I vow to chase the truth with untimeless words.
Good morning.
You may be familiar with the, or may not be familiar with the old Chinese novel, Monkey, or The Monkey King.
It's one of the most well-known tales in China, which was,
written around the 16th century.
Can you hear me?
And this tale was often put into
made into plays, and there's actually a Chinese movie that's quite wonderful.
And there's a play recently called Journey to the West, which I saw the other night, which is based on this monkey.
And so I wanted to talk a little bit about it.
is a novel which is based on the travels of the Chinese monk, the Tang Dynasty Chinese monk, Xuanzang.
And Xuanzang went to China in about the 7th century.
He went from China to India to
bring back the Buddhist scriptures.
And in those days, it was a very arduous journey to go from China to India over land.
You had to go through the Palmier Mountains and the Gobi Desert.
It was not something that people did easily.
And he thought he would go for a couple of years and he ended up being there for 16 years.
And he accomplished his task and he came back and spent the rest of his life translating hundreds of scriptures and forming a school.
So he was considered a kind of Buddhist hero in those days.
And
It was very frightening.
You know, his journey was very frightening and dangerous.
And he said that whenever he got into a tough situation, he chanted the Heart Sutra.
So, the story of Xuanzang
put into this novel.
The novel is actually very imaginative and full of fantasy and allegorical and humorous.
Totally humorous.
But the star is not Xuanzang.
The star is the monkey, the Monkey King.
Well, the way it unfolds is that the celestial bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara, or Kuan Yin, is looking for someone to go to India to bring back the scriptures
or the unfortunate people who don't have them, the depraved or deprived.
And so she picks out this monk who is very pure.
In his past lives he has done wonderful things and he's very pure.
So she wants him to, she asks him to go to India to bring back the scriptures.
But it's very dangerous.
So she needs, she wants him to have some disciples to help him to be his companions on the way.
So the monkey king, I have to flash back to the monkey, his story, the monkey king,
one day realizes that he wants to be an immortal.
In China, Taoists were always looking for immortality, the secret of immortality.
And so one day the Monkey King says, I want to be immortal.
So he dashes off over
He journeys miles and miles to find a teacher that can help him to find immortality.
And he runs into all these teachers and he's very clever.
He's so clever.
He outwits all of his teachers and he finally ends up in heaven.
And he trashes the heavens, you know, totally trashes everything.
The monkey is the symbol of the mind.
The monkey mind.
It was very clever and intelligent and always hard to control.
The monkey is always difficult to control.
And nobody can control him.
And they're all really angry at him, you know.
And finally, his last challenge is the Buddha.
So he meets the Buddha.
And the Buddha says, well, I'll tell you what.
If you can hop into my hand and hop out of my hand, you win.
And you'll be immortal.
Okay, and so he runs to the ends of the earth.
He can do that.
He has these Taoist powers that he accumulated.
He runs to the end of the earth, he says, I finally made it.
And there are these huge trees, pillars, there, and he really leans against one.
I can't remember what he does against one, but in the other one, he takes a leak.
And then when he comes back,
She said, well, I made it to the ends of the earth, outside of your domain, outside of your hand.
And she says, that's funny.
And she lets up her fingers and says, and this is the one you peed on.
So Maki loses, and he has to go into the nether world.
But she says, I have this mischievous person, this monkey, who I think will make you a good companion.
So she ordains monkey and said, you will be his disciple, the disciple of Xuanzang, who is called Tripitaka.
Tripitaka are the three baskets of learning.
And so then the next one is a monkey, I mean a pig.
I don't want to tell you how he met the pig, but they meet the pig, and the pig also gets ordained and becomes a disciple of Xuanzang.
And then they meet another demon.
And all three of these demons are fallen from heaven for one reason or another, kind of like Lucifer, right?
It was originally an angel who fell from heaven.
So, the three of them go on this adventure, or the four of them.
The three disciples and Shwanzang.
And Shwanzang, Tripitaka, is the symbol of pureness, purity.
and intention, lofty intention, and naivety.
