You know the story of Matsu and Nanaku about rubbing the tile. Probably Sugiyoshi's favorite story. Rubbing the tile. You know, he's sitting. And Nanaku says, what are you doing? He says, I'm sitting to become a Buddhist. Hanako gets a tile and starts rubbing it. Matsu looks around and says, what are you doing? Oh, I'm making a mirror. Jewels. So anyway, you know the story. You can't. How can you make a tile into a jewel? How can you make a Buddha by sitting? This is what you should always say. Don't say, just sit. Say, how can you make a Buddha by sitting? Then, you know, next part is with you.

[01:26]

You have an ox and a cart, you hit the cart or you hit the ox. The next part is the part I'm talking about today. It says, how do you, it says to Nanaka, how do you concentrate so as to realize this formless absorption? I think this is a question you're asking yourself. How to concentrate so as to realize this formless absorption? I think if you heard me yesterday, you'll be asking this question. How to concentrate then to realize this formless absorption? Very good question. And Nanaku says, you're studying the way, you're practicing the way, are like seeds. And my teaching, my expounding the essence of the way, is like moisture.

[02:57]

And circumstances are meat for you. Circumstances are meat for you, and so you'll realize, you'll see the way. And then he says, if the way has no form or color, how am I to see it? Like the polar bears here, except it has form. No. The way has no form or colour. How am I to see it? How am I to act? And Nanaku says, the eye of the mind ground will see it. The eye of the mind ground will see. This is also formless absorption. And he, so Nanaku, so Vassa, Matsue says, what about arising and decay? Means tongue. What about arising and decay? And Nanaku says, if arising and decay, or gathering and scattering,

[04:32]

are present, you will not see the way. That is a very exact scientific conversation between two people. Very exact. But to hear it requires meet circumstances. Circumstances are meet for you, so you will see the way. Now I'm again venturing on forbidden waters. Discussion. Life history. Forbidden waters because it's very illicit. Very illicit. And

[06:04]

On the one hand, I can talk about it all day, year after year, and you won't understand it. I know that from experience. So I can go on, and you might as well, but... That's the wrong conclusion, actually. Because you don't understand, I shouldn't talk about it. Because if you're not going to understand, I might as well not talk about it, right? However, because if I talk about it, There's always the danger you'll get the illusion, you'll get the familiarity of understanding, the illusion of understanding. To try to make things static produces greed, hate and delusion. When you try to make something static,

[07:31]

you immediately are involved in rejecting and grasping and delusive thoughts. And delusive thoughts means you believe, basically it means you believe your own perceptions. You believe your own mental constructs. As an isolated, closed system. You don't let others into it. So it's fairly easy to think you understand something. That's part of the reason it's forbidden, I guess. Another is, it's taken quite a few years for us to get to this point, actually, each of you separately.

[08:42]

to this point today. And some of you haven't paid your dues. Excuse me for saying so. You take things too much for granted. But most of you are paying your dues, maybe all of you. Someone asked me. It always comes up during Sushin and Doksan. People come to Doksan and say, I can't think of a question, sorry. I guess I'm supposed to be really disappointed. Partly, I think, you know, I said, doksan has nothing to do with asking a question. Whoever told you it had to do with asking a question? If you have this pernicious thought, it has to do with asking a question. I guess you wanted doksan to represent something, but doksan is there.

[10:15]

I try to describe it so it's very pedestrian, very ordinary, which it is. Also, it's extraordinary. But I want to make it so you just come in the room, and that actually is all there is to it. Often you don't get that straight. The variations on the theme of bowing and greeting, I never cease to be surprised when somebody comes up with a new variation for us. But you bow once outside the door and once inside the door and once to me. And then, that's all there is to it, except there's another person in the room, so you might do something. So no one said, do something. There's anything other than that. So then, much you do. So then, there's this person in front of you.

