this convinced meditator, this convinced insight meditator, then enters into tranquility, into samadhi, in the sense that you calm down, and then in that situation you have a new, a deeper realization of what I just mentioned, a deeper realization which comes by the enhanced context of tranquility practice. And also the understanding you have in the samadhi, because in the samadhi of tranquility, which is samadhi number two, so in samadhi number three really what happens is you take the insight mentioned there and combine it with the samadhi number two where you're calm. And then in the enhanced situation of tranquility, the understanding of the selflessness of the person is now existing in a situation where the belief in the separation of subject-object is temporarily attenuated by the exercise in giving up discursive thought.

[01:15]

So then, the understanding of the selflessness of the person is not put out there separate from the person who understands the selflessness of the person. So although you haven't realized the non-duality of subject and object, you're in a state where the duality of subject and object has been attenuated and calm. So then the duality between you, the one who understands now the selflessness of your personhood, in fact, you now understand it in a non-dual way, even though you haven't realized non-duality yet fully. So you have a more... a non-dual understanding of the selflessness of the person, which is a deeper understanding. But you still don't understand that the knower and known are separate. You are in a state where that's being demonstrated, but you don't get it, just like people are always in the state of having that samadhi nature, but they don't get it.

[02:22]

Does that help at all? It takes a while to get this clarified. We have a little bit more time. Yes? So this first part about the nature of mind is one point. Is that walking mind, would it be possible to Realize the one pointedness of that wandering. Is that what you're saying, the nature of wandering? When you look at wandering, when you actually are aware of wandering, then wandering is an object. When you actually notice discursive thought, then you now have a, that's a phenomenon you can see. And, you know, it appears. And that can also be known in a, that is also known in the samadhi way. when you're aware of the phenomena of discursive thought.

[03:24]

But even while your mind's moving, it's actually an illusion that it's moving, it's not really moving, it just seems to move. It's actually just this arises and ceases, this object of awareness arises and ceases, or, and then another one arises and ceases, and then there's a mind which actually thinks of the two of them and thinks of going from one to the other. Or you could be aware of two objects at once. That could be what you're aware of. And you could imagine moving from one to the other and comparing them. It's another experience, but then that creates this illusion of movement. Just like, you know, when they take those little cartoon things, you know, you have different pictures and you spin them. Really it's one picture, another picture, another picture, but if you spin it, it looks like you have a moving thing there. In that way, the mind creates this sense of movement. But in each case, in each frame, and also in the case of the illusion of movement, in each example, the knowing and the known are one-pointed.

[04:34]

But we need to train ourselves to develop familiarity with that. So giving up discursive thought, discursive thought means you don't get very involved in it. You kind of like, your discursive thought's going on, but you're just kind of, you're relaxed with it. You just don't get that involved. Things are changing and, yeah, things are changing, but you're also not getting involved in that either. you're just relaxing. You're kind of like, again, sometimes this type of meditation, this aspect of meditation is called, you kind of withdraw from your involvements. Another way it's put is, well, it's like in there, it says, cease all movements of the conscious mind, the engaging in this stuff. So thoughts and views come up, you know, pros and cons come up, but you don't really engage them.

[05:36]

Another way to put it is, don't activate your mind around objects. So an object appears and then you can learn the difference between seeing something appear and when you get active around it. Like this comes up and you go buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Nice stick. Where did you get that? What does that mean? You know, where did you buy it? How much does it cost? Where can I get one? How long do you have to practice before you can carry it? What does it mean? How do you use it? All that stuff's normal discursive thought around an object. Imagine now training your mind, when you see things, just at least temporarily, just to see something, just that's it. It's kind of like being dumb. It's also kind of withdrawing, getting really involved and getting active around the things that appear. In fact, That way of being with things is already there. It just sometimes helps to enhance it by training your attention to deal with things that way.

