Good morning. This feels pretty weird to be sitting here. Now if I speak like this, is this about right for the people way far away? No. Too quiet probably, huh? How about if I speak like this, how's this? Is it about right? No? A little bit? I suggested that I sit here today rather than at the other end. How's that? But now that I sit here, it does seem really kind of strange, like I'm in a little cage or something. Does it work?

[01:05]

It works better? Somebody said one time that Zen is free, but Zen training is not. Zen training happens in the midst of tradition and limitation. Am I still speaking about the right volume? And somebody also said, people often speak of art as being spontaneous in the midst of some limitation or some form. People like Zen stories.

[02:09]

I do. I like them, and a lot of other people do. And it's nice to start, if you're giving a talk in a Zen temple, it's nice to start with a Zen story. But I want to mention that part of the reason why it's nice to start with a Zen story is because you can hide behind it. But I actually believe that what's really important when speaking or writing is to be aware that no matter what you do, you really show who you are. You can't really hide it. However, when you speak, you can be unaware that everyone can see I shouldn't say everyone can see, but that you do show, whether people see it or not, you do show your vices and virtues in the tone of your voice, in the expression on your face, in your posture.

[03:20]

Every breath shows this about you, and every breath shows this about me. I think that's true. But the point I'm trying to make is, in addition to that, that I actually think it's very good to be aware as you speak that you are exposing yourself. Then you feel exposed. So as I say, I would like to start with some Zen story or some Buddhist teaching I like to do that. And I'm aware that part of the reason why I like to do it is because I can hide behind it. And it hopes that people won't see my vices and maybe they'll think the story is my virtue. But I'm not starting with a story today.

[04:24]

What? What? Yeah. But it was mine, and it showed something about me. I'm not starting with somebody else's story. But a little later, I may tell a story which is about this kind of thing. We'll see if I get to it. When we, before we start this talk, we said an unsurpassed perfect and penetrating dharma, perfect and penetrating teaching or truth. And there's some, there may be some feeling that when the person speaks after that, that that's going to be it. How to avoid thinking that what you say after that chant is it, and how also to avoid thinking that what you say isn't it, is the challenge.

[05:53]

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it will never forget what they did here. But that was not true. The world long remembered what they said there that day. And what they said there was inseparable from what they did there. And what I say is inseparable from what you do. So the Dharma, the unsurpassed, perfectly penetrating Dharma, is not the same or different from you or me. It's all of that, interpenetrating each other. When I say that, I mean that's my belief. So, not only do Zen talks and Zen sermons and Zen temples often start with a story, but then part of the style is that the speaker then gives a commentary on the story.

[07:22]

And there again, the challenge is, how can you give the commentary without relying on the story? And also, how can you follow the tradition of presenting a story and making a commentary and still be, you know, really yourself? If you avoid the tradition entirely, that may seem easy. But if you avoid the tradition, you're really still a slave of the tradition. The way to become free of the tradition is to enter it and have something new and fresh bloom from it. But if you think about it beforehand, you might be frightened by that possibility.

[08:36]

Because this new sprout coming up out of the tradition, if it really is new and fresh, not holding on to the tradition, not being dead in the tradition, but really a new sprout, we don't know what it will be, and it's very fragile and delicate. In the development of insight, we sometimes speak of three stages.

[10:00]

And these stages are called, you mind a little Sanskrit for starters? Is that all right? They're called in Sanskrit śrutta-mai-prajna, cintamai-prajna, and bhavana-mai-prajna. Prajna means insight, means penetrating insight. So there's three types of penetrating transcendental, transcendent insight or wisdom. Three types or three aspects of it. Before I came and sat down here, I went into the zendo and I bowed to the bodhisattva, Manjushri. Manjushri means pleasant splendor.

[11:10]

This pleasant splendor, enlightening being is the personification or sculpturalization of perfect wisdom, of transcendent wisdom. And when I was bowing, I thought, why am I doing this? Why do this before I go and talk? And what does transcendent wisdom have to do with helping people? And while I was bowing, I thought, well, maybe when you really have insight, you really understand what's happening. And when you understand what's happening, you have no problems in being helpful. You have no resistances and no lack of skill. So these three types, these three aspects of wisdom, the first one, śrutta, means listening.

