Every week I try to ... I think of school. The teacher wants to know what the note says. It's from the girl in the back of the room. Anyway, every week or every day Anyway, I try to talk about Buddhism and Zen practice in a way that will encourage you to practice. Before you simply can't get it by osmosis or by... you already have it.

[01:31]

but you can't get it by osmosis or by intellectual effort. One of the stories in the Buddhist record starts out. Ho Shan, a famous teacher, said, cultivating study is called learning. Cutting off study is called nearness. Going beyond both is really going beyond. So I'm definitely not encouraging you to study, and I'm encouraging you to cut off study actually, or to Another way to say it, cut-off study is to come to the point where you realize there's nothing to study, maybe, but you. Or what is the object of study? And of course, you know,

[02:56]

we always say, study you. But if you start to study Buddhism or study yourself, it's not easy to do. So, how to penetrate, you know, cutting off study or ending study? and which is called nearness. Why is it called nearness? Why is cutting off study called nearness? A monk went up to Hoshan and said, taking the third part of his statement, he said, what is a going beyond both? And Hoshan said, beating the drum. Anyway, we've been sitting at Green Gulch, 60 or 70 of us sitting at Green Gulch, and some of you are here, one just left. Some of you from the Seshin are here. And I always feel I should talk about some of the things I talk about in Seshin with you.

[04:39]

It's interesting how the difference between, you know, understanding this kind of story and a practice, understanding it from practice, isn't just a matter of your practicing it and coming to it experimentally yourself, which is really what we're doing, then practice is a Buddhist practice is a kind of experiment. You're always experimenting. Like I said, the ship which goes this way. Trying, you know, back and forth, trying to stay on course. That's the very nature of reality.

[06:05]

But it's not just this experimental effort, but that somehow practice allows you to hear, allows your pace to be such that you can hear. And you can make the necessary connection. Or the connections are there in you by your pace, you know. You're not making the connections by your head. So one of the stories we talked about, the one about Poshan I just mentioned, is the 43rd, 44th story, and the one I talked about, Green Guts, mostly, is the 44th story, 43rd story, a rather well-known story. Tozan is asked by a monk, as usual, How can we escape from hot and cold? How can we escape from this, well, it's wonderful it's raining, but this muggy weather? Or in Seshin, how can we escape from pain and suffering, discomfort? Togan gives a very straightforward, childish answer.

[07:42]

Why don't you go to a place where there's no hot and cold? Well, intellectually you... Intellectually you obviously would discard this as a kind of put-down Why don't you go to a place where there's no hot and cold?" Of course, we know there's no place where there's no hot and cold, so just accept hot and just accept cold. That would be one way of understanding it, but that's not what this story is about. Just when you're hot, you're hot, and when you're cold, you're cold. That's one kind of understanding of it, and if you penetrate that deeply enough, That's true. When you're hot, you're hot, and when you're cold, you're cold. But to get to that, you know, there's something else there. So the monk says, where is this place which is neither hot nor cold?

[09:09]

This is the kind of response of someone who practices. Also, it looks rather childish, like a, you know, daddy. Where is this place? There's no hot or cold. And again, this answer is, this question is in the pace of the teacher, in the pace of in the space of totem. So his reference, he can ask such a seemingly naive question, and many of you reading Castaneda's books were critical of Castaneda being so dumb, you know, asking such dumb questions, you know.

[10:12]

His questions were not dumb, they were typical questions of a Zen student. Maybe rather dumb, actually, but a kind of innocence. You say there's a place where there's no hot and cold. Where is this place where there's no hot and cold? So, he's not taking, if you look at this kind of question, he's not taking as his reference system, you know. Of course there's no place where there's no hot or cold, you know. He's limiting his reference system, rather innocently or maybe more like sophistication, perhaps, to what Tozan said. he's able to just drop his reference to what Toguzan said and just respond in that thing and say, where is this place where there's no hot or cold? And Toguzan says, when it's cold, cold kills you, and when it's hot, hot kills you. Now, the introduction, the commentary, can you hear me in the back all right? No.

[11:38]

Most of the time. Most of the time. Thank you. I like a good clear answer. Anyway, the commentary says ten thousand ages, introduction, ten thousand ages abide by the phrase that determines heaven and earth. Ten thousand ages abide by the phrase that determines heaven and earth. One thousand sages can't help you judge how to catch a tiger or a rhinoceros. That's true. One thousand sages cannot help you judge how to capture a rhinoceros or a tiger. Without a trace of obstruction anywhere, without a trace of obstruction, the whole body appears everywhere equally, or the whole person appears everywhere equally. Without a trace of obstruction, the whole person appears everywhere equally.

