Would you sit up a little closer? It's all right now. You're so far away. Upanishad means up close. Sit up close. Zen, of course, means to sit just where you are. But let's compromise a little. Recently I've been thinking about limitations.

[01:08]

And... Now, first there's a story I want to tell you about a famous koan about a master, a poet of Goso Mountain. This is a very famous story He said, for example, he said, a buffalo passes through a window and its head goes through and its horns go through and its four legs go through, but its tail, its tiny tail can't get through. Why is that? That's a famous Zen story. Anyway, I wanted to talk about limitations because I'm always struck by when someone comes to lecture and speaks to me afterwards or I meet someone who is quite intelligent.

[02:43]

I feel sorry for them, actually, if they're interested in Zen, because it's maybe nearly impossible for them to understand Zen if they're intelligent. I hope you're not so intelligent. Zen doesn't appeal to the intellect, but to limitations. So these Zen stories always appeal to your limitations. If someone's very bright, but they're obviously nuts, you know, then I think there's some hope for them. Because they have some limitation, you know, that maybe they can understand something by being nuts. As you know, I've often said before, worldly disclosures or four worldly treasures which are worldly and a limitation are intelligence and beauty and energy and wealth. If you have all four you're lost, you know, you don't have a chance. That, you know, through the eye of a camel or needle or etc., that kind of story is true.

[04:14]

for Christianity and Zen. Wealth is, as you know, I've said, probably the most pernicious. Because if you don't have limitations, particularly fairly new wealth, people seem to survive wealth if they have several generations of experience with it. But I've virtually not seen anyone with fairly new wealth who can survive. Because we have to have limitations. And in Zen it's rather difficult. If you're smart, particularly with stories like the koans or... Zen is not as a whole. The philosophy and logic of Zen is Buddhism is not so difficult to understand. What happens to smart people is a little like... I remember when I was a kid, you know, you're asked many... you're asked kind of riddles or stories and, for example... excuse me for telling...

[05:43]

For example, someone, let's see if I can remember it, someone says, these guys are in prison or something and they don't have any cigarettes but they have a lot of butts that are thrown out. And they can make one cigarette from ten butts. So they accumulate one hundred butts. How many cigarettes do they smoke is the question, right? Well, everyone says ten, so you know that must be wrong, so obviously it must be eleven, right? Because from the ten you make, ten you smoke, you have ten more butts and you can make one more cigarette, right? So if you're even a little bit smart, you get that kind of thing right away, right? It would be too easy if it was 10, so you take your mind one step further and 11 pops up. The trouble with smart people is they're used to doing that and when they get to the point of 11, they think they understand it. And they don't know there's 12 and 100,000 cigarettes, etc. Dr. Schumacher, who I spent nearly a week with,

[07:12]

last week says that he has a profound feeling for jokes and he says that he likes Dr. Konsei's perhaps two-edged definition of Zen as Mahayana Buddhism and Chinese jokes. I think that's pretty good, eh? And I told you at the Green Gulps, Dr. Schumacher's story about the man taking a straw out of the factory. I told you. But some of it I didn't tell, so I'll tell you the story again. This guy is taking a straw out of He comes through the gate, pushing a wheelbarrow full of straw, and the guard says, what have you got there? And he says, it's just straw. So he searches through the straw and can't find anything. So he's quite suspicious, but he lets him go. And the next day, again, the same thing happens, and he's quite suspicious. So he searches very carefully, all through the cracks, and he picks up some of the tubes of straw and blows through them to see.

[08:42]

what he's up to. And he goes through, because he can't find anything. This happens several times, and each time he searches more and more carefully. And then later, in the next week, he meets him, and he hasn't been at work for a while. He says, what are you doing? I haven't seen you. He said, oh, I'm going south. I've quit the job. And he says, well then if you've quit, would you tell me what you've been doing? I know you're up to something. He says, no, I'm, what do you mean? He says, you've been, what have you been taking? You've been stealing something. He says, no, I haven't. He said, please, come on, I won't. So he says, all right, wheelbarrows. That's an example of what Dr. Schumacher calls lateral thinking. But, you know, that kind of thing just shows the limitation of our mind, but smart people can get over that barrier that makes them think they've understood something. So I have people who are quite smart. First they like Zen, and then when they find out that

