We have only four meetings, which seemed to be plenty when I first thought about this. I think I talked to Frank about it, and four meetings seemed like enough. But now I give you sip koans. There's sip stories in here. Four weeks have been enough time for two sip stories. So you get two extra stories to work on. beyond the class. I would like to tell you just, you know, introductory statements about this. And that is, which I said to introduce the regular call-in class, which we have at Green Gulch, starting in the Book of Serenity. And that is that these stories, these Zen stories of death, and dying and the dying process and death itself are like sharp swords or like precious gems or like wild Siberian tigers or

[01:21]

like powerful explosives or earthquakes or tidal waves. Anyway, these stories and the dying process is something which has a lot of potential. It's very important that we learn how to handle these materials in a skillful way. If we can handle them skillfully, they can be opportunities for complete freedom. If we handle them unskillfully, that would be too bad. This is true of everything we meet. This is true of our relationships with our friends, with our children, with our parents with our spouses and it's true of our relationship with death and it's true of our relationship with these stories that if we have the proper relationship it will be liberating and if we don't then we have problems so the main thing seems to me to work on is

[02:48]

how to study death, how to study dying, how to study life, how to study these stories in the proper way, in a way that's helpful to us and everyone. My assistant kindly typed up these stories. and they came out in a certain order. And I couldn't decide what order to work on them. But I thought, since they're paged the way they are, and since they're in this order, we might as well go the order that they're on the paper. But then when I looked at the first case, I thought, oh, that's a difficult one to start with. And I thought, yeah, it is difficult.

[03:57]

It's a difficult one. It's a difficult story. But I thought, oh, but death is difficult too. Dying is difficult too. This story, you know, is not necessarily the story you'd like to study just tonight or next week. It's kind of misshapen and weird. unpredictable and not under control, this story. But neither is death. Death doesn't come to visit us, and the dying process does not necessarily work the way we'd like it to, for ourselves or for our friends. It's often not as romantic or glorious as we might want it to be. Sometimes it's more romantic and more glorious than we'd like it to be. Anyway, I thought, fine, that this is a difficult story. We might think, oh, if it was an easy story or if death was easy, then we could be easy to have a proper relationship with it.

[05:02]

But I don't think so. I think if we have our habits of relating to things in an unbalanced way, that if things are easy, we don't notice our imbalance. But when things get tough, our imbalance starts to show. So difficult stories, difficult children, difficult parents, difficult wives and husbands, difficult friends, difficult dying, they show us our imbalance. And when we see our imbalance, we have a chance to balance and take a better, more appropriate attitude towards the material that's appearing before us. And if we can do that, then our own dying, the dying of our friends and relatives, and these stories can become opportunities for liberation and for great benefit in this world.

[06:09]

Does that make sense? Brett? Did you have a question? Yeah. Or comment? Go ahead. There's been a lot of stuff in this lately. There's a lot of stuff in this. I don't know. There's a little approach to that, though. Anyway, this idea of trying to make it less difficult, I think that's through physician-assisted suicide. Uh-huh. Difficult. Do you have any sort of thoughts about the whole topic of a physician, you know, trying to get easier with medicine and so on? Can I say something else first?

[07:19]

And that is, I also should mention that birth is difficult. Birth is difficult. Buddha said, as a matter of fact, he said, he said the first truth of Buddha is there's difficulty. Buddha said there's difficulty, there's hardship, there's pain. The Buddha taught that. Anybody heard about that? He didn't say, I never heard him say, Never read Buddha having said that life is difficult. Didn't say categorically that life was difficult. However, he has, as I mentioned a number of times, been quoted to that effect in Scott Peck's book, A Road Less Traveled. So, you know, here I'm telling you this, but Scott Peck's telling millions of people that Brutus said, life is painful. Life is suffering. So, you know... That's the message that more people are getting than I can reach.

