We have the idea of a beginning and... Can you hear me in the back? No? Okay. In San Francisco they have a microphone and I forget how to speak. Anyway, we have some kind of idea of a beginning which we can use to have a new practice period. And some of you are here, a few of you are here for the first time on a practice period, but most of you are continuing.

[01:04]

Umon was a famous Zen master whose style of teaching was pretty much like Rinzai's. He lived from approximately 860 to 950. Rinzai died about 966, I think. In a funny way, the Umon lived directly immediately after Rinzai, but their teachers were related, and he's a disciple of the line of Wong Po, or Obaku, who also was the teacher of Rinzai. The Umon is famous for three phrases, several words.

[03:46]

I guess four words each. And the first one is direct reality, reality with emptiness. The unequivocal moment, this moment without anything you can say about it. But to have that kind of You have to be quite sure of what you're doing to have no doubt about what you're doing.

[05:24]

You know, in Buddhism we talk about the sutra we chant, so there's no origination. And usually we have actually had some idea of an origin or a continuity. An origin suggests some kind of discontinuity, there's a particular beginning. to you, or to this day, or to this practice period. Actually, of course, today is, we're calling it the beginning of the practice period. But because we can call it the beginning of the practice period, actually, you know, means there's no beginning, even of you. Do you understand that? Actually, it's easy to understand that we could have called tomorrow the beginning.

[06:47]

It's not so easy to understand that you have no beginning that we can call a beginning. I think probably you look back on your own childhood as having more of a beginning for you than if you'd see somebody's new baby. You don't think that new baby is as fixed as you think your own life is by your babyhood. If you try to examine or understand the beginning of something, you can't actually say, this led to that, or it came from itself, couldn't come from itself.

[08:14]

And you can't say it came from that. You can't say exactly what it came from. And the more you try to say what it came from, eventually you have to say it had no beginning. But yet, you know, we want some kind of a beginning. In a couple of weeks, eight people are going to be initiated with and given new names, which is our kind of course, obviously, a beginning. And you want some end.

[09:24]

to yourself, and you want some beginning. And some of you have the idea that actually you don't need a beginning, that there's only continuity which you have to take care of. But continuity is not exactly right either. Sometimes a If we contrast an ordinary person and a Buddha, an ordinary person is defined as someone who has continuity or has a mind, and a Buddha is someone who has an original awareness, an original way of being aware, something like that. I can say so each moment is a beginning, but again, that's too easy to say.

[10:31]

When Dr. Abe was here, he's going to be here next week. Do you all know that? Anyway, do you all know who Dr. Abe is? Lineage. We don't emphasize lineage in this country, in the West so much, because we emphasize or you can do it by yourself. But actually, if you know the facts of who has done something, there's almost always a lineage involved. If you trace who the best surgeons, say, in the United States are, they almost always studied with some other best surgeon. And who

[11:53]

things true of painters, if you look at the painters in this country who are at least considered successful. There's a very complicated lineage of who studied with who and who lived with whom. And there's almost no such thing as an independent painter, in that sense. Anyway, we don't notice it. In Japan, maybe in China, over-noticed lineage. So that, as I was saying to somebody yesterday, even the geita, you know, these little wooden shoes I wear, and other people wear that have a little high, The third generation geita man tied the ropes on me.

[12:59]

Maybe it's not necessary to be the third generation to tie the ropes just right. They do do it very well. But when I look at lineage in Japan, I know it pretty well in the Soto school and somewhat in the Rinzai school. And almost all the teachers we hear about, and are considered good in Japan, go back to one or two teachers, one main person who they all had contact with about 150 years ago. And there, the lines stemming from him represent the major strong lines in Soto school today. And most of the people who are good, you know, I guess we think Suzuki Yoshi is good, I'm not sure.

[14:05]

If we take Suzuki Yoshi as being good, they don't just have one lineage within that group of lineage. They usually have two or three interconnections. Anyway, Dr. Abe has a similar... You know, Dr. Abe came here and he felt right at home, he said. And later he wrote us a letter saying he felt Buddhism had come to root in America. Anyway, when we began to talk, and Nakamura-san began to talk with him and other people. He has a very complicated lineage which is very intertwined with almost everybody that I know about, whether it's a scholar or a tea master or something in this small community of people in Japan who continue Japanese culture.

[15:13]

Anyway, his teacher is... Dr. Abe's teacher is... Hisamatsu Shinichi. Hisamatsu you may know because he's done a big book on Zen art. But he also taught at Harvard and was closely related to D.T. Suzuki. And from Hisamatsu comes the Cambridge Buddhist group and Elsie Mitchell. And Hisamatsu's teacher is Nishida. Nishida is the most well-known, practically only, philosopher, Buddhist, Zen, and considered aside from Buddhism and Zen just by world philosophy as a major philosopher.

