn't this just a sutra? Yeah. Well, it's a kind of a, it is a Zen, you know, a playful Zen version of, yeah, of the Mindfulness Sutra. The only difference is it brings up this dimension of the Absolute, which the Mindfulness Sutra sort of does, but you might not get that. The Mindfulness Sutra could sound like a technical manual for how to work with your meditation, whereas this makes clear that there's a deeper level that he's evoking.

[68:31]

But yeah, that's true. That's what I meant when I said that Zen is the Buddhism in slang. He's just making this little play, which encapsulates a huge dimension. aspects, I suppose a learned person could do a disquisition on all the Buddhist philosophy involved in that little vignette of Master's Rigon. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Kind of on a related point, there's an ambiguity when he says master, because he happens to be a Zen master, so like all Master's Rigon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, first, there's the issue like, is that word master, and I think in some of the commentaries I read that said this, had this double meaning, in other words, like the master of the world, you know, the person who has, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing.

[69:37]

there seems to be that kind of ambiguity there. So, for example, if he says, Master, blah, blah, blah, and suppose I'm trying to somewhat imitate this thing, it wouldn't be the same thing if I said, Ken, yes, because that word Ken doesn't have that ambiguity, Master, does it? then sort of pretend I'm Master and say, Master, yes, blah, blah. Or do I just say, Ken, yes? Or am I using something by doing just that? Yeah. Well, I think you could say Ken or not address yourself with any name. You? Yeah. Be present. I see what you're saying about the ambiguity of the word master, but that certainly doesn't obviate the possibility of our using the case in the same way.

[70:43]

So the art is just for yourself, and it has to be truly coming from your own heart to find out your own way of doing the same thing. Because you're the master too, even though on the relative level maybe you're not called that. Maybe a couple more comments, because it's almost time to go. I was listening to your practices with fascination and admiration, because I know that when I get into any of this stuff very quickly it becomes original, and then it becomes another one of my to-do lists. And of course, even lighting a piece of incense to burn on my little home altar, and I have to do that before I can have a cup of coffee. one of the little, very ordinary things that I can remember to do is to simply, because I always feel sped up, and I always feel like I'm trying to catch a little time, you know, that's not what I'm meant to do, but I sort of start to actually time, you know, I sort of count the seconds, and I realize how crazy it is that I, you know, think something is taking a long time, and it's taking a second and a half,

[72:00]

I guess that's a little practice of mine, is to wake myself up to the fact that it's a visceral amount of time to be mindful. Right, it doesn't take any time at all to be mindful. I have to remind myself that it doesn't take any time. Yeah, saves time. Yes, well, what you're saying is, of course, this is the universal conundrum of religious practice is that the greatest things in the world become rote. Everything is subject to that, to being overcome by our limited mind. I was talking about all these marvelous practices in Zen monasteries, but believe me, there's plenty of Zen monasteries where people do these things just mindlessly and by rote and without any sense of what they're all about, right? And so we're all subject to that, and I think that's the challenge all the time, is to remind oneself, to open oneself to what's going on here and raise up that spirit, and that's very challenging.

[73:12]

But we can do it and we have to train ourselves to do it. And I myself am a great believer in, do it anyway. In other words, even if you do it with exactly the wrong spirit or just kind of mindlessly doing your spiritual practices, better to mindlessly do your spiritual practices than not to do them at all, because maybe if you keep doing them mindlessly, one moment you'll do it mindfully and then you will have done it, whereas if you do it mindlessly and you say, I'm doing this mindlessly so I quit, then the opportunity will have been lost, so I think it's better to One recognizes that these things that one does for practice are going to be by rote and meaningless a high percentage of the time, but you do them anyway for those times when they are meaningful, and you try your best all the time to keep that spirit alive, and it's never perfect by any means. So maybe A. Robin could say the last thing.

[74:16]

And then this better be like, sum up everything that we've... Well, two things, and the second one tonight. I was thinking about authority. I think there's so much, at least in our Western educational system, that dictates authority. You know, follow authority, listen to authority, authority, authority. And so that turning that around to is in the real turning from what a lot of the practices have been in formative periods for many people. And even in everyday life for adults, depending upon the environment in which they live. So I think that it feels like almost a privilege to look at taking ownership of authority

[75:23]

realizing your authentic self. So that's a serious comment I had. The other, this is going to be totally ludicrous and it's not meant to be entirely irrelevant for the reverend. I was in an antique store last week and there sitting on a chair was a figure that looked very familiar from a long time ago. I looked at the tag and what it said was Jerry Mahoney. So in his discussion about you know, hello, yes, here I am. What came to mind in the course of just the discussion was, you know, Edgar Bergen, and Charlie McCarthy, or... Ventriloquist, yeah. And Jerry Mahoney, and Paul Winchell, and that, or even that children's hand game, you know, where is Pointer, here I am, how are you today, sir, very well, I thank you. And recognizing that, that there's not a duality, it's just kind of different ways of recognizing those aspects of self.

[76:29]

That's great. Ventriloquy. Well I have one final thought, some homework assignment for next time, for those of you who are those brave souls who are interested. By the way, anybody who is inspired to continue the homework assignment from last time because you started off with it and you don't feel like you're finished with it should do that. But here's something else. The obvious thing is for you to make a personal assessment of what practices do you do during the day, outside of your zendo practice, to evoke this mind of Master Rewan, the big master. I suggested a bunch of practices. You could try some of those. You could invent others. So that's one. possible thing. The other thing to do is to study your subjectivity in your zazen, to breathe with, you know, who is this?

[77:39]

Who is this? And during the other times when you're not in zazen, to actually, in the middle of your activity, reflect for a moment or drop your and see what is this experience of me that I'm experiencing now. What does it feel like? What is it really? What's your sense of me as an ongoing entity, different from the rest of the world? Can you find that? Can you see what that is? So I suggest those two practices for any of you who would be interested to take them up and we can see next time, like we did this time, if anybody's took me up on that. So, again, thanks a lot for coming. We have one more session on Case 14, I think, next week, and we'll see you then.

[78:38]

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