to make you a little more familiar with what he's got. A hint or a guess about these stories, which your mind leaves you, is not so useful. It can be troublesome, actually. May it prevent you from directly knowing what these guys, old guys, were about. And it's useful to be a little perplexed by them. Maybe it takes quite a few years

[01:04]

of vaguely wondering what exactly was going on and comparing your understanding to theirs or comparing those personages to each other. It will open up your own eyes to what people are doing. So you don't see things so much always in the same manner. Not to look for some hidden meaning, but to see the meaning before it's there.

[02:08]

one of the commentaries says, quoting from some Sanskrit sutra, Inga quotes and says, when one whose understanding surpasses a bird's understanding, captures a bird's One whose understanding surpasses wild beasts captures wild beasts. One whose understanding surpasses human understanding captures men. How your responsibility precedes you, as Suzuki Roshi used to say, to the spirit of practice is the spirit to accept everything that comes to you as your own problem. Anyway, the poem of Setyos on this story is, Seen right through, seen right through, seen right through the first time, seen right through the second time,

[03:39]

piling frost on snow. Near, close, near to a plunge from the cliff the leader of the flying horsemen is nearly captured in the tent of his enemy and yet escapes alive and unhurt. One running away the other holding on, sitting together high on a solitary peak in the grass of the valley below, there. Anyway, that's Setso's poem about the whole story. comments on the story saying, the autumn moon in the lake, the temple bell sound or vibrations meet the silent ripples.

[05:00]

These guys, you know, Setso and Engo and Toksan and Isan, are always trying to fool you until you know without a doubt what is happening. So they always say both sides. Toksan is the winner, Isan is the winner, who let go. When Toksan, when Isan, in the end of the evening, later in the day, asked his Jisha, where did that young man go? He took some. Engo says, drawing the bow after the thief has gone. And Setso says, holding on. Does he mean he's committing adultery? somebody at Tassara committed adultery with a snake. He wanted to offer the snake to the garden, so he captured a snake and brought it to the garden and released it. And somehow, later, he felt he didn't properly offer the snake to the garden, so he went back and

[06:46]

offered the snake again and it bit him. Anyway, so is Isan caught by what Toksan did? What does secho mean by holding on? There's an interesting story about Ryutan, Rutan, when he was a young boy, he used to live near Tenno-dōgo. And Tenno-dōgo had him deliver rice cakes, I guess rice cakes, I don't know, maybe dim sum. Philip found yesterday that the characters for what the lady served to, woman served to, Tokusan, when he was carrying the Diamond Sutra, mean dim sum, isn't that right? And D.T. Suzuki says it means to point to the mind or punctuate the mind. And there's some other meanings Philip wrote down for me. Anyway, this lady, as far as I know, was serving rice cakes. I mean, this boy was bringing rice cakes, but maybe he was bringing dim sum.

[08:15]

Anyway, he brought these rice cakes to Tenno Dōgo and every time he brought them, Tenno Dōgo gave him one back and said, what comes from you must return to you. And the boy would accept it. When he grew up, when he was, I guess, a teenager, He said to Tenno Dogo one day, who was quite a venerable, distant teacher, you know, he got up his nerve and said, Why do you always give me one rice cake back? My family is in the rice cake business. We don't need one rice cake back. He said, Don't think about it. Yes, I'm just giving you back what belongs to you. So then, sometime after that, Rūtaṃ became Tenno Dōgo's disciple. And when he received ordination, Tenno Dōgo said to him, Up until now you have practiced common virtue and respect. Now you must see into the Dharma. And Rūtaṃ served

[09:51]

Tenno Dogo for some years. And then he asked Tenno Dogo, he said, Now I am your attendant. You never give me any formal instruction. I miss receiving some formal instruction. And if you're going to See it. You must see it directly. Don't think about it," he said. Later. I think it's Rutan again. Oh, yes, Rutan said... I can't remember. I forget something. Anyway,

[11:21]

Bhutan has some insight or some feeling, and later he says, how do I hold on to it? And Tendodogo says, just trust your intuition and act according to circumstances. If you think about it, or just directly do your task. If you think about it, it's too late. I think it's Isan, which I was thinking of before. These are all stories related in the same things. Isan's teacher, Yakujo, says to him, Do you have any fire?