And he's so naive, you know, that he walks into all these situations with his eyes open.
And see, the thing is, he's so pure that whenever he meets a demon, they always want to eat him.
Because when they eat him,
They can live for thousands of years just by taking one bite out of his body.
So the demons, I mean, the three disciples are always having to rescue him all the time.
And it's kind of a wonderful way of thinking about the passions
and the elements of the mind as your disciples.
So the monk, Xuanzang, is always training the disciples.
He's always coming down on them for their bad behavior.
And at the same time, the disciples are always rescuing him from his naivety.
So it's a kind of wonderful balance that's still going on all the time between all four of these elements of the mind.
I highly recommend seeing the play, which is staged so wonderfully.
But how do we
You know, the meaning, there are many, many layers of meaning in this kind of comedy.
And one time, they meet, they're going along, they kind of get separated sometimes, and Xuanzang comes upon these immortals.
They say,
We are, you know, a group of immortals, and we'd like to hear the Dharma.
And so he sits down and starts talking to them about the Dharma, and they're having these wonderful conversations about the Dharma.
And he says, boy, we've been talking all night long.
All night long we've been talking.
And then suddenly his disciples appear and start chasing these immortals away.
And he said, why are you doing that?
Do you know how long you've been here?
You've been here a year.
I've only been here overnight.
And then the disciples say, these are not immortals.
They're just tree spirits who have detained you on your way.
So he gets hung up.
He's constantly getting hung up in various ways.
And the disciples are trying to help him
to get to the Western land, right?
And he keeps saying, how much farther is it?
How much farther is it?
And Monkey will get up on somebody's shoulders and say, oh.
Looks like 10,000 miles.
And he says, well, let's keep going.
Let's keep going.
And at some point,
The disciples look at each other, and Mikey says, if he would only stop, he would find it.
That's the point of the story.
If he would just stop and settle down, he would find it.
I think what's interesting is how you think about the monkey, the pig is greed, and the monkey is delusion, and the other monk who's called the sandy monk, or
He's actually called Moksha before that, which means liberation.
But I think that he stands for delusion.
So these three aspects of the mind, greed, ill will and delusion.
Or maybe he stands for ill will, because after he fell from grace, from heaven, he took to eating travelers.
And so he thought that there was no redemption for him.
But she pointed and said, if you take care of this monk all the way to the Western land, then you'll be redeemed.
So they were trying very hard.
The monkey mind controlling the monkey mind.
It's about controlling the monkey mind and controlling all these aspects, the greedy aspect, the desirous aspect of the mind, the destructive aspect of the mind, and the restless aspect of the mind.
Monkey is restlessness.
And it's always used as a metaphor in Buddhism.
The monkey mind is very hard to control.
So how does one control the mind and how does one control the emotions, the passions?
That's uppermost in Buddhist practice.
and something that we're always dealing with, something that we're... to get it under control.
But, you know, control... If one is too controlling, then life becomes too constricted.
And if one is, there's no control, then our life is a mess.
So what is control?
How do you control without controlling?
Or how do you bring everything into, how do you bring the elements of the mind into balance?
I think balance is good without stifling.
So this is an ongoing problem for everyone.
The monkey wants freedom and immortality.
But there's something lacking in the mind.
The mind has a function and can help, but cannot work without faith and inspiration.
Xuanzang is like the spirit of faith and inspiration and purity.
And the mind is its servant.
These days, we tend to feel that the mind should be served.
and that desire is also subservient to the spirit.
But these days we feel that desire should be served.
So it's all backwards, very perverted.
And we feel that destructive ill will should be served.
But ill will is a very strong force
passionate force which should be in the service of aspiration and faith.
So how do we bring these aspects under control so that there's servants, servants of
the true master.
There's a koan, Zen koan, which is, who is the master?
Sometimes I give that koan to people to contemplate.
Who is the master?
Who is in control?
And who is to be served?
There's another koan.