[12:24]

Cinta means thinking or reflecting. And bhavana means basically being. So it's wisdom through listening or hearing. It's wisdom through reflection or thinking. And it's wisdom through being. These are three levels. And they go usually one, two, three. And then when they go after one, two, three, they go three, two, one. The śrutta level, the listening level, is that you can have some insight or wisdom through hearing, which also includes seeing, touching, tasting, smelling. In other words, through your senses, things can come in and you can understand by means of those external informations.

[13:33]

And that's the way you usually start. It's usually the first stage. It sort of has to be the first stage because our ignorance is language bound. And so the first level of release is from words that come in from the outside. Words in the forms of sounds, words in the form of sights, words in the form of tastes, words in the form of touches, and words in the form of smells. The next level is that once you have this kind of insight, then you turn it over and around and think about it, and it gets deeper. You reflect it on all your other images and memories and experiences that you have stored in your consciousness. And the next level is you actually, it becomes you or you become it.

[14:39]

You're no longer thinking about it, just your daily life is wisdom. And when that's the case, then the way you think and then the way you talk and touch, so it goes back the other way. I bring this up because we don't want to rely on the teaching and yet we have to start by listening to it. Once we listen to it, later we accept it into ourselves and we let it become us or we become it. But in that first stage, of listening to it, of looking at it, of hearing it, were quite susceptible to relying on it and becoming dependent on it. In the words of modern, at least, I guess modern American words, it's possible to develop a dependency on the teaching.

[15:53]

an addiction to the teaching. And it's also possible to become co-addictive or co-addicts or co-dependents to people who are dependent on the teaching. So it's possible to have a Zen group or a Buddhist group where some of the teachers, or all the teachers, or the teacher, is dependent on the Dharma, dependent on the teaching. And the students there, or the congregation there, are co-dependents. In other words, nobody is saying the emperor has no clothes. They go along, they kind of sense that the person is saying the Dharma, but really they're attached to it or they depend on it. It's not really coming from them. And the subtle difference between dependence and interdependence on the Dharma is the crucial issue.

[17:04]

And it's possible that one moment I'm dependent on it, the next minute I'm not. And each of you probably has some intuition about which is which. In fact, we We start by receiving the teaching. That's the first step. We start by faith in the Buddha. We hear stories of Buddhas and Buddha's disciples and we are encouraged and we want to learn from them and from their stories and from their teachings and from their disciples. This is the first step and we need that step. Faith in the other. The next stage is we have to accept it into ourself

[18:07]

and make it ourselves. Stand on your own two feet. First you read, then you write. First you hear, then you speak and make gestures. We sometimes say, raise your eyebrows and wink. First the Dharma turns you Then you turn the Dharma. First you're weak and it's strong. Then you're strong and it's weak. So now here's a story. You judge if I'm depending on it or hiding behind it. I have some hopes that I won't depend on it too much because it's not a very good story.

[19:15]

This is a story that took place in China in, I believe, the 11th century, maybe the 12th. A monk named Dōkai went to study with the master Tōsugisei and asked, the sayings of the Buddhas and the Zen founders are everyday affairs. Do they have anything else to help people? Tosu said, you tell me.

[20:30]

Do the commands of the emperor in his own realm depend on the ancient kings? As Dokai was about to speak, he hit him with his whisk and said, the moment you intended to come here, you already deserved a beating. Now, according to tradition, next comes the commentary.

[21:36]

Again, I'd like to avoid it and be free like a bird. But if I avoid it, I'll be trapped in a cage. So, I'm going to make a commentary. I'm going to knowingly and willingly enter the cage of tradition. And every step I take, every move I make, every breath I take, every vow I break, you'll be watching me. I'm a sitting duck. Or a sitting bull.