[12:23]

which is quite a common request in a temple, because they often had, I suppose they had charcoal burners and things. Do you have any fire? And he said, his son said, yes. And Yakujo said, show me your fire, bring me your fire. And he picked up a twig from a woodpile and blew on it. And but actually a rather interesting answer. And Yaka just said, that's like wormholes in wood. It looks like calligraphy, but it means nothing. And later, he was stirring the hibachi, looking for some coal and he said to, this was some months later I guess, he said to Yakujo, it's out. And Yakujo went over and stirred very deep in the ashes and blew and came out. This is fire, he said, hot coal. And he said,

[13:51]

felt something. And Yakujo said, quoting from a sutra, he said, our season, our circumstance are necessary to see into our nature. And It's the same statement that Ingo used in his introduction of bright sunshine, blue sky, etc. So these guys are all a weaving something to make you see directly. Yesterday I was speaking about your area of familiarity, making your area of familiarity stronger. But to do that, it means you can't be discriminating, you can't be involved in right or wrong.

[15:16]

or past or future, present even. Just what's familiar, what's there and you accept it. By that your area of familiarity will become stronger and your zazen and your life can begin to include more and more without disturbance. So there isn't some... That's why our zazen practice is so unprogrammed, why we don't discriminate. One reason we don't discriminate our practice, because your practice should include all ends. Your final zazen at the end of your life, and your first zazen, and your most ordinary state of mind, and your most condensed pure, burning state of mind, not now incandescent and now mixed up. That's no good. So you keep enlarging your area of familiarity, always some pressure on willingness to

[16:47]

not a protective, you know, keeping out the strange, but confident enough that anything can come, that your responsibility extends in front of you, ready to accept everything as your own problem, as something you've called forth. When you have this confidence, then you can some other activity, some other kind of motivation or energy will move you that you don't have time to think about. This energy which sometimes destroys people and which is sometimes activated by various circumstances in our life does outlandish things unless your area of familiarity is strong. And you are creating it by your own stomach or your own energy. So this is more precisely what I mean and what

[18:14]

Toksan and Isan were about. Engo comments on the last word of Setche's poem, There, capital There, and says, drawn swords or crossed swords are sharpened. Walking along in twos and threes, one singing, the other beating the rhythm, Then come the blows. Anyway, that's enough. of that story.

[19:53]

area, realm of familiarity. That way, when you stray out of it, you become anxious. Your own area of familiarity. You should develop some confidence in knowing exactly what you are sitting zazen or exactly what. I don't mean exactly know what you are but for instance when we have that image in Buddhist some image of your body sometimes. It's not an image we're imagining, you are the image. So as you become

[21:21]

more familiar with your area of familiarity. And you are it, you know, without question. Then when something disturbs you, you know, you can meet it in some friendly way. When some story about Toksan is mixed up for you, you can make Toxan part of your area of familiarity. Until it is, you should not... it's no reason to leave anything outside your area of familiarity. If Toxan doesn't make sense to you, then you press on Toxan. Until you absorb Toxan. So something that disturbs you or you doubt is very important, and when you doubt or are confused about Buddhism, to press on it. We want to know Buddhism, your life from the inside. Through and through, Buddhism is nothing but the study of you, your path, your own path.

[22:52]

So, to know Buddhism from the inside... You know, after Toksan and Isan, Buddhism more and more took two... became two different schools. There's some controversy about it, you know, as a... Buddhism as a social institution. and there was some controversy about it. It's very interesting, Tok-San and Rinzai are almost exactly contemporaries. Tok-San died a year before Rinzai, I believe. And it's possible that Rinzai... We don't know, but it's possible that Rinzai studied with Tok-San, or met him, or spent time with him, or vice versa. We don't know. Rinzai's way is almost exactly like Tokson's way. Anyway, that's Buddhism from the outside. But for Buddhism from the inside, you know, Rinzai and Tokson and Ison are all one.

[25:01]

Walking in harmony in twos and threes. Sometimes granting way, sometimes grasping way they respond according to circumstances. This is the second principle. First principle is just to sit. I don't know. From Buddhism, from the inside, we are very familiar with Suzuki Yoshi, and the Dogen, and Togusan, and Isan, and all kinds of Buddhism. And we know this from our

[26:04]

what we call great activity which comes alive when you have accepted, realized your area of familiarity which extends to everything you meet when you stop discriminating and accept things without past or future and then you can penetrate directly as Tenno Dogo said. You don't need any special instruction, just see directly by your activity that comes out before you have time to think. I think I'm telling you too much, and you should forget it, what I'm saying. It's quite simple, though. Just become familiar with what you seem to be.

