Express what I feel to you. And I can only make serious attempts over and over. Japan and China have developed, come upon pretty good ways to express many of the things I'm trying to talk about, but they don't... They're too unfamiliar to us to convey much. Some of the poems do best, but even then, it's pretty difficult.

[01:01]

But this problem is part of Buddhism anyway, and it's always the case where you have to come forward, as we talked about several years ago in the memorial service for Suzuki Roshi or for Tozan, the story about coming forward. You have to figure out yourself what I'm trying to say. You have to flow toward it. If not, there's no chance. So some willingness

[02:08]

Sympathy. For the problem. Necessary. If your mind is filled with the idea of resistance or being has to be proved to you, the world isn't going to prove anything to you. Yesterday I was talking about Dozen and his three pounds of flax, and everything being equal. But if everything is equal, you find out many differences on every

[03:27]

as I've mentioned to you before, Srikirishi's comment, that if everyone sits straight, we can see many differences. We are always. Events collide in us, somewhere else. Our events are stitched together by us