And yet, I suppose, I am a religious man because, if for no other reason, I find that the mere fact of existence is perfectly extraordinary. As a Zen poem says, how wonderful, how miraculous this, I draw water, I carry fuel. But please be it understood that I am not here in the capacity of a missionary, if anything I am here in the capacity of a philosophical entertainer. Because, although this universe is wonderful, it is also playful, in the sense, say that

[01:11]

music is playful. First of all, I suppose almost everybody in this audience has heard of Zen Buddhism and knows something about it. In case you don't, I must begin by explaining that the word Zen is Japanese, and it's their way of pronouncing the Chinese word, Chan, and this in turn is the Chinese way of pronouncing the Indian Sanskrit word, Jhana, and for this there is no English equivalent. We fumble after its meaning by such words as meditation or contemplation, but these will not do. And perhaps you have to understand what Jhana is by going back to the fundamental idea,

[02:13]

or I really should say non-idea, of Gautama the Buddha, from whom all this springs. The word Buddha is not a proper name, it's a title, and his proper name is Gautama. Buddha means one who has woken up, one who has become free from the spellbinding imposed upon us by words and ideas. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with words, ideas, conceptions, they are very powerful and very useful instruments, but they can run away with you, as can the instrument

[03:16]

of money, as can the instruments of warfare, arms, as can even your own horse. And ever since man can remember, because there is no history before there are records, and there can be no records without words, ideas, symbols. And ever therefore since we can remember, we have had these methods of saying to ourselves what life is, and have therefore been constantly in danger of confusing the description with the reality, as Alfred Korzybski put it, the map with the territory, the money with

[04:18]

the wealth, the menu with the dinner, and our idea of ourselves with ourselves. So therefore, the Buddha addressed himself primarily to the problem of human suffering. He was brought out on the lap of luxury as a prince in the territory approximating to modern Nepal, about 600 years before Christ, and although he was very protected, he managed occasionally to get out of his father's palace and see the life of ordinary people. And he saw poverty, sickness, old age, and death, and was so full of concern and passion

[05:23]

for these conditions that he wondered how on earth there could be a way of living, that is to say, a system of biology in which such events could come to pass. He was horrified, and so he went for seven years into the forests to meet with the holy men of India at that time, the rishis, the jungle sages, the yogis, to see if he could find out from them the answer to this problem. He practiced all kinds of methods and austerities and methods of transforming his consciousness, but he still was not satisfied. Finally, after those seven years, he gave up, he relaxed, he stopped seeking, he stopped

[06:36]

thinking it over, he stopped worrying, and suddenly he got it. Sitting under a tree, he saw what the whole problem was, but he felt in his heart, I don't see how I can possibly explain it. I know what the solution is, but how can I say what it is? And so he thought he had better just stay quiet. But then it said that all the divine beings, the gods and the angels gathered around him and said, you are now Buddha, the supremely enlightened or awakened one, and you really must deliver your understanding to all sentient beings.

[07:37]

It is only compassionate for you to do so. So he decided he would try. But, as they say in Zen Buddhist circles, all the troubles in this world began when old Golden Face stuck out his three inches of iron. Old Golden Face is, of course, the Buddha, and three inches of iron is his tongue, because he started a religion. And as to say, as if to say to you all, look, I've got a secret that you don't know. And I'm going to one-up you on this, because you see, I know and you don't. Now, there are many subtle ways of putting that across.

[08:43]

I can say to you, as I did when I started the book, I've not come here to sell anything, and yet you paid admission to come here. Only though for the entertainment, not for the spiritual uplift, which you cannot buy. So, when anyone says, look, I have the word, I have the message, I have the solution to your problems, watch out. Someone is going to pick your watch out of your pocket, or your billfold, and sell it back to you. Be very careful of spiritual authority, because, you see, supposing you say, I believe in the Bible, and I think it contains the word of God, and therefore I should follow what it

[09:43]

says. Whose opinion is that? That's yours. It may have been your father's opinion, but when you grow up, like I have, I'm a grandfather, I have five grandchildren, and I know I'm just as stupid as my own grandfather. So, when you accept an authority, be it the authority of the Bible, or some scripture, or spiritual teacher, or official church, remember that your acceptance of it is your acceptance, and you confer, by your acceptance, by your opinions, the authority which that book or institution possesses. When Buddha was born, it is said that he immediately stood up and said, above the heavens and below the heavens, I alone am the well-honored one. And that is a problem for meditation and Zen.