[10:07]

somehow what their understanding is not acceptable, they get angry about it or argumentative, because they've got to the eleven cigarettes or they've got to the wheelbarrows and they think that must be the understanding, and it's not. Something more emotional or something that breaks your definition of yourself is needed. One poem about that Buffalo is The going out Going out following the fresh Going out Following the fresh grass Returning

[11:38]

Pursuing falling blossoms. That's one commentary on this buffalo. the village is through the trees, the village through the half moon is in the trees, the north village is in dark shadow and the south village is in the mist, or Hakuen says. The moon outside the window is always the same, but with the plum branch it's different.

[12:55]

Dogen has various comments on this story too. You know, when we're... it's interesting when you're eating. Generally, we don't know when to stop. There is certainly a correlation between how something tastes and whether we're hungry or full or not. You can eat, even though, say, you like ice cream, you can eat enough ice cream so it makes you sick. You don't want to see ice cream for a few months, or anything. But generally, we don't take the signal. If our taste was quite simple, on and off, you know, it would be easier. You could eat and everything would start to make you gag, you'd stop eating, you know. But it's not that simple. Usually things will taste quite good long after we've eaten too much. But actually, if you're sensitive, your taste tells you

[14:37]

when you've eaten too much. But we don't get the signal. It's virtually impossible for most people to stop while it still tastes good. You eat three cookies, and if the three taste good, you have the fourth, and in the middle of the fourth, it starts tasting not so good, or tasteless, or you're rushing through it. You realize three was enough, but you've eaten the fourth. It's very difficult for us to stop while we still like something. We have to bring it to the point where it's no good. It makes us pretty unhappy because if we could stop while it was still good, we'd have very few bitter experiences. The main problem many of you will face and all of you will face to some extent

[16:09]

is the degree to which you sabotage yourself. In your zazen, some good experience, you will cut it off. Something unusual takes you over and you will turn away from it. Concentration is possible And you will distract yourself, not a matter even of distraction coming up. You'll create distraction to break concentration. You'll want to complete something or finish something. You want to finish Zen, you want to understand Zen, or you'll be looking for some finishing mark, some end to your koan study. You'll think that when you have the wheelbarrow or the eleventh cigarette, it's finished. You won't be able to live in a world in which there's no eleventh cigarette or no wheelbarrow.

[17:45]

I believe Edward told you yesterday that everything is always undone. Purity, which is a word which scares us, is just another form of the fear of leaving things undone. Strange to say, impurity is always trying to complete something. All moral states, the sutra says, tend toward concentration. But we, you know, fear concentration or morality.

[19:29]

by what I said Divine Morality was yesterday at Green Galaxies, doing things so that the short-range consequences and long-range consequences are what you want. That's all. get close to that, you will sabotage yourself in some way by some frightening thought or some clumsy behavior. Or your concentration will be broken by your trying to complete something. Until you can leave things, as Edward said, undone, you can't move in and out of this more concentrated world. You can't understand.

[21:25]

you know, catch his cart, which I mentioned last time. So in your practice, and in your state of mind you should not be satisfied with some conclusion. Your doubt, great doubt, should push you always. Not feeling you're right or you attain something. the ability to, simple ability to try hard enough to fail. If you don't fail in everything you do, you haven't tried hard enough. If you try pretty hard, you'll always leave every situation with a feeling, I didn't complete it, I didn't do it well enough, I didn't, I should have done such and such in addition.

[22:59]

And the more sincere you are, the more you have to be able to stand the strain of that incompleteness. But that incompleteness is also very positive. subtle form of compassion. So you should sit well enough in every period that you fail.

[24:19]

Issa also commented on this poem of the buffalo, koan of the buffalo, saying, nothing can surpass the light of the sun and moon, but your mind surpasses the light of the sun and moon. Why is it this tail doesn't pass through the window? Why is it you don't pass through the window?

[26:20]

Anyway, in this sasheen I'm asking you to immerse yourself in this state of mind which surpasses the light of the sun and moon, and yet in which you find out the limitations, the limits of your state of mind. Stable or unstable? Friendly or hostile? Comfortable or uneasy? Why should we have... It's our own state of mind.

