I want to talk a little more about the story I talked about yesterday. The story number 17 from the Hekigan Roku, the Blue Cliff Records. These Zen stories I find very interesting. I suppose I'm supposed to, should. I'm also quite interested in Tantric Buddhism because it's almost exactly the same as Zen. And I always find that maybe it's because I'm so familiar with Zen, but I find these stories are almost the same points as the techniques, meditation techniques used in tantric Buddhism are almost the same.

[01:13]

The meaning and use is almost the same as these stories. I mean, exactly the same, actually. But these stories are very elusive, because you can't quite figure out what they are. a question. It's very interesting that they're in the form of questions because a question extends beyond an answer. The question itself is maybe the answer. Anyway, a question is much bigger than an answer. But the question is meant to create a relationship That's why it's a question, maybe. One of the reasons it's a question. Primarily, a relationship with yourself. So before you answer a question, or ask a question, you should have some long relationship with the question.

[02:17]

As I talked about yesterday, over and over again. And a question is also an opportunity to create a relationship with a teacher or with someone else. It's also a way to indicate something. As you know, the sutras often begin with so-and-so bared his shoulder and asked a question. For every, he says, for all the beings in the six worlds, I'll ask you this question. So he asked questions. And the story number 17 is about Kyo Rin, who was Un Mon's disciple, who founded his own... Actually, he was the starter of a school.

[03:19]

I guess in Chinese it's Yan Men, I think his name is. Anyway, he started a school which later became part of the Rinzai school. The Unmon was quite a famous Zen master. Suzuki Roshi admired him very much. He has many, many of the koans are actually about Unmon. I think there's, in Hekigan Roku, there's six or seven or eight about him, and in Mumonkan, there's, you know, four or five. One famous koan of Bhumon's is, someone asked him what dharmadattu was, and he said, the flowering hedge around the toilet.

[04:24]

That's more meaningful if you live in Japan because the toilets are pretty smelly. And they're easily connected to the house, you know, there's just a big sort of trough. Nowadays they come with these, they've sort of modernized in Japan and they come now with these big sort of electro-luxe trucks and they have a sort of vacuum cleaner and they come in with this big hose. But you happen to be on the john, it's a little startling. because they come in with a little hole from outside your house and they just shove this great big sort of vacuum cleaner in the hole and they... and up comes all the stuff, you know. Anyway, it's pretty stinky. And so they plant flowering hedges around the toilets, usually. Particularly flowers which have a heavy odor. So anyway, he said the flowering hedge around the toilet. I got quite a reputation in Japan because I knew people... I didn't like killing bugs, you know, and there's many bugs in Japan.

[05:42]

And also I knew nothing about class distinctions. And I couldn't tell the difference between Japanese person and Korean person or different jobs. So I treated everyone the same. So in my neighborhood they thought it was because I was a Buddhist and not because I didn't know the difference. And, uh, when the man would come with the Electrolux, you know, I was, he'd come and we'd get buckets of water, right, to sort of help him, and dump water in and flush it around. And usually the people in Kyoto who do it are Eita, which is a kind of outcast. And, uh, I didn't know, so he'd stick the thing in and I'd hear him coming. You can smell the truck coming down the street. So you, he goes, oh here he comes and you jump up from what you're doing and you grab the buckets you've got out. You receive a little slip of paper which says he'll come on such and such a day. And you grab the buckets and you rush out there.

[06:46]

And he'd stick the thing and I'd say, good morning, how are you? And I'd jump in. And we'd have this conversation while he was there. No one has ever spoken to him before through the toilet hole, you know. Particularly a foreigner. So with all the men who drove these trucks, they had some reputation to come to my house and they wanted to take turns to greet me. So then they'd go out and talk and Nakamura-san who lived in her house would listen and she'd say, they all talk about what a wonderful foreigner you are because you greet them through the toilet hole. But anyway, we'd talk about things and he'd say, is it clean enough? And I'd... He really worked hard. I think we had the cleanest toilet in the neighborhood.

[07:49]

Anyway, so the flowering hedge around the toilet was Mun Mun's answer this koan, Kyorin, where the monk says, why did Bodhidharma come from the West? And the Kyorin says, thank you for hanging out here with me so long and practicing zazen and asking this question over and over again. And in the commentary on it, on the question, well, before I tell you about the commentary, I should tell you a little more about Kyorin.