[06:40]

So you still see things as different. You haven't yet been able to see they're the same, like a diamond and a ruby and a piece of junk. You still see the difference. But in this course, Training Tranquility, you kind of try to train your attention to treat them the same. Like, okay, diamond, that's it. Ruby, that's it. Tin, that's it. Shit, that's it. That's all. You don't, like, say, oh, I should get this, blah, blah, blah. All that stuff you just kind of let go of under this special situation of training in tranquility. So that's why tranquility in some sense needs a more special situation in a way than insight work, because tranquility, you have to feel like it's okay that you don't get into your judgments much. So like, you know, during a special retreat you may feel like, maybe for this weekend I can just like not get into my judgments about the food for at least a couple of days.

[07:48]

But I couldn't do that for a long time, otherwise it would be bad for my health. Some situations you could do that way for a limited period of time. Some people can't do it for a weekend, but maybe you can do it for one period, or maybe not a whole period, but maybe for five minutes you could just treat everything that came up the same. So in that way, if you treat everything the same, you're not moving among the different things, but you still think they're different. The insight work, however, you don't have to worry about treating things the same. It's because more like you're applying the teachings to the different things. So you can move around among the things and be more in daily life and practice insight if you're able to hear the teachings and apply them to what's happening. Just being involved in discursive thought is not insight work. Insight work is using your discursive thought to apply the teaching to the phenomena you're studying. But that's not necessarily calming all the time. Sometimes it's agitating a little bit to apply the teachings to what's happening for various reasons.

[08:55]

Yes? So in this context, the ruby diamond is a piece of shit. And coming there, they are coming up and creating the same. And yet ruby comes as ruby. Shit comes as shit. Yes. Yeah. And also you still, in that state, you have not yet understood the way that they're the same. You're treating them as though you understood that they were the same, but you don't yet see that. So there's various ways that they're the same. Various ways of putting the way they're the same. One way they're the same is that in each case, The very important way that they're the same is that in each case, the subject knowing them and them are one point. That's the way they're the same.

[09:58]

In the tranquility practice, you're acting like you understood that because you're treating them the same. Namely, you're not getting involved in any of them. but you still do think they're different. You don't see that. And when you come out of that training and start treating them differently again, when you start treating them differently, because, in fact, a hot dish should be treated differently than a cold dish, but you don't understand that they're the same because you didn't understand that yet. When you have insight, you can treat them differently and understand they're the same. So you can treat a hot plate differently than a cold plate, but you know that when you pick up the hot plate, that the apprehending subject and apprehended object are one point, are not different. So you know that everything's that way. All the different things are the same. In other words, they're all empty of any separation between the knowing and the knowing, or the touching and the touched, or the tasting and the tasted.

[11:04]

So that's the difference. That's why in the tranquility side, usually you're not doing that at the same time that you're cooking dinner or driving a car. Anybody else? Yes? I have two questions. One is, does I'm saying essentially that the knower and the knower are not separate, that the knower, that the eye can see itself. Am I saying that the eye can see itself? Say it again? Or any of the same thing, the tongue can taste itself. Am I saying that? I don't see, am I saying that the tongue can taste itself? I don't know if I'm saying that, but I don't know if I'm not saying that either.

[12:14]

But anyway, in a case of a taste, there would be an understanding that the taste and the tasted, or the knowing the taste and the taste, are one entity. Or rather, put another way, is they don't differ in entity. They're not two separate events. There's an understanding of that. So then when there's an understanding of that, there's an understanding that, for example, the taste doesn't have some kind of like, you know, inherent existence. But it's there. But it's not there in a kind of essential or independent way. It's there in this other dependent way, which you then start to open to, which is this, you open to its Buddha nature, you open to the samadhi.

[13:26]

Yes? The heroic stride of Bodhisattva, applying samadhi to a situation of violence. Yes. I like your story so much. But then there could be even more violent stories. Yes. Where real harm to oneself or to other sentient beings is involved. How does one practice that, you know, tapata or suchness of that other, at the same time one has to take action to prevent suffering? Well, in the example I gave, you know, where someone was verbally insulting somebody, he did take action. His action was that he calmly said, is that so? So if someone's like about maybe to physically do some physical harm to you, about to, what would be the action which would be comparable to is that so in the physical realm?

