If I pause long enough, enough of you will go to sleep so I can talk with impunity. Today I, to begin with, I feel somehow I should share with you some of the situation I'm in. It relates to what I want to talk to you about. You hear okay? I may have to... I hate to say it. I may have to leave today, and I can come back, I think, right away. I didn't think so until last night, and I gave in.

[01:29]

Now, Kadagiri Roshi has arrived, and I still don't know if he's going to come down here. Do we know yet, Linda? I don't know. I've been asking about it for a few weeks. And Paul Reps is here, and the princess Is that what you say? De Lichtenstein is here. She's a very charming woman. When I first met her, this is her second or third visit, and I've not been able to spend any time with her, though she's been corresponding with me, wanting to come to talk to me about something.

[02:48]

She's been studying with Count von Durkheim, who wrote the book Hara. And she's presently thinking of trying to study here, but I don't know. Anyway, she's been here, maybe this is the third time, I don't know. And I talked with her very briefly one day in the courtyard. And after we talked for about 15 or 20 minutes, I showed her around the building and I said to her, what should I call you? Should I call you the princess? And she looked at me and she said, well, we could start out that way. She's about 80 years old. I thought that was great. She said, after all, we are our own principality. It's about as big as a postage stamp, I guess. But her brother, I guess they're wealthy. Her brother was, I read somewhere, was the second or the largest investor in Texas last year. Anyway, I haven't figured out always how to

[04:19]

what to do about someone like this, or Kadagiri Roshi's visit, or Paul Rep's visit. If I went to Minneapolis, Kadagiri Roshi would be there all the time. When he arrived it happened he arrived in a day. I was so exhausted. I couldn't even sit up So I missed his first talk And Although the Princess I guess was a little miffed that I didn't meet her at the airport or spend time with her But I felt it's better for her to just be like any other person here. Lou Richmond, she's staying at Green Gulch, can be as useful to her as I can be. And Rex is

[05:34]

hasn't been, he was planning to stay here a few months of each, a couple months of each year, and he stopped and then this year he was quite angry about something with Alaya, so finally I wrote him a letter to straighten out the Alaya thing. And then he decided to come, responded to my letter with deciding to come and stay with us. So I always feel, I'm always being Because I'm always being somewhat rude to people, they come to see me and I'm not there. If I didn't have this position I wouldn't feel much obligation about it, but the position puts me in a situation where they want to see the position or me or something. So anyway, for a number of reasons related to what I've been talking about, I'm going to go up and spend one day and turn around and come back. It's not so difficult for me to do that, but when someone comes all the way from Europe several times,

[06:57]

But I don't know. Werner Erhardt wants to come down here and stay for a while and Swami Chaitananda does. What should I do? That's a good answer. And then, you know, there's a poem by Moo Big, which goes that the East Road is narrow and the East Mountain Road is narrow. The West Mountain Road is low.

[08:10]

Newcomers should each take care of four loads of dirt. Alas, but alas, they have been traversing the roads for so long it seems so clear that they always get lost. Does that make any sense to you? East Mountain Road is narrow. Northwest Mountain Road is low. Each newcomer should take care of four loads of dirt Alas, they have been traversing the road so long, it seems clear, but always they get lost. We have, within Zen Center too, you all got the window, didn't you? So, probably you have enough information about, I can stop right away.

[09:28]

But even within Zen Center we have pretty limited understanding of what we're doing, and outside Zen Center much more limited. And the people call me up, you know, regularly, and ask me to help on something, as if I have some special power, you know, to do something. or it's me, you know, or Zen Center is successful, they see it, they think so. And we've done it by pull or something like that. I can't say to them, you must take care of four loads of dirt. But Mu Bing, when anybody came to his monastery, he would say, you must take care of four loads of dirt. One monk asked him, I'm not asking about what's included in the four loads of dirt, but what about what's outside the four loads of dirt? And Mubing said something like, the iron emperor's wheel turns the whole earth.