[10:48]

And the answer to that problem, you see, the implication is, how possibly could a baby be so conceited, as to say that. And one answers the problem by saying, meeeeeh. So please, as you listen to what I have to say to you this evening, don't strain your ears. Just let all sounds, including the sound of my voice, play upon your ears as if they were simply music that you were listening to. You were listening and just taking in the totality of sound without trying to make any sense of it. You won't have to try to make any sense of what I'm going to say, because your brains will take care of that automatically. So then, what in effect was the thing that Buddha's method, or dharma, was about, was

[12:12]

not a philosophical theory, was not any kind of doctrine in a religious sense, but it was a kind of practice. Not practice in the sense when we use the word practice makes perfect, that is to say something done to prepare for a future event is when you practice the piano for a concert. But practice in the sense of when one might say, I practice medicine, that is to say it's a way of life, and that way of life is jhana, or something like meditation in English, although meditation means usually in English thinking about something, pondering over it deeply, musing. Jhana doesn't mean that, jhana means being directly in touch with reality without thinking

[13:15]

about it. It doesn't always, or necessarily, exclude thought. You can practice jhana even while thinking, while reading a book, while doing accounts, or anything like that, but in order to get into it at the beginning, you have to stop thinking, and that means that it's a very different kind of practice from anything else you do, because almost all things that we are engaged in, with some exceptions, have a purpose. We are doing what we are doing in order to get into a different situation, but jhana is the study and awareness of the situation in which we are now, without laboring it,

[14:16]

that is to say, it is feeling, experiencing it absolutely directly, without the interposition of any commentary. So as to find out where you are, when you are, and what reality actually is. And that practice spread out of India, and eventually went into China, and to Japan, and to Mongolia, and to Tibet, and to Southeast Asia, and that was really all that Buddhism was about. Wake up, find out where you are, here and now, but don't try to put a label on it. Now why could that conceivably be important? It doesn't seem to feed anybody, it doesn't seem to lead towards progress, what is it

[15:24]

for? But an exponent of this tradition would say to you, why are you always asking, what is it for? What's the use of it? What will it do for me? The reason why you are always asking that sort of question is that you're not alive. You're not really here. You're dead. You feel so inadequate at this moment, that you can feel satisfied only in terms of looking forward to something else in the course of time. And you'll never, never, never get it. Because you're simply a donkey who has a carrot dangling in front of his nose from a stick attached to his collar. When you were a baby, you had no need for a religion, for an explanation of the universe.

[16:30]

You had no concept of your ego, of time, of the possibility of death and disease. You didn't know that you were supposed to survive. You just saw the big jazz going on, and it was you, and you were it, and there was no it and there was no you. It was just what was happening. We can't even talk about it. But then everybody came around you and told you things. When you had a fever, and you were real turned on by that fever, all kinds of weird things happened. But everybody came around you and wrung their hands. And you somehow were made to feel that you shouldn't be there. And when you made wonderful noises with your breath, and played out all the strange things you could do, well they came around and said, the baby is crying, the baby's unhappy, and

[17:34]

they picked you up and said, oh, I made you feel terrible, don't do that. And then, I don't know how it is in America today, but in England when I was a baby, everybody was, all the adults were absolutely hung up on whether or not you'd had a bowel movement. It was extraordinary. And if you didn't, you know, they'd first of all dose you with California syrup of figs. And if that didn't work, they'd give you Senna tea. And if that didn't work, they'd give you a thing called cascara. And if that didn't work, they'd give you a pill called a calomel. And if that didn't work, they'd give you castor oil, which was the fatal, total, absolute, way out horrors. Finally you produced. And you know, naturally, because all this pressure had been put on you, you felt very

[18:40]

proud of it. But the adults turned up their noses and said, it stinks. My father, who's now 90 years old, told me not so long ago that until he was about 10, he thought all adults were completely insane. He couldn't make out what they wanted. Because they were always saying, you must do that thing which we will value only if you do it voluntarily. So then, what the function of the Buddha's method was, was to get human beings de-hypnotized from an excess of civilization.