[14:45]

Okay, so if you make a gesture towards, for example, me, you know, if I'm sort of aware of how you appear. And if I was in this state of awareness, I would be, like, dealing with the way you actually were. As I was saying the other night, my mind might be wrapping around you, you know, wrapping the thought around you, a violent person. My mind might be doing that. Okay? But I might also be aware that there's more going on than what's wrapping around you. That there's more to you and me in our relationship than my conceptual version of it, which might be, he seems to be violent.

[15:51]

So what I'm suggesting right now is that Well, like right now I'm talking to you, right? And so I have some kind of conceptual version of what our conversation, how our conversation is going. And if I talk to you, if I respond to you now, whether I conceptually render you as violent or not, if I conceptually render you as not violent, or if I conceptually render you as violent, wrap my mind around you in that way, that's, I understand by listening to the teaching while I'm talking to you, if I listen to the teaching while I'm talking to you, I understand that that is what I'm perceiving is going on. But what's going on is not just what I'm conceiving. There's more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in my philosophy. In a sense, you're aware of the narrowness of your perception enough to say that it is not everything that there is in that relationship, in that person.

[17:08]

And now what is more than my perception, actually more, what is more about our relationship right now? How there's a dimension to it that goes beyond and actually is more fundamental than my conception. My conception of what's going on with you and me right now, including that part of my conception is we're in this room with a lot of other people, that conception of what's going on is based on, it's not totally based on, it's based on what is more fundamentally going on. What's basically going on is a very complex causal process which we wrap our mind around and make into a more graspable version of it. So as I remember that what's actually going on, what's fundamentally going on, is also there.

[18:15]

Then that changes the way I relate to you. So that if you appear to me to be non-violent and not trying to hurt me, I don't necessarily enchanted by that. I'm less enchanted by the fact that you appear to be peaceful right now. Now if you were violent, I would also be less enchanted by your violence. So on the street sometimes, you know, maybe you've been on the street, people come up to you and say, you know, hey man, give me your wallet. They don't just say sometimes, you know, can you have some spare change? Sometimes they say, give me your wallet, man. Hey, man, give me your wallet. So it appears that this person is asking you for your wallet, and maybe that might appear to you as kind of like, fine.

[19:18]

Right? It might appear that way. But sometimes when they do that, they're just kidding. That's what they say they're doing. And maybe they're not kidding. Maybe they think, well, I'll just say it. Maybe he'll give me his wallet. But if I become enchanted by my version of it, I would say my response to that is less skillful than it would be if I wasn't enchanted by my version of the interaction. So if you have something happening and your version is, this is violence, this is dangerous, this person wants to hurt me, this person is a whatever, I'm just saying that if I would remember the teaching that whatever happens, although it has this conceptual surface, That conceptual surface is based on an inconceivable process.

[20:27]

And then I'm more open to the situation and more flexible and more skillful. Then I will, my involvement in our relationship will tend to become balanced. I will tend to give up being excessively involved in my version of what's going on. I will become appropriately involved in my version of what's going on. Namely, this is my version. I think he's being peaceful right now. Now I think he's being violent. This is my version. But I'm not excessively involved in that. So you can like, you can say, you could change and I wouldn't, I wouldn't be sort of embarrassed that you now switched in such a way that I I see you as really different but I don't even want to say so because I put you in that category before and I'm just going to state that you're violent. So you might say that when people appear to be violent that that's really when you need to do this practice.