[10:50]

What people outside don't see so readily is how what we've done is equaling all of us. And it's knowing when you walk on the highway that's already clear. You know the four loads of dirt. It also says, Careless people are those who make their living by words without knowing their source. Careless people are those who make their living by words without knowing their source, their own source or the word source. And then it says, Setso's poem, Shudo's poem says, Sweet is

[12:03]

sweet. Bitter is bitter. Often I feel like a scientist or something like that who can't exactly explain, I can't exactly explain my work to you or research to you. So today I'm just making some observations to let you work on it yourself. What we're talking about here is whether the universe is local or non-local. Does that make any sense? It's been an issue in physics for some time, and some of you who know science better than I do may be able to explain it better or correct me. But Einstein, despite the evidence of his own theories, didn't want to think of the world as non-local, even though his own theories suggested non-locality.

[13:33]

This koan that I'm talking about today, Ho-Shan's Beating the Drum, he says, cultivating study is called learning. Ho-Shan used to say, cultivating study is called learning. Cutting off study is called nearness. Going beyond both is truly going beyond. So a monk asked Hosham, what is truly going beyond? And Hosham said, beating the drum. The monk said, what is real? And Hoshan said, going, beating the drum. And the monk said, I do not ask about mind is Buddha, but what about not mind and not Buddha? He's a pretty sharp monk. And Hoshan says, you know what he said.

[15:09]

beating the drum. And the monk says, when a person who has gone beyond arrives, how do you receive that person? And Hoshan said, beating the drum. This is called Hoshan's four beating the drum. That already gives you a clue that each one is different. The next koan which tries to explicate the thing further, you know, is Joshu's seven-pound shirt. Everything returns to the one, says the monk. What does the one return to? everything returns to the One. What does the One return to? And Hosham and Joshu says, I was in some place or other and I bought a seven-pound hempen shirt. It weighed exactly seven pounds. And this is, you know, Koan is

[16:38]

The commentary emphasizes, don't make a channel. This morning we did outside kini. So we go around. And I started going faster, and the person in front of me didn't go so fast, so I kept pushing. And still they wouldn't go any faster, so I pushed them. And they still wouldn't go any faster, so I pushed them. Finally they got the idea. And maybe they were mad at me. Who is he pushing me? But I probably, when we went by the door, should have pushed the person into the Zenda and caught up with the next one and pushed them in the Zenda. If I'm coming, if you hear somebody pounding up from behind you, you should speed up before

[17:40]

You know, I get… so I can reach you, you should already be going faster. And when we come in the zendo, we come in fast but by the last people are kind of wandering in and bowing at the door, you know. You don't have… we are coming in quick. And you don't have to bow at the door. That's what Hoshan means by beating the drum. Or the seven-pound shirt. You don't, you're not, you know, Sometimes you meet, occasionally we meet, unpredictable people. Sometimes I think maybe Baudelaire was such a person. The opposite of fame, the opposite of sharing in a common view.

[19:09]

And there's a side to Zen like that, you know. There's a side to practice, you know, which someone, if they're prepared, I'm not giving orders or something like that, but if someone comes to me when they're practiced a long time and can take care of themselves quite well, I might say, here is one dollar, go north. They might say, to hell with you, but they might say, oh, okay, and they go away. Come back in a few months and maybe they'd work on a farm or whatever. The people who might do this, you know, we've had to prepare their spouses. Suddenly they're gone north. You know, Daito Kokushi, you know the story of Daito Kokushi, who disappeared for ten years. It's a kind of incubation, you know, or hibernation.

[20:40]

a time to mature, but also a time to… Just if you're walking along the street and you see something going on, you can just join it. You're quite free to just join it and do whatever those people do for a few days or a few months. Anyway, he was gone for ten years and then, you know, you look for the… try to find because you want them to found a monastery or be the Eno or something. We hunted for Tommy for years. He didn't know he was hibernating. And anyway they went out, finally they really wanted to find Daito Kokushi, so they knew he liked melons. This is certainly an apocryphal story, but anyway, it's amusing. They knew he liked melons, so they went around the city offering melons to people. And under the Sanjo Bridge, the Third Street Bridge in Kyoto, supposedly, the bums were hanging out.

