Is it warmer on this side of the Zenda? Everyone's all over there. I almost didn't make it to lecture because a group of guests insisted that I give them a five minute talk. They really, I usually say no, you know. They really were pretty insistent. And so I ended up going to their room. And it turns out that five years ago, I guess I gave them a talk. And they remembered everything I said, practically, verbatim, all these years, you know. I almost take myself seriously after hearing this. Anyway, they have some feeling for what we're doing and it always amazes me the feeling people have for Tassajara and us being here. I think I told you maybe that I was at a meeting

[01:27]

a few months ago, and it was attended by a left-wing lawyer who said, oh, Tassajara, yeah, the hip vacation spa. And I sort of thought, well, that's all right, a hip vacation spa. Maybe it is a hip vacation spa. But this other guy really got irate, and he attacked him for half an hour about it. What do you mean vacation spot? That place is the most wonderful place. He defended Tassajar. I didn't have to say anything. Maybe people confuse hot baths with Buddhism. I want to talk tonight about the cemetery we're making for Suzuki Roshi. And first I'd like to say something about his garden. He spent most of his time and energy here making that garden.

[02:56]

And that garden is a kind of monument to him, for him, since this koan I'm going to be talking about is about a monument. I want to try to complete the garden as well as I understand what he wanted the garden to be. I've talked with him a lot about the garden and walked around with him a lot and also seen his garden in Japan and around his temple and the first garden he tried to make in Japan, which was... In that garden, the ideas he... that are... this garden that you can see developing in the garden he has in Japan, One thing is, please leave the stones and plants that are there, there. Partly because the stones you picked, I want to try to fit into the garden.

[04:27]

but also because it's a little embarrassing sometimes, like today when a woman came all the way in here to give me a Buddha that she intended to give to Roshi. It's a Buddha that Roshi and I admired at her house in Big Sur some years ago. She had a dream about the Buddha and decided to give it to Roshi and now has given it to me. So, it's now in the cabin where I'll stay. But one of the reasons she came down, too, was she had this wonderful stone she found, which has a white circle on it. In fact, she sent it here with Alan Watts on his only visit to Tassajara, and made Alan promise not to take it, because he wanted it. Anyway, she wanted to see the stone, and it's not here. So it's possible it's somewhere else, but it's possible also that somebody, oh, that's a nice stone. But we couldn't find it. It would be nice if we could. It's in the study hall. It's in the study hall? Okay, good. I can find it. Well, see that's... Hey, does anybody know where my boots are? There are many pairs for you to wear in the office.

[05:53]

When you cleaned my cabin, my boots disappeared. I don't know if anybody announced it in Findo. I'm still looking for them. I knew these lectures were good for something. Toby asked a very good question last night. I'd like to respond not just to what he said, but to the larger implications for all of us. In a sense, what he did was, maybe he didn't specifically intend it this way, but the implications of what he did was he questioned the whole situation of Tassajara, why we're practicing and why we chant, and what's all this Dai Osho business,

[06:54]

and why we have a concern with history and tradition. And I think those are very real questions. And I remember, I used to wonder why Roshi carried this stick, you know, and what he did all kinds of things for, why he bothered to chant why he always had this bowing cloth on his wrist which kept slipping off as he'd talk onto the floor and pick it up and talk a little bit more and it'd slip off. I thought, why doesn't he just leave it in his room? Anyway, it took me quite a long time to come to even an intellectual acceptance, let alone the willingness to do it and then longer before I could do it, do it knowing it's our real practice. Anyway, we should question what we do, the way Tozan said in response to the sutra,

[08:21]

saying, no eyes, no ears, no nose, etc. He said, yes, but I have eyes, ears, nose. The problem of history on one sense is an intellectual one and it's helpful to if you really want to explore the question, to know what the Western concept of history is in contrast to the Oriental concept of history, and what your own personal idea of history is, which is usually very mixed up with myth. But aside from all of that, I think the best way to approach the question of history is, what is your own history? One moment ago, what you thought or did. How different is that than what someone did 100 years ago? What is the thing you're living in right now, the continuous thing you're living in right now, moment after moment? Anyway, that's where I think we should start with such questions.