[22:46]

it's time to stop. Recently a man came to visit from Japan. His name is Yanagida Seizan. Now he already went back to Japan a few days ago. I want to tell you a story about him and me. About 13 or 14 years ago I first heard about him. No, more than that. About, yeah, more than 13 or 14 years ago. I read an article by him that was, actually I worked with someone and translated an article by him from Japanese into English.

[24:11]

And it was an article about something called the Platform Sutra of the sixth founder of Zen. This is one of the most important texts of the Zen school in China. And for your information, The point of this article was to show that nested inside of this platform scripture was actually an initiation ceremony for enlightening beings, which I don't think at that time almost no one had noticed. So he explained how you could see, with his assistance, you could see that there was an initiation ceremony nested inside these lectures that he was giving. So anyway, I thought that was really interesting at that time, and I still do.

[25:18]

For many reasons, but maybe sometime before an initiation ceremony, I could tell you about his article. But I want to tell you about him more than his article. So after that, I became a little bit of a devotee of this scholar. And then a few years later, about 13, 14 years ago, we invited him to come to Zen Center as part of a conference on Zen, early Zen. And he didn't come. There were various rumors about why he didn't want to come. Anyway, at that time, in the wake of his not coming, I learned from the scholars who did come what I already suspected, and that is that this man is, well, I hate to say this, but probably the leading, the top or something like that of all Zen scholars in the world.

[26:31]

He has never come to America before. He came this time. And I assumed after that that he probably never would come. I went to Japan two years ago, and I met another scholar and artist who was a friend of his. Am I still speaking okay, loudly enough? I met a friend of his. who was a disciple of D.T. Suzuki and an artist, a Zen artist. And he said, he suggested that we invite this man again. And I said, well, he won't come. And he said, I think I can get him to come. So I said, okay, I'll invite him. Let's see. So I did invite him. And with the aid of this man and with the aid of another man who was a former president of this Zen center, And really, because of that man's gumption and persistence, Yanagida Seizan came to America.

[27:42]

However, before that happened, a lot of difficulties in the arrangements occurred. A lot. Really a lot. And they happened, and the impact, the surface of impact of these difficulties was primarily me and my assistant. And also the people on the other end of the telephone in Japan, none of them were Yanagida-sensei, but some other people. It was really difficult. There was a lot of difficulty. And I thought during the arrangements, I thought, well, maybe this is just the way it is when you deal with world-class people. It's just difficult. I've had this feeling before. that when you have that much energy and intensity to be that great a scholar, that there's a force field around people like that, you know? And there came a point, you know, Zen Center doesn't have so much money, and I had to sort of beg to get the money for this guy to come.

[28:54]

And people gave it to me, but they wondered, you know, they don't know who this guy is. They don't have this background with him that I had. But finally, I got approval to have him come and to pay him an honorarium, even though he wasn't coming for the money. I mean, you know, Japanese people aren't coming here for the money. And then we got news that we probably should invite his wife too. So we did. Invite means pay for her airfare. And one other little piece of information for you is that if you buy a ticket in America to go to Japan and back, you can go for about $600. But if you buy a ticket in Japan to come to America and go back, it costs $1,200. because the Japanese government controls the prices in Japan. And the Japanese people have to pay twice as much to get out of Japan as we do to come to America, as we have to pay to get out of America to go to Japan.

[30:04]

It's a different government, basically. So we had to pay $1,200 for them to come this way, each. Then we got news that we should invite his attendant. And then we got news that his wife, who was an important tea teacher, was bringing four attendants. And we probably should pay for at least one of them. At that point, I felt like, gee, I don't know if we can handle this. Anyway, that was an example of difficulty, OK? In the end, we didn't have to pay for all those attendants. We only had to pay for three people and we made it all right and they came. And then we went to the airport. I went to the airport and I was at the airport waiting for him and I was on time. Actually, I didn't want to go to the airport in the first place just because I don't like to go to the airport.

