He started practice 50 years ago, in 1969, at PCC. And then he orbited over to San Francisco Zen Center for some era of his practice. I met him, I actually met him in 1983 when he was Shuso at Tassajara. And then eventually he orbited back to the East Bay, married, raised a couple of lovely Thank you, Laurie. Is this volume okay? It's good? Okay, great. Well, preparing to give a talk, as I give them, maybe twice a year. I do experience some anxiety in arriving at this position, but now that I'm here, I see that I'm among friends.

[01:19]

Thank you. I want to talk about... The topic is sort of a continuation of various topics that have been talked about here, over the last few months, starting with practice period, where we heard about the koan Kyogen's man in a tree, and also, to some extent, about the story of Dao's condolence call. And then we also heard another theme, which is about love. And that theme was continued again and again. And last week, Jerry talked about it at some length. And I began to think that there's a thread which connects all of these things. And that thread, just to say it out loud, is something about going beyond, which will take me later in this talk to the Heart Sutra.

[02:30]

But I want to talk a little bit about the problem of talking. The problem of talking is that it doesn't get us there. It perhaps takes us into the neighborhood, but we always find ourselves at a loss for words when it comes to what's really... what really Is there a key to enlightening, a key to awakening? And I would say probably not. That the kind of going beyond that keeps being suggested by the old stories about our thinking about love, It's of interest to us because it's the one thing we can't know how to do.

[03:38]

There's nothing more intriguing or beckoning than an impossible problem. There are no quick start tips. There is no owner's manual. there are no even instructions in another language you don't yet understand. And I keep thinking, I kept thinking, it's so unknowable that it couldn't be anything other than the ultimate surprise. In the story about Kyogen, He is presented with a dilemma. A man in a tree, holding on by his teeth. Someone shows up down below and says, What's the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?

[04:41]

And the man who's hanging on to the tree has a choice. Reply. and die, lose your life by falling, or simply lose the opportunity to speak to this person's need. And so Kyogen can't figure this out. a very learned monk he was, but he cannot find any answers in any of his texts. And he goes to his teacher, and his teacher refuses to say what the meaning of that is, to explain that. And he goes away. And so Kyogen leaves and ends up for years caretaking an old grave of the national teacher. And one day, As he's sweeping the grounds, a pebble springs up and bashes against the bamboo, and the sound of that occasions his awakening.

[05:57]

So was that accidental? Is awakening an accident because we can't know how to make it happen, that there's no instrument we have that will take us there, and therefore it's completely accidental? I don't think so. But how do you find the neighborhood? It still raises the question, is there such a thing as preparation? Or is it just that... Is there such a thing as preparation or readiness? Or is it just that we have some instinct for this, but we can't put our fingers on it?

[07:01]

What is it? There must be something that we intuit that brings us all here together. has been bringing people together for thousands of years to inhabit this question. So in some sense, this talk is about what's called not knowing, what is referred to as not knowing. There's a koan in the called Dizang's Nearness. Dizang asked Vajang, where are you going? And the monk says, oh, around on pilgrimage. And the teacher asks, well, what is the purpose of pilgrimage?

[08:09]

The student says, I don't know. And the teacher says, Not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is, in some translations, not knowing is most intimate. So, not knowing, again, people talk about this, Dogen talks about this, but It's not ignorance. It's not blankness. It's a willingness to abide in uncertainty without reacting with hope and fear, not giving away to the small mind's insatiable appetite for exploitation, while at the same time opening moment upon moment to so-called inner and outer experience.

[09:14]

remaining receptive, though purposely so. Purposely so without purpose, moment upon moment. So back to the question of whether or not awakening is some kind of big surprise. I thought about this for a while, and I thought, you don't hear about, you don't read in the stories about people having awakening experiences and being surprised by them. But on the other hand, how could it not be? But again, on the other hand, surprise is something... it's almost as though it's a way of trying to grasp the experience.

[10:21]

Oh! But then it seems like the experience of awakening, as we hear about it in the sutras and in the stories, is one of just Commencing to just move on, there's no time for surprise. And I don't recall, I mean, you can correct me, and I'm probably wrong, but I don't recall hearing about people being surprised by an enlightenment experience. even though it can be no other than completely unanticipated. So, what is it that ties all this to love?

[11:24]

I was thinking about one of the challenges that comes up in love is the thought that, yes, this is great, this is just what I thought it would be, I so much love this thing. It's about the moment when everything turns sour. It's as though everything that's of value in life must be left behind. We must go beyond what we grasp, what we construct as the most wonderful things in the world. I imagine and I experience to some extent, I have experienced to some extent the same is true of art, where you get to a place and you have

[12:39]

At some point you pass on to the next work. Whatever you have for this piece of writing or painting or what have you, you've given it and it's time to go. And being alert to that moment is what gives life to the next moment, the next piece of work. So I'm going to shift over to talking a little bit about what comes up in the Heart Sutra. Because, as you know, at the end of the Heart Sutra there's a mantra, and it's translated, although some people say it's best not translated.