[09:40]

What I'd like to do tonight is something I haven't done before, which is to read directly from the Blue Cliff Records and then read some of a lecture that Roshi gave in 1963 about what kind of monument, what kind of gravestone a Zen teacher Zen Master should have. As you may know, sometime soon we'll have a ceremony here in which we, two ceremonies here in which we, in one ceremony scatter Roshi's ashes and in another bury Roshi's ashes. Scattering of Roshi's ashes is not a thing Japanese people do, but it's something that he asked to have done. And he... He always... Tsukuroshi was interesting. He always thought about everything beforehand, before you talked to him about things.

[11:15]

even you'd go to a place, I remember going to land, to look at some land, say that somebody, long before Tassajara, that somebody wanted to give us for a monastery. And we'd be there half an hour walking around, everybody chatting, you know, and we'd leave and then we'd be talking about how the where, if we did get it, where a building should be, etc. And he would remember everything about how the land went and probably where the water was and what kind of stone and exactly what to do on a piece of land like that to make a building work, etc. And when

[12:17]

Nakagawa Soenroshi, who was a close friend and to be a close friend of Nyogen Senzaki's and was in a way going to be the heir in America of Nyogen Senzaki's role here. He wasn't a disciple of Nyogen Senzaki, but they shared a common feeling. I think they met actually by writing letters. but they became very close and Soen Roshi was going to, when Yogan Sanzaki died, he was going to, or before, he was going to come and join him in Los Angeles. I forget the details, but anyway. It didn't work out that way, but Soen Roshi is one of the two or three Roshis in Japan who has quite a feeling for the West and has come here several times. He's also considered the best haiku poet in Japan, this century. Anyway, when he brought some ashes here of Nyogen Tsunzaki, Suzuki Roshi, and said he'd like to scatter some in Tassahara, and Nyogen Tsunzaki said that, Suzuki Roshi immediately knew where he wanted them scattered.

[13:46]

And he must have thought of it many times coming down the road. And as you go up the road here, where it stops being really steep and then turns and goes off along, well, sort of parallel to the ocean and you can see down into Church Creek Ranch, that area, just before that turn there's a little sort of jut where the road goes off a bit. and it's the last place in which you can see Tassajara. After that you can no longer see Tassajara. And there's three peaks, little peaks, and actually then there's a whole row of peaks that stretch way down almost to Tassajara actually. but there's three main peaks you can see. From one side you can't see, it's not so clear that there's three peaks, but from the other side you can. If you walk out, it's very clear there's three. He immediately said he wanted, you know again, Senzaki's ashes scattered on the first peak, and then a little later he told me he wanted his ashes scattered on the middle peak.

[15:09]

So that'll be one ceremony we'll do, either the night before or the night of the main ceremony. That night when we... Some of you, other than Ed, who was here that night we scattered Niyo Gen Senzaki's ashes? Anyone? Just Ed, I guess. Almost everybody went up the road, and it was full moon night, and Sonen Roshi gets quite excited, and he began to be impatient for the moon to come up, so he

[16:13]

And we were all waiting, and Yasutani Roshi was with us, and Soen Roshi, and Suzuki Roshi, and all of this group of Zen students. I think it was Soen Roshi's first visit to the United States, or the first one in many years. And the moon, it got brighter and brighter, and the moon didn't seem to appear. So finally Soen Roshi said, we'll chant it out. So we all started chanting, Kanji, Sai, Bo, Satsu, Gyojin, and all of us in the group. And the moon sort of seemed to come up over the hill, you know? You know, it came up to view. Wonderful light. And, I don't know, everybody got very excited and we chanted everything we knew. Over and over again. And somehow we ended up in a big circle. It's a May Day celebration. Holding hands. I was between Tsurugi-oshi and Yasutani-oshi, I think. And we started dancing around like this. And Soen Roshi said, in a big voice, this is true hippie dance. It was the height of the Haydash person. Anyway, that was... So the other place that maybe most of you know, which is...

[17:43]

the Hogsback back here. And just beyond Grasshopper Flats, there's a sort of little hill. And to give you some more background about that, when Suzuki Roshi and I first came down here, actually, Virginia and I camped. When Graham Petchy came first, he'd heard that He'd just been hunting for a place to camp, and he'd camped at China Camp. And he always told me I should take a day off sometime. So I decided to... to come... to take a day off. Or two, I guess we're going to spend the night. And I have a penchant for exploring roads. and continuing on wrong turns. If I'm driving somewhere and I make a mistake, I go for miles before... I know it's wrong, but I want to see where it goes. So anyway, we hunted for China Camp and came in. We found this place because I just kept going down the road, you know. It was wintertime almost. No one was here. And then a year or two later, I'd been curious about why there was private land in here.