[11:37]

You can say, right? Or share some experience. Whatever you like. It's a very free moment. No rules. But I guess, having no rules, you want to give it some form, so you come up with the idea of the question. Cat on a cold tin roof. At Aheji there used to be some creature that lived in the ceiling.

[12:44]

I could never quite figure out what it was. I'd be lying on my tatamis. I could hear the sound. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a rat, because I was quite familiar with the sound they made. Rather large animal. So this person, you know, who asked me about this, they could have never been able to ask a question, or something like this. I'm sort of trying to remember. I may get it mixed up, but something like this. Trying to wonder what to ask, and they never had a question. No, first of all, there's the problem of, you know,

[13:50]

A question like, you know, maybe you can think about what a question is, a question like in school, you know, where you raise your hand and you say, what is the capital of a place? The kind of question in Zen is maybe much more like when you see someone and you say, how are you? That's a question, but you don't expect a long answer, just fine or pretty good or something. It's a question in the sense that when you're with somebody and you don't make a statement, when you say something that allows them to participate, it's a question. It's either a statement or a question. If it's a statement that allows somebody to participate, we can say maybe it's a question. How are you? Anyway, you say something, a shosan ceremony, a shuso ceremony, which expresses yourself and allows the kindness to allow the person who's with you to participate. So maybe from that side we conform it to a question, we think of it in terms of a question.

[15:13]

So this person says, well, they've been in Zen Center 25 years, 12 years, or a long time. I never know. I haven't heard the question yet. I asked, did you ever ask what doxan was, or should you ask what? No. For 12 years you've had this question, what is doxan, and you've never asked? Well, that person's paying their dues, but they have not used in the sense that Sashin will use. You know, for instance, particularly the first Sashins you do, your practice changes a lot during one Sashin. Your Zazen, even your posture changes a lot. Of course, when you're not in Sashin, you're still living and breathing and talking to people and developing and so forth. But something more dense or intense happens when you're doing Sashin.

[16:57]

And something more intense is happening when Matsu and Nanako are having that kind of discussion with each other, exactly with each other. So the question here is, when each of you, in various ways, is not a question, we're not making use of practice. Now, should I try to find some way to tell you? Even if I do, how often have I talked about questions and so forth? Even if I do, I've taught, oh, so many, so much, so many lectures I give, I feel sorry for you guys.

[17:59]

So actually I can't... even if I want to, I can't tell you. All I can do is wait for you twelve years. But how many people will wait for you twelve years? That's something. Oh, yesterday I should... We talked about not liking or not liking the usual idea of a teacher. My feeling is more we have a common craft. But I should own up to some responsibility as the teacher, your teacher. I guess so. And partly it's... You need someone to respect. You need someone to respect and to trust. So I will try to be someone you can respect and trust. And I'm not of the school of, you know, like somebody tells their child, just fall backwards and I'll catch you, and then you step aside, let them fall, and say, see, I taught you not to trust anybody.

[19:21]

That's not my philosophy. But you can set yourself up. You may wait till I'm in San Francisco and say, I'm going to fall backwards and see if he catches me. And you'll fall backwards. And I am a teacher, because I know my experience. Not good or bad or anything, I know my experience, and I'm willing to share my experience with you. And share your experience. But main teaching is going away. Tsukiyoshi today is a memorial service for Tsukiyoshi, and Tsukiyoshi went away. You know the story of the physician and the lotus sutra? Some of you, some of you don't. Anyway, this physician had many sons, ten or twenty or a hundred, and he had to go away.

[20:41]

And when he went away, his sons, not knowing which was good medicine and which was poisonous medicine, took some poison. They were all sick. And he came back and found them all sick. So he gave them, he got herbs and things and made a good, perfect potion and gave it to them. And some took it and got to bed. And others said, I'm very glad to see you back, but they wouldn't take it. We didn't know which was good or bad, so they wouldn't take it. He made up some verbal medicine, and then he said, I have to go away again. And he went away. And then he had somebody, a messenger, send a note which said, your father has died in a foreign country. So then they were all, all assigned to it.