[31:05]

I don't like the airport too much. I don't like to wait at the airport. But I thought not going to pick up this man would be really arrogant. I mean, if he's at the airport, I should be at the airport. If he deigns to land on the earth and walk down those corridors, I probably should be there waiting for him. So I went and I stood and I waited and I was on time too. Anyway, I was on time but his plane was late and it got later and later. It wasn't terribly late. But it got later and later. And I was standing there waiting. And while I was waiting, I was thinking, how many more times am I going to have to go to the airport in my line of work? Tell me later why you're shaking your head.

[32:14]

Or now, if you want. And I thought, gee, maybe someday I won't have to go here anymore and stand and wait and wait. That's what happens when you're on time sometimes, you know. Anyway, I waited and I waited, and it wasn't too bad. Anyway, I was looking, you know, I kept watching for some massive, some sort of like, there's people just coming, coming and coming and coming, and I was waiting for this, you know, that bulge or that mass that happens when a plane lets its people off, you know. But I didn't see any kind of... I just waited and waited. And finally, I didn't really see a group of people coming. But then I just sort of saw... Somehow I saw, among the various faces coming towards me, I saw one face. And I didn't really think, oh, there's a Japanese person. There's an elderly Japanese man. So that's probably him. I didn't think... That wasn't my first impression. What I saw was something energetic coming. Something smiling coming. And And I looked at it.

[33:18]

I didn't think it was him, but I just sort of was attracted to it, whatever it was. And I watched it, and it started smiling more. So I smiled back. And when I smiled back, it smiled more, and I smiled more. And then I started thinking, well, maybe this is him. And then I started to notice what he looked like. And he was kind of a little guy, and real thin, and younger than I expected. I expect him to be in his 70s. He looked like he was in his 60s. And he's kind of funny looking. And then he said, I don't know what he said. He said something like, Tenshin? That's my Buddhist name, my Japanese Buddhist name. And I said, yes. And he came and he bowed very deeply and said, Yanagida says on this. way down, and stayed there a long time. So I didn't, you know, I was bowed, when he bowed, I bowed too, and then I got up to look to see if he was still there, and I went back down.

[34:26]

Well, ladies and gentlemen, at that time, I became very happy for some reason. And I forgot about all the difficulties during the year of preparation. I was just happy. I don't know why. But I was just happy. And he and I and his wife and all the attendants started walking to the baggage area. And I just felt really good. And I just kept feeling good being with this little guy. And I was very happy to find out that I not only met a scholar, but I met something else, which I really don't know what it was. I still don't. But it was really wonderful. He's a layman. He was born in a Zen temple and he was supposed to become a Zen teacher or a Zen priest. His father was a Zen priest. He was supposed to grow up and do that, but he didn't. Instead, he became a student of Zen, an incredibly intense student of Zen, and I would say, to make a long story short, a wonderful success story, because after the war, he was a total wreck spiritually.

[36:00]

He felt very bad about what Japan did in the war, the way Japan acted, and most of all, he felt bad about what Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism did during the war, which I'll say a little bit more about in a minute. It really almost finished him. But somehow some Zen teachers, a lay Zen teacher and a priest Zen teacher, saved him, taught him, were compassionate towards him, and he started to practice Zazen and also scholarship. And now he's a very happy little bird and a great inspiration. Part of the reason why I bring this up is because he really liked Zen Center and what he saw of American Buddhism he was really encouraged by.

[37:07]

And for him to be encouraged is really encouraging to me. And one of the reasons why it's encouraging is not only is he a wonderful person, they don't have dogs like this in Zen temples in Japan. We frequently, as you see, before we had that little one came in, did you see it? And now we have a poodle. Now, I haven't spent that much time in Zen temples, but that's very rare to have two dogs come in during one sermon. Very rare. At least these days it's rare. And that's part of the reason why Yanagida Seizan likes American Zen. Really. After he did his lecture sermons at Zen Center in San Francisco, he went to Tassajara. When he came back, the first thing he said was how much he loved the Tassajara dog, whose name, by the way, is Zori.

