I want to think about, with you, a little more of what we've been talking about. Are you all familiar with the word hubris? Hubris is a... I don't know what it exactly is in Greek, but I guess we can say it's a Greek word which is usually translated as something like overweening pride or excessive pride or something like that. but i think we might be able to say that hubris is the the sense of hubris is the ultimate moral principle in the west and hubris has the

[01:27]

Meaning, hubris proposes a relationship between your mind, the mind, and events, physical, social, political, personal events. If you are your mind or you are out of scale, out of sequence with the actual movement of events, the events themselves will come back against you. Now we can say you will come back against yourself or we can say you lose the ability to properly engage yourself in the world so that you move with events. The word hubris is related to hybrid, hybrid, and I think it literally means the mating of a wild boar and a tame sow.

[03:02]

which is a mixing of levels. It also means a violation. Without fudging and trying to interpret, we can say that it proposes a cause and effect relationship between the state of your mind and physical events. particularly in the sense that if you, from the movement of events, you accumulate merit, you possess, you swell with pride or merit from the sequence of events, you lose your touch with the sequence of events, and the sequence of events will have their revenge.

[04:33]

So Socrates had his, which he talked about, hubris, he had his last cup of tea, somewhat detached perhaps from the sequence of events and yet able to follow with them. So, what could be a greater hubric overload than, you know, enlightenment? I got him in the back of the neck. I'm sorry, excuse me. Or what could be, you know, more of an overload than

[06:24]

as in my last lecture, to stand aside and criticize or watch the dissolution of our own society? How can we be out of our society or think we're out of our society? This is some grave, hubric danger, overextension. So, what I forgot to add last time, or didn't add last time, is there's a fourth practice. I mentioned three practices, precepts or survival, jhana, meditation or practice

[07:53]

and our vow, putting yourself into relationship with all beings. And there's a fourth, which is the lineage, which I can't say too much about, actually. As Suzuki Roshi said, there's nothing we can talk about. It's no secret. It's no secret, and so there's no way to say anything about it. That's why we

[08:59]

live here together, practice here together, come to Tassajar, is what he said. But it's interesting, you know. a couple of years ago, or a year and a half ago or something. I mentioned how the television program, what's it called, Gung Fu, is that what it's called? Gung Fu, about David Carradine, who the Rolling Stones says has taken 500 trips

[10:02]

How David Carradine, a half-Chinese, half-acid, or half-Chinese. Supposedly on a television program, half-Chinese, half American, I guess. I think the people who wrote the script must have been half-Asian, too. But anyway, how this half-Chinese guy out... he doesn't outgun, he out...

[11:05]

smarts, out, moves, all of these gun-toting, hard-drinking, Christian cowboys. And the fact that such a program can be on television is a rather significant fact. That even for popular consumption like that, What's the word, kitsch? It's described, potpourri. Such a popular program could depict a person of another race and a person from another country, and particularly from the Orient, because in the past, the Orient, if you've ever watched early science fiction movies, you know, Buck Rogers looking bright-eyed and Ivanhoe-ish, and Christian was always fighting the evil guy way at the farthest end of outer space, was always the emperor of Ming, or something like that. There was always some Chinese guy with funny eyes,

[12:29]

who was the source of everything mixed up and wrong. So now we have, you know, this man who's... maybe it's a concession that he's half American, but actually it's more mixed up to be half American, actually. Anyway, here's this half-breed winning, without even a gun, you know. He just steps aside, picks arrows out of the air, and refers occasionally between bullets to this Chinese man or Japanese man. Some of it was actually filmed in Japan, I think, because I could recognize the footage. Hu appears and gives him wise advice from Zazen posture. It's not entirely funny, it's rather interesting. But where does he get his power to, even at this level?

[14:01]

where does he get his power to confront these dreadful mixed-up cowboys is from his lineage. And when I mentioned this story a year and a half ago, I compared it to Milarepa's battle with the Bon priests. And again, you know, Milarepa wants to... for some reason he wants the Disay Mountain, right? And he wants Buddhism to be located there. It's probably some significant mountain. I don't know. And the Bon priests hold it. Anyway, it's a symbolic battle for Tibet. The new foreign religion, Buddhism, coming in to

[15:03]

throw out the bonus. And there's a similar kind of popular battle with flying and leaping, lifting mountains and stones and flying to the top of mountains and everything. And Milarepa always wins. And so he out-miracles the old religion, as does David Carradine with his acid or script writers or whatever, out-miracle. But actually, with the consent, agreement, and assistance of American television audiences, he out-miracles the cowboys. as Milarepa out-miracled the Bon Priest. And again, at the end of the several-stage battle, the Bon Priest says, OK, you're the boss. Can I just have a mountain nearby where I can look at this mountain?