[08:22]

So I'm here to try to turn that a little bit and say, Buddha didn't say life is suffering. Buddha said the first truth is suffering. The Buddha did say, however, that living creatures have two options, basically, a life of suffering and a life of bliss. Those are the two options for sentient existence. If you're attached to yourself, if you don't understand yourself, if you're deluded about what you are, then life is difficult. Then birth is difficult, high school is difficult, marriage is difficult, work is difficult, Zen is difficult, dying is difficult, death is difficult, everything is difficult, as long as you have any selfishness that you're holding to. Okay? Buddha said that. But if you don't have any attachment to self, if you understand that your self is not something that you can attach to, then life is not difficult.

[09:26]

Then life is called nirvana. It's total liberation and happiness. Being alive is happiness when you don't have attachment. You already knew that, right? The hard part is to renounce all attachments, to renounce all self-concern. Now back to this question, what do I think about making life, I mean death, easier? I think if you want to help somebody have an easier life, if somebody's got some pain and you can lessen their pain in some way that doesn't lessen their awareness, I say fine. Somebody's got a sore shoulder, give them a massage, no problem. If somebody's hungry and they want some food, give them food. If they've got aoi, help them. If they've got sore feet, give them a massage, whatever.

[10:30]

It's fine to make people more comfortable, but I don't think it's helpful to people to make them more comfortable in a way that significantly reduces their awareness. Now, let's say that somebody has just had an operation. And as a result of the operation they have, what, maybe some congestion in their lungs. And it's hard for them to breathe. And the healing process is slowed down by the congestion in the lungs. But they have a lot of pain, maybe post-operative pain and post-operative lung congestion. And they're in a lot of pain, so it's hard for them to breathe because of the pain. And if they don't breathe, they don't clear their lungs. In some cases, you can give a person a little painkiller, and then they can breathe, and then they'll heal faster. So I would say in that case, it seems all right to take some painkiller, even if it reduced your... the acuity of your meditation a little bit, it might be okay if it actually promotes your healing.

[11:37]

And then when you're healing and you can breathe again, then you should, I would say, take away whatever dulls your awareness. So I feel that as you approach death, to take something that would make you more comfortable is fine. To take something that would help you meditate, and being alert would be fine. If you're in so much pain that you can't concentrate on what's happening, if there's something that would help you relax a little bit so you could concentrate, I think that's okay. But if it's like to push your awareness way down so that you don't even know what's going on, even to the point of death, I wonder about that. I wonder if I would help the person. I don't think I would help the person. Do that. but we don't know what happens to the person when they take these drugs. They may be thrown into a state of where their vital signs are suppressed their vitality is suppressed, and they seem to be not suffering. But inside, they may be in a tremendous drug hell.

[12:41]

We don't know. They don't necessarily come back and tell us what happened. I don't know if people have taken these chemicals and come back and told us what happened to their consciousness because these things suppress your consciousness so much it's hard to report. But they may be in some real terrible situation. And then, They have no chance of using that time as a time of awakening. I should say no chance, but it makes it really hard. So I, for the sake of their spiritual evolution, I would not give them things or I wouldn't recommend or assist them suppressing their opportunity to learn. At the same time, I also wouldn't necessarily make a law against it and legislate and have people spending their time stopping people from doing what they think is best for them, what their friends think is kind. I wouldn't interfere, I don't think. That's how I feel about it.

[13:43]

So now again, back to the attitude with which to study life and which which to study death and with which to study koans, these stories. Just let me again parenthetically mention that koan means public case. It means public case. It means public case of some very important spiritual event. Most koans are important spiritual events, important teaching occasions, times when Buddhist teachers were interacting with people in a way that was considered to be very helpful. So there's many interactions between Buddhist teachers and people and plants and animals that are helpful, but not all of them become like public. These are the more... the ones that a lot of people felt were important enough to take care of and transmit for centuries. So these are very famous stories that a lot of people thought were useful, often about famous teachers.