[13:06]

if you want to understand the hammer and tongs of transcendence, if you want to understand the hammer and tongs of transcendence, you must have the forge and something, anvil, forge and anvil of an adept. Tell me, has there ever been a case of this family style? To test, I'm telling you this story. Look. Anyway, that's the introduction. This doesn't, as you can see from this commentary, this commentary is directing you away from the idea of this just means to accept hot and accept cold.

[14:20]

I think there's something that's useful to understand here, which is, I often have talked to you about the grasping way and the granting way. Anyway, Suzuki Roshi used to talk about it a lot. And it's rather difficult to understand why the translation grasping comes out. So usually we talk about the positive way of teaching and negative way of teaching. And if we say, for example, the positive way of teaching is, you are a Buddha. This is Buddha, this is Buddha. What you do is right. That's the positive way of teaching. Rather compassionate way of teaching and very accurate. Negative way of teaching is, you dope. What makes you think you're Buddha? You have a long way to go. If ever. You are not Buddha. This is not Buddha. Etc. Idiot. That's more strict Zen style.

[15:53]

if you ask for it. And that's more for the adept. That's the hammer and tongs, you know, of transcendence are made by an adept with a forge and anvil. But actually, it's always negative way or positive way. But if we talk about negative or positive way, we have a kind of binary system, you know, like a computer, which creates its processes by off-on positions, you know, yes or no. But if we say yes or no, you get the idea that there is such a thing called no, and this is an endless, almost endless subject of

[16:57]

attention of the Prajnaparamita literature and Nagarjuna. Is there such a thing as there's an entity and is there a non-entity? Or is a non-entity just a version of an entity? Is there possible an entity without depending on the definition? Is a non-entity possible without the definition, dependent on an entity, etc.? Or is there a non-non-entity? These are rather, you know, extremely important considerations but unless you're on the beam of it, unless you are really riding with what it's talking about, it's rather nonsensical. It seems endless digression. But it's because of this kind of analysis that actually grasping and granting, and I would say the better way to translate it in English, is granting and withholding, is more accurate. And this is central to how do we exist, you know, and how do we help people. As I have said, practicing Zen, and you've been practicing for a while, you know, as

[18:25]

if you come in the door you must go out the window or anyway be ready to get out you know or I will send you out and you have to climb back in the window but anyway you get in and you start for the window and you find there's a big pit between you and the window and you get sort of stuck practicing you say to yourself, you know, actually you are on the way out and you say, oh, this is okay, but maybe you don't realize this is okay means ten years. But anyway, you're here for a while and you are sitting zazen with people and you begin to feel some gratitude about this practice and gratitude for the bell. This is the example I used because I think it's a rather common experience. We feel some gratitude for the bell which begins zazen and ends zazen.

[19:56]

And you maybe want to ring it yourself as a way of helping people, because you see how it helps you. Yeah, but when do you ring it? This is a question of withholding or granting. If I ring the bell, it's granting. If I don't ring the bell, I'm withholding. But every action is this kind of withholding or granting. you write into the question of how do you help people? Do you withhold or do you grant? And so it's not a simple matter. So the grasping and granting or withholding and granting exploration is an exploration of boundaries. Do you understand? Because there's no off position. There's only withholding the doing of it. Gregory Bateson asked when he was here, is there a no in the universe? Well, he said that's because they are trying to look at information and the basic source, the basic mudra of information for us is our gene structure. And you can look at the genes and there may be a missing gene or there may be one gene

[21:25]

which tells another gene to cool it. It's a kind of no, or a kind of withholding. So, our practice is withholding and granting. And you will see, it's fairly easy to ring the bell here because it's supposed to be 40 minutes, but if you didn't have 40 minutes, When would you ring the bell? When would it be good to stop zazen for people? So as soon as you see that it's a matter of withholding and granting, you may get the hint that this is all a constructed reality, that we're talking about a constructed reality. You know, Again, the same example I used. When we chant, we obviously are creating a constructed reality. We all come in here and chant together. And you can say, when you see this, when you see withholding and granting, then you start the search for the real. What's real?