Maitreya and Shakyamuni are both servants of another.
Who is that other?
So,
That's why we always put so much emphasis on aspiration and intention.
Aspiration and intention are so important, naive as they are, because they give us the right direction.
And when we have the right direction,
then all of the other aspects of mind line up behind that aspiration.
So in the Eightfold Path, it's called Right Thought or Right Aspiration.
If we have Right Thought or Right Aspiration,
as right in front of us all the time, then we don't become so ambivalent.
But greed and ill will and delusion are always
vying for supremacy.
And we go back and forth between them in an ambivalent way.
That's why aspiration is so important.
Not to get something, but to
cultivate the way.
And it's exemplified through posture.
When you have the aspiration to sit up straight, then the whole body, mind, follows.
All the parts of the body-mind follow and line up together with each other.
And then you get sleepy and they fall apart.
And then you realign them.
But you know what you're doing.
You know which way to go.
So many people are actually quite lost.
And no matter how smart we are, it doesn't help.
as smart as poor monkey was, and he was smart, didn't help, until he became the servant of his naivety.
Because we say, when
The heart and the mind should be in balance.
Schwanzang is like the heart and monkeys like the mind.
And when they're in balance, things work well when they take care of each other.
And the mind is actually looking for something to serve.
Monkey wanted to be served.
He wanted to be, he gave himself this great name, which is, I can't remember the name, but it's like some grandiose name, you know, Conqueror of Heaven and Earth or something like that.
So the mind tends to fall into, become arrogant and cunning.
Monkey was the master of cunning.
But when the mind is not controlled by the heart, it becomes cunning and arrogant and destructive.
So you don't have to see the play, but you can read the book.
Very good book.
Very interesting.
Do you have any questions?
directs you, but it's also very hard to stay in that direction sometimes with all the forces around you that are negative.
But to me it seems like
There is a way.
Don't be singly.
Don't be single.
I haven't seen the play, but it was interesting to me that the monkey, who's the one who's totally out of control, was the one who said only he would stop.
Yes.
Is there some kind of teaching in that?
knows.
Finally, the monkey got it.
And at one point, they all stopped.
And then the narrator said, and they all got it.
It seems that the story is saying that the greed, hatred and delusion are necessary for survival?
No, they're not.
But they are aspects of our mind.
They're not necessary for survival.
But they think they are.
Yes, that's the delusive quality.
They think that they're necessary.
They think that they need to be exaggerated in order to, because everything wants to, you know, all aspects of our mind want to propagate themselves.
So the desirous aspect of our mind doesn't want to have any limits.
So it becomes greed.
Desire itself
is not bad, not good or bad.
Desire is life force.
And when it has a direction, then it's no longer called desire in Buddhism.
So when we talk about desire in Buddhism, it has a certain kind of meaning.
It doesn't mean, I would like to eat or go to sleep.
That's not what desire means in Buddhism.
means inordinate, exaggerated need, neediness.
And when desire has a direction for practice, then it's called way-seeking mind, rather than desire or ill will.
I just wanted to recommend the story, the actual story of Schwan's Song, which is in the library.
Oh yes, Schwan's Song.
It's actually, there's a book called The Journey to the Wolf.
No, the title.
There were several pilgrims, Chinese pilgrims, who wrote books.
Xuanzang was one.
something mystic, that there was some
this tenacity and this courage.
Yes, he chronicles all the places that he stopped and describes them and the people.
Desire is a kind of neutral form of greed.
Greed is a type of desire.
Is there also a kind of neutral form of hatred and delusion?
Perhaps like discomfort is like the initial feelings that I don't want this and then the sort of the unbridled Realm of discomfort becomes ill will right discomfort or I Think discomfort is okay So one feels
Averse to something.
One feels aversion, you know, and the aversion can take many forms.
So just the feeling of aversion or discomfort is neutral until it's directed in some way.
And delusion is a kind of ambivalence.
not being able to settle, an unsettledness, because one cannot decide something.
Like restlessness.