[27:41]

and accept that on each Is there something you'd like to talk about? Yeah? It takes ten kelpas. I mean that. It takes time. That means it takes time you don't calculate. It takes uncalculable time. Not time long or short. Time you penetrate completely. Right? Just now. Begin. Don't worry about when. If you worry about when, when will you begin?

[29:09]

or you'll give up easily. Why? I started yesterday. It's exhausting. I sort of identified with them. I mean, I feel, I felt like saying, haven't you ever been calved? I mean, haven't you ever been squirming? But I may have kind of identified how I got nervous when he realized that he knew that it was... How he got nervous? Yeah, when he knew, when he felt that something was hurting him. I mean, I just felt like, haven't you ever been those people? Like, sometimes we act like it's a practice, but we do the right thing. And it bothered me, you know, that we have that feeling. Yeah, I didn't mean to... I was concerned about that afterwards. I didn't mean to slight the dentist. Oh, hi. He agrees. He's very interesting. He's the boss of 300 Page Street.

[30:42]

Of course, you know, I have been and still like that woman. And if I'm doing something like that and somebody sees me directly, I get nervous. Same way he got nervous. It can't be helped. Sometimes you don't... Sometimes we don't notice what people are doing to give them some space, you know? And perhaps I was hasty in noticing what he was doing, but he had all these hammers in my mouth and was banging away. And I could feel something wasn't going so well. But it's not just that. He became nervous and looked at me to see if I noticed. I actually tried to calm him down a bit. It's all right. Just finish, please.

[32:11]

But the question I was posing is how to... This doctor, he has a family and, you know, some life, some respected way, you know. Someone pointed out to me the other day in the movie Wild Strawberries, if any of you saw it, how the doctor in it has a nightmare about being charged with malpractice. Or look at what's happening to Mr. Nixon right now. So it's a very delicate matter for him to make some mistake. How to be kind to him and yet also respond to to be kind to the people who he's working on. It's a very complicated problem. I said I could make fun of him. I did make fun of him.

[33:48]

But I meant to say that's not what I feel. It's easy to do that, but that doesn't solve the problem. To completely pretend it was okay is not appropriate either. I don't know, that kind of problem comes up in our life fairly often, what to do. We've had it with insurance people who want to cheat on the insurance to benefit you. Do you say we don't want to cheat? You know, please just do it the most correct way because then he will feel like he's a crook, he'll feel lousy.

[34:51]

Do you say, OK, cheat for us? It's a very complicated problem, that kind of thing. Yes? I have a question. You mentioned me. And I'd like to know if you have any physical movement experience? Physical movement, you mean? No. Some kind of mental experience, for example, or emotional experience. Japanese art, taking a moving, a forward movement into a completely, it's not a movement of familiarity, but the next space is totally unfamiliar, but you nevertheless would like to move into that space of something.

[36:10]

Yeah. Well, if you can, do. If it takes you over or separates you. I've been trying to talk about this in various ways for some weeks, this aspect. I talked about it in relationship to the deity, that in some ways we create a deity. What's what? What is it? What has a pronoun in it? You know, who? I tried to express it that way. And when you respond to something, you respond to it as a being. But you don't embrace it or become one with it, you worship it. You turn toward it. That's why I talked about turning towards something value or meaning, so the word worth comes. At least I explained it that way. I mean by that you take your area of familiarity with you. Maybe you, that doesn't make so much sense, sometimes you'll find your world disappears and you'll feel a physical sensation

[37:45]

You won't know. You're like passing through a small hole. And it can be quite scary, or you can just assume you will wake up in your area of familiarity. And it may be completely new, but there's some, or there's an expression, go through the whirlpool and land on your feet. I spoke about this first as an area of familiarity in talking with people who had physical movement which took them over. And one way is to just go into it, you know, and allow the movement to thrash you or spiral you or twitch you or whatever, there's various ways it comes upon people. One way is just to go into it.