[22:50]

Is there something out there that's real or primary or prior cause or something? Didn't the bird sing just spontaneously? But if you examine our chanting, I don't know if it's different from the bird singing, but when we come to chant we actually have a mixture of motives. Some of us want to chant, some of us don't, but we come and do it. And this seems to not only be seems also to be true of non-human life, for example, the whales. I was talking recently with Dr. Roger Payne, who did that record on the humpbacked whale, and he says the whales come together every year at a very exact time. I mean, like the 23rd at 10 a.m., you know, at a certain point in the ocean every year, and they sing a song which one, what do you call it, a verse, a stanza, what do you call it, before you repeat? What? No? I don't know. Anyway, you know, anyway, you sing and then you sing to the end of the tune and then you repeat it for the second, whatever it is.

[24:20]

Yeah, you know. It's a refrain, yeah. Anyway, I guess the song, right? Okay. Maybe they … because we do … the second time we go through the song we have different words. We don't know what the whales do. But anyway, they … their song lasts approximately, he says, about fifteen to twenty minutes without repeating itself and they sing away. And then at the end of fifteen to twenty they start over again and they repeat it exactly, except, you know, there's minor variations in, but if you stopwatch it, it ends again exactly 17 minutes and 40 seconds or something, and then they start again, right? The next year when they come back, well, first of all, they all know the song, all the whales know the song and they all sing it together. I don't know how many there are, twenty or a hundred or five. Anyway, they all know the song. And next year when they come back, they sing a completely different song. Last year's song is forgotten. They sing a new song.

[25:42]

and they all know it. Everyone knows it, right? I don't know, they were practicing over the year when they got it together, but they get there and they all know the song and they all sing it together. And you can imagine some of the whales are saying, geez, do I have to go over there and chant this morning? Maybe one of them is really enthusiastic and the other is dragging his tail a bit. But they sing it and they sing it, they must sing out of maybe some spontaneous moment which they're able to withhold and grant. When do they do it? are able to restrain their spontaneous desire to sing until they all get together, or whatever, and then they sing together. And I suppose that one of the aims is not just their desire to sing, but also the desire to sing with someone else, the contact there. Anyway, whales seem to stay in constant communication by sound.

[27:04]

But a lot of us get very confused about this kind of thing, you know. I know, again, a story I've told you before. My daughter, at the airport, when she was two or three, started taking all her clothes off. And I said, Sally, put your clothes back on. I said, no one has their clothes off here. She said, and I said, put your clothes on. She said, don't, doesn't everyone want to? Well, it's true. You know, everyone wants to take their clothes off. And yet everyone wants Sally to put her clothes back on. So you have a classic double bind, like Gregory Basin points out. You must not desire enlightenment. It's a classic double bind. If you want enlightenment, don't desire enlightenment. People who cannot understand this distinction of withholding and granting, excuse me for saying so, are crazy. If you can't understand

[28:36]

your crate. We have one member of our community who off and on has difficulty with being crazy and she's in a hospital right now and she's boiling orange juice, walking around without her clothes on and what else? Putting ivory soap in the coffee machine, etc. She's lost touch with withholding and granting. She grants herself the opportunity to walk without her clothes on when it's not appropriate. So the only thing I'm pointing out here is that actually we are constantly in constructed reality. a whale's chanting, or the decision to keep our clothes on and off. So then you again, as I say, can start the search for the real. What's real there? No matter how hard you try. But we sense there must be something that's real. You know, you go outside and you, as someone questioned this at Green Grove, as they should.

[30:03]

looking at the stars and the fog coming across Green Gulf and the wind. This isn't a constructed reality. Well, the level of our perception we can certainly see it's a constructed reality. We perceive it as green or foggy or whatever by our particular point and by our five skandhas, by our form, feeling, perceptions, etc. You know, Heinz von Forster was one of the people who was here when Gregory Bates was here, and he has a paper which starts out using … I said it was Montaigne, but it's Molière, excuse me. It's Molière, you know, I think a play by Molière. There's a guy who, I guess nouveau riche guy, who's hanging out with some Parisian wags,

[31:06]

and they're always talking about poetry and prose. And this guy discovers, much to his amazement, I'm speaking prose. All my life I've been speaking prose. And he feels like he's made a wonderful discovery. Frank Forrester says a few years ago people came up to him and said to him in much the same way, we live in an environment. There's ecology. I live in an environment, you know, like I speak growth. And we take for granted when you hear that. Ah yes, we live in an environment, that's something It's real that we hadn't noticed. But what Pond Forrester goes on to try to prove in his paper, which Buddhism would try to prove the same thing, is that what Moliere's nouveau riche person, and the person who says we live in an environment, has not noticed yet, is that he invented prose and we invent the environment.