Yeah, restlessness.
Yes.
I wonder if you could say more about effort or intention.
It always seems sort of mysterious to me or magical or something.
The difference seems very small, like between, say, having the goal of meditating or having, sitting Zazen and trying to pay attention.
And then there's this little magic gap or little tiny
thing that can just arise where the difference between doing it and not doing it is sort of fine, you know.
And we name that, you know, the change to intention or effort, it has to be this little teeny effort.
But it always seems mysterious to me where it comes from.
Why does that rise back up?
It's a little different to me than just being reminded or remembering or something.
It seems like something, I mean, we hope we can train it.
Yeah.
Strengthen it or something.
You see, we're creatures of habit.
Habit.
Habit.
And we have to cultivate habits.
You know, we cultivate good habits and bad habits, you know.
And we're also creatures of rhythm.
And in order to do something, to do something in a sustained way, there has to be a rhythm established.
If we don't establish a rhythm, then our lives are controlled through various rhythms.
You have the rhythm of school, you have the rhythm of work, you have the rhythm of family and its various functions.
And if you don't have the rhythm of Zazen, you don't do it.
Because something else, we have these strong currents in our life.
And if the rhythm of Zazen is not a strong current, well some other current is just going to come and cut it off.
And the current of ambivalence will be stronger than the current of practice.
And so every time you want to
you say, oh well, or you hesitate, right?
So this rhythm of hesitation is stronger than the rhythm of intention.
So intention has to be very strong because there are a lot of forces out there and in here that will keep you from doing what you want to do.
even though you want to do it.
Wanting is the first step, but it's not enough.
So one has to actually step into and create a rhythm.
That's why I always say, when you practice, in order to practice, see, if you go to the monastery, the monastery is all set up and
Everybody practices, and that's all you do there.
And if you're not doing that, you leave.
So, in a sense, that's the container.
But here, you have to create your own container.
This is the challenge of lay practice.
You have to create your own container.
And the way you do that is to, say, take a certain period of time.
And you say, for this period of time, I will sit zazen Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
and Saturday morning for a month.
And you honor your intention.
And honoring your intention is your integrity.
It's on the line.
And then you have
And you follow the program.
And just following the program is practice.
That way you know.
And you create a rhythm.
The rhythm is Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday.
That's the rhythm.
And you follow the rhythm.
And at the end of the month you say, is this the right rhythm?
No, I'll change it to Tuesday, Thursday, and Monday, or something.
And then you do that for a month.
But every month, you look at it and say, is this right?
And if it's not right, you change it.
And if it is right, you continue, rather than leaving it open-ended, which will lead to failure.
And then you say, I can't do this anymore.
And I don't know why.
So you have to make a container for yourself
increments of time.
That's how you create a sincere practice that helps you, that works for you.
So you honor your commitments.
So you should be careful what you say and what you commit yourself to.
You should be very careful how you commit yourself.
What might be the difference between a promise and a vow?
Well, one is a little more... Actually, there is no difference.
In the sense that if you promise something, you should keep your promise.
And if you vow something, you should keep it.
But a vow is more like a stronger statement.
A vow is a much stronger statement.
And it's like trying to, making an effort to do something that's difficult.
A vow, we don't say vow unless it's something that's pretty serious, right?
And that will give us trouble.
But a promise should also be honored.
where integrity came up, that somehow triggered in me, you know, my integrity is on the line, if I've made a promise or a vow or whatever.
Yeah, it means that we should be integrated with our intention.
In the spirit of affirmative action,
I would like to point out that the production currently running at Zellerbach has cast two of the primary roles to women, Buddha and the Bodhisattva.
And furthermore, the Bodhisattva is seen at least in two scenes carrying a cigarette and smoking it.
A lot of anyone thinks that there's some awful
and you know, untouchability about transcendence.
The only problem is cancer.
But the flesh is heir to many failings.
Well I think that, yes, it does bring out, it gives you some feeling of lightness.
which is quite wonderful.
I enjoyed that.