[38:48]

But usually when people go into it, they don't take their area of familiarity with them, and it takes them over. They're separated from their usual state. So a more traditional way to practice with movement, which going into it is okay too, but the more traditional way, which also we should try, is to stay and... we're not always moving, you know. Sometimes we're sitting in the office and we're not thrashing or spiraling or twitching. So, maybe to have that state of mind in which you're sitting in the office when you're doing zazen. So, not completely, but just before you move. So you're always extending that into the movement, without movement. And when you start to move, it gets too much, it takes you over, you move back into a more familiar space. That kind of... As I said yesterday, that way you always... your area of familiarity widens from the center. I think some of you may not have heard what she said, but I think you must have understood what she said from what I said. You're not satisfied, but that's all right. I'm sorry.

[40:15]

Yes. How does the viewpoint of the Bodhi doctrine, how does this, not to use the word experience, but one person's universal nature, it becomes so open. Isn't it possible for him to forget about the temporal world? Does he want to? Yeah. Do you think he does? Is there some advantage to forgetting about the temporal world? Q. Well, I don't think so, but I've heard various commentaries say that the opposite is a pressure upon us. K. The opposite of which? Q. Of saying, well, freedom versus detachment doesn't change.

[41:43]

Well, when you explore it in words and it doesn't make sense so much, it's better just to go back to our own experience. If we talk about nature or Buddha nature or big nature or something like that, what does that mean in our own terms? If it's just something from a sutra or some freedom or time or change, those things don't mean anything, except through your own experience. What do you think the choice was? I think the choice was to... to show, well, to love everything.

[43:30]

Maybe he meant there's no choice. Choice isn't really a choice. Change, as I said, is not change or abstract truth, as truth really means trust and change means giving and receiving. That's all there is, if there's something. Those sutras, like the Lotus Sutra, which seems the most far out, is actually very exact and precise, but you can't understand it from the usual sense of big whirls and whirls over there and things like that. But it's very exact about our nature. When you don't try to figure it out,

[44:38]

If you try to figure out what Toksan is doing or Isan is doing, you can't understand them. Without discriminating Toksan and Isan, even without any idea of others, of separate people, it becomes familiar. Then it's very difficult to say we act in the usual space-time. So our actions, we can't even say are creating space-time. So we have another way of speaking about it. But you have to begin from your own area of familiarity. There's no point in speculating beyond that. Just what is actually familiar to us. Is anything familiar to us? Even as I've pointed out, if I say to you, follow your breathing, let your breathing lead you, most of you will become quite scared. Where will my breathing take me? Oh my God, you know.

[45:40]

We don't want to give up control even to our breathing or our heart. So first we have to find out if there's anything we do feel familiar with. Our heart, our breathing, our area of familiarity. Is there such a thing? What could I mean? Karma and conditioning and ego pretty much the same thing. More or less. This picture? What it is or why it's there? Both. It's saying you're not serious enough. Shape up.

[47:06]

You're not considerate enough of your own life. We put it there because it's in Japan called Fudo, Mio, but the other name is Achala, and it's the fierce form of Arjuna, isn't it? I think so. Actually, Rudy gave that to me at my installation ceremony, and I gave it to Huey Newton. And Huey kept it a long time, and he used to read Gary's poem about Achala to everybody. He'd get all the Panthers together, or any visitor, he'd get Gary's poem out and he'd say, and read him Gary's poem over and over again. Then he'd talk about it for hours. People said it was incredible. He'd go on about this. He liked it very much. And then in his new house he was starting to build. We were going to help him build. He had a special place made for him above the door. And when the police came to his apartment they destroyed everything. They cut the rugs and shreds

[48:39]

and busted up the furniture and ransacked everything except this picture they didn't touch. I don't know why. Maybe they didn't notice it. Anyway, Huey left instructions for it to be sent back to me, so I had it next door in the house, and when His Holiness Karmapa came, we got all the Tibetan pictures and Tibetan tantric type pictures out we had to hang here. We hung two there, and we put these five forms of Manjushri there. And this here. And by popular demand, I've not taken it down. It's rather unusual in a Zen Buddha hall to have a Buddha Myo. But in Shingon Shu Buddha halls, they have him on the right side, usually, I think. At least in the temples I've been in, he's been on the right. Special altar. In Soto Shu temples, they often have a fox spirit on the right.

[50:08]

in Japan. Many country temples have the fox shrine instead of Buddha. So he's there. I don't know how long he'll be there. And that wonderful Hon'ji Shri. I'll take them away if you want. Leave them. I'm sorry, I have to go to the dentist again.

[50:44]

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