[19:10]

So, somebody gave me the phone number of people who lived with Bob and Anna Beck, and Anna's here tonight. And I lost the piece of paper a couple of times. Anyway, finally we made contact. And Bob Beck said something about Zen, fly by night. Everybody says they're Zen. Anyway, we had to convince him we weren't. before I find out. I don't remember what his exact words were. Anyway, I brought Suzuki Roshi in here, and it's the first time I'd ever seen him so genuinely excited about something. And we... At first... Well, the first idea... The second idea was the horse pasture, and the third was here, this whole place. But the first possibility was over that Hogsback. So the first thing Roshi and I did when we got here is we came down here and walked down and up over that Hogsback and looked from there down into where you can see the waterfall and the stream and then we went down there and walked around. Because at that time it didn't look like it would be possible.

[20:37]

nor financially possible, from our point of view, we had no money, you know. And we had a budget of $4,000 to $6,000 a year at that time. What's in those budgets now? $250,000. Anyway, then it was $4,000 to $6,000, and so we had no possibility of buying any property. And Budget is just, you know, of course, just cash flow, how many money in the bank. And it wasn't also, from Bob and Anna's point of view, possible because they had commitments about how this part of it would be used. So we stood on the hillside and looked down. Right there. And then Roshi later, with some students while I was in Japan, but before that we did

[21:38]

there's a small little baby boy buried on that hill, who died in a tipi fire, not here, somewhere else. And so Roshi, the reason I chose that spot is because Roshi talked to me about that hillside as being a cemetery. While I was in Japan, he picked a spot up there, up the path, And he picked a place, a very inconspicuous, quiet place, usually sort of Zen masters. Important people are buried with a great big monument on the top of a hill. Roshi picked a place down below the bottom of the hill, and not any farther than he thought that the old Japanese people could walk. And it's also a place which is quiet. You can't hear the...

[22:38]

the stream on the other side of the Hogsback or this stream. It's quite quiet. You just go up a few feet to the top of the hill and you can hear the stream on the other side. This stream, of course, doubling back. So, what Reb has been doing the last couple of days is preparing the place And what it'll be is a... rather big stones, about two feet, going down into the earth, with four sides, with dirt on the bottom, and a big stone will go on top. And for now, some wooden stick will put behind it. And... Anyway, the ashes go into that hole and then into the dirt.

[23:48]

Can I have that phantom? Is it possible to take it out? Maybe you put it right there where the crackers are. That's perfect. This is the Blue Cliff Records and the Heikigan Roku. And this is 1963, I think. Yeah, February 1963, Koshige gave this lecture. He talked about this model subject number 18, about the tutor, or kokushi. Many teachers in Japan are called kokushi, which means daito kokushi, which means teacher of the nation, or emperor's tutor. Emperor's tutor and religious advisor to the nation. Anyway, this is about this man named Nanyo Echu, who is called Chu, and who was a disciple of the Sixth Patriarch, and who was a tutor and advisor to

[25:38]

one of the Tang Dynasty emperors named Xu Fuso, who I guess was sort of a bad guy. He was abbot of a temple called Hakugaisan about 40 years, I think, before the emperor called him to the capital. And he was ill. And I'm not exactly reading this because this book, by the way, is... The Blue Cliff Records is translated by R.D.M. Shaw. It is one of the worst translations in Buddhist history. Anyway, it's not an accurate translation at all. It's completely mixed up. It's got everything mixed up. But it is interesting, he has a rather charming understanding. He happens to be a Jesuit, I believe, R.D.M. Shaw, D.D., Doctor of Divinity, and his understanding is very Western and Christian, and Buddhist, but mixed up, and he translates things.