[13:50]

but it hasn't stopped anybody from attempting to do so. And it evokes the concept of going beyond. There's general agreement about that. So, one way of thinking about going beyond is that it's a sort of embrace of impermanence. It's acceptance of both change and renewal, and birth and death. So, there's a tricky aspect of the Heart Sutra which has to do with the language. I'm going to explore it a little bit. In the translation of the Heart Sutra that we chant,

[14:53]

We use the word emptiness to characterize a fundamental aspect of all things that exist or don't exist, all identifiable things. The word emptiness, we say it's emptiness, empty of their own being, empty of any intrinsic characteristic. And it's a complicated concept, which is one of the reasons why it becomes problematical. Because as we use it in the Heart Sutra that we chant these days, the word the word has implications or has connotations which are sort of counter to its intended meaning. So it's a sort of... just the word emptiness refers to a sort of intellectual construct which sort of flies in the face of logic.

[15:58]

And in the course of thinking about this talk I looked over various translations of the Heart Sutra. And Kazuaki Tanahashi's translation handles that word a little bit differently, using the word boundlessness. But it's not just a substitution. It's a very interesting translation because it uses the word slightly differently. And at first I thought, well, maybe this isn't so much better than emptiness, because it kind of refers to some great faraway thing, which is sort of like... It's out there someplace. But actually, the way he uses it, he says that all things that boundlessness is free of all the things that you can name, the five skandhas, the ear, eye, nose, form.

[17:14]

Boundlessness itself is free from all of that. And he talks about the five skandhas as being without boundary. So it's a rather interesting way of working with that problem. Okay. So there's two sides to boundlessness slash emptiness.

[18:27]

And one is a sort of active side, or let's say a passive side, of acceptance of not knowing. or the practice of not knowing, being an acceptance of, I can't get a hold of this. I can't get a hold of the meaning of this. And the other side is an active side, which is just completely plunging into your activity without recourse or second thoughts. and finding yourself right here upon each moment. So, this is the sort of enactment of not knowing.

[19:38]

This acceptance that what you have right before you is... Both cannot be known, and you can be completely intimate with it. It's interesting, this phrase, not knowing is most intimate, because intimacy implies two sides. One is oneness or merging or no difference. And the other side is separateness. You cannot have intimacy without separateness. You cannot have intimacy without deep connection. And that's a little bit about what love is.

[20:40]

Is that You can't predict how love will manifest. Just by bringing your heart's full attention, you find a way to recognize connection or recognize difference, and that it's a little bit like a play between these two sides, never landing completely at one and sticking there, but allowing that these two aspects to be at play and alive. So, to go further a little bit on the Heart Sutra.

[21:54]

It's of interest to me because this concept of going beyond is is seems to be the direction of our practice. And so the Heart Sutra says a lot about not grasping, not holding, not assigning of reality to various objects of our perception. And it also identifies itself as a mantra which It identifies itself as a whole as a mantra and it also gives us a mantra, a short mantra at the end. I wonder how many of you have resorted to the Heart Sutra itself as a mantra in some situation of extreme stress or

[23:17]

challenge. It's a powerful invocation. Some years ago I was flying to India and we were to land in Hong Kong and the weather was very rough and it was a little nerve-wracking coming into the In those days, the Hong Kong airport was sort of right in the middle of the city. So there were these big buildings and you were sort of plopping yourself down in the middle of it all. And the weather was very windy. And I was looking out the window and I saw the ground getting closer and closer and closer. And just about the time I thought maybe the wheels would touch down, the airplane roared into the sky. What is going on here?

[24:20]

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. Yeah, that did the trick. And then there was a great round of applause, but on the second try we actually did land. So, The end of the Heart Sutra has this mantra which we chant as, Gathe, Gathe, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhisvaha. And the Heart Sutra itself is pretty difficult to understand, but that, of course, is something else. And it's chanted in that transliterated Sanskrit, I would assume, out of respect for the intention of offering a spell that might be of use.

[25:42]

Not an intellectual construction, but a something beyond that. So that impulse itself is a sort of choice in the direction of going beyond. And so I'm going to venture into some of the... I'm actually just going to read to you some of the translations of that which all differ depending on the inclination of the the writer, their orientation, their relationship to the Sutra. Edward Kahnze translated it as gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. Oh, what an awakening, all hail. Here's another one, I'm not sure of the origin of it.

[26:44]

Gone, gone, gone to the other shore. Attained the other shore, having never left. Oh, you have done. You have done. You have completely crossed the margin. This is enlightenment. Congratulations. I'm not sure of the origin of that one. Alan Ginsberg is said to have penned it as, gone, gone, totally gone, totally gone, over the top, wakened mind, so ah. Thich Nhat Hanh renders it as, gone, gone, Gone all the way over.

[27:47]

Everyone gone to the other shore. Enlightenment. Part of the thread that I was talking about at the beginning of the talk was, it also includes Sojin's talk on square Zen, beats Zen, square Zen, and Zen. And that came to mind when I looked at Philip Whelan's rendering of this mantra. mostly beat Zen, even though he did take ordination and received Dharma transmission and was a recognized teacher. There's something impish about Phyllis that just wouldn't go away. But in his mind, this mantra reads as, gone, gone, really gone, into the cool.

