The life of the monk may be the only one that's safe, and even that has its dangers, any way of life has its dangers. the life of the monk may be a little safer than most because, on the whole, the style of it is an antidote to the agreement, the larger agreements of society. I think at one time, though, enlightenment was commonplace, and now it's rare and unfortunately commercialized. It seems that there are many ways to get more or less free, or free enough to manipulate, anyway, the patterns, the agreements of our society.

[01:35]

And most everyone succumbs to what really represents a commercialization of it, a building of some power on it. Anytime you want someone else to know what you're doing, you should be wary. Want someone else to know what you've done. I'd like to try to talk about individualism. It's one of the major agreements of our society, that such a thing called an individual exists. Although the evidence is greatly to the contrary.

[02:59]

When you say, when you feel, I would like to have someone else know what I've done, we don't have individualism any more than saying, I'd like to help someone, do something which is rather the opposite. Instead of your impulse to have someone know what you've done, your impulse is to do something for someone. So, group identity is usually taken to mean you give up yourself and you want to do something for others. You submerge yourself into the group. But that is no different from wanting someone to know what you've done. just versions of our absolute interpenetration with others, our complete interpenetration with others. Now, I've been trying to talk about the buffalo not getting through the window completely, and yesterday I talked more about that and about

[04:32]

a topic, our confusion by a topic. And I don't think I was able to convey how thoroughly I meant that we are confused by a topic. But let me add today that our confusion is, or we are confused by, How can I say it? We make the big mistake of confusing topic with consciousness, or consciousness with topic, and activity with choice. We confuse topic, consciousness with topic, and activity with choice. Now, somehow I'm trying to get you to realize there's no topic and no choice, in the usual sense. But I'm going to try to do it today by creating a topic. I shouldn't do it by creating a topic, but I don't know any other way, because we are so used to thinking

[06:07]

to existing, they're defining in terms of topics that we don't believe anything that doesn't exist by topic. And so I want to use a biological metaphor. Which is pretty powerful, pretty important that biological metaphors are coming into our political consciousness, social consciousness. Such a thing is extremely powerful, such an introduction. It may be the same as Sir Thomas Aquinas or some other big change.

[07:20]

Henry Adams in his book, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, which I was looking at recently. Years ago, I read The Education of Henry Adams maybe four times. It's quite a marvelous book, but in this book, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, he says, that American history tends toward universal dissipation of energy and will degrade human thought and make America an unfit place for human habitation, as we now know humans. And he's completely right. He was right, you know. And yet, you couldn't say it, you know. That book was suppressed for quite a long time as being nuts, you know. They thought he was nuts. That's interesting. That universal dissipation of energy would lead to the degradation of thought and making

[09:08]

America, unfit for human, as we know it, habitation. I think that's amazing that someone can make such an accurate statement. Anyway, what I what should be done by no topic and no choice – I would have to say more to explain what I mean – and which only can occur when you are not caught by the possessions of greed, hate and delusion. So if you're involved in power, it's not accessible to you. Anyway, the biological metaphor I want to use is just to discuss our body. They have created, you may have seen films based on

[10:43]

a tiny camera, electron microscope I guess, they can put onto a needle and run it through your heart, everywhere in your body. You can see this huge heart pumping and many complex things going on. And it turns out there are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in you. That goes around the world twice or more, I think. And, as you know, such statements, but still I don't think, just because you know them, we should pass them off the cells, one or two cells of the dividing fertilized egg, eventually produce 60 trillion cells, all doing different things. This is not ordinary information or ordinary knowledge.

[12:07]

the minuteness of our biological existence is incomprehensible, and our faith in science is misplaced. It's understandable, science and technology no different than a cargo cult. Do you know what a cargo cult is? Some of you don't know what a cargo cult is. A cargo cult is... it's quite wonderful. I guess some Polynesian islands, I guess it is. It's occurred in various places in the world, but the most common example is in Polynesian islands. They'd never seen us Westerners before until we arrived in big cargo planes. and they'd land on the beaches and open up their tummies and great quantities of goods would spew out, right? They thought it was quite wonderful and they'd never seen anything like that before. And after one or two such visits they would stop farming, stop everything, you know, and they'd wait for the planes to come. And they would offer incense and a whole religion developed around these planes would arrive, you know.