[38:16]

Does everybody know what a Zori is? Anybody not know what a Zori is? A Zori is a Japanese sandal. We named this dog after Japanese sandals because most of the people at Tassajara, at least when it's not too cold, wear Zoris. And we named this dog Zori for some reason I really don't know. Maybe because he has no mind. You know? He's gone beyond consciousness. He's the stupidest dog in the world. And the first thing that they mentioned when they got back from Tassajara was this dog. It's very rare too that the first thing people mention is this dog. Usually, especially Japanese people, usually the first thing they mention is the hot baths, because Japanese people love hot baths. Or maybe the first thing they mention is the practice of the students there is really good, or the mountains, but they mention the dog.

[39:23]

And they also said, jokingly but also seriously, I mean also sincerely, that they finally realized that dogs do have Buddha nature. Busho in Japanese, they said. Zori Busho. This man... found a text about quite a while ago, about 40 years ago, he found a text, which in Japanese is called Shōdōshū, which means the collection of the Hall of the Founders. And he's been working on it for the last 40 years. It's not a very big text, only 200,000 characters.

[40:30]

And he studied this text. And this text is interesting because it's nice for scholars because it has very large characters, easy to see, about four times the size of characters that you usually find in books because it's a woodblock print. And he copied this text. this 200,000 character text. But by copying it, you know, if you're copying, well, if you're copying English, but in this particular case, if you're copying Chinese, usually when you're copying Chinese, you look and you see, if you know Chinese a little bit, you look and you see the character, you recognize the character, and then you write the character. But this ancient text, and also because there's no other text of it, he didn't just look at the character and copy the character. He had to make a photographic copy of the character because he didn't know what the character was. He couldn't be sure. So he painted the characters exactly like they looked. That he did for 200,000 characters.

[41:38]

And he said, you know, which may sound a little bit like bragging, but I think it's also a fact, that when you do something like that with a text, you develop some fairly deep intimacy with it. You see it, you read it, and you draw it. And he did that three times. He spent years just copying that text. He's a pretty smart guy, but he's also not lazy. Anyway, that text is an interesting text because it was recently found in... And this text gives a picture of Zen, which is before there was Zen. At a certain point, particularly in the Song Dynasty in China, which means from about 950, 1000, A.D. until 1250 A.D. That's the Song period.

[42:44]

That's when this thing called Zen seems to, the Zen school and what we usually think of as Zen appeared. And they presented their, they started making histories of their school and they presented images of their founders. And the images they presented of their founders are pretty much a lot of what we think the founders of Zen are. But the images they presented are a little bit or quite sanctified, sanctified, heavily made up and glorified. Even though I think we like Zen stories because they don't look so glorious, still, the master is usually in charge. But in the... in the text he found. He found it before they made the masters up.

[43:49]

This text was not, he thinks anyway, and it looks like this text was not touched up. And you see a more human picture of what Zen was. the same stories that we often have learned and studied, but before they were... I don't know what you want to call it anymore. So that's the Zen he's been studying. So when he came here, he was very happy for many reasons, but one of the reasons why he was happy was he went into that meditation hall And he just thought it was fantastic. And I told him. I forgot who told who first. I think he told me that it reminded him of those early Zen temples. Can you hear me, George?

[44:51]

You're going to like this part. Maybe you already heard about this. I think even before I told him, he told me about the early Zen temples. And one of our great ancestors... Yakusan Igen, he actually set his meditation hall up in a cow barn. And I told him that that used to be a hay barn for the cows that lived downstairs. So he was really happy, and so was I. That Zen, you know, now if you go to Japan and China, if you go to Zen temples, even the small ones, not to mention the big head ones, I mean, they are glorious architectural wonders. They are the greatest national treasures of that magnificent country, Japan. I mean, they are amazing buildings.

[45:53]

But they are not cow barns. And if you have a magnificent building like that, if you have a founder of a building like that, the founder of a building like that does not seem like a farmer. But the early Zen guys, the early Zen people, who Yanagida calls non-professional Buddhas, they were farmers. They wore denim clothes like this. They didn't wear silks. Not to mention synthetics. They wore denim. They wore blue denim. They wore blue jeans. And they had a good time together. And they helped each other. And they were fantastic. And they were so fantastic that a huge religion sprung from their work.