[28:53]

Oh, mama! So there's something about that which transgresses in a sort of delightful and challenging way. And probably on many levels. So... How much more time do we have? A little over ten minutes. Yeah, what do you mean before questions? I see, okay. So this problem has just so many impossible aspects to it. One of which is that going beyond

[29:58]

can only be manifest now, here. It's the only possible location, time, and yet cannot be known, cannot be defined by that. But there's something about immediacy, which is key to this. There's something about another aspect of not knowing. My dear twin sister broke her arm last week. And she's recovering and is in pretty good spirits.

[31:01]

But she has her left arm in a cast. And this is sort of a... The left arm in her case, like most people, is the non-dominant arm. And it's interesting that she's discovering how much goes on over here. because you tend not to think about it. You think about your kind of doing hand and you don't think so much about it. Although I have to say, she must be somewhat ambidextrous because she's an origami fanatic. So again we come back to the problem of our teachings.

[32:17]

The ocean of Buddha's way again and again brings us to, are we going beyond? Are we stuck? Are we moving forward? Are we moving backward? they bring us to a place of stuckness or stillness or some question which is not graspable. What are we going to do? What are we going to do in this moment? This is where the heart of our practice lives. And it's where all of those wonderful teachings surfaced and flowered.

[33:21]

The magnificent ocean of lotuses. And... I want to thank you for the opportunity to express myself, and I want to offer my apologies for my stumbling around in the neighborhood of not knowing. So if you have questions or comments, I'd be willing to hear them now.

[34:24]

And I'd like to ask Sojin if he has anything he would like to say. I have something to say about everything you said. Oh, well, is that good or bad? I'll make it short. the Heart Sutra is a kind of intellectual construction. So how do we deal with that? And it's difficult to understand, because the way to understand it is in the way we chant it. The way we chant it is what the Sutra is talking about, without talking about it. totally loosen yourself into chanting the sutra, the whole meaning is right there. So you don't have to have this big explanation of the sutra, except that intellectually you need that.

[35:32]

So it's like one whole piece. Thank you. And I wish I had touched on that aspect of it further, not so much the Heart Suture, but just the direction of our practice, as in throwing yourself completely into one thing. That's the flip side of letting go. Thank you very much Peter. In reading all of those translations of the mantra, I was struck by the fact that each one seemed to spring from the culture dominant in that translator.

[36:47]

I can't imagine that he would, well, I'm hearing, I'm seeing nodding here. It's hard for me to imagine that he wasn't, frankly, but yeah. Yes. Considering impermanence, Huygens' pebble striking bamboo, does he really, It's an impermanent thing that's happening there, right? Well, along with everything else, yes. So is he taking away something from that? Is he taking away something from that experience? He's propelled, I've got to say it this way, he's propelled irretrievably into his own experience, moment upon moment.

[37:57]

He's propelled irretrievably, moment by moment, completely into his own experience going forward. Oh yes, John. Actually, I was going to ask something like Jerry's question earlier in your talk. You were talking about how we address the moment, and Kyogen's moment was the example. And I remember a class Sojin was teaching, and it came up, the idea of not savoring the moment. And in my mind, I pictured what I've seen when I was taking people to whale watches a long time ago. People, all the time, with their camera in front of their face, trying to capture the thing. and so the takeaway question is are we snapping a photo of the moment of the bamboo and then savoring that we saw that moment or to talk about, I'd like you to address a little bit more how we address the moment and what we don't take away or what actually occurs in that moment that isn't involved with moment upon moment coming.

[39:20]

In that moment, you actually recognize what you're doing. I've got the camera in front of my face. This is a real experience. Just the camera. Whatever. Laurie? The one that struck me newly, the translations, was Thich Nhat Hanh's where he said, everybody knows it. That's right. Have you ever thought about it that way? No, neither did I. gone completely beyond, but like, that's like completely means we all went beyond. Completely, you know, which is great. It's a great, of course it's very Thich Nhat Hanh, which is great, but because, you know, we've often heard all together beyond, but I always heard that as completely, not all together now. Thank you. Because the story of Kyogen's awakening is a story.

[40:36]

That's true. Who told the story? Who witnessed the story? Is this something, if it's something that presumably nobody else was there. Right, even if somebody else was there. Then it comes to Kyogen. He carried something away. He carried a pearl of wisdom experience, which we are now talking about 1,500 years later. Because it has the potential of tuning us to what's going on. But to learn of it is to recognize that that experience is available to each of us to go beyond.

[41:42]

But it's interesting, I just said to you, where did that story come from? That's what we're dealing with right here, is the story. Right. It's not like other stories where so-and-so said this and then so-and-so said this. This is just the story. Yeah. And it's alive because we're alive. Yes, Judy. That's true. Yes. I chose to tell that story because I had faith the Heart Sutra would carry me someplace.

[43:11]

And to my ears, you're practicing over and over and over again, chanting it, studying it. Yes. We have one more? Yes. This is maybe not something you have to answer on the spot, but at some point, I think it would be very interesting to hear your take on gatte gatte. Oh. I am not going to answer that on the spot. Sure, that's why I started with that. Yeah, that would be interesting. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.

[44:05]

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