[16:31]

And Rilrepa says, sure. And then he volunteers why he has such super strength, why he has this. And he says, it's because of my lineage. I have this because of my lineage. And Dogen over and over says, Things like, you know, within water there are seas and rivers made by water, and within water, even in the smallest particle of water, there are Buddha Lands, and in each Buddha Land there are a succession of Buddhas and Patriarchs. So part of the meaning is simply that it gives you some scale, outside the scale of your own time, some relationship outside of this time.

[18:08]

So you can speak for or act on the basis of many times, the times of all the Buddhas and Patriarchs. So, Dogen says, water doesn't exist in the realm of time or Dharma worlds. And another Meaning is that it's the only way to really get free of ego. That actually everything is given to you. That what you take for yourself and find by yourself

[19:15]

Even if you find it by yourself, you should give it away and have it given back, is our teaching. And to say it another way, you know, in Jung's terms, you can be destroyed by being an archetype, a poet or priest, politician or doctor, you know, completely. If you do it completely, it can destroy you. So how to be free of that? The forces that are released by doing something completely

[20:17]

how to survive on another level. For when you confront anything, I mean, we are held together by enormous energy, personally and socially. There's enormous power in the binds, in what binds us. And if you confront this, you release an enormous attack on yourself. And if you're there, you'll be destroyed. How not to be there? Or how to be everywhere? Or how to see the confrontation in a

[21:52]

scale at which it's no longer confrontation. And the lineages, of course, for introducing you to the perfection of wisdom. For if hubris is hybrid, hybrid or impure, the perfection of wisdom is perfect and complete and pure, another kind of hubric over-extension.

[23:02]

So what we mean by complete or pure or perfect is some, as Suzuki Roshi said, not some secret but also not something we can explain, that can be explained. So hubris for you practically is not just excessive pride, though I'm sure it's possible for some of you to suffer from that. But it's more often seen just in how you do relate your state of mind to your physical events. How you baby yourselves. Socks, you know, when it's not really very cold.

[24:07]

My state of mind will be disturbed. I won't be able to meditate so well or I'll be irritable if my feet are cold. Or how you need to start the day with a cup of coffee. Or how you take vitamin C. You imagine something wrong and you want to do something, you know, you feel some need to do something, so you take a vitamin C. Maybe it helps. I don't say it doesn't. I'm just saying that, just as socks do keep your feet warm, I'm just saying that there's a kind of ritual relationship there of attempting to play with your state of mind, state of being. I don't mean you should rigorously refuse all comforts, vitamin C's, socks, coats, and sit here, you know? Nude. That would be too much. With the window open. But you should know how you baby yourself.

[25:40]

how you consider, well, for my ultimate well-being it's better if I don't do this now because that will, that's a form of hubris, a form of digging yourself as a, in this relationship where you have to keep balancing the events of pills, days, walks, encounters, coffee, moods, you know? It's a frightening situation actually. Plus, you don't need all that, actually. If you really don't need it, then you can enjoy it. It doesn't matter, but it's some kind of sport or game. If you have a vitamin C, what will happen? a cup of coffee in the morning. Anyway, to see it as a playing with your state of mind, but no dependence on it, to sometimes eschew it, to put it aside,

[27:11]

and try the opposite of what usually you do to protect your state of mind, in a situation which counts, where there are consequences of your being in... being some way you want to be, do the opposite of what usually puts you into some brave feeling. I don't need those magic signs. So I think mostly, while you're all practicing quite well and quite sincerely, I worry about the degree to which you baby yourselves. at the first sign or second or third sign that something is wrong, you're ready to act on that. But maybe you should wait till the 20th or 30th sign.

[28:32]

You can't be ready for things as they are, or ever free from hubric conditions. No matter how well you practice, no matter how deep your understanding, if you baby yourselves, you won't actually understand Buddhism. giving some special relation, condition, or spell to your state of mind, which you baby and explain and listen to and think it's some representative of all human history. I don't mean you shouldn't be soft or accepting or easy to get along with, what characterizes a bodhisattva, as the sutras say, is easy to serve, easy to be with, easy to do things with.

[30:30]

some easy relaxed and yet non-babying state of being is the basic condition for understanding Buddhism. Willing to feel anything and yet not caught, detached in some way. willing to follow where things lead. Not where your society says, or your parents, or your ideas, but willing to follow where things lead. That is out of time. That's the stream. That's being truly independent. Knowing your own

[32:16]

mind and body at this moment, being open to anything, able to follow where things lead, moving in the deep course of a sutra, the heart sutra opens with. Moving in a deep course, not some prescribed course or a particular social course or historical situation now. But again, without the lineage, that is some dangerous, psychic, social, personal overextension in the two. I'm so independent, I can do anything. How that's not what we mean, and yet we mean to be completely independent, is the meaning or understanding of the lineage. You know, there's a story about

[33:33]

Yakujo, which Suzuki Roshi has told. It's quite a famous story. I heard Mumon Roshi, Yamada Mumon Roshi tell it in Japan once, and Suzuki Roshi several times, about Yakujo is giving a lecture, and he notices a new monk in the back. And he looks at him and goes on with his lecture. And then after the lecture, all the monks leave except this one new monk remains. And he comes up and says, can I ask you a question? Nyakujo founded, he said, a day of no work is a day of no eating. He founded our Zen monastic tradition, how we live, which is somewhat different from the way Zen monks before his time lived with other Buddhist schools together.