[32:33]

The environment is also a constructed reality. Okay, you're with me? Should I stop now? No. So, that's what this story is about. A constructed reality and withholding and granting. And our experience of withholding and granting. And how do we stay on course? What's our course? What's helping people? So here we can go back to the introduction. Ten thousand ages will abide by the phrase that determines heaven and earth. Ten thousand ages will abide by the phrase that separates heaven and earth. This means that once you set up a distinction once you construct a reality, heaven and earth, it sticks there for 10,000 years. People will abide by that, but some particular culture or some myth. And all, again, I'm sort of weaving, because it's interesting, in and out of this Buddhist terminology and cybernetic terminology. Cybernetic terminology would be

[34:00]

that everything, all wholes, must have a closure. Do you understand what I mean? All wholes must have a closure. If you're a whole person it means you are within a self-referential system, in that every aspect of you specifies every other aspect of you. Red corpuscles specify white corpuscles. Heart specifies blood, blood specifies vessels, vessels specify lungs for breathing, etc. So a closure is any system which is entirely self-referential. All dharmas in their own being, or whatever it is, in their own being. This means a self-referential system. And in their own being are empty. So a whole, to be a whole, must necessarily be a part. It's always paradoxical, because it has to have a closure. You can't perceive it as a whole, or it's

[35:27]

So we're talking about boundaries, where does the closure come? So a myth, a cultural myth, gives a closure to a culture, you know, some myth or some assumption. But Buddhism attempts to force you out of the closure. doesn't use myths. By your exact observation, you find out that there's nothing to depend on, that everything is free, that there's no suffering, no bodhisattva, etc., and if you can handle that without fear and trembling, then you're a bodhisattva coursing in the well-gone wisdom, without fear and trembling. So that's the next part. Ten thousand ages will abide by the phrase that separates heaven and earth, but a thousand sages can't tell you how to catch, capture a tiger or a rhinoceros. Tiger or rhinoceros means when you realize that everything is a constructed reality. Where are you? What? We've constructed this, you know,

[36:51]

And Buddhism is the same thing. Buddhism is, you know, a kind of epiphany of constructed reality. You've created Zen Center. And you'll probably, I think, feel a great relief. Finally, I'm at home in a constructed reality. Artificial as hell, but I like it. But it's true, it feels like our own possession. There's no God, there's no Buddhism. Zen is a mere concept which we don't review. I think that's a great definition of Zen. Zen is a mere concept which we don't review. It's all there in that statement. So Green Gulch and Tassajara and all, we've all made this up, you know. We had a little help from our friends in Japan and China. But basically it's a constructed reality.

[38:16]

And its strength is, it says, okay, it's a constructed reality. It's just like ringing the bell. It's a matter of withholding and granting. It's a matter of boundaries. And Buddhism and the Sangha says, if we are going to help people, Let's make clear the world is a constructed reality. Let's set up a constructed reality. Everyone will agree on it. Not everyone will want to chant in the morning, or they won't like this or that, but let's set up some kind of constructed reality, point out that it's a constructed reality, and get people to utilize it and escape from fooling themselves and thinking that there's something which is not a constructed reality. So this is all arbitrary. But there are rules. And those rules are, you know, as an example I used at Green Gulp, an automobile is a constructed reality, you know, but you don't get out of it at 70 miles an hour. There are rules.

[39:45]

And as I said at Green Gelch, I knew someone who would get out of cars up to, I said thirty-five, but thinking about it, I think it was up to thirty-two miles an hour he could get out of a car. And it was rather startling when you drive in one. You'd look in the rearview mirror and you'd be... I bet he's too old to do it now. Anyway, there are rules, and the rules of the constructed reality are just as real as getting out of a car at 70 miles an hour. I've used the example several times of the wind and the trees. Does the tree move the wind or does the wind move the trees? Well, this kind of example, you know, is useful not for its logical coherence but for the help it gives you in sneaking up on a world without closures.

[41:17]

If you look at it, a leaf is the very exact, precise event like our practice, and a leaf makes the air. So, air is completely specified by plants. And plants are dependent on air, and air is dependent on plants. And even though that's true, a big chunk of air, called wind, can knock down trees. Just like, as I've said, my left hand and my right hand are joined and separate, I hold But I can also attack myself, as most of us do spend a great deal of time attacking ourselves. So the air and tree are both constructing each other's reality, and yet each is subject to the other.