[22:03]

very sad and suffering, and they said, oh, we can't depend on him anymore, he won't come back, we have no choice, so they took the medicine he left and got better. Buddha asks in the story, in the Lotus Sutra, did the physician tell a falsehood or not? That's a throwaway line. Did Buddha enter nirvana or not? Did Sukhyoji go away or not? But there are certain aspects of the teaching. that come home when your teacher dies. And of course, when you realize you're alone. And there's aspects of your own life that will come home to you when your parents die.

[23:23]

And your friends die. So, you know, you might want... This person said to me, I was waiting till I had a question. But the nature of a question is not to have something. And to wait till you have a question usually means you are trying to arrange the question so it doesn't disturb your life. It's in the guise of expressing yourself. You find a question that covers everything. Someone said, I was looking for the right question. But then it's not a question. A question has the danger of being wrong or something, not knowing. But usually we want to arrange a question so it expresses us or makes us look good or something like that.

[24:51]

It means you don't... it means you care for yourself, that's all. It means you don't care enough about Buddhism. If you care about Buddhism, you won't... You can open a sutra to any page and put your finger down on it, and I'll bet you you don't understand the sentence very well if the finger falls on it, and yet you say, I don't have a question, or any koan. But it's only that you don't care enough about what the sentence says in the sutra. What characterizes Matsya's question is not the nature of the question, by what concentration do I enter and realize the formless of torture, but that he completely cared about it. That complete caring is the only thing that works.

[25:53]

So I can't really do much, I can talk to you, but really it's your completely caring, and the circumstances being meet for you. Maybe it takes twelve years, or twenty years, So another aspect of a teacher is they wait for you. Tsukiyoshi used to say, you disciples, you can come and go and forget about me and come back. You never leave my head. I can never forget about you, he said. He meant he was waiting for us.

[27:24]

Now, I'm supposed to be talking about space today, right? Earth, water, fire, space. Today is space. Yesterday I mentioned how, in history class, teacher asked something and I answered it correctly, without knowing really even what was being asked. Now, that kind of event is very elusive.

[28:51]

Because, in this case, it's mixed up with history, teacher, school, getting good grades or bad grades, and so forth. So, in our mind, we get it mixed up with something having to do with talent, or something we notice. But what characterizes such an event is that you didn't do it, and it's not something that grades. It has to do with anyone can do it. Not everyone does it, but anyone can do it, and it's not dependent on the knowing history or getting a PhD in history or something like that. It's something very elusive, outside of time. I hardly do that.

[30:13]

Oh, something like 6% or 13% think they've had some ESP experience. Anyway, there's a tremendous, vulnerable, gullible population out there waiting for Buddhism. and we should be careful about what we do. So there's a lot of interest in this kind of thing, but it's pretty illicit and it slips by and we get involved in the history class or good grades or something like that. That is not something you can examine or reproduce exactly. For example, sometimes some people who work in, say, a grocery store in the produce department, they can take a bag of, say, throw some potatoes in a bag, and the potatoes are two pounds for thirty-five cents, and they can go, oh, this is thirty-two cents worth.

[31:50]

pretty good to do that, because there's all these different prices – two for thirty-five, four pounds for twenty-nine, etc. – and yet, by your feel of your hand, you can tell the price. It's not uncommon to be able to do that. But if you try to grasp it, the more you see that you cannot do it, you cannot conceptually think about it. You just put the potatoes and you save the price. If you do more than that, you can't get it. You know that. What is formless and solid? What is the eye of the mind ground? But cease. I have told you this before, but when I was quite little I asked my

[33:22]

It's like the beginning of a song. Twelve o'clock doesn't exist, does it? And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well, if the handed time is going toward twelve and away from twelve, it's always a slightly before, slightly before, slightly before, and then slightly after, slightly after. And there's no length of time for twelve, so twelve o'clock doesn't exist, I said to my father. He said, well, we say in physics that something that's approached and then passed exists. So I... I wasn't sure it satisfied me completely, but I was silenced. And so you can think, well, yeah, it's just an abstraction. It's just an abstraction. Twelve o'clock is just some abstraction, because actually it's, there's the physical objects of earth and flowers and sun,