[19:43]

That's really the basic problem. Once we have been told who we are, and made to feel important, we want to cling to that particular role in life, that particular personality, and therefore the prospect of its dissolution makes us feel very, very unhappy. And so in the same way, all kinds of thoughts about the future lead us to the conclusion that the future is no future, it's always dissolution. Everything is going down the drain. And that horrified us, although, why shouldn't things go down the drain? It's only because you don't have a full present that you're horrified at the prospect of things

[20:47]

going down the drain. So the art of Buddhist meditation is to live totally in the present. But I repeat, this does not exclude the possibility of thinking about the future. In fact, only those who live in the present have any reason to think about the future. Because if they make plans, and the plans work out, they will be able to enjoy the fruition of those plans. But as you will already have noticed, even the youngest of you, that people who are always anxious about the future make plans in vain. They never enjoy what they plan for, because they're not here. And if you're not here at this moment, the chances are you never will be. Well, Zen actually is more than Indian Buddhism.

[21:58]

It is the fusion of Indian Buddhism with Chinese culture, with Chinese, what is called Daoism. And the philosophy of Lao Tzu, who is supposed to have lived, oh I suppose around 400 BC, shortly after Buddha, is the philosophy of the Tao, T-A-O, which means the way or course of nature. And it's very often compared with the flow of water, all life being flowing. If all life is a flowing current, the wise man is therefore a navigator. He is not the martial man who stamps upon the ground and opposes things, who wants something

[23:02]

firm under his feet, and who erases mountains with bulldozers. He is the subtle man who knows that all nature is in a course of flux and flow. There is nowhere to take a stand, because as one of our own poets says, the hills are shadows, and they flow from form to form, and nothing stands. There was once upon a time a physicist who was so aware of the, what I would call the flimsiness of matter, the enormous spaces between all atoms, that he used to go around in enormous padded shoes, for fear of falling through the floor. So as the Buddhists say, we live all the time as, in space, as space, they call it the void.

[24:09]

The earth is a spaceship. It's a complete fallacy to go out exploring space, as if we weren't on a spaceship already. And most of the earth, I mean, there's very little of anything that could be called material around. The impression of there being something material is simply a result of the speed of movement. Like an electric fan, when it goes fast, appears to be solid. But there's more space in it than solidity, or take the propeller of an airplane. So the hardest things in the world, the rocks and so on, are simply those in which energy is moving fastest. There isn't really anything there, because there aren't any things. That's what the doctrine, the Buddhist doctrine of the void means.

[25:13]

It doesn't mean that the world is nothing, in a sort of nihilistic sense. It means there is no thing. A thing is simply a unit of thought. Like an inch is a measure of length, or a dollar is a measure of wealth. You can't just say to someone, give me an inch. Or if you say to somebody, give me a thing. What do you mean by a thing? A thing, you see, is a think. And so we get it in Latin, reis, thing, reor, think, in German, ding, thing, denken, think. So what we call things, as if the world were just a sort of a collection of separate objects, that's our way of talking about it. That's our way of describing it.

[26:16]

And we are therefore under the fantastic illusion that things are real, and that we can separate them. That I can have I without you. That I can have good without evil. That I can have pleasure without pain. That I can have insides without outsides. That I can have fronts without backs. Or a world of no mosquitoes. Whenever you try to operate on the principle that things are separable, you get into trouble. And you see, that is why our current methods of technology are about to destroy the planet,

[27:18]

or at least the biosphere. Because we are trying to deal with nature as we describe it, instead of nature as it is actually functioning. Thus the significance of Zen, or of Taoism, for our culture, is to liberate us from the hallucination that we are each separate entities, and that the world consists of a lot of other separate entities. It just doesn't. That is not to say that we are all just a kind of homogenized milk, that all the delightful wiggles that we see around us aren't there. It's only to say that one has to learn to feel and interpret them in a different way.