[21:38]

Or you might say when they're violent that's really when you don't dare to do this practice. But also sometimes the people appear to be not violent and you're not doing this practice because you think you don't have to because you feel safe, so why not do it? And then suddenly something seems to go not so well because you were enchanted by your vision of them being harmless. So I just think that actually I'm proposing that even before you get to the place where you can realize that apprehending subject and apprehended object are one point, even before you get to that point, You can listen to this teaching and start to become more virtuous in your relationships with beings by taking your own version of reality more lightly. But not by putting it down, but just realize its scope, namely that it is a rendered version of reality, a rendered version of what's happening, a conceptual version of an inconsiderable process.

[22:47]

So our actual relationship is an inconceivable process. Buddhism is a religion of causation, of causal processes, but we don't put conceptual laws into the causal processes. We realize that the laws of causation are conceptual overlays of an inconceivable process of causation, which is not that it's unlawful, but it's not lawful in the sense of a conceptual law. You can't say how it's going to work in such a way that what you say reaches the actual process. You can say how it works, but that's just a conceivable, graspable overlay on the actual ungraspable process of living. And the bodhisattva, by training, actually gets more and more intimate with this inconceivable process, more and more used to orienting in such a way to events so that they include awareness of inconceivable dimension, and they notice that when they include that teaching in that awareness, their behavior becomes more and more effective.

[23:55]

They don't know how, but by listening to that teaching, on the superficial level too, on the conceivable level, things seem to be more virtuous and more harmonious. I've seen that the samadhi might possibly influence a situation quite differently than if you would respond to it, let's say, in a conventional way. In other words, the mind itself can transform a violent situation, quite potentially harmful to others, into one that may actually turn out quite differently because that kind of interdependent polarizing connection between the mind and the situation. Right, that's the theory, is that the actual process of transformation doesn't come by, you know, just operating on the superficial conceptual level.

[24:57]

But also we don't overlook it. We honor it, we take good care of it, but we realize its limits. Because on the conceptual level is where we actually see separation. And we honor that we don't see things the way we hear the teaching. We hear the teaching of selflessness, but we see self. We hear the teaching of interdependence, but we see independence. And so we have to like, in the realm of insight, we have to bring the teaching of interdependence or dependent co-arising to situations that don't look like that. And that's enough this morning. As I just came in the door, I saw over the doorway Dosho Sensei's calligraphy.

[26:28]

The way is perfect and all-pervading. It's the beginning of the Fukanzazengi, right? The way is perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice, practice in realization. And then it says a little bit later that, and yet, if there's the slightest discrepancy, it's like the distance between heaven and earth. And And then it says something about, I suppose you gain pride of understanding and wallow in enlightenment, full of wisdom that glimpses the utmost ground, tainting the way and clarifying the mind.

[27:44]

rousing the aspiration to escalate the very sky. You are still making the initial partial excursions about the frontier but may lack something of the vital way of total emancipation. So when it says though you are proud of your understanding and replete with insight, that always kind of made me feel like, well, proud? Would you be proud if you had understanding and you were full of insight, full of wisdom? And I kind of think it dug in as being a little ironic or almost sarcastic. But today I was thinking, well, maybe not so kind of ironic, but more like just if you attain something, I mean, if you attain wisdom and

[29:06]

if you just thought that you attained wisdom, in a sense that would be kind of proud. Even if you didn't think you attained it, but anyway, just sort of thought somebody nearby has attained wisdom. That attitude is maybe an example of a hair's breadth deviation. So you actually come to a place maybe where you actually do have insight and you do, you know, glimpse or see things as they are at a glance, you have really, in a sense, attained something. But if there's a slightest difference, it makes a big difference. So, for example, if you actually think you attained something, that thought that you got something, may be sufficient to keep you sort of, this translation says, making the initial partial excursions around the frontier.