[14:58]

Some of these teachers in this book here, some of them were famous like Billy Graham or something today, or Martin Luther King. Some of these teachers were famous like that in China, but others were not famous during their lifetime. And the first story is about a teacher who was not famous in his lifetime. He had a few students off in the mountains, and not too many people knew about him or his students. But all of his students were excellent, became excellent teachers. So his tradition generated millions of practitioners. Millions and millions of practitioners came from this one teacher over the centuries. But he was kind of quiet, just concentrating on his individual students, trying to make sure that they really did understand what was going on.

[16:03]

So again, the attitude with which to study this story, the attitude with which to study life, is I call being upright, which tonight I would call non-involvement with what's happening. But non-involvement does not mean that when something's happening, you leave. Non-involvement means you're intimate. Non-involvement means you're intimate with what's happening. So the attitude with which to study death, the attitude with which to study dying, the attitude with which to study these stories is to be intimate with them. And when you're intimate with something, for example, with a person or an animal, some other kind of animal, intimate does not mean you control them. Intimate does not mean you own them. That's what I say.

[17:08]

Do you agree? Everybody agree? That intimacy is not owning people or controlling people. Also, intimacy doesn't mean they own you or control you. However, intimacy does mean, just kidding, that you're their slave. That does mean that. But voluntary slave, slave of love, In other words, intimacy means you're devoted to whatever it is. You love it. You do whatever you can to help it. So you're devoted to the koans. You're devoted to dying. You're devoted to people. You're devoted to plants. You're devoted to mountains. You're devoted to rivers. You're devoted. You give your life to the welfare of. And that helps you get intimate. And also... you gradually let the other side know that you kind of want them to do that too. So you can actually develop this strange relationship with this story of asking this story to be devoted to you.

[18:14]

Kind of weird. Just, dear story, please, you know, be devoted to me. That's non-involvement. That's non-attachment. That's what I mean. Another thing about intimacy is when you look at somebody's face, you're intimate with them, you are careful not to attribute reality to what you think they are. So I think I can't help it. I think this is a man. I think this is a woman. I think she's not sitting up straight. I can't help it. That's what I think. What can I say? But I don't have to attribute reality to that. I don't have to say it's true, what I think. This is just my impression.

[19:23]

Now, you may all agree with me, yes, that is a man. Yes, that is a woman, but that still should not make me attribute substantial reality to my perception. You may think, this is my friends really being bad, my friends really being disloyal, or my friends really being kind. So maybe you can understand, it wouldn't be good to say, to think your friend's bad, to think your friend's cruel, and then tribute reality to that. But you might think that wouldn't be good. But you shouldn't even tribute reality to when you think your friend's kind. It's nice to see, when you look out and you say, oh, God, I got a kind friend, and you're grateful, it's nice, great, no problem. Well, if it's so good, why tribute reality to it? If it's so wonderful and you're grateful, why make it into a substantial reality? That'll kill it. So when you're intimate with things, you don't make what you see the thing.

[20:33]

And if you can see that making things into realities is different from experiencing the experience, then this is intimacy. Now that was a tough one, wasn't it? Any questions about that? Was that real hard or real easy or crazy or what? Is your name Barbara? Something like that? Yes? In a relationship, how do you make the other person a reality? How do you not make them a reality? Well, we human beings have the ability to, we have a perceptual faculty so that we can, out of the, whatever's happening, we can imagine, you know, isolated individual beings, we can do that.

[21:43]

Like you can see a woman. Okay? We can do that. Are you following me? You can do that, right? Okay. We have a separate faculty, a separate ability, which is not perception, but is just pure imagination. For example, I can go like this. I can look over and look, [...] boom, a woman. Very fast like that, I can perceive that. All right? That's a perception. I perceive a man, perceive a light, a chandelier, okay? That's perception. But I have a separate ability, a separate ability called imagination, where I can actually, in addition to having a perception of a woman, I can imagine that she really exists, that it's a true perception. So, for example, you can look out over a hot,

[22:45]

field of earth and you can see a shimmering at the edge it looks like water and by education you can say it looks like water but I think it's a mirage it looks like water but it's not really water it just appears to be water okay so you see the water but you know it's not really water you can learn that all right Now, if you say it's really a mirage, then you're slipping off again. But anyway, we see people, and then we can imagine that the people we see, they really are like that. That's a reality. Rather than, that's just the way it looks to me. And because you people have similar genetic makeup as me, you see the same kind of stuff. And we've made conventions to agree that we're seeing the same stuff, so we see the same stuff. And also we usually use a separate faculty of attributing reality.