[08:59]

He, I think he was with Uman about 18 years as his sort of jishya and attendant and person in the monastery. Not always, of course, as his jīṣa, but he traveled with him and scrubbed floors at the temple and did his laundry. Everything you do to help another person. So for 18 years he practiced in this way with Muni. And for 40 years he was at his temple, I believe his monastery, which I think was also called Kyorin. I don't know exactly. Anyway, for about 40 years he was at his temple. So he was quite well trained Zen master. Nowadays in Japan nobody stays usually with their teacher that long.

[10:03]

Suzuki Roshi was unusual in that he stayed with his teacher quite a long time, from the time he was... I forget, eight or twelve, twelve maybe, until he was thirty or thirty-one. And then he worked with another teacher almost until he came to America regularly. And his teacher also brought to his temple famous scholars and Zen masters, when possible, who stayed for six months or one year and helped teach the students. Sufi Rishi often talked with some gratitude of the opportunity to stay with people a long time.

[11:06]

Anyway, so that's what this poem's about. In the commentary it talks about if it's all right, I think it's something like, it may be all right I think so. Where not even a needle can get in, where not even a needle can enter, may be all right. But what about when the great white waves fill the horizon, cover the sky? Then what will you do? So, where not even a needle can get in, means ultimate truth. So when your practice is so good that not even a needle can get in, not even the change of prasahara from practice period to guest season can disturb your practice.

[12:26]

We let a lot more than needles in our practice. We let whole cities, pretty faces, all kinds of things get into our practice and disturb it. But this commentary says, when not even a needle can get in, when you know ultimate truth, then what about the great white waves of confusion activity or doubt. It says, you may be able to break iron, but what about the great white waves? Intellectual delusion may be pretty easy to get free of. Maybe like it's pretty easy to break a stone.

[13:36]

But it's not so easy to break a lotus root, they say in Japan and China. You can hit a stone a good blow and it breaks. But if you hit a lotus root, try to cut a lotus root. It's just so stringy. No matter what you do, you can't get through it. The lotus root is more like our emotional delusion. One thing to get free of intellectual delusion, but to get rid of our emotional delusion is pretty difficult, almost impossible. So from one side, the great white waves that cover the sky means all those things which means samsara, ordinary life, which you're protected from here at Tassajar. The commentary says, we're not interested in a man who escapes from the sword thrusts, who only knows ultimate truth, or only can practice at Tassajar.

[15:02]

Suzuki Roshi says, a person who's always trying to escape from extremes can never be an enlightened being. Maybe he can be a hero, but we're not interested in being heroes. We're interested in enlightened being, says Suzuki Roshi. Part of it is we don't, you know, if you really want to practice, we can practice maybe what I call as if, you know. It's difficult to accept we're already enlightened. But if you really want to practice, you can practice as if you were enlightened. You can practice as if you were a Buddha.

[16:04]

You can practice as if the city made no difference. You know it shouldn't make any difference. So if you are actually practicing Buddhism, you practice as if it made no difference. And eventually it will make no difference. So that not even a needle can get in. Anyway, from one point of view, great, the great white waves, you know, are difficulty, samsara. From another point of view, they're great activity. great function. So it's not, doesn't mean, the commentary doesn't mean that the waves that cover the horizon are negative. It means if you're a small boat out there, they're pretty difficult, right? But if you're the ocean itself, it's no problem.

[17:07]

It's just expression of your activity. And whatever you do is okay. A few Last one month ago or anyway when I was here a while ago, I talked about the four wisdoms. Most of Mahayana uses four wisdoms and Vajrayana uses five wisdoms. And the four wisdoms are great mirror wisdom, universal wisdom and observing wisdom and perfecting in action wisdom. And Vajrayana adds one more, emptiness or Dharmadattu or something like that. But actually it's not needed because always in Mahayana there's the background.

[18:08]

So if you list four wisdoms, there's always emptiness as the fifth, but you don't have to say it. To say it is maybe extra. There's four and of course five. Anyway, Vajrayana lists five. So when we practice Zen, we begin with great mirror wisdom. And these stories, Zen stories or koans, are not meant to be answered, like in this kind of situation. And they're not meant exactly to be understood. Hopefully, You don't understand what I'm saying, and I don't understand what I'm saying. And it's just something that enters you. Maybe even if you're rather sleepy, it's still something you're exposed to. And when it's useful, it'll be useful. So the questions are maybe in doksan.