[28:21]

And you see, this doesn't undermine any value that we in the West have set upon the uniqueness of each human being. Yes, my fingers are all separate, in a sense, all unique, and can move separately. But they can do so only by virtue of membership in the body. And the body can operate only by virtue of membership in the cosmos. We are in a situation in which our real body is everything that there is. But that does not detract from the individuality of each one of us, any more than my fingers, being members of my body, detracts from their power of independent movement. On the contrary, it underlies it. But we have neglected this, because we have confused wisdom with book-learning.

[29:33]

Now, not that books, again I repeat, are bad. I write them. And I'm some sort of an intellectual, because I was brought up to be a Brahmin, not to get my hands sullied with the earth. But the trouble with the academy today is that it's all cerebral. It's all preoccupied with words. And we think that life is explained, you see, when it has been put into words. And some of these explanations are so silly you wouldn't believe it. Daddy, why are the leaves green? Because of the chlorophyll. What is explanation? Explanation is the translation or representation of what is going on in nature into a code.

[30:44]

And the code is words or numbers, principally, maybe a notation, such as musical notation. But what a code does is that it strings everything out in a line. And we can speed up that line of coding with computers to a speed much faster than that is possible for our ordinary intellect, as in figuring. But still, we are representing what is going on in the world with a long, strung-out line. Now, that is a very clumsy operation. It's like trying to drink two gallons of water with a fork. So that's what we go to school for. And it takes us 30 years to get educated, whereas it takes the bird to get educated

[31:53]

for its purposes only a month or so. I have a Siamese cat that was educated in six weeks, and was smarter than any cat around. So, what are we doing? Oh, we say all this life that we live is very complicated. The universe is an extraordinarily complex process. It is not! The universe itself, nature, is not complex at all. What is complex is trying to translate it into words, to measure it. So we can string out these words, and we can string out the numbers, but all we have is a linear model, or representation of the world. And the world itself is not linear. The world is multidimensional. Everything is happening all together everywhere at once, and there aren't any things.

[32:59]

The world is a multidimensional Rorschach plush, and there are various official modes of explaining which represent what we call different cultures, different languages, different logics. But it remains really beyond the reach of intellectual comprehension. But nevertheless, funnily enough, we achieve all kinds of amazing feats of skill without using the intellect at all. And we overlook these, and sort of ignore them and put them down because we all do them equally well, with some exceptions of diseased people, crippled people, and so on. So do you know how you operate your eyes? Do you know how you beat your heart at the same time that you work your lungs?

[34:06]

That you secrete properly from your glands, that you shape your bones, that you transfer the blood into the capillaries, that you breathe through your pores, that you know how to balance when walking, that you know how to be conscious, that you know, most improbably, how to decide to work muscles, to make them correspond with nervous impulses? Most of us have the faintest idea, verbally, how that's done, and yet we all do it pretty well. We try, of course, to explain it away as some kind of mechanism, but we're all, since the Renaissance, hung up on the idea that the world is a machine, that it has to be explained by analogy with a machine. Well, that's just a kind of mythology. That's just a way of looking at things. The fact remains that your brain is more intelligent than your mind, if mind means

[35:15]

the system of words, ideas, and numbers, thinking, that's the way I use the word. Now the neurologists don't understand the brain, and that means, of course, that the brain is more intelligent than the science of neurology, and I think many neurologists would be the first to admit it. Now the question is then, could we live more intelligently by using our brains than by using our minds? Well I believe that the function of the university is, in this day of rapid social change, when the future is not going to be like the past and we don't even know what the future is going to be, is not so much to hand out information as to train us in the art of using our organs.

[36:22]

Of bringing the brain to its fullest potential, not just by stuffing it with information, but by practicing full functioning of the brain. Now just a minute, when I say brain, you associate that with body, with physiology, and therefore might accuse me of being a materialist. Now the idea that the world is material is simply an opinion, a philosophical school, as is equally the idea that the world is mental or spiritual. The world is not material, the world is not spiritual, it is this. Don't say what it is, feel it. So, in practice, Zen is a discipline in which the students who study it learn to use their

[37:43]

brains, or actually Zen people use a different word, they use the word shin, and point here rather than here, because it isn't just the head, this is the center of one's total organic functioning, at least symbolically, shin. Sometimes point here, to the solar plexus. But the point, you don't need to get technical about this, the point is that we are wise beyond any possible conscious conception of wisdom, if we'd only let it out. But to be able to let it out, you have to be able to respond instantly. Not in a hurry, not in a rush, but what's the first thing you thought of in the answer,