[21:59]

This person came through with melons. He said, he saw a particularly wet-eyed, alert person. And so when he was about to give him a melon, the person with the melon said, take it with no hands. So the bum said, give it to me with no hands. He must have wanted to be discovered. if he would say such a thing. But there's a kind of career, a career implied even in what is real, what is the one returned to. seldom and so refreshing to meet someone who isn't locked into a career of, you know, sort of they're a tunnel of the known, they're leading their life in kind of a tunnel of the known. Their creativity is, they're a scientist or something. It's so diminished, my own experience, is meeting someone like that.

[23:23]

sort of magazine, leading the life that magazines project on us. There's a common sort of view, which I characterize as fame or being known. But how to not be known? How to be willing to live and not be known? So you're quite free when you come in. We're doing kinghim. This space is the same space, but you can just come in. You don't have to do the little chashu bow. And if the zendo was a little larger, we'd come in and just go round and round, fast, not worrying about altars or anything. So in three-dimensional world, three-dimensional world, cultivating study is called learning. And thoroughly, you know, to know something. It's like Harry Roberts, you know, cutting out the canoe each

[25:05]

brush. Each cutting must have the feeling of the canoe. The same if a painter or a Noguchi has somebody work helping them execute a sculpture or a painting. Some areas may just be filled in, but you can't just take a big brush and fill them in. It will be dead. So when we do something in Zen Center, we should know as a community and individually, if we are taking care of Green Gulch or Tassajara, we should always know there may be a fire, we may lose Green Gulch, we may not realize this teaching.

[26:24]

If you have that feeling, this is four loads of dirt, you know the road, the source or original sense of things in bigger scale, then your activity in three-dimensional world is quite effective and you're not caught so unawares when something happens. So if someone calls me up and, as happens quite often, and says, my organization or our situation is in trouble, won't you help? Or they ask someone to ask me, as if I, you know, they don't understand. If they've done four loads of dirt, if they've taken care of four loads of dirt, there's something that can be done very precisely. But if they haven't, they don't know, understand the three-dimensional world. So three-dimensional world is the universe as local, that near, things happen, and farther away, the forces don't act. But it's not quite that simple.

[27:52]

And then cutting-off study is called nearness. To attain intimately, it says. Cutting-off study is called nearness. And usually, objectively, we study the world and science studies the world like through a lens. Everything is far away or near away, small away or far away. So we are examining world through telescope or microscope. And you might ask yourself, at what point of resolution do you lose contact and cease to identify? Something that's far away we don't identify as ourselves, but something that's near away. At what point your skin or your molecules or your stomach or your blood cells, at what point does it cease to be you and become some abstraction? I think many people only experience even their legs from the outside. Their relationship to their legs is this cat, which hurts sometimes.

[29:19]

but they have no ability to be inside their legs. And you can't get inside your legs very well with usual three-dimensional idea of cultivating or study, which is called learning. But by cutting off study, it means more than just stopping conceptual thought. It means a new kind of activity, which in this poem they call nearness. And not being caught by either is going beyond, not being caught by a world as local or non-local. Now, the koans all are almost universally based on the idea the universe is non-local. And I think that my guess is that science is going to come around within the next ten to twenty years.

[30:22]

to view the universe as non-local. Non-local means what happens here, happens here. Instant. They don't lose their memory. They either lose all their memory or or at least the loss of memory isn't related to the physical loss of the brain. You can have very little bit of the brain left and have all of your memory. So the idea that memory is stored electrically, here and there, in every cell, it seems to be stored, all of it in one cell. broken up in an entirely different way than in the way you see it three-dimensionally. This is also, whether it's so or not, this is what the idea of nearness means. And one of the keys to this is the bare attention of mindfulness. When you just note

[31:52]

the practice over and over again of just noting what happens to you and in you simultaneously without thinking about it or acting on what you note. This is very, very important to learn. This is key to mindfulness. Just, as I always say, just I'm angry or getting angry, but not I should or shouldn't be angry. That is not something you're considering. Just, I'm angry. But many of us have this anger barrier we're stopped at. And I think you may have to go through the anger barrier. plumb your anger. But the experience over and over again of bare attention, just noting, even noting isn't, you note but barely.