[42:43]

each has its rules, and the wind can break the tree, even though the tree is the source of the wind in several ways. So what we have here is no prior cause, no space or time. Maybe I can't get to this point yet. I should go back a little. But where should I go back? Now, let's go back to four items. We say, this is a stick, and eleven o'clock. We say, this is a stick, and we also say, it's not a stick. So, first level of mundane truth is, this is a stick. And second level of truth is higher truth, they say. It's not a stick. And again,

[44:23]

to understand directly what we mean by it's not a stick, I think you have to meditate or you have to be an adept. But you can sneak up on them again by saying, well, it's going to decay and it's temporal and it's, you know, various things about it. It's a constructed reality and you and also you can apply ideas of withholding and granting to it. Third level is to perceive simultaneously and to be able to act on the reality that it's simultaneously a stick and not a stick. We call it a stick, so it's a stick, but actually its uses are wide. This reality is the reality in Huayen philosophy of mutual identity, of each thing specifies the other. And what we're talking about here is, at this level we're talking about the third eye, you know, the ability to see both at once, existence and non-existence. The constructed reality of culture,

[45:45]

or Buddhism and at the same time a freedom from it, the ability to use it. So this third eye, you know, is to actually see it operationally, you know, it's not How can I say it? You know, I often give you some practices to get you to stop identifying, to stop foreground thinking. Foreground thinking means, you know, again, computer is useful. If you had a computer scan a forest, it would scan the forest and see a lot of like that. But if you look at a forest, you will invariably make aesthetic distinctions and pick out one tree and there'll be a foreground and a background. you will make some distinctions, and you will sort out the information. So it looks green, but actually it's not green, and it's a lot of colors, but you'll say green and brown. So the ability to drop foreground thinking, so you look at everything equally, foreground and background. If you do this long enough,

[47:10]

At some point you will have the sudden eruption where you perceive form and emptiness, or perceive absence and presence equally. And you can use absence, as I've told you, to perceive warmth as mind, shadows as body, and sound as speech. This is to get you to drop foreground thinking, which leads into storyline thinking, etc. So suddenly you can make use of absence or emptiness or fullness. Operationally you've got it. This is not intellectual. You see it actually and you You're seeing is action, that's beating the drum. What is going beyond, going beyond? Beating the drum, says Hoshan. The monk says again, again the same innocent or sophisticated, persistent, he says, what is the real?

[48:34]

And in Buddhism, when you say, what is the real, it means, what is the realm in which nothing is set up? Right? Because when you see it's all a constructed reality, you begin to seek for the real. What isn't a constructed reality? So the real is defined in Buddhism as what is not set up. Because we're always setting up something to get you to see that you're in a setup. to set up, and you're supposed to take it hook, line, and sinker. And if you do take it hook, line, and sinker trustingly, you have a better chance than being kind of, you know, I'm not going to get caught, you know. So he says, what is the real? And Hoshan says, beating the drum. So the monk says,

[49:36]

I'm not asking what's the monk third time asks, pressed three times. Commentary says another iron spike. A little dramatic, that's great. Another iron spike. So he says, I'm not asking, I'm not asking what's mind is Buddha. I'm asking, what is neither mind nor Buddha?" You know, he's really trying to get in there to what's not set up. I'm asking, what is neither mind nor Buddha? Oshanta's beating the drum. And that's the same kind of answer as the old tub of lacquer, which I like very much. There's some teacher who, every time someone says something to him, he'd say, you tub of lacquer. But that's very descriptive of what we're talking about. You tub of lacquer, you.

[50:51]

the constructed reality of your legs that you need to give up. Okay, the third, the fourth, I'll stop with the fourth. Maybe I'll pick up on this tomorrow, I don't know. I never know what I'm going to say, actually. We'll see what happens tomorrow. The fourth is, the first is, this is a stick. Second is, this is not a stick. Third is, the ability to perceive both simultaneously, which is the realm of mutual identity, which is the realm of closure, which is the realm of self-referencing systems. Everything references the other. going beyond perceiving this as form or emptiness. Same thing as in the drum line, what is going beyond that enough. And this is when this implies everything. First I said this specifies everything. Next is this implies everything and then we're talking about the level of radiance in practice and that's again why I use the word epiphany because epiphany means shine, to shine.

[52:31]

And the epiphany in Christianity is when the divinity, the ordinary person Christ, the divinity of Christ is recognized. So at this level we're talking about the divinity of constructed system. And their use, or whatever, you know. That's to be continued.

[53:03]

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