[16:15]

Nishida, I think he died maybe 20 years ago. Anyway, Nishida is Hisamatsu's teacher. And Nisita's main disciple is named Yanagida. And Yanagida's daughter, this is getting very complicated so I won't go into it much further, is my daughter's tea teacher. Anyway, I could go on like this for some time, and it spreads out to be the two or three hundred people in Kyoto who are doing what's happening. And I don't know how, Zen Center is hooked up with it. Zen Center is quite hooked up with it somehow. And Gyanagida's teacher, Gyanagida's daughter's husband, who took her name, the name of Gyanagida, is one of the two or three top Buddhist scholars in Japan.

[17:22]

and he probably will be bringing out with introduction the new Rinzai Roku, the stories about Rinzai. Anyway, Dr. Abe is a kind of lay priest, and Hissamatsu is head of a lay group. Hissamatsu is quite old now, maybe 87 or something like that. And Dr. Abe has taken as his work over the next two or three years the translation of the main classicals of Dogen. And he's already translated two or three sections which have been in the Eastern Buddhist. Anyway, he wants to come back and teach at San Francisco.

[18:43]

San Francisco, we created something called the Zen Study Center. It has a beginning, and Dan Welch is going to be head of it, and Dr. Abe, now Dr. Konsei, is teaching at He's been in San Francisco for three months, and next fall, I think Dr. Abe will. But we don't know. He has to figure out his calendar in Japan. Anyway, he's coming here next week. About the, anybody know? 18th or 19th? You don't know? 18th. 18th. Who knows? Do you know? Might be the 18th. He said, all right, have a very good time around the next week. I always assume you know. Anyway, he'll be here for thirty days. But he remarked that what we're doing here would have been impossible if Suzuki Roshi hadn't had some kind of commitment, some kind of unequivocal sureness

[20:03]

about practicing Buddhism. And it reminded me of when Tsukuyoshi was even only 19 or so. I mentioned this story at the first lecture at Green Gulch a week ago this Sunday. I don't know if any of you were there, but I told the story about Mrs. Ransom. She was Tsukiyoshi's first, I guess you'd say, convert to Buddhism, and she happened to be a Westerner, rather interesting. Tsukiyoshi was about 19 at the time. Do you all know this story about Mrs. Ransom? Anyway, she was the tutor of the last Manchu emperor before, I guess, before Japan invaded Manchuria.

[21:18]

And then she came to Japan and she was the tutor of the crown prince and taught at Komuzawa University. In Suzukyo she became her kind of Jisha. He wanted to learn English because he wanted to come to America or Europe. So he finally entered her house and lived there with her. And she had this Buddha given her by the Manchu emperor. She didn't know, she kind of liked it as a statue, but she kept it in a place where everybody put their shoes when they came in. And Suzuki, of course, didn't like that pretty much. So he moved the shoes regularly. Every day he'd take the shoes out. And then he put an incense bowl after a while, and he began to light incense.

[22:28]

And she made fun of him, saying he was an idol worshipper. and superstitious religious person, you know. But after, he had no doubt, you know, about what he was doing. He just did it and offered incense. And after some months, she began to stop putting shoes there and participated in offering incense and then said, all right, I give up. And she took the three refuges with him. and became a Buddhist. Near the end of her life, it was rather difficult for her because she felt Suzuki Ueshi was her teacher and changed her life. And he never answered mail. I don't know if you knew this. And she almost never

[23:31]

And she wanted him to write her. And she was quite ill. And for one or two years, she wrote letters asking him to write. And he never wrote. But aside from that, which was a difficult time for her, they had a very long relationship for many, many years. So to practice Buddhism, you have to have some kind of commitment or some kind of willingness to practice, willingness to respect your teachers or lineage and the community you practice with.

[24:37]

So actually, we should probably start out a practice period with maybe 108 bows. Anyway, we use some kind of creative attitude to free ourselves from our usual attitudes, like that there's a particular beginning. Lung Mun's second phrase is that you can't describe reality, that

[25:38]

that all appearances come to rest or are stopped, which is like a beginning. In this session or in this practice period, you want to try to Allow yourself to be more and more subtle in how you see things, not just in terms of a beginning or this thing is good or this thing is not so good. Whatever way you perceive things, any time you have a particular viewpoint, you limit yourself. much more than you think.

[26:41]

We have to practice as if we are in the dark. You know, Dogen's famous phrase about practice is like hunting for your pillow in the dark. And if our practice is just on the light side, you know, just in activity, then our activity will actually have no light. As you all have sat in the evening, and it gets darker and darker and darker and darker, and each time it gets a little darker, you can't see objects very well. But if you sit there, you can see a little more clearly, and a little more clearly. And then it gets darker and you can't see anymore, and then you sit there a little more clearly. And sitting in a sashim, in a practice period, you don't need any ideas about your thoughts, where you came from, or how this world exists, or whether the world is subjective or objective.

[28:05]

Just your way of observing, of being aware, just become more and more subtle, without any ideas about anything. One of the most fundamental ideas we have is that things are caused and you had a beginning and you'll have an end, and in between there's some meaning. And this has only a very small relative importance.

