Now, Issan asked if we could have a lecture with the doors open, as long as you can hear. If you can't hear me, it seems all right. No? If you can't hear, wave your hands at Issan and he will. But no one else has a hearing aid. Okay. Annette's baby, Annette and Ralph's baby is off. They had her hooked up to some kind of machine that kept her breathing going and they unhooked her and she started breathing normal. So she's on her own, and they can even go in and touch her now. But pretty much she's still in this incubator, I guess. And on Harrisburg, Herb Cain says the big movie in Peking these days is the Harrisburg Syndrome.

[01:27]

The radioactive gases of various kinds, krypton, xenon, and I don't know what else. I think strontium-90 too, have been found as far away as Maryland. And in the milk around there, and the Hertzibar company, He's only six miles away from the plant. Just a delayed reaction. If I mention chocolate, he turns his hearing off. And I guess that Three River plant, they say, will become a billion or two billion dollar mausoleum because it is so contaminated that they don't think they can ever clean it up. Some people say they can, but other people say they can't. It'll cost more to clean it up than they did, than the two billion dollars to build it. But they're still planting about 500 to 1,000 more plants in America.

[03:01]

Anyway, I guess the danger of the explosion is now over, because they've got the bubble of hydrogen, which nobody ever thought such a thing could happen. None of the planning of all of the safety people ever imagined. They imagined small bubbles, but they never thought of a big bubble. But now that they have that reduced, the danger of explosion is gone. Anyway, that's all there is to that. Kui, a Zen teacher named Kui Chen, was working in his garden when a monk was walking, a traveling monk was going by. And he hollered out to him, where are you from? And the monk said, from the south.

[04:46]

And Kui Chen asked, how is Zen practice, how is Zen there in the South? And the monk said, a din of mondo, or mondo after mondo. And Kui Chen said, that may be good, perhaps that's good, but here we tend our field, harvest plant the rice, harvest the rice, mill the rice, and eat it together. That's how we practice here. That may be better. I prefer it," he said. That, of course, is

[05:48]

more Suzuki Roshi's emphasis, too. And he often talked about problems of contemporary world, scientific, industrial world, in relationship to Zen. And the story of something like Chu... What was his name? Chen Yu? Is that his name? Who danced with the rice pails. Many koans are like this. The story is presented in such a way that no explanation is possible. All you're left with is the act of him dancing with the rice pail.

[07:07]

and the emphasis on perceiving our acts direct, without any explanation. Maybe an athlete has... it's similar to an athlete, you know, of sport, where your body does the game, you don't think about it. But a monk is someone who body, maybe body, you, it's hard to say, in words what I mean. Zazen, you know, is very physical. Very physical. And unless you can sit still, it's pretty difficult to know. Actually, it's quite difficult to know this experience of Zazen. I'm being very practical human now. You know, in the same way, you know, unless you jog,

[08:43]

say, 15 miles a day, or some amount like that, you don't know what that experience is. There's no way to know it except to do it. And unless you know the experience of zazen by sitting, there's very little way to know true zazen. I think if a person can't sit, you know, for some reason of old age or legs or something, if they really develop their concentration in everything they do, perhaps, I'm sure, in fact, they can have same experience of zazen, but it's much more difficult. It requires much more concentration. I notice, you know, I've chosen a way of life which requires me to do zazen.

[10:05]

Partly, of course, I want – or completely – I want to share Zazen with you. And at the same time, I can say completely, I find Zazen so wonderful – excuse me for saying so – that I wanted to create a life which let me sit and helped me to sit. And I notice when I don't sit, you know. And recently, the last, oh, I don't know, six months or ten months, It's been most difficult for me ever to sit when I'm in the city, in Green Gulch. Harder in the city now. It used to be harder in Green Gulch. I've been trying to... My schedule in the city works pretty well if I only sleep three or four hours, but if I try to sleep... I don't work so well, but my schedule works.

[11:32]

If I, at least as I'm getting older, I don't work so well. I think of Po Chui, who said he ruined his health by sleeping like that when he was studying for examinations and so forth for many years. But I don't think I've ruined my health, but... Anyway, I... If I try, as I've tried the last nearly year to sleep, more than five hours, which is the first time I've done it in years, it's very difficult for me to keep my schedule. So often the way of Zen Center has changed. If I go to Zazen, that means I get up after two hours' sleep or something. As a result, on these compressed trips to the city, turning around and coming back, it's all travel, sort of, and no being there, actually. As a result, for the longest period of time, in almost twenty years, I haven't done zazen for some successive days.