[30:22]

Another translation is saying, loitering in the precincts of the entrance. Still lacking something vital in the path of liberation. So it's not quite, it's going a bit far to say there's no realization or no attainment, but it may not be going too far to say that in attainment or in realization, nothing is attained. So, and as you know, in the Diamond Sutra it says, the Buddha asks the Bodhi,

[31:28]

When I attained unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment, was there any dharma by which I attained it? And Subuddhi said, No, Lord. When you attained unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment, there was no dharma by which you attained it. And Subuddhi, in this attainment, was there anything I attained? Was there anything, any particle that I attained? And Subuddhi again says, no, Lord. In this unsurpassed attainment, there was nothing that you attained. Therefore, it's called the unsurpassed attainment. So again, we don't say there is no practice and there is no realization, it's just that if there's anything by which you practice or anything that you get from it, it's that little bit of thing there can make a big difference so that we actually miss, we may miss something.

[32:45]

And one translation says you may miss something, you may be lacking something because You know, if somebody made this little deviation, had this little hair's breadth deviation, and they weren't lacking anything, that would be okay. I mean, if somebody got enlightened in a kind of faulty way, it would be okay. But the problem is that you might really miss out quite a bit if you have a little bit of a hair in there. a little bit of something that's being grasped. In the sutra on the heroic stride samadhi, there's a picture as often in his Mahayana

[33:53]

scriptures about this wonderful group of bodhisattvas that are there. And it describes the kind of beings that they are, and they're really great beings. And then it gives their names. I believe the last one in the list is called Dhridhamati, which means firm or resolute intelligence. And this Bodhisattva then has this thought that he would like to ask a question that would really really be helpful to many many beings. And So then the Buddha encourages him to ask a question, and he asks this really great question, which is basically, he asked, what is the samadhi by which bodhisattvas quickly realize unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment?

[35:18]

And the Buddha praises him extensively for the wonderful question, and tells him that the samadhi through which bodhisattva is attained, complete perfect enlightenment, is the heroic stride samadhi. The way is perfect and all-pervading. What need is there for practice and realization? In some sense the answer is that the way which is perfect and all-pervading is practice and realization. In some sense there is no need for practice and realization because the way is practice realization. The Buddha nature is perfect and all-pervading.

[36:20]

What need is there for practice? Well, the Buddha nature is this samadhi. Buddha nature is practice. It's the samadhi by which you attain Buddhahood, or attain enlightenment, quickly. But it actually is also the thing attained. And then later in the scripture, I think, Yeah, I think the questioner at this point is maybe still Dhridhamati, I'm not sure. But anyway, some bodhisattva says, if a bodhisattva wishes to attain this samadhi, what dharmas should she cultivate? And the person who answers the question is named Manifest Mind.

[37:29]

And Manifest Mind says, if a bodhisattva wishes to attain this heroic stride samadhi, she should cultivate the dharmas of an ordinary person. If she perceives that the dharmas of an ordinary person and the dharmas of the Buddha are neither conjoined nor separate, This is called cultivation of the samadhi. What conjoining or separating are there in the dharma of the Buddha? Ask Manifest Mayans. Or ask Dhridhamati. And Manifest Mayans, if conjoining and separating do not exist even in the dharma of ordinary people, how much less so in the Buddha dharma? What is cultivation?

[38:31]

To be able to penetrate the fact that there is no difference between the Dharma of an ordinary person and the Dharma of the Buddha is called cultivation of the samadhi. And there's two ways I hear this One way is that if you're looking at the dharmas or the phenomena of an ordinary person, and you see that these dharmas of an ordinary person are not separate from the dharmas of a Buddha, they're not separate from them, and they're not joined to them. that that's cultivating the samadhi. Another way to see it is that looking at the dharmas or the phenomena of ordinary person and seeing there that the Buddha dharma, the truth, the Buddha's teaching is not joined to the phenomena of the person and is not separate from the phenomena of the person.

[39:46]

So I could understand that then as being about the relationship between the phenomena of being an ordinary person and the phenomena of being Buddha, or the relationship between the phenomena of ordinary person and the Buddha's teaching about the nature of an ordinary being. And this nature is, as I just read, that the things of an ordinary person, the dharmas of an ordinary person, the phenomena of an ordinary person, are not joined with or separate from. They're not the same and they're not different. They're intimate. They're intimate, they're non-dual. So the smadhi is about the relationship between ordinary existence and the true existence.