[29:27]

But most of your lives are actually confined in that, from beginning to meaning to end. But actually, it's some stage direction. Do you have some questions? I've never seen a half-moon house, but sometimes I get the idea that they are in a storehouse.

[30:44]

Morning, evening, half-moon house. If you say you're the result of your past, what you mean is probably not right. You exist now, and you exist now in some way which certainly has something to do with the way you existed before. But why think about it in terms of I was resulted, I'm a result of my past. How does that useful to you? Yeah, you can say that, but why say it?

[31:49]

I wouldn't, by the way, I wouldn't depend too much on the things you hear around here. The best way is to forget, you know, complete your past or events that you call your past, you know, come up. to you, you don't have to get rid of them, but they're not so important. We give you, you know, when a person is initiated, they receive a new name, but the name you have can be new. But you do have to cut I don't want to be too strict with you, at least on the first day of practice.

[33:22]

But some actual, some kind of depth actually is required. Krishnaji said, the practice arises from our courts. But for now, we can say it's nice, it would be good to forget about who you were. And the way, one way to do that is to notice how much you talk about who you were, or who you could have been, or who you might be, and why you're going to forget that person who could have been and would have led to, etc., who you don't like. Anyway, all those references, you can notice them, you know, if you can become more alert about what's happening with you.

[34:37]

You can see the shadings, instead of just seeing the things in the bright light, you know. You can begin to drop them from your conversation. Some of you may find you don't have anything to talk about. If you actually drop from your conversation everything that has a reference to you. But there's no need to know about those things. I, you know, it was impossible to find out anything about Selicki or his past. Finally, he would talk about it to a student, when the student realized he was totally incidental, unimportant, and could be viewed from many points of view, and maybe at 40 he saw as fast as one thing, and 60 another, and various people would see it from a different point of view.

[36:02]

So Suzuki Roshi could have lived his life without us ever knowing a single thing about where he was born, or whether he was married, when he went to school, his name could be completely gone. But his actual existence continues in us, rather like, in some ways it's similar to Alan Chadwick's idea, that he doesn't want to paint a picture, or have his name known just if he can plant plants that produce seeds. His idea is that a horticulturist is the most invisible real profession. That kind of idea is somewhat similar.

[37:07]

Could you say it a little louder, please? Time Magazine asked me the same question a week ago. Why do you want to know? Well, then you've answered the question. You could know for yourself. Actually, they're wonderful books, the last two in particular.

[38:27]

The first one is not so interesting to me, but the last two are pretty interesting. But I said, I told Time Magazine I didn't want to make any comment, actually. The last thing I want to do is appear in Time Magazine. Anyway, they called me because they're doing a cover story on Castaneda in one or two weeks. He'll appear on the cover at times. He says he... It's interesting because I don't know quite what he's doing, but anyway, I guess it's happening. There's a reporter who's been downstaying with him. for the last week or so in Los Angeles.

[39:28]

What I said to the reporter was that... I said, if I had to say something, what I'd say is that there's a great deal of similarity between Zen and Don Juan teaching, particularly between the relationship between teacher and disciple, but that Don Juan chooses to articulate more of the way than Zen would, or articulates different things. Anyway, they're quite similar. But I said, even this I'd rather you didn't. So he called up Alan Watts and Mike Murphy, who told him so much that he didn't read this book. Anyway, the reporter and I talked quite a while, and I spent most of the time asking him about what he was doing.

[40:41]

And he was an engineering student who dropped out of being an engineer and became a journalist and writes stories for Time and lives in Berkeley and is 30 years old, and wants to come to Tassajara next spring. So he's probably going to come down in May. I'm sure none of you heard what she said.

[41:43]

She said today in this session she finds a willingness to just sit there and be whatever she experiences. But she also feels that she's right on the edge or a little afraid that she might start that squirming and not wanting to be there at any moment. So then you said, what? Confidence in Buddha? So she said, what is confidence in Buddha? Willingness to squirm, too. Is there someone else there?

[42:44]

You mean, why substitute lineage, Siddhiroshi's path, for your own? Aside from just an abstract question, why do you think so? The 2800 years. Actually, we don't have any lineage. You know, if you're really Suzuki Yoshi's disciple, you don't have any lineage.

[44:29]

But because it's not so common to not have any lineage, we say, oh, he doesn't have any lineage. He has a lineage. Do you understand what I mean? I mean, Suzuki Yoshi had no... different from most people, he had not much sense of a past. But that was so marked, it was so different from most people, that you say, where did that come from? So you can say, oh, he had another, he had a teacher who also had no past. Anyway, we're stuck one way or the other in having some embodied form. So we have to use it. I like very much the question you asked in the city, actually.

[45:43]

Do you remember that question? Do you want to ask it again? Well, every time you try, you know, you find out your eyes are able to see more in the dark. So try some other way.

[46:20]

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