[19:12]

When there's a relationship, you can... Then the question has some meaning, just in the abstract. as a question with an answer has no meaning. So, in Zen, we're always giving some suggestion, maybe at storehouse consciousness level, which you can say corresponds to great mirror wisdom. So, then there's universal wisdom and observing wisdom, and then there's your activity. From this point of view, from mirror wisdom, not from ordinary activity up, you know, but rather we're talking about from mirror wisdom down to perfecting in action. So when... Perfecting in action means great function, or when the waves, whatever your life is, whatever your life,

[20:15]

here at Tassajara, or in the city, or wherever you are, if it's perfecting in action your wisdom, if it's perfecting in action ultimate truth, then the white waves that fill the horizon are not some difficulty, but just what we call great function. We talk about the thought of enlightenment and how you come to the thought of enlightenment.

[23:06]

Usually, as a real possibility, it's given birth with a teacher, like with Suzuki Roshi. Suzuki Roshi makes it possible. And that thought of enlightenment, called bodhicitta, has many meanings. And really our practice is a nurturing of the thought of enlightenment. And it has a physiological meaning as well as some idea. So there are two ways we talk about practice.

[24:51]

One is becoming one with ultimate truth, which from the point of view of Zazen means learning to sit absolutely still. necessary as a base. The other is, I don't know how it's, there's some one word for it in Sanskrit, but I don't know how it, how to, there's no word for it in English except something crude like following into form highest truth. So, so-called bodhicitta, we follow it into form in our zazen practice. And in our activity, we follow the thought of enlightenment into form.

[25:55]

And how to break our habits so that our activity can follow that form is what most Zen practice is about. So anyway, this koan is about hard training, or long training, or asking the question over and over, asking the question of yourself over and over. You can sometimes understand pretty quickly some kind of insight, the non-substantial nature of delusion, the non-substantial nature of ego.

[27:24]

But to actually break your habits is something else. And it just simply takes a long time. And if you're a person who not only needles but whole buildings can enter, then it's mostly just a matter of you need more training, more practice, more staying with your practice over and over again. Karma is, after all, a building up of habit. And one way to free ourselves from karma is this repetition. bringing ourselves back to where we are over and over again. Much of Buddhism is just common sense, but common sense that's maybe wisdom through practice. It's practice that makes Buddhism.

[28:28]

Practice means over and over and over again. until your understanding is thorough. There's something different which happens when you have some idea like emptiness, say. No matter how well you understand it, to have that before you, for many years, is something different from the first understanding. So that's why we chant sutras. We chant form is emptiness over and over again. And no matter how long you chant it, if you just, just sound has no meaning, but if at the same time you realize that your mind is the source of all the Buddhas, and you chant the sutra, and you're exposed over and over again to this. Our life becomes more

[29:37]

full or empty. Again, empty is not a good translation of sunyata. Sunyata has the meaning of able to include everything. In traditional Buddhism we talk about four formless attainments. One is endless space. One is I'm not very good at lists. I have to sort of recreate why they'd say four formless attainments and say, what must there be? Anyway, one is endless space. One is infinite mind. And one is nothing whatever. Another is neither perception nor non-perception. And actually there are four practices. Maybe form is emptiness is.

[30:38]

Or when you start zazen, you have some different experience of space. And that's ultimately it's endless space. Then as you realize everything is mind, you have infinite mind. And then as you free yourself from mind only way of looking at things, you have nothing whatever. Like as I said yesterday, one who doesn't even enter the door, But even beyond that, but closely related to maybe the same as form is form or great activity, perfecting in action is neither perception nor non-perception. I don't know if any of this makes any sense to you.

[31:41]

but I think I should tell you about it. We'll see what happens. Maybe it's like south of here, someone told me they're seeding the clouds to make rain because it's so dry this year. Maybe what we're doing here in Zen practice is seeding the clouds all the time. Maybe the great Dharma rain I'm down. All right. You have any questions? I liked your question yesterday, but what you say is true.