[27:07]

very literally, and he gets the references mixed up in it. Anyway, I'm sort of using this to tell you the story as much as I know it from other sources and from Suzuki Oshi. Anyway, the Tudor, too, was quite ill, and the emperor came to see him, and the emperor, very tactfully, wanted to ask him what kind of monument or gravestone he would like. So he didn't want to say, you know, next week or two weeks from now. So he said, a hundred years from now, what do you want? What would you ask for a hundred years from now? And the tutor said, for this old monk, build an un-teared mound. Un-teared? Tears. Anyway, he said, build a untiered mound. And the emperor said, I asked the teacher, what shaped monument? And when he asked what shaped monument, the tutor at that time waited quite a long time. And then he said, do you understand? And the emperor said, I do not understand.

[28:35]

And the tutor said... Let's go back. Tutor's Kokushi, untiered. Untiered mound, it says, is the simplest kind of tomb in use for Zen masters. And the usual one... I didn't bring another drawing I have, but... Here's Roshi's drawing, or what I copied off the blackboard. Now, you can't see, I don't think, but... Anyway, a tiered mound, they put it in all over Japan, they're this way, and they're based on the same thing a pagoda is based on, which is that there's a base, and then a round part, and then a kind of triangle this way, and then a curve this way, and then a flame, or bindu, or point. That flame is very important in Tantric Buddhism too. It's on the top of a lot of buildings in Japan and it's the jewel or the flame or the point of concentration. It has many meanings. And they represent earth and water and fire and air and Buddha nature, enlightenment. Anyway, usually the biggest ones in Japan are for

[30:01]

the lords and the shoguns and daimyos. And there's a really, which must be the most incredible cemetery in the world, which is Koyasan, which is the sacred mountain for Shingon Tantric Buddhism. And it's several miles long of these huge, I forget what they're called in Japan, but redwood trees, Japanese redwood trees. with these enormous monuments, one after another. And the Japanese cemeteries are not so bare as ours. They're rather quite pleasant places. But they all have these huge stones in these shapes. This is a tiered one. An un-tiered one is just a simple stone shape. So he says, make me an un-tiered monument. And then when the teacher said, when the emperor said, what shape? He didn't say anything. And then he said, do you understand? So that's an untiered mind. And then the emperor said, I do not understand. And the tutor said, I have a law qualified disciple, Tangen. And the footnote here for that is

[31:25]

law-qualified disciple recognized publicly by the teacher and appointed at a public ceremony as fit to become successor. The Tudor said, I have a law-qualified disciple, Tangen, who positively knows this matter by heart. I ask you, give an order and ask him to come and tell you about it. He knows my innermost mind thoroughly. So after he died, the emperor sent an order to Tengen and asked him what was his teacher's idea. Tengen said, South of Shou, north of Tan. Within them there is gold which fills the land. Underneath the formless tree is the public association boat that he means fairy. It's a really literal translation. In the Emerald Palace, there is no understanding. South of Sho, north of Tan. It's interesting for two reasons. One is that south of Sho, the waters of Sho flow northward.

[32:55]

in the waters of Tan, north of Tan, flow to the south. But also between those rivers was the... where most of all the Zen temples were in China. So it represented the Zen world, you know, known world by Chinese standard. And when he said south of Shou, north of Tan, Set Shou, Setsho wrote most of the introductory words for these introductions to these poems. Setsho here inserts a word which is, the single palm of the hand makes no sound. And after there is gold which fills the land, Setsho inserted a mountain-shaped pilgrim staff And after, underneath the formless tree is the ferry boat, Setsho inserted, the sea is calm, the river clear. And after the emerald palace, there's no understanding, Setsho inserted, the summarizing ends. Anyway, that's what you have to make sense of. Study Zen. Then that's only, that's the main subject. Then there's what they call the appreciatory word.

[34:27]

The untiered mound, to see it is indeed difficult. Then he says, in that clearness and depth of mind, no green dragon torturousness was allowed. That's just not, that's completely wrong. Well, anyway, this is mostly wrong. The formless tree. He's got this kind of mixed up too, but anyway. says, the formless tree is the reference to a passage in the Parinirvana Sutra which speaks of men carrying on their life journey across the waters in a ferry boat while they are, as it were, in the embrace of the reality of the Absolute. And he's also got the Pilgrim staff on this stuff. He says it was to... Okay. So, look at what she says. Chu, Kokushi, who's a famous disciple of the Sixth Patriarch, said that. And, uh, Hata talks about Nanyo Eichu, who's somebody, I forget who he is. Anyway, he, uh, says, he just inserts that it's too bad that

[35:58]