[34:43]

and the sun is there and things like that, the abstraction twelve o'clock doesn't exist at any length of time, but the sun exists and so on and so forth. So you can put aside that. But yet, I think you can say twelve o'clock exists It's not just an abstraction. It doesn't have any length of time, because it bubbles into space. You may, again. It actually exists that the sun is directly over the flower, say,

[35:46]

at 12 noon in July, and something happens because of that. But you can't measure it. It does only occur... it's always after or before. But it's different from what happens at 12 noon on November 3rd or some date. So the coordinate exists, say, of flower and sun, you and noon, you and sun. So you may, again, have some experience of

[36:48]

like the history question of knowing incredibly exactly what's going on effortlessly and not in the realm of time. We can say it's a kind of spatial knowledge. And it means, of course, you have to have gotten out of your ego constructs, out of a closed system or pattern that separates. So, I'm not talking about space that surrounds things, or even space that includes things, penetrates everything, manifests everything, but I'm talking about an activity, a kind of activity or power, again. There's no power to the sun being sort of... it's sort of noon. There's no sort of noon, it's exactly noon. And there's a power to being exactly noon, or exactly eleven o'clock, and each one is different, unrepeatable. So, although it has no

[38:18]

Time, it's ungraspable. It's completely elusive. It's very powerful. Sun is versatile. By some conjunction, my daughter Elizabeth was born. Conjunction of my mood and genes so forth, and in a way that I could not control, consciously control. I have some gross control over it, by choosing Virginia, and maybe a little more conscious control, but not much more. And a particular child is born. It would have been a different child.

[39:20]

another day, another time, another mood. A particular child is born, and then this particular child may not even like me, may not respond, may never reveal the secret of their look, may not even notice they have a secret look. Anyway, how close I am to this child having participated in being a particular conjunction that produced her. And yet she may not like me, may not want to spend time with me, may be too distracted yourself to me. And yet, you know, it's about as close as you can get. So, I'm saying this partly just so you'll be more realistic about a teacher or a lover or a friend. You know, if your own child, you don't know, but they feel they have so.

[40:50]

What the contact is, there's a tremendous contact with my daughter Elizabeth, but if I try to grasp it, if I try to make her a character in my own play, it won't work. And I make some of you nervous because, you know, I want to be a character in your play. I want to be predictable in a way you want me to be predictable. This is also generosity, allowing each person, you don't have to make them be a character in your play. So although there's tremendous connection, I have tremendous connection with Elizabeth, she's not a character in my play.

[41:54]

And that smile I saw from her. Did the person standing next to me see it? Did she know she gave me that smile? Someone standing nearby thought it was a frown. I can't get her to do it again. Did Mahakasyapa say, Buddha, pay once more? One more once. Buddha would have. So circumstances are meat for you and it's incredibly elusive if you try to grasp your teacher or child or parent a friend or a Buddha, you have nothing. Twelve o'clock doesn't exist, yet the power of twelve o'clock is invincible, everything. So the early Buddhas, early image of Buddha was just relics. It represents mind ground, space.