[32:50]

I don't know what to do about it. Go ahead. Yes? I was wondering, last time you were here, you mentioned the four types of wisdom, which is referred to that as part of the teachings that constitute basic Buddhism. And I wondered if you could tell us what you've been told is in basic Buddhism. Oh, that's many volumes. Well, Buddhism's gone through some development, of course, and it's not a revealed religion in the sense that it's some emissary of God where God came and said, this is it and stick to this, please. It's a... Historically, it's a cumulative. Lots of people have added and interpreted and etc.

[33:53]

Buddhism is a basic... Maybe Buddhism, I don't know how you can... Buddhism is... based on some fundamental assumptions that you have to accept or figure out for yourself are true. One might be that Buddhism isn't reality, it's not worth anything. So there's no way to contradict Buddhism. You can't say, well, this scientist just said this was true. It doesn't agree with Buddhism. Whatever is true must be Buddhism otherwise. So in that sense Buddhism doesn't exist. It's just what is. But probably the most fundamental assumption is that everything changes.

[34:59]

There's impermanence. And hence no ego and hence interdependency. And then there's a whole lot of was the Four Holy Truths, and the Eightfold Path, and the Twelvefold Causation, and the Sixteenfold Meditation, and the Fivefold Meditation, etc. It's all these techniques that were developed. And Hinayana has many. And Mahayana came along and replaced a lot of them, replaced some with the Paramitas. and various others, they had their own lists, which are based on the Mahayana view, but essentially include the Hinayana list. And then Zen and Tantrism are later developments, and they shifted around a little more, both simplifying and, from one side it looks like a simplification,

[36:08]

from another, primarily the change is there's a different way of teaching about it. Instead of doing these five meditations, we do some other kind of meditation. But anyway, when I said basic Buddhism in that, I meant that the four wisdoms are almost in any list, like the four holy truths. So anyway, we should know basic Buddhism. Soto school especially doesn't just use koans but uses all of Buddhism and doesn't emphasize so much as Rinzai school does being a special teaching of the patriarchs. So in Soto school, the practice, particularly for beginning students, is not so different from any other practice.

[37:17]

You may remark that a good part of your training was how not to be described as a teacher How about the Western tradition where attitudes are destroyed? Would you help me not be destroyed? I'm trying one way or the other right now. Okay. I'm not sure you're supposed to remember these things and send them back to me. I don't know how to explain what I mean exactly. Let's take a simple idea, like Jung says, that if a person becomes an archetype, the poet, the prophet, the teacher, it destroys him.

[38:25]

He's no longer the Mick Jagger. You're no longer some you're no longer ordinary. So a good part of Zen practice is how to remain ordinary. In fact, in Zen, it's really that even if you attain some special power, you reject it. You can forget you attained it. So, Zen especially, I mean, maybe somebody else should have some power of healing or something like that, but Zen says... Anyway. But there are many ways you can describe Zen practice, of course, but one way is there's the phase in which you practice as a student, and then there's the phase in which you practice as a teacher.

[39:30]

And they're not so different. I mean, teacher and student are kind of one relationship. Sometimes you're a student and sometimes you're a teacher. And even in certain ceremonies with your teacher, this is recognized because in one part of the ceremony, he puts his bowing cloth over yours. The edges come up. And another part, you put your bowing cloth over his. And The stories, koans and the sutras are... Some are about how to practice, but many are about how to teach. It's the same problem, how to understand Buddhism and how to help others understand Buddhism.

[40:33]

So again, there's a list for that too, there's some list of four or five, one's opening, one's indicating, one's revealing, and one's leading. Again, these lists represent various things, but in this case, they almost always are four phases of practice. Not that you necessarily say, oh, now I'm in phase one, but when you look back on your practice, There's been some emphasis. I mean, also, the lists are ways to avoid ideas of ego. So one of the most interesting is the Ten Bhumis, which, on one end, it describes your meditation, like starting with joyfulness. At the other end, it describes number ten, Buddha himself.

[41:35]

But each one is, you know, there's no idea of you, but there's some stage in practice, the practice of joy, and number six or something is the practice of imperturbability. But from seven on, I think, it becomes cosmic. It's just the extenuation of that practice. So on one end it's Buddha, on another end it's you. But it gives, it's a kind of a way to talk about our existence without using the idea of self. So these lists often are substitutes for ego, substitutes for five skandhas, for instance, a way of talking about ourselves without using the idea of ego. First, I don't think you can, you know, we can We can answer that kind of question in the abstract, yes or no.