[40:53]

Someone said to me a while ago, my meditation is not much. And I thought, and it never will be. And then the person said, what about mindfulness? Isn't that good? Isn't it good to be more and more mindful? And I said, yes, but Buddhadharma is not about making yourself more and more mindful or making yourself a better and better meditator. That can lead you to getting to be a better and better meditator can lead you to being replete with wisdom and escalating the very sky, getting better and [...] better.

[42:02]

People can get better and [...] better. That can happen. But that process has a little bit of a hair's breadth difference in it from the actual intimacy of persons and Buddhas. So the important point, I think, that's being stressed here is that we understand the relationship between our mindfulness practice in its present form, whatever it is, we understand the relationship between that and the Buddha's mindfulness practice. We don't understand the relationship between our samadhi practice and the Buddha's samadhi practice. that we realize the non-duality, rather than we make ourselves better and better and better. And if we happen to get better and better, then we just, with the samadhi, meditate on how the relationship between this better person and the Buddha Dharma.

[43:16]

And again, the relationship is one of intimacy, of non-duality. In that way we don't get... we don't get anything. And yet there is attainment of Buddha-Ninja. And ordinary people may prefer a practice where you get something And preferring to get something is being an ordinary person. So in a sense, you do get something, you get being an ordinary person, which you were before you got anything. Just wanting to get something, you already were an ordinary person. Then when you get something, you continue to be an ordinary person.

[44:21]

So ordinary people want things and get them and sometimes lose them and want something and sometimes get them and sometimes don't and sometimes complain when they don't get them and sometimes are happy that they do get them and sometimes proud that they get them and so on. This is a little bit of a short story about ordinary people. And sometimes ordinary people get a lot and then get more and then get more. That also happens. But the samadhi of the heroic stride is about the relationship between people who are into that kind of thing and the Buddha Dharma. Maybe that's enough for the starters.

[45:34]

Anything you want to bring up? So we've got the dharmas of an ordinary person and the dharmas of Buddha that are non-dual, right? Yes, right. You've got them non-dual. I don't know about those dharmas of Buddha. I don't know. Is there... I don't... I'm not experiencing... It seems like it's just a story about my own... I'm having trouble... You said you have the dharmas of an ordinary person, you heard about the dharmas of the Buddha, and you don't know what the dharmas of the Buddha are? other than your story of the Dharma of the Buddhas? Well, I've heard the teachings of the Buddha, but I'm thinking that the Dharma of the ordinary person is related to myself.

[46:42]

These are the phenomena, right, that are coming up. And I don't know what the... I have trouble understanding the phenomena of the Buddha. What they can get out of it. And so that relationship doesn't... He's not speaking to me. The relationship between... You have a sense of what the dharmas of an ordinary person would be? Those would be like phenomena that are coming up for you, that you're saying? And then... And you've... Did you say you've heard about the dharmas of the Buddha? Or you've heard about the Buddha dharma? I've heard the teachings of the Buddha. You've heard the teachings of the Buddha? But those seem different than the momentary phenomena of that... They don't seem to line up. The teachings you heard about don't seem to line up with your momentary experience? Two different categories. One's abstract and theoretical, and one's right here and now.

[47:47]

The one's abstract and theoretical and one's right here and now? So the Buddha Dharma things are abstract and theoretical, and the ordinary person things are here right now? Okay. So, and what's the relationship between the abstract theoretical and the here-right-now things? You're wondering about that? Is that right? Or is there another way to understand Buddhadharma that would make that relationship more... Is there another way to understand Buddhadharma that would make that relationship more... More fruitful or more... More fruitful or more powerful? Yeah. Well... the teaching which we just brought up was that if you wanted to cultivate the samadhi, it recommended that you cultivate the things of an ordinary person, which include these momentary phenomena that you mentioned. Plus it also includes that an ordinary person would be hearing about things that sound theoretical to him.