[23:47]

We map it on almost everything we see. But they're separate faculties and they are separate. And when they're separate, you're enlightened. And there's almost always this going on. But I sometimes do it like this. Usually something's happening and we put the reality thing on top of them. So I look at you and I say, you really are a woman, like that. In other words, I'm confused. In other words, I'm not intimate. I'm interfering. There's two things between us. One is my perception of you, which you can tell me is not true, and also my attributing reality to my perception of you, which even if you tell me it's not true, I won't believe you. if it's overlaid. But if you can turn it sideways or walk around sideways and look at it like this, then you can see, oh, this is my perception of you, and this is the attributing reality to you.

[24:58]

And I see, oh, they're separate. And I look over at my perception of you as not having any reality to it, and I experience liberation from my perception. Enlightenment is not a perception. Enlightenment is understanding the nature of perception. But usually we overlay reality, substantial existence, onto our perception so we can't see how glorious and radiant perception actually is. Perception actually is always non-stop beautiful. It's always beautiful. if you don't lay substantial existence on top of it. If you lay substantial existence on top of it then you sometimes call it beautiful and you sometimes call it ugly but that's not beauty and that's not ugliness. So what you need to do is you need to meditate until

[25:59]

and be intimate with the process of perception and the process of attributing reality to things and be intimate with that process until you have the chance sometime to go around sideways by chance and have a turn and see the separation between your imagination and your perception. So, for example, I do not have a perception that any of you are, I don't know what, out to get me. But I could imagine that, even if I didn't have a perception of it. But that would be probably, I would guess, just a mere mental fabrication. I bet none of you are out to get me. Of course, if you were, you probably wouldn't tell. But even though we may not have paranoid fantasies about the people we're meeting, we all have these fantasies of the existence of people.

[27:03]

We actually, almost all of us, are mapping reality onto each person we see. That's our general human tendency. To confuse these two. And when we read a Zen story, we think it's easy, and we say that's really so, or we say it's hard and it's really so, and then you're not intimate with the story, and then the story can cut you, can hurt you. And you can say, this story's too hard, and that's true, and I'm done with this story. Or this story's easy, and it's true, and I'm done with this story. Or this story's in between, and that's true. So I'll play with it longer. But the attribution of reality to your impression of what this story is blocks you from studying it. But if you can get intimate with it, you can become free of it. So that's what I'm talking about. This is about the relationship towards the story. Okay?

[28:06]

Does that make sense to you, Barbara? Oh, good. And then who is next? I saw Sonya, but somebody was before Sonya. Who was it? Who were you ready to tell the truth? You had your hand up. Who was it? George. Was it you, George? It's most easy to recognize when you're sitting at yourself. You sort of have to start with yourself. You might be able to discover it in some other case, but we usually recommend start with yourself. Because it is our interest in protecting ourself that's the origin of this attributing of a substantial existence to things.

[29:07]

And this interest in protecting ourselves is congenital. So this is an inbred thing in us. It doesn't happen right at birth, but after not too long, we're into this. So yeah, so studying the self is the key point. And it's very conveniently located, too. You've got it with you all the time. You don't have to carry it around. You don't have to remember it. You've got it. It comes spontaneously. It's a really handy study thing. Sonia? Can we say that again, please? Yeah. Uh-huh, right.

[30:10]

Right. Uh-huh. Yeah, I serve that purpose for you. Yep, that might help. Okay. Now, we're ready to start looking at the story. But even before we start looking at the story, are you already having a hard time? How are you feeling? Are you having a hard time tonight? No? Nobody? You're having a hard time? Okay. Well, how do you relate to the hard time? Did you hear what I said, how to relate to this hard time? You got the hard time already. Good. Before we even start studying the story, we don't even need the story.