Nanyo Echu had no good disciples, no good descendants, because he was a great Zen master. Then he told some stories about... By the way, in this lecture, I... In those days, when I was doing these lectures, I was working for the university, and I had about a 60-hour-a-week job, and I was at Zen Center all the time, and so I was quite sleepy during lectures. And in this lecture, I was quite sleepy. It's a little bit abrupt. Sometimes I get so sleepy my lecture notes, I can't write anymore. It wanders off. Anyway, he told some stories about the pause of the teacher, the tutor, after the emperor said, what shaped monument, he paused and then said, do you understand? So, Suzuki Yoshi tells some stories here about the emperor should understand why he was silent. Then he tells the story, a Brahmin asked Buddha, what is the teaching if it is unwritten and unstated? What is the teaching of unwritten, unstated Buddhism?

[37:24]

Buddha didn't say anything, he just stood in front of him. Then the Brahmin bowed and said, thank you very much. But the emperor could not, this emperor in this story, could not understand what was meant. But I don't understand is all right, says Sudipi Rishi. Because his monument should be the whole universe, no need to say this or that. I don't know is quite right if he understands. And he also tells another story where a man asked Bodhidharma, who is before you? Bodhidharma said, I don't know. Then he explains about an un-tiered mound and a tiered mound, saying that the un-tiered mound, simple shape, is for Zen masters, and the one with the various shapes, the Buddhist shapes, is not. And he says, anyway, it means a simple mound.

[38:51]

Then he says, do you know the sound of one hand clapping? A single hand does not usually make any sound. But if you understand, there will not be a need to make an elaborate tombstone. A simple one will do. Then he explains about ku while he talks about gold. And then the mountain-shaped pilgrim staff. The pilgrim staff, when it's sticked with the rings on it, is usually made of a natural branch of a tree. In one hand, it means... It stands for being able to lead, being able to teach. And because it's just natural wood, it also stands for Buddha nature. And it stands for a cemetery stone, a monument. So he talks about that. It means also the tombstone. And then his explanation of under the formless tree there is the ferry boat is not about what that footnote says. But in India, in this case, it means he says, in India,

[40:28]

It was very hot. So the ideal place to be would be to sit in a boat under a tree. And so it means people are very happy. Likewise with saying that the water is clear under the formless tree and calm. So he meant where his tombstone was is people's People are happy, so there's no need for a tombstone, or a big tombstone. Then he said something quite interesting. He said, you may say the emperor should understand. You know, when the Tudor remained silent, the emperor didn't understand what he meant by being silent. So Tsukiroshi says, you may say that the emperor should understand his silence. But this kind of understanding, while it may be right, it's too much concerned with remaining silent. And you can say Buddhism should be understood within us.

[41:53]

But this also is like building a big monument. To be too concerned with remaining silent or understanding in that kind of way is also to build a big monument. If you say Buddhism is like this, you create waves and calm water. And he says, in this boat, under the tree, the people may be wise, some people may be wise and some people may be foolish, but if they're happy, it's okay. He says, but if you say I'm a Zen master, you're going to rock the boat and we're going to sink. That's another way of building a big monument. Then I was so tired, you see, I turned two pages at once. Anyway, he says that to see untiered mound is indeed difficult. It means that if you want to see the untiered mound, it's difficult to see it. That to want to see it, to want to see an untiered mound, like a story of wanting to be the horse

[43:46]

which moves, you know, before he even feels the shadow of the whip. To want to be good in that way is to create a big monument. But this understanding is not so deep, to want to see the untiered mound. Because you want to see it, you cannot see it. Then he says, in the clear water there is no dragon. clear, dead water, there's no dragons. Dragons only live in muddy water, rivers or oceans where there's something to eat. So, he says, the shadow of the mound is round. And everyone can see... I went to sleep. I don't think it's so interesting to here, something red like that. But I felt it was important that you understand what kind of mound we'll have, as that lecture is probably just a simple mound with some stone on top.

[45:14]

but probably first we'll have a wooden stick carved in those shapes at the top that will later be replaced by an appropriate stone. Do you have any questions? Yeah. He also, with Mike, prepared a place for Trudy. Mike and he prepared a place. So as soon as we finish this ceremony, and Mike feels able to do it, we'll bury Trudy's ashes. I have to talk with Mike about it. Aum.

[46:57]

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