[35:09]

So this monk, this new monk, told Shakyamuni, I am not actually a man. I am a fox. I lived in this temple. This was my temple many hundreds of years ago. And I answered a question incorrectly. And for the wrong answer, I was condemned to live as a fox until I could answer or someone could answer the question correctly. So I've come to you to ask you the question. And Gyaku-jo said, please. Oh, he says, What I did is a monk asked me, how can you be free from your karma? How can you be free from, if you are enlightened, are you free from cause and effect? If you are enlightened, are you free from cause and effect? And I answered, yes, and was turned into a fox.

[36:38]

And so, Hyakujo said, would you repeat the question to me? And he said, I... is a person who is enlightened, free from cause and effect. And Yakujo said, No. You are a fox. You will be reborn as a fox many lifetimes. Actually, Sugiyoshi said, You will be born as an American fox or Japanese fox. He said, I don't know. Anyway, you will be reborn as a fox because you are tied to cause and effect. But at that moment the monk was enlightened, at last, and he thanked Yakujo profusely and said, could you, now I can die and not be reborn anymore as man or fox, and could you perform my funeral ceremony?

[38:18]

And so, you'll find me, my dwelling is such and such a place on the mountain behind the temple. So, Gyakujo, he, the new monk, went away, and Gyakujo announced to everyone later in the day, I guess, tomorrow we will do the funeral for a monk who has died. They didn't know what he meant, because no monk had died that they knew about. But the next day, they, with all the preparations, went up into the mountain behind the temple, and following the directions, Shakyajiva found a small cave, and inside was a dead fox. And they performed the funeral ceremony for the fox. Anyway, this is a famous story. So are we free from cause and effect? Are we free from hubris? The answer is yes and no. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Always yes, always no.

[39:40]

This is the perfection of wisdom or the meaning of the lineage. Is there something you want to talk about? That it can be anything, you, your society, your own karma, someone else's karma. Patiently waiting for what?

[40:55]

Alms, dharmas that fail to be produced. I only heard parts, let me see if I can guess what I missed. You said in the Prajnaparamita literature There is the phrase, patiently for waiting for dharmas that will not be, that fail to be produced. And you asked me to say something about this in relation to friends and relationship between people and man and woman and teacher and disciple. You'll have to stay here for 10 years. Not as a fox though, but sometimes maybe as a fox. Anyway, that's right. Waiting for dharmas that fail to be produced. That's one.

[42:23]

That's the perfection of wisdom. That's what I mean, you know. That's why we live together or practice together. To be able to say that. to act in that way. In that realm, it isn't even necessary to be free from dharmas.

[43:29]

have not even been produced. Some other question? Thoroughly? You have to, don't you? Even if you're out of sequence, you have to. So, Socrates, no choice is every choice. That's why it was so easy for him, or so natural for him too.

[45:39]

just do as he did. Isn't it hubris of the highest order for him to tell the Athenians how to live? Which brought upon him both of them, right? I don't say Socrates is a bodhisattva. There's no... No, but within his historical and personal situation. He may have been greater than a bodhisattva. Just... I'm not trying to apply Buddhism to Western culture. I'm just talking about Socrates as an example of our own myth of morality. And I don't mean to make some parallel between

[47:05]

Socrates' supposed confrontation with Greek culture, and our practicing Buddhism, or David Carradine's confrontation, or Milarepa's confrontation with the Bonn priest. I don't mean such a dramatic role-playing, but just that. We take responsibility for our own lives and the way we're living, and this has some consequences. And we should understand that those consequences require us to take responsibility for our own life and to practice well. In that realm that Ulysses mentioned, you know, where waiting, suprasid, you know, like the word waiting, waiting for dharmas which fail to be produced, is where master and disciple, teacher and disciple meet, and where true friends meet.

[48:28]

Although we shouldn't refrain from meeting in any other way. Man and woman? That's more complicated. It's interesting that there is, since some of you are interested in the derivation of words, etymology of words, probably hymn and hymn and sutra and bridal song, sutra, are all one word. Some hymn of praise, some scene, sutra, sutra means sewing.

[50:04]

So that which profoundly relates us to others, man or woman or teacher and disciple, is the essence of Buddhism. And how we find the specific way we live in each moment. In accord with that requires some practice. Maybe some life like we have here, at least in our case. Thank you.

[51:18]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