[31:15]

You already got the thing. Got the hard time. How am I recommending to relate to this hard time? How do you practice with this hard time? You're noticing you're having a hard time. Good. That's one of the ways that she practices with having a hard time is she notices that she's having a hard time. I can tell some other ways that she practices with it, but if she doesn't tell you, I'll tell you. Want to tell us some more? Another way she practices, she puts her notebook down. How else do you practice with it besides noticing it and putting your notebook down? Well, you're uncomfortable with the hard time? You're having a hard time staying with the hard time?

[32:18]

Is that what you're saying? It's hard to stay with the hard time. What more? When you've got the hard time and it's hard to be with the hard time, what else? How do you practice with having a hard time with the hard time? and noticing that? My adrenaline is going up. Your adrenaline is going up? Is that how you practice with it? Or is that just part of the deal? That's part of feeling on the spot. You're feeling on the spot? You don't usually feel on the spot? Does anybody else feel on the spot? No? You do good. Two people. You're near the spot. If you're dying, can you imagine if you're dying you might feel like you're on the spot?

[33:28]

Can you imagine if you were in this story, which you haven't yet looked at, that you might feel you're on the spot? These people in these stories, I would suggest, my suggestion, they were on the spot. Do you think the students feel on the spot in these stories? Yes, they do. Do you think the teacher feels on the spot? Yes, they do. The teacher feels on the spot. So if you feel on the spot, you're like the people in this story. There's some other ways that you practice with being on the spot in your difficulty. Do you want me to tell you? You don't know? I don't know if I want you to tell me. You don't? Well, you don't know, but maybe you do you? Sure. Well, another way that you practice with this difficulty and your difficulty with the difficulty, another way that you practice with it is that you're sitting there and you're not running away.

[34:32]

and you're having difficulty, you're not even sure you want to hear more from me, but you're staying there and you're sitting there at your place. That's a big way that she's dealing with this. Very important. When you're dying, it's very important to be there and sit there, whether you're in the sitting posture or not. But anyway, she's sitting there and she's sitting up pretty nicely. She has her legs on the ground, she's got a nice little stool there. You're there. That's a big part of it. You're a success. Okay? See if you can stay on the spot the rest of the night. Okay? Try. Just see if you can keep being on the spot like you are right now without me talking to you. Then you're like in this story. Okay, here's the story. Ready? This is case 13 of the Book of Serenity. It's called Linji's Blind Ass, or if you prefer, Blind Donkey.

[35:38]

Linji is one of the most important Zen masters in history, as I said. He's like the fountainhead of a tremendously important school of Zen. He lived in the Tang Dynasty in China. Lin Ji is the name of where his little temple was. And the introduction says, do you have the introduction? No? Here's the introduction. The introduction is devoted entirely to helping others. You don't know there's a self. There's a self. When you're devoted entirely to helping others, you don't know there's a self.

[36:46]

You should exert yourself in the Dharma to the fullest without concern that there are no people. Okay, here's the story. When Linji was about to die, he admonished Sanxiong. Sanxiong means three sages. This monk's name was Three Sages. So the great master is about to die and he's teaching his main disciple now and he says, after I pass on, don't destroy the I, the treasury of the I of truth. In other words, don't destroy my teaching. Don't destroy Buddha's teaching.

[37:50]

Then Sanchang says, how would I, how dare I, or how would I dare destroy the teacher's treasury of the I of truth? And Linji says, okay, if someone suddenly questions you about this, how will you reply? And this means, what's this? This is the treasury of the true, of the Dharma eyes, the treasury of the Dharma eyes. Okay, if someone comes up and asks you about the teaching, what will you say? And Sanxiong shouted immediately, And Lin Ji said, who would have known that my treasury of the Eye of Truth would perish with this blind donkey? So this is the story of the teachers on the spot.

[38:58]

The teachers are about ready to die. This is his life.

[39:04]

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