[48:52]

But when he thinks of something theoretical or abstract, at that moment he's having a momentary experience of an abstract thought. But it says anyway that it recommends cultivating the things of an ordinary person in the samadhi in order to realize the nonduality. Things of an ordinary person also include your hearing of teachings about, for example, about being an ordinary person. You just heard a teaching which said that in order to cultivate the samadhi, you would cultivate the things of an ordinary person. didn't say anything about cultivating the things of the Buddha or the dharmas of the Buddha or the Buddhadharma.

[49:55]

It didn't say that. But it did mention that when you start to see or when there's an understanding of the relationship between the two, that then you're really getting into the samadhi. It also says something like, does it say, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping the elephant?

[51:03]

Groping for the elephant? Does it say, do not be afraid of the true dragon? Do not be suspicious of the true dragon? So ordinary people are kind of like, they're groping for this elephant, they're touching various phenomena, trying to understand what they would be. And we have these actually transient experiences which we're dealing with actually on a kind of superficial level. We've got some kind of like Phenomena out there and we're we're dealing with it kind of like in a superficial way trying to figure out what it is This is our cousin. We're honored followers as n are long accustomed to this Groping for elephant So this is a comment on On the way we're accustomed to

[52:14]

So, for example, right now maybe there's some groping for elephant going on right now in this little conversation you and I are having. Groping for the elephant. And it says, but don't be suspicious of the true dragon. What's a true dragon? Mixing metaphors. What? Yeah, maybe Buddha-nish you could call it. So, we're dealing with various impressions that we're having and then trying to guess what's there. Then later Dogen says something about you should move, mixing metaphors all over the place, you should move, I think he says, move from, does he say move from loving the carved dragon

[53:17]

to loving the real dragon? That's interesting. Yeah. Something like that. Move from loving the carved dragon to loving the real dragon. It's kind of an elaboration of this comment about the elephant and the true dragon. So carved dragon is kind of like groping for the elephant. Carved dragon you can touch, you know, you can carve, or you can buy at an antique store. And this image comes from a Chinese story, which some of you may have heard about it. A man who loved various, he loved the form of the dragon. So in his house he had many different kinds of carved and painted dragons.

[54:21]

They had like wooden dragons jade dragons lapis lazuli dragons and so one day a dragon was flying over his house and saw all these dragons all over the place in his house and thought he probably would like to meet me so he swooped down onto the guy's veranda. This was like a duke, you know? Duke of Joe. And he swooped down to sort of show the duke a real dragon. And the duke was terrified and fainted. Which is not all that bad, actually, to faint when you meet the real dragon. If it doesn't kill you. probably makes you healthier, right? Anyway, what's the carved dragon?

[55:21]

What's the carved dragon? This is the thing of the ordinary person. These are our day-to-day experience, but it's not the real dragon. There's a real dragon which the carved dragon is based on, right? The reason why people make those dragons, those carved dragons that I like, is it's a real dragon that people really like. It's a basis. The real dragon is the basis of all those carved dragons. People didn't make those dragons based on nothing. There's some reason why people carved those dragons. But the real dragon doesn't look like the carved dragons. Something that looks like a carved dragon is another carved dragon. Dogen says, you should move from loving the carved dragon to loving the real dragon. He says, love.

[56:23]

I don't remember what the character was, but make this move. Move from the dragon you can touch and grasp to the ungraspable dragon. That's the basis. But he also says, but don't esteem or despise what is near. Don't value or demean what is near. What is near? What's near? The carved dragon's near. What's an example of a carved dragon in Zen practice? Everything, but, you know, in particular, what kind of carved dragons do we like in Zen?

[57:25]

Bowing, yeah, bowing. What else? Buddhist statues, what else? Incense. Incense. Robes, sitting upright, crossing our legs, sashin, all this stuff, we love this stuff, don't we? But sometimes we don't really just love it, we actually sometimes get into esteeming or despising it, rather than just loving.

[57:57]

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