[43:21]

Or lineage. Lineage is conjunction. Buddha is lineage. You know, this is rather a joke, but everything is a necklace of string of beads. Even a triangle is three beads, big long beads. But everything is this string of beads. this what I've been calling power of simultaneity, or unrepeatability, or mind-ground, the I of mind-ground Caesar. So this facial mind is very elusive, and you need to learn to exist in the realm of the

[44:30]

It's so elusive we have to wait twelve years, forty. And that second realm I told you, the first realm is the realm that you share with others, that you're conscious of with and through others. The second is the area you keep private. We don't want to ask a question because we don't want to disturb that. And you won't want only characters you've written a script for there. Then you make an almost invincible lock on that area. Everything you hear, you rewrite the script for it. But it's very, very difficult to get through that glue, adhesive, mud of addictive ego. So your practice, our practice is to begin, not to try to have that kind of experience of knowing

[46:00]

The answer right away, because you're going to get a good grade, or because it's like me, or something like that, that's all sort of comparative thinking again. But just to move more gently into the realm of your own lucidness. Maybe instead of concentration, concentration you should define as Relaxed, undistracted mind. Very relaxed, very undistracted, very gentle. Otherwise you want very soft. The air is very soft. Or smile. Smile is very real. Noon is very real, but completely ungraspable. And if you want it again, everything turns to shit. How much trust it requires of you to trust your child and friend

[47:27]

Your own elusiveness. Maybe it's wrong. How can you trust yourself? You need something to check up on, otherwise you'll go crazy. How can you know what you're experiencing is the first signs of craziness? It might be. You know, an awful truth is. It might be. But so what? What's wrong with being crazy? Even if you can stand it and can sit still. If you can't sit still, it's not so good. But if we can sit still through craziness... Craziness is just a power of our mind. Imagination is not for fanciful things. Imagination is just a power of our mind, a power of our consciousness. not consciousness as control, but consciousness as engagement. So it takes unrepeatability. Our unrepeatability is to emphasize courage, to enter elusive. You, which requires such immense trust, also requires immense courage.

[48:50]

not some ego, maniacal sureness that you were fated, you know, you're karmically. You don't. It's much more tenuous and treacherous. And yet it's very positive, too, not negative. What do I mean by that? I don't know how to express it now. So little by little, by sitting, all Nanaku could say to him, let's say this, I am your studies, seeds. My ground is there. And what our practice does is it makes objects yield to space, and space yield objects. Primitive space yields to objects, like a room has furniture that we can use. So instead of having very two-dimensional

[50:24]

a rigid, dimensional world. It becomes very fluid. And space yields to objects and objects yields to space. And if you can get the ability to sit still, and you can care enough, too, about others and about Buddhism, to forget whether you're right or wrong, just, you know, like Tozar. The one side is Das Shri, when Guishan says, you haven't asked me a question. He says, well, what question should I ask? He says, what about, what is Buddha? So you may take that as justification for not asking a question. But Dasui was always asking a question, always unsure, in the midst of... with great ease, in the midst of great doubt.

[51:50]

From the beginning, he read the sutra. He was a young boy, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no mouth. He said immediately, I have eyes, ears, nose, mouth, what does it mean? He asked the question, he cared what it said. So he didn't worry, is it a good question? It's like Castaneda, those early books are quite good, he asked very dumb questions. Like a good student does. A good student doesn't care how they look, they just, what is it? What is it? What is it? Not just to ask a question, because they're paying their dues, they really care. They want everything to testify. Inanimate objects produce the darkness. This kind of... only with this kind of awareness can you move into this spatial, but knowledge into this lucid realm with trust. Again, all he could say was,

[53:49]

Your study are seeds. Your action, your caring are seeds. But my ground is already there. And my speaking, say, Nanaka, is moisture. My talking, expounding the Dharma is moisture. But it's your circumstances, your making use of the power of noontime, shall we say, that makes its bloom. Circumstances are made for you, we say. And if you're this turning, this consciousness-like space which penetrates everything, will awaken this power of simultaneity, this power of circumstances being meet for you, this spatial power that is actually timeless, it's not graspable. So you have to begin to feel comfortable in non-graspable domain, non-graspable realm.

[55:15]

completely elusive, timeless realm. So, Nanaku said, arising and decay have nothing to do with it. Gathering and scattering have nothing to do with it. It's timeless, not in realm of before noon and after noon. So we give up being characters in each other's play in order to find goodness. Thank you very, very much for letting me talk to you this way.

[56:24]

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