[13:42]

And sometimes they'd arrive on schedule according to the religious rituals they did. And everyone would eat this food that came, etc. But if they didn't arrive, they weren't farming anymore and society was in a havoc. And we're in exactly the same boat, you know. We believed in the cargo cult of technology and science because it delivered you know, pretty easily what we grossly thought we needed. And when it didn't work, science came up with really quite, by ordinary measure, phenomenal insights and refurbished the cargo. But the degree to which we're carrying it to today, just in terms of technology, which is not what I'm talking about, is really ridiculous. And the intermixture of fact and fancy, or belief... I'm told that

[15:28]

one of the big plants in the East. Plutonium is so hard to make, you know, and has a half-life, as you know, of 25,000 years, I believe, which is longer than any historical period. Dr. Schumacher points out. And it has to be contained for that length of time. for only its half-life. Then it has, you know, next period and next period. They don't seem to be able to automate the manufacture of it because it's too complex, the handling of it. They have a plant in the east where They bring in manpower people. I'm not absolutely sure this is right, but, you know, it's accurate enough, I'm sure, to tell. Manpower, you know what they are? The kind of Egyptian slave laborers, basically. People without jobs, you know, who will do anything through manpower. Well, they work on plutonium assembly lines.

[16:51]

They wear these little badges which indicate how much radiation they're getting, and they get their year's dose in one day. And so, next day a new batch are brought in, and next day a new batch, because they can't work more than one day. So it's, I mean, to think that we can handle... we have social institutions or a scientific ability to handle such material that we've created. I come from a family of scientists and I wouldn't trust it, my family, anyway. Anyway, it's not possible, I don't know. So that's a real danger, you know, in the world, but what's incredible is that we've lost our common sense. That's much worse. And our common sense or our deeper sense or wisdom works when there's no choice, works when there's no topic. I was getting at that when I was talking about the difference between visible work and invisible work, which most of you heard me talk about.

[18:22]

Invisible work being the work that we neglect. Our society emphasizes visible work. Building a house or something. Something that's not there till we do it. But invisible work we don't notice till we stop it. Like garbage collecting or brushing our teeth. But invisible work is where it's at. We've lost such simple knowledge. Anyway, we think that minuteness... stops at the bus token, or how can I express? Our consciousness does not extend beyond topics. So, we limit ourselves more and more to a world of violence because we limit ourselves to topics.

[19:53]

And we don't... It's ridiculous to think that this minuteness of 60 trillion cells coming from something the size of the head of a pin, or so many blood vessels... Think of the surface, the sheer... I mean, we try to take care of the surface of the earth. If we have 60,000 miles of blood vessels alone, Think of the tremendous surface involved. Doctors can't, you know, cope with such. If there's something wrong with you, doctors can do something, but no one can cope with repairing 60,000 miles of blood vessels if your blood vessels want to stop working. So mostly you have to depend on the invisible work of your 60,000 miles of blood vessels. and millions of trillions of cells, etc. And our society is equally minute, is what I'm trying to say. It's not a matter of getting on the bus or creating a career or choosing your job or getting married.

[21:15]

It's ridiculous to think the minuteness stops at the biological skin or somehow because our consciousness is so gross in the degree to which it's limited to topics that this is the world and we can control things by the grossness of our topics. Society, as I said, is millions of hands, like Avalokiteshvara's. Consciousness is millions of hands. You all know of many coincidences. I'll just mention one. It happened just the other day, so it's recent in my memory. Most of you don't know who Barton Stone is, but he was... Did I tell you? He was at Zen Center. I don't know how long he was at Zen Center before I came, but anyway, he was at Zen Center a year or so before I came. And when I came... Actually, Zen Center didn't exist, but people were sitting with Suzuki Roshi.