[43:02]

In each case there is some difference. Maybe I should say something about the particular situation that occurred yesterday, today. is, from an ideal point of view, it'd be, she wants to practice Buddhism. Okay, she can't fit in here. I mean, this kind of practice doesn't work. So, where could she go where she could practice? But before we ask that question, we have to... we barely know her. You know, she's only in the city. very short time and only intended to come down here a short time. She's more like a guest than a student.

[44:04]

But her husband knows her well. And she has children. So first she has to work out, has to be some attempt to allow her to try to them to put their life together. You know, we can't interfere and say, oh, she should stay here and practice or something. We could have, you know, there's some, she wanted to stay here and she wanted to leave, mixed up. Anyway, maybe she'll come back and we'll see. Also, this place, Tassajara, is pretty heavy for some people, particularly people a bit unstable. And if you come here without much experience. So that's an experience. The whole thing of these mountains and the isolation and all of us zombies walking around, you know, it's a little much. So a few years ago, uh, I've told this story in Josan this morning, but a few years ago, uh,

[45:15]

You know, we didn't have lanterns outside yet and it was really dark. And a new student had been sent out to hit the Han. And we had a girl here who was really quite crazy. She'd come down and we didn't know quite what to do. Suzukiro, she'd just, oh, sit. So, anyway, I ended up having to take care of it. But we tried to. keep her here and take care of her for some days. And the sort of climax came one morning when this poor guy went out to hit the haunt. I don't actually remember if it was a man or a woman, but anyway, this person went out to hit the haunt. And it was the first time they'd done it, and it was dark out there, and they hit Fonk, and as they ready to hit the second time, suddenly from out of the bushes came this, you know, six candles on a candelabra and a big kitchen knife.

[46:19]

The second hit was sort of... And she went on down the valley somewhere. Later she did a kind of Ophelia and threw herself in the stream several times. It was quite difficult. And then finally we got her out and she escaped. And she hid in the woods up there several times. Her husband looked for her and search parties were out. Anyway. So anyway, we had quite a lot of experience, actually. Not so much in Tassajara now, because almost everyone here has been through the city for six months or a year.

[47:25]

And it's made a very big difference down here. When we had new people down here, we had that kind of problem fairly often. But now we have that kind of problem in the city. And... It's probably the biggest user-up of energy in the city. No one knows quite what to do. And... I think... I mean, Zen Center is... A lot of people in Zen Center, including the oldest students, are people who, a few years ago, were by clinical definition schizophrenic, or heroin addicts, or all kinds of problems which they felt were insoluble. And when I have thought about these students, one, there are several things which seem to be, two things which seem to

[48:38]

no matter how bad they've been, how sick they've been, or mixed up, or in some kind of difficult circumstances, usually two things have characterized them. One is a very strong belief that it was possible to be well. And second, a fair amount of willpower. Now, without those two, we've had students here who weren't very sick at all. you know, occasionally have delusions, which they wander off in, but have been unable to break out of it. But if they have this strong commitment, which is very close, strong belief that they can be well, which is very close to a belief in the possibility of enlightenment, and they have willpower, then this community and this practice work quite well. What to do when we don't have circumstances like this morning, in which the husband's here and she has a family, etc.?

[49:46]

And probably, well, the message I got from the city is that the trip out and all worked out quite well. I don't know what it means, I have to find out. But probably, the situation of Tassajara was a fairly strong precipitant. And when she's outside Tassajara, particularly if she can get some attention before she has a major break, she'll probably maybe be all right. But when we don't have those kinds of circumstances and we have somebody who's here, wants to practice with us badly, and has some pretty big difficulty, can't continue to sit. If you can continue to sit, you're pretty healthy. If you can't sit, then there's some difficulty. And unfortunately, Zen is based on self-help, being able to help yourself, primarily. And it's also, as a practice and as a community, it's directed toward creating really thoroughly together people like Suzuki Roshi.