[46:56]

And when it sprung, they looked back at them and they said, they were better than we thought. Let's show people how wonderful they were. Anyway, he was really happy about... And now, here we are. Now, this also used to be the tack room for the horses, right? Now, we moved out of the cow barn. Now, we're in the horse area. Another thing he said about American Buddhism is, as you may know, which he liked. I was surprised he liked this following thing. He heard about our recent history. Six years ago, the abbot of Zen Center had some problem with the community. Did you hear about that? How many people didn't hear about that? Well, the abbot of Zen Center had some problems with the community.

[47:57]

His conduct was questioned by the community very strongly. They asked him to take a leave of absence. There were all kinds of communication problems occurred, and finally he left. Some people say he was kicked out. Anyway, there was a big problem. And when Yanagida heard about that, he thought that was really good. He didn't think it was good that we had the problem. He thought it was good that we could have a problem. In Japan, they do not have problems like this. He thinks it's good that people care here enough to challenge an abbot, that there's a passion here. In Japanese Buddhism, they don't have problems. If somebody gets in trouble, they handle it really nicely. this gets changed, that gets changed, and the thing just sits there like that. But when this happened at Zen Center, Zen Center almost fell over. I mean it was, we barely made it.

[48:58]

We don't know if we made it yet. That kind of vitality, that kind of struggle, that kind of passion, that kind of strife, that kind of tension, that's reality. That's what human life's about. He went to Tassajara and he talked to the students for a little while and he said that he feels like American Buddhism is like a baby rubbing its eyes like this when it wakes up. It's like American Buddhism is like a baby just rubbing its eyes and opening its eyes. And again he thinks that's wonderful and I do too. And then he said, but don't suck too hard. Laughter Why not suck too hard? And what are you going to suck? What are you going to suck? Huh?

[49:59]

The teaching, the tradition. Don't suck the teaching or the tradition too hard. Why not? Because you might get some pollution. What pollution might you get? You might get the pollution of unquestioning acceptance of the tradition. You might get the pollution of don't challenge the authority Or even if you do, let's cover it up so nobody really notices anything happened. He said Japanese Buddhism completely embraced the war effort. Second World War. And after the war was over, they completely switched and embraced peace. Because that was what was happening. And now, he says, Japanese Buddhism is completely embracing industrialism, the industrial attack on Japanese society, completely embracing it, and the temples are really rich. I went there in 1974, and I went to some temples, and I felt a little bit sorry for the way the monks were living there.

[51:08]

The food was not too good and kind of not too much. and the temples were a little bit, had some rotting edges. In the 15 years since then, those temples, their food has gotten a lot better. They don't have broken down cars anymore. They have new cars, they have gorgeous robes. Japan has changed in the last 15 years, as you know. And Buddhism has, to some extent, I don't know entirely, I'm not saying entirely, but from his point of view, They're going along with it. Are we going along with what's happening? Now again, first we have to go to the temple and listen first. If you don't even go, then you have no… But after you go, please continue to make this Yanagida sensei happy.

[52:12]

and question what Buddhism is doing. Question the teaching. Don't suck too hard. I'm saying that to myself too. And next, on Tuesday, I'm going to Japan actually to go embrace the establishment. That's why I'm going to pay my respects to the establishment. But I also have Yanagida Sensei's question in my heart and I will be looking in another way now and maybe ask some questions and maybe not be invited back. I don't know. Anyway, our weak point is we really don't understand Buddhism here. Our strong point is we don't understand Buddhism. We do not have a fixed idea.