[22:49]

and he had been sitting with Zubyoshin, and he went on a peace march from San Francisco to Moscow. And when he was passing through a small town, There was a group of people that went, I don't know how many people, ten or twenty people or something. We knew someone from Zen Center, from our group of people sitting with Sri Krishna, was off walking to Moscow. We would see it in the newspapers occasionally. I was, of course, quite impressed with him because I didn't know who he was, but when he came back, I was doing zazen with Graham Petchy in the zendo. And someone sat down beside me. He didn't move, which only Tsugyoshi didn't move. You had to be Japanese or something in those days to not move. And this guy didn't move, so I met Graham in the hall afterwards and I said,

[24:09]

must be the guy who walked to Moscow, and it was. He's now at Greenville. So, he walked through this small town in Kansas, and a girl came out and saw the march and joined it, and then stayed with it, continuing on across the country. I don't know, not quite as simple probably as joining on the west side of town and decided to continue on the east side of town, but nearly so, and then went on to, finally in West Germany, she married Barton. So, that's pretty Anyway, and Barton did many things, and recently he decided he wanted to be back here on the West Coast and wanted to maybe participate with Zen Center again, and so he's a good carpenter and he's the one who, the person who sent Paul Disko to us. And he's now working on the Wheelwright Center, building it at Greenville.

[25:29]

Steve Stucky, who takes care of our fields, saw them and recognized Marty, his wife, as his old babysitter. Kansas. Left, you know. Peaceful. There's no statistical way or sociologist could predict that. But that's not unusual. I know literally hundreds of such coincidences. And the more your life begins to take some form in the realm of what I'm calling invisible work, in the realm in which you don't have a topic or choice, such occurrences are everyday events. And I suppose, if you wanted to,

[27:01]

try to extrapolate the minuteness of our organism to our society, you'd have to say that consciousness is like some kind of fluid with many passageways, and it's very exact, and it reaches to everyone. And when you do something, moves immediately through the plasma or through the liquid. I don't say, I don't think such a object exists. We're not interested in topics or something substantial, which reminds me of Ed Brown's favorite example that the skandhas are something substantial. Is that right? massive, like an elephant, which blocks the view. Something like that. So that's right, our skandhas are a big topic or elephant that blocks the view. Religion or Zen can be such a topic.

[28:25]

And it's clear there's a tremendous power in agreement. That ten people agree upon something, you can't resist it. If a million people or more agree on something, it's fact. And you're crazy. You cannot withstand it. I don't mean all craziness is sanity and all sanity is craziness. together. And one way we're together is we, by our Buddhist practice, agree. We make some agreements among ourselves. And we make an agreement with ourselves through our satsang and by our vow or bodhicitta. That agreement itself is very powerful. For example, as I've said before, if somebody, your parents or your uncle or somebody you know, has led a certain life, is leading a certain life, but usually is wavering, they wanted to do this and they didn't do that,

[30:11]

or certain failures, etc., in their life, which they regret. But at the end of their life, it's a fact that this is the life they live. We can say that. But there would have been a tremendous power in their life if they had vowed to lead the life they actually live. If they led the life, they led unequivocally, is the meaning of the vow. To recognize what you're doing and vow to do it. If you can't vow to do what you're doing, you know something is funny and it's not good. It means your life may be not so clear, and it may mean that your ability to make a vow may not be so good. So one of the things we learn in Zen, we agree upon, is that whatever you do as a statement,

[31:36]

That's pretty obvious, but actually you don't know it so well. You may come to doksan and say, I have nothing to say. But actually, that's a statement. You're having nothing to say is a statement. You can't come to doksan without some statement. You can't come to doksan and say, I have nothing to say. You may feel that, but a person who's practicing Zen comes to dōsan with the statement, I have nothing to say. But if you know that your statement is you have nothing to say, you would not express it by saying, I have nothing to say. Knowing it's a statement, you would express it some other way. Whatever you are is okay, but If you're practicing, it's a vow or it's a statement. By the way, in doksan, doksan is up to you. Sometimes with new people I ask you, do you want to say anything? Actually, it's up to you to say something. And you should present your best posture.

[32:59]

Let me talk a little bit more about topic, Bill. When we started the Green Gulch Green Grocery Today we had a meeting about changing the cases to some extent. It had to be decided this morning for some reason. And we can say, why didn't we figure all this out at the beginning and not have to change the cases now? Yeah, that's so, and some person might have done that. But then it would have been that person's store. To say that, though, confuses the topic of the store with the store, because the store was the people who were making the decision. You can't separate them.