[50:57]

And this is, again, a kind of assumption in Buddhist practice, which is that society needs a sangha, and society needs Zen masters. If it doesn't have people of this kind of health in it, the society can't be healthy. So the whole energy, traditionally, of Buddhist communities is directed toward producing people like Suzuki Roshi. And other considerations are rather put aside. Somebody in the village who's mixed up a lot of the time. They let the village take care of it, the Zen monks don't try to do it. Or they don't try to include the person in practice. So maybe this is a more extensive answer than you wanted, but... It's quite a... actually a big problem for this community. because America is different and America has more crazy people than perhaps anywhere or let's say confused people because I mean anyway I don't you know I haven't

[52:17]

compared statistics or made studies but one statistic is that there's a fairly stable percentage of people throughout the world are in all societies are say schizophrenic whatever that means I don't like those kind of labels and there's much you can do about it but in America there's lots of people who are pretty confused about what they are doing which for instance in Japan there isn't anywhere near that much confusion Because people are what they... they're farmers and there's no problem about it, or they're something else. And there's delusions of grandeur or possibility or... they seem to be. They say in Japan the nail that sticks up gets hit. So... In Japan you shape up, you know. So... So in America, what are we going to do?

[53:22]

Because here Buddhism is now sort of taking form, what do we do? And also I think that, again I said this in Shosan this morning, I think that if our national situation continues to grow more chaotic, I mean, you know, the so-called credibility gap, etc. When you can't believe in your government or in the basic direction of your country, when everything we do turns into things like Vietnam, pollution, you can't breathe the air anymore, etc., and all we need is a little dose of social disorganization and governmental collapse, and we're going to have a pretty incredible situation in this country. and we may be a kind of island of some sort of vague health and with an awful lot of people, quite crazy.

[54:29]

What are we going to do? Then there's just practical problems. If we begin to accept people and work with them, we can't follow the practice. it requires other people to spend a lot of time with them. And we can have, for instance, with that girl, we had to have somebody sitting with her all the time because she wanted to and tried once to run off into the woods somewhere, which is these hills around here, it's pretty hard to find someone, and it's likely that end up being dead if you run off in these hills without food or maps. So anyway, it takes quite a lot of time to take care of somebody. So, if we don't draw a line somewhere, we'll end up to be a mental institution of which those of us who are more or less together will take care of those who are more or less not together, and we'll switch places every now and then.

[55:40]

And which is maybe what we're doing already actually. But that's okay too, maybe we should do that. But that's not Zen practice. And we're not going to allow people to focus on Zen practice. So I think that overriding direction this Sangha is, that first of all our job is to produce people like Suzuki Roshi, and secondarily our job is to help as many people as possible practice. This isn't, not all Zen monasteries are this way. Suzuki Roshi had a kind of open door policy. It would let anybody come and practice, but most Zen groups in this country don't. Most Zen temples in Japan, particularly Rinzai temples, are very selective.

[56:53]

You know, six or ten or twelve is considered a lot, and you work with those, and more than that, it's just too many, and if they can't meet the grade, they're out. So Suzuki Roshi, in a way, our practice divides up into all those people who come and practice because it benefits them, and the few who stay on for a long time, making practice their life. Anyway, I think one thing we'll be doing over the next few years is trying to find more ways in which we can include more people who want to practice.

[57:53]

Maybe there'll be several... We have the farm, too. Maybe the schedule there will be a little different and easier for people to get started in. At present, the city is the easiest and, in some ways, the hardest, because you can practice there one period a day or once a week. And most of the older students are now in the city, so the practice is also maybe the best in some ways. Anyway, I think we're trying to find some answer, but there's lots of considerations. All in all, I think we've done pretty well, and one, it's not so obvious because we don't label people as well or unwell. We don't say, here's somebody who used to be unwell and now they're well.

[58:57]

You know, maybe I used to be unwell and now I'm well. Sort of well. But we don't say that, you know, so much. But actually, many people in Zen Center, including some of the oldest students, used to be pretty unwell. That's it. Maybe so. By old-fashioned method, you mean Freud and things like that, don't you mean?

[60:04]

Those are new-fashioned. One of the weaknesses of psychoanalysis and theory is that it's so new. There's not much wisdom in it. There's some experience, but it's only 100 years old. I studied psychology quite a lot before I studied Buddhism. in deference to all the psychologists present. What happens when you have a thing like Buddhism going for 2,500 years trying to solve the same problems is quite different. But anyway, I think as a community we're trying, and pretty hard, actually. I almost spilled my time.

[61:04]

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