[53:14]

We do not have a down pat. We do not know what it is or what it's supposed to be. We can see what it is in Japan and China and Korea and Vietnam and Thailand and so on. We can see that they can help us, but this is really the frontier. This is Pioneersville. But again, the word, that character, which is sometimes translated from Buddhas, the character is translated as ancestors or patriarchs, can also be translated as pioneers. They're the founders. And in some ways, Yanagida Sensei says, looking back at that old text, they were outlaws. They were Buddhist outlaws. At the time that they were living in cow barns, and having a good time as non-professional Buddhas. It's not that there were no Buddhas, professional Buddhas in China at that time. There were plenty of professional Buddhas. There were millions of them. There were huge temples full of gold and bronze and brass and copper with vast tracts of rice lands and huge memorial towers.

[54:29]

Like one memorial tower was 900 feet tall nine stories, 100 feet each story, and each corner had huge gold bells, and all the nails in the doors were solid gold. Zen grew up as an outlaw religion in the midst of a huge Buddhist establishment in China, which was already almost 800 years old. I'll tell you one story he told would give you a feeling for the difference between... What do you think? Do you want to hear one? It's not too long. The story that he told, which is a story about Rinzai. Have you ever heard of Rinzai Zen? The two main kinds of Zen, in America anyway, and also in Japan, are Rinzai and Soto.

[55:31]

And this temple is of the Soto lineage. But the Rinzai lineage is another very important one. And the founder of it is called Rinzai in Japanese. The Chinese way of saying it, which is really the way to say it because I use Chinese, is Linji, which means the edge of the forest. Anyway... This is a story which appears in the record of Lin Ji. The record of Lin Ji was composed after the record of the Hall of the Founders. The record of the Hall of the Founders was composed in about 952. It was written in 952. And maybe in question and answer I'll tell you more about that text. But I'll just tell you that's when it was composed. The record of Rinzai was composed quite a while later, hundreds of years later.

[56:34]

It presents a different Rinzai from the one that appears in that text. So here's the story. I'll tell you the story that appears later, and then I'll tell you the story that appears earlier. There was a monk. His name was Puhua, which means universal flower. Or you could say cosmic flower. And he would go to town, and when he went to town, he would sing a song. The song he sang was, I'll tell you the way it says it in the later one. He said, when it's bright, I hit the brightness. When it's dark, I hit the darkness. He would sing that song through the streets when he went to town to get his food from the people.

[57:42]

He begged. Rinzai heard about this guy and sent his attendant. He said, go ask him. When it's not bright and it's not dark, then what? So his tenant went and asked Phu Hoa. That question, when it's not bright and it's not dark, then what? And Phu Hoa said, tomorrow there's going to be a big feast at Da Hu Tua Monastery. The tenant went back and told Rinzai, and Rinzai said, I've always had a lot of respect for that guy. That's a later story.

[58:52]

The earlier story is similar. Please listen. The monk Pu Hua would go to town and he would say, when it's dark, I hid it. When it's light, I hid it. Rinzai heard about this and sent his attendant to ask Pu Hua, when it's not dark and it's not light, then what? And Pu Hua said, There's going to be a big feast at such and such a monastery tomorrow. The attendant went back and told Rinzai and Rinzai was overjoyed and said, have that guy come here. He came and they had a feast. Puhua looks like he put his food on the ground and put his both hands on the ground and maybe ate right out of the dish. It's not clear.

[59:53]

You can imagine. Maybe he, anyway, something like that. And Rinzai said, you're eating like an ass. And Pu Hua said, hee-haw, hee-haw. And Rinzai was dumbfounded. And Pu Hua said, the master has only one eye. Rinzai couldn't say anything. So Rinzai was a great master. But, you know, look at baseball. They don't win all the games. Even the world champions don't win all the games. And I don't know if there ever was a really great baseball team, maybe 1,000 years later or 500 years later or 200 years later, maybe they'll say they won all their games.

[60:55]

I don't know how much they'll doctor it up. But the reality of the situation is more organic and a little bit wilder than sometimes is depicted. Real Buddhism is a Buddhism where the master is not always in charge. There can be a flip around occurring. If there's a real interaction among the outlaws, real life, things aren't so glorious. Well, there's a lot more in that story, but maybe we can talk about that some other time. May our intention...

[61:48]

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