[33:17]

this practice of bare attention will let non-coercive world, world in which you don't force things. Sometimes I express it as letting situations exacerbate themselves. But it's finding out how to act non-coercively, not trying to control things. And this ability is the threshold of nearness. And you can find out, start to find out the softness of your calf, say.

[34:32]

from inside, very soft from inside. And maybe intellectually, it may be of some help intellectually to wonder about that point of resolution where you lose touch with yourself, touch or identification at what It's like there's all of these things and they come into a certain focus at different levels and a certain focus suddenly we start to identify with it. And it ceases to be far away, either small or big. You may think this is nonsense, but anyway, emphasis of Zen, which has no God, no explanation to give you some comforting authority, asks us, suggests that to be able to act in the world, both as local and non-local, is necessary.

[35:57]

There's a poem, a capping verse that I like. You may show the two brocade mandarin ducks I made for you. Or you may see the two brocade mandarin ducks I made for you. But the golden needle which made them you cannot show to anyone. but the golden needle which made them, you cannot show to anyone. This is the same poem but from a different direction as the four loads of dirt. To attain intimately. To realize nearness. Everything is near. Nothing is far away. Nothing is small away. Everything is near. Everything is near. There may be certain people you meet in which you don't know where you are anymore when you're with them.

[37:27]

You feel time and space stop. You don't care what happens. You feel that what's happening is right where you are. And yet, even in a familiar place, it may look quite different to you. You don't know quite where you are, but where you are is the center. I think falling in love is like that, but there are people, you know, not exactly people you fall in love with, people who can give you that feeling that time and space are collapsed. Stop. This is some... This is a... This is like... This is maybe... expression of feeling of what I mean by nearness.

[38:31]

There's a kind of weaving we're always doing, you know, we're chanting together. And we're weaving together. Chanting is the sounds. You may think you have to say something to be convincing, but your voice is convincing. Your body is convincing. Maybe the words, the voice and not the words is nearness. The weaving of the chant or the experience, the continuity. So the beating the drum represents beating the drum. It doesn't come out from his questions.

[40:23]

So it's different each time. Whatever is questioned, it's different than the question would lead one to. And yet there's a continuity in beating, every time beating the drum. Familiar is quite unfamiliar. Wisdom is an act, not a thought. Wisdom is your behavior. Wisdom is an act, not a thought. And an act in three-dimensional realm and n-dimensional realm. An act in world as local and world as not local. Between intimacy and alienation, no difference. True friendship transcends distance. On the flowering, fully blossomed plum tree, the north branch owns the whole spring, as does the south

[41:49]

So three-dimensional world will always be more or less disturbed. But realm of nearness or multi-dimensioned world, we must also act in that if three-dimensional world is going to, you're going to realize harmony of three-dimensional world. not harmony, you know, that there's no conflict but harmony that includes conflict. This is the emphasis over and over again of the poems. It's not exactly the emphasis of the Six Paramitas, the precepts, the Four Holy Truths, the Eightfold Path. But end of eightfold path, end of paramitas is what each koan is trying to get you to realise.

[43:52]

So sometimes we act to give people satisfaction in three-dimensional world, and sometimes we don't. But always we are acting to give people satisfaction in n-dimensional world, or nearness. Anyway, this is This is one of those talks where I think you may feel I've gone off the deep end. And maybe I have, but I want to try to tell you how I feel using whatever I find I can use. Bertrand Russell says somewhere, that in his time at least, coming to the point of no belief, even the Buddhist idea of no self, no soul, which takes us out of the realm of ordinary projection or predictability. Anyway, Bertrand Russell says, to come to the point he did,

[45:48]

his contemporaries did of unbelief was they came to by much hard thought. And nowadays, unbelief, shall we say, is a matter of indifference. Quite different. This is also Mo Ping's Four Loads of Dirt. Every newcomer was expected to take care of four loads of dirt. You should. Cultivating study is called learning. You should thoroughly know three-dimensional work. Cutting off study is called nearness. Not just non-conceptual thought, but something.

[46:50]

outside the realm of career or trying to organize your life. It may be very difficult for even you to understand, but especially difficult for your friends and family to understand. But they will feel actually liberated by it. facing death, there's nothing we can take with us. We should know that in life.

[47:58]

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