[38:49]

say, to a question or to a situation which challenges you? Let's suppose we're in a very practical situation, of you're attacked by an enemy. How will you respond? Because you don't have time to think. When you're in a car accident, very often you will remember, you have acted far more intelligently than you would if you had thought about it. And on certain occasions, people being, say, chased by a bull, can do all kinds of feats of physical prowess, which they never imagined they would be capable of in the ordinary way. You know, jump over a seven foot wall. How did you do that? So, if I might say so, a good education would consist in learning how to let the whole

[40:02]

organism function, instead of merely the verbalizing intellect. But in order to be able to get in touch with the functioning of the whole organism, the verbalizing intellect must temporarily cease. Because if you think all the time, that is to say, talk to yourself all the time, what do you have to talk about? Just talk. You don't experience anything. So in Zen, they make the great point of the practice of meditation, which they call in Japan, Zazen, where you sit for some time and just don't think any thoughts. Of course, you cannot forcibly stop thinking, any more than you can smooth rough water with a flat iron.

[41:03]

But if you listen to the inward chatter in your skull, as if it were just birds outside, it eventually comes quiet of itself. And you find yourself in the extremely agreeable situation of having no past and no future, and no self, and no other. There is just this. I assure you, it's an amazing relief. And you don't even think of it as a relief, because a relief from what? It's all gone. And yet at the same time, this is a state of intense aliveness. You might not call it the sound of the wind, but what we formerly called the sound of the

[42:06]

wind is far more fascinating than it ever was before. You might not call it somebody coughing, but in that cough you can hear the whole universe. You might not call it cars honking on the distant city street, but those noises. So, one does this, you see, without looking for a result. It isn't done to improve oneself, or to improve anybody else. It isn't done with a motivation, because all that wouldn't be meditation.

[43:15]

It would be a lot of concepts, a lot of ideas about should and ought and past and future and history and this, that and the other. This is simply waking up to discover, experimentally, that there is nowhere but now, there never was and there never will be. As Emerson put it in his essay on, I think, compensation, these roses under my window do not ask whether they are better than last year's roses or whether next year's roses will be better than they. There is simply the rose, unlike man, who heedless of the riches of the present, regrets the past and stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. Incidentally, it was reading that passage that gave a Zen master that I once knew the

[44:21]

first clue which precipitated his enlightenment. Now you see, here's the trouble. Our logic and our language compel us to ask, what's the use? You might ask me, why did I come here? Why am I talking to you? What would happen if everybody thought this way, or felt this way? And I said to you, that's not the point. That's all off the point, because the point is now. Well then you say, yeah, but why do you say that? Are you trying to one-up the people who say it's all for the future? If I say, well, everybody else is out to improve you, or to sell you something, or be a missionary,

[45:25]

but I'm not, won't you say, well, that's just an extra special game where you've outwitted the others? All as long as we think and talk, that must seem to be the case. But if we enter into the non-think stage for a while, all those problems will simply vanish. And you will see perfectly clearly, the whole thing as if you had walked through a gate, turned around, and discovered that the gate had vanished. That's why it is called in the Zen phrase, the mumonkan, which means the no-gate barrier. The gate without a gate. Close your eyes and think of me, and soon I will be there, to brighten up even your darkest night.

[47:07]

You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am, I'll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, and I'll be there, you've got a friend. Yet the sky above you grows dark and full of clouds, and that old north wind begins to blow. Keep your head together, and call my name out loud, soon you'll hear me knocking at your door.

[48:28]

You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am, I'll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, and I'll be there. Ain't it good to know that you've got a friend, when people can be so cold. They'll hurt you, yes and desert you, and take your soul if you let them, oh but don't you let them. You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am, I'll come running to see you again.

[49:40]

Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, and I'll be there, you've got a friend. That's from Les.

[55:12]

That's from Les. That's from Les. That's from Les.

[57:10]

That's from Les. That's from Les. ♪♪

[59:16]

♪♪ [...]

[60:22]

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