[34:35]

You can't say the store is something efficient to sell good. If you do that, we're in delusion immediately. You end up with the International Pancake House. Just, you know, how can a pancake out to be international, first of all? It's total anonymity. It takes some quaint, I don't know, some idea of a quaint roadside cottage in rural England or something like that and and manufactures it for corners on busy, you know, busy intersections all over, at least America, I don't know. And it's horrible to go in there. They completely have, completely involved in the topic.

[35:47]

and they think that knowing the topic they can repeat it. If you can't repeat it, touch it. The store belongs to the corner it's on. and the street and the people who come in, etc. And if you lose sight of that, you lose sight of the minuteness, you know. And we end up with violence. To emphasize the topic and centralization and efficiency is just a form of violence. And our culture won't survive it. Like pouring some poison into your biological system, your body won't survive it. So when we're talking about practicing Zen, we're talking about an uphill battle in our society. And we're talking about culture or society.

[37:02]

And we have to get rid of some agreements we have that the individual, some separate individual, who can do it on their own or is separate or something. Even though you hear Zen so much, you still have the ideas. I don't know. lone meditation and the cave are part of Buddhism. But we emphasize that so much, you know, in our fantasy, when the entire history of Buddhism is Buddha and his disciples and the Sangha. Virtually, you know, the history of Buddhism the minuteness of our larger existence. Lineage through history and lineage in contemporary society.

[38:45]

And we have a lineage in contemporary society. That lineage is why Steve, Stucky's babysitter, and Steve are both living in dreamland. means also that it's not so difficult to transform society. It can be extremely fast, actually, as we've seen. And something

[39:51]

Activity in the realm where there's no choice. And consciousness beyond a topic. A thought, I don't know how to express it, but activity, shall we say, in the realm of consciousness beyond thought. beyond topic and activity beyond choice. That's accurate, exact, penetrates everywhere instantaneously, virtually instantaneously. Everyone will have the same idea at once. But you cannot participate, your activity will not participate like this with everyone. You won't have any apprehension of what Zen is about or what I'm talking about, as long as you're involved in possession, greed, hate and delusion. We should have a fear of possession.

[41:14]

husband or wife too, Zen too, creating a life for ourselves too. It's okay to do so but when it's a possession you kill yourself. One of our agreements that we have is Buddhism was back there in the past, Garjuna Basho. That's not so. You should change that agreement with yourself and recognize Buddhism is now and the patriarchs are now.

[42:25]

to change such agreements can change your whole life. It's so easy. The problem is most people don't see that certain agreements that are held in common can be changed. It's not that they believe so much their agreement, it's that it just doesn't dawn on them that there's an alternative. And if one person makes clear in his or her activity that such an agreement is the purpose, it changes the agreement throughout everyone's consciousness. So the buffalo and elephant in and out of the room means you should live beyond any topic, beyond activity which only exists in the realm of choice,

[44:19]

to understand and be able to do with the completeness of the vows the deep choiceless activity. Just to have your breathing go and heart go and to do things without not separated biologically from the past or from the present, or in our, you can't say it separately, consciously, from the past or from the present. But that realm does not exist as a topic.

[45:35]

and is not graspable or able to be participated in as long as your mind or consciousness is defined by topic and your activity defined by choice. We shouldn't have to talk about this because for most of human history It was just a fact. It was the way society and culture existed. By trying to control it, by thinking we can control it, by science or sociology or something, we have so narrowed our agreements with each other that we are in dire danger. So this practice is not just for yourself and cannot just be for yourself because you are not separated from anyone.

[47:04]

You think, oh it's just me haphazardly, I wandered into Zen center and now I'm doing zazen sort of haphazardly and it's completely wrong. You didn't just wander in here. You're not just sort of doing zazen this afternoon and maybe tomorrow you'll quit the You're not going to. It must be pretty obvious to you if you're crazy enough to sit here for a week. Something beyond your control is going on. If it was in your control, you would have quit. So you should do it with the force of a vow. you should also choose this life which is being chosen for you by the minuteness of our existence inside and outside.

[48:26]

choice and topic are teeny parts, but capable of fooling us completely, fooling an entire society completely. And you can turn it around in your own stomach.

[49:07]

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