[28:03]

Why should we have an uneasy state of mind? What have we gotten into that we have an uneasy state of mind? Are there any problems you're having with your sitting or zazen that you'd like to talk about? How is fear useful in our zazen? When sitting in very intense, things seem to even sound, kiyosaka is much more powerful than when

[29:12]

Why do you think fear should be useful? I want to be okay. You want it to be okay? But if it's fearful, it's not okay. If it's not okay, it's not okay. Is it okay for it to be not okay? Or is it unavoidable? What if you find out your life is not okay and unavoidably unpleasant? Did anyone promise us it was going to be nice? They gave you this life, body and mind which is deteriorating all the time.

[30:56]

and very subject to corruption and confusion. And just as you get attached to it, you will perish. So maybe it's a bad show from the beginning. That's what I meant by usefulness. It's a training. It's an imperative.

[31:59]

And to what? To the fear experienced as a sheep. so And don't be afraid. What's the worst thing that can happen to you? You'll lose your life? But you're going to anyway.

[33:31]

I think we can surround our fear, our composure. Fear can be inside our composure. But I don't think we can get rid of... The best approach is to try to get rid of fear. Because what you're afraid of is... One point of view we can say what you're afraid of is not real, but it's just a stick which looks like a snake. But from another point of view, what we're afraid of is real. People can hurt us if we care about our image or something, and people can hurt us if we're trusting or affectionate. And physically we can be hurt and mentally we can be hurt. So you can't pretend you can't be hurt. So the best way, I think, is to give up trying to avoid being hurt.

[35:29]

It's maybe too much to say, but I think to have real composure, you have to accept all hurts that have ever happened to anyone as being possibly going to happen to you. That's the secret of compassion, to suffer with. As I said the other day, passion means suffer, and com, c-o-m part means with. Passion actually is the same as pain. To really be compassionate means you have to be willing to have cancer or to go on the guillotine. Tsukiroshi, coming from Japanese culture, which has had, only recently, had sword fighting, said many people have had to have their heads cut off by a sword.

[36:34]

It's the human condition to have your head cut off by a sword. I mean, we'd like to define it, because it's not so, but it is so. And, you know, my great-grandfather came to California in the gold rush. And he lived here for quite a while and built houses. And he built, he made the furniture for the first capital of California in San Jose. And he kept long diaries. He said, he never carried a gun because everyone carried a gun and it was quite dangerous to carry a gun. But, and we think, well, those days are over. But as far as I can tell, 95% of this neighborhood is armed.

[37:36]

They all carry guns, carry or own guns in their house and we may be shot. So I think first it's good to get out of our mind that life is going to be easy, you know, or we're going to be able to avoid pain or suffering, or zazen will improve anything. It will actually, I'm afraid, make you feel better, but sometimes I wish it didn't, you know, because you get fooled. So once you, if you can, actually that, there are certain kinds of satori experiences. One satori experience is when you accept that suffering which has ever happened to anybody and you're actually genuinely willing to accept it. That's not something you can do intellectually.

[38:58]

And it's a tremendous relief. Many people weep and weep when they accept it. So it's a tremendous relief to accept it. And then you can actually help people. your composure can become very deep in that case. And fear then and suffering is within your composure. You still suffer. Sluhi Roshi said when he had cancer, I feel someone is eating my insides or cutting my insides. The suffering was certainly there. He didn't eliminate suffering, but it didn't eliminate his composure either. The suffering was within his composure.

[40:15]

At any moment, any of you can get the most disastrous news you can imagine. So if you know you can't eliminate fear in the Zendo, then you can just sit still. That's, you know, Mara. And as you know, once you eliminate that fear, Mara will send some more powerful demon.

[41:41]

to see if they can still make you afraid. You'll be tested by that. Now, as long as you're trying to adjust your life so that things aren't too bad, you can't break through. you may, your adjustment may be pretty satisfactory and with luck you may get through your luck but it depends on luck such an adjustment whether the buffalo gets through the window or not No, that was the last. To cut off your concentration?

[44:49]

I enjoy breathing the same air with you. So you figure it out.

[45:27]

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