[13:01]

And I do notice a difference, you know. If I don't sit daily zazen for, say, several weeks, or not so much, you know, my state of mind is the same. I was trying to think, what is the difference? My state of mind is the same, my feeling of calmness is the same, but My, I don't know what, empathetic or physical engagement with things is different, slightly different. So Zen does not depend on yoga, you know, or Zazen.

[14:05]

practice. Otherwise it couldn't be considered, you know, universal teaching. But like, you know, a healthy body helps you get through the day, a good zazen helps a lot to get through, to understand zen, to understand emptiness. And Tokudo or ordination is about being a Buddhist. You know, you take vows and to cut off attachments and so forth, but transmission is about emptiness, about the non-existence of Buddhism. About. How to exist without any framework.

[15:08]

or rules. So, you know, I ask myself, is Buddhism a religion or is Zen a religion? And everyone says it's a religion, and I guess it is. By a historical process it became a religion, I would say. that if you have some teacher, like Buddha, some extraordinary teacher, people will create, if it continues, if this teacher's teaching continues, people will create it into a religion because it's part of, I would say, the way people do things. So what is a religion? To me, a religion is something that supplies some security to people, or transcendental existence, or maybe meta, I don't know, meta-social existence, something more than social, like metaphysical.

[16:39]

So our practice is not just of this culture or this century. Now that metasocial or metaphysical or transcendental existence may or may not be a truth. It may be based on some myth or astrology or usually some explanation of phenomenal world identity of us and phenomenal world by myth, mythic creation or something. And then the second aspect of religion is it's a vehicle for confirming the truth of this metasocial existence, or transcendental. I don't like transcendental, but transcendental existence. So religion also must be a vehicle. Maybe this is more esoteric side and exoteric.

[18:09]

Religion also must be a vehicle by which individuals realize the truth and the truth of the explanation or security or net social explanation or existence. So it seems that Religions are pretty nearly the same when they emphasize the vehicular aspect, the aspect of it, as a vehicle for you. And I'm always amazed, you know. This, to me, again, I will say so. The extraordinary jeweled cave of zazen, jeweled cave of our existence that we step into, bride's wind, luminous centre of existence.

[19:31]

which you may find out from Zazen. It's so... It's amazing to me, it's not more widely known how easy it is for people to ignore it, for our culture to ignore it. Perhaps it's just not accessible to most people. But I think a large part of it is the inability of people to see it is the one-dimensionality of our contemporary world. And I would say it's the most difficult thing, from the point of view of Zen practice, about contemporary Western world is its one-dimensionality, trying to make us all equal, not equal with the planet, unfortunately, but all equal, and seeing no other experience. You know, it was a big thing for scientists or psychiatrists, psychologists, when they, studying transcendental meditation, found out there was a state of mind that was neither sleep nor awake. That was news to people.

[21:01]

and it took the pharmacology of LSD to make people aware of any other level, other dimension of consciousness. But you are practicing, you know, and I think you block yourself from it by your fear of some other world, you know, or something not one-dimensional. block yourself from actually concentrating. And I think in our society we block ourselves more than other societies have done so. That's my opinion, anyway. I would say we may be more rational than the farmer, you know, of previous times, or more rational than the so-called primitive person, but I think we're considerably less subtle than farmer or so-called primitive person, considerably less subtle. Science and technology, you know, it's obvious to say so, but has robbed us of the intelligence and consciousness and consequences of daily living, of planting our fields, of milling our flour,

[22:33]

That's why I think it's so important for the bakery to mill its own flour. We have such narrow idea. And it's not just that Zen is ordinary life. It's that ordinary life, everyday life, is so intelligent, conscious, and there are so many consequences. It demands so much of you to actually plant something and to make it grow in sufficient quantity to eat and live. It requires a tremendously more subtle sensibility than to read a book. So our practice is not just the concentration of zazen, but the concentration of direct acting in each thing we do. But again, it's very... I think you get bored. I think of Daoji, the famous Chinese painter.

[24:05]

He said, he wrote on it, he painted a picture of bamboo and he wrote on it, torn leaves and sparse branches are best painted from life. Torn leaves and sparse branches are best painted from life. a put some high and some low, here and there, as if they had feelings. Put some high and some low. Here and there, as if they had feelings. I think you can cook or do the service to the insects. When you hear something, try to do what you're doing in the space of what you're hearing. If you hear some cicada or some insect sound or buzzing, try to do what you're doing in the space of that insect's buzzing.

[25:33]

some high, some low, here and there, as if they had feeling. Sit down before one bamboo and drink of it for ten years, he says. Study one bamboo, observe one bamboo for ten years, and then when you take up the brush and turn out the roots, You hear the swishing sounds. This is quite another sensibility. Or, you know, Dogen, trying to get the cook, when he first arrived in China, to stay and talk with him some more about Buddhism and the Sutras. And the cook said, No, you don't understand Buddhism. I must return to cook the meal. He said, don't you have some assistant cook who can do it for you? You don't understand Buddhism. I must go back and cook the meal. New, dancing with the rice pan.

[27:00]

So we are trying to… Zen practice is trying to awaken you, if you like, by chakras and yogic practice, to a very empathetic, luminous consciousness. I shouldn't say so, but you are practicing zazen and sitting sushi. And this teaching in the sutras and in the koans is so much about activity of this

[28:41]

of the strength you get from zazen. I miss, you know, reading Chinese poetry. It makes me miss the ancient feeling or the feeling that things are always here, which our century doesn't have much feeling for them. everything changing so much. As a child, I think, you know, when we play outside or find some place away from our parents, some garden or path, we notice things in a kind of detail that probably as adults we don't anymore. I don't think that's just growing up. I think that has a lot to do with our particular one-dimensional culture. Here we are doing outside qinyin, which is... I think it must be called follow the leader. Not much different. Stop, fast, slow.

[30:25]

We could draw some squares and jump through them. And it's a lot of fun, don't you think? No, we're just kids. I don't think this consciousness I'm talking about much wider consciousness, as if your eyes are no longer limited to your eyes, is not just from yogic practice, but also the real world. that most people have had to do. The subtlety required of life. Show people by your work this consciousness.

[31:45]

I have no particular interest in the 20th century. But in how we exist, century after century. And it's so... Such a point of view is so forgotten. We are so, our minds and our parents' minds are so, you know, very difficult to deal with this which is much more ancient way of life. It looks like something peculiar, but it's much more universal way of life than 20th century. But our images,

[33:02]

of our 20th century life are so powerful, I think you can only accept that part of Zen life which fits in with your 20th century images. If it's so, you won't find out why dimension, ancient, ahistorical dimension of consciousness. You'll be frightened. to find out things are not what you think they are, and more than what you think they are, and other than what you think they are. The enforced and narrowing one-dimensionality of our life makes it so hard to imagine anything else. It becomes wrong to imagine anything else. Now, maybe the aspects of life which you can write about, chronicle, have always been pretty much the same. So each historical period to a historian looks pretty much the same. But the kind of life of people is rather quite different, I think.

[34:59]

something chronicles and historians can't reach. And we have, as the Cold War forces everybody into these postures, international postures, our rational historiography forces everyone to a one-dimensional kind of television news consciousness. where we find ourselves having to live according to how life is explained. And we are always checking our experience out according to our explanations. So it's especially important for us to get to this imageless consciousness.

[36:12]

to recreation, to empty state. If you're trying to keep tabs on it, you know, and I see you sitting and most of you hold your body, you're actually not sitting there, you're You have a... like somebody outside you is holding your body. Maybe you need more pain in your zazen. It's interesting when we... we get a lot of tension in our body if you try to avoid things, and if you try to avoid pain, you'll get very sore and a lot of tension. But if you finally have a lot of... with a lot of pain, say, in your legs, if you just give up to it and recognize each of your sore legs as pets on cushions. This is one pet, this is another pet, and it's on a nice soft cushion, and just let it rest. If you just accept it like that, like some maybe sore pet,

[37:35]

you'll find you get softened up all over. That that effort to stop fighting it actually will soften your shoulders and back and scalp up. And if you really get soft enough, sometimes like someone who has very serious disease, and told Paul Jacobs, became very soft near the end of his life. Like a person with very serious disease becomes very soft, you will become very soft and not caring about anything, you may be able to concentrate.

[38:40]

Insight and concentration, both are necessary. But just insight isn't enough. Physical concentration is really very important. Not concentrated on something, just nowhere else but where you are. If I talk about it, I see why it can't be talked about. If I don't talk about it, I can't understand why everyone doesn't do zazen. I can't understand why it's not the most talked about thing in the world. When I don't talk about it, I think there should be headlines in all the papers. Have you heard about zazen?

[40:00]

on all the newspapers. People read it. Oh! That's how I feel. But when I try to talk to you about it, I see it can't be talked about. I feel foolish. Like trying to explain why you're in love with that perfectly ordinary person. everyone else can see. It's perfectly ordinary, in fact, a very flawed person. It's difficult to explain to anyone. But it's something happens. So the purpose of sasheen is to make this experience sure. to confirm this experience, this vehicle. And although you can't talk about it, to express it in everything you do, so people who are dying to find out about it can find out about it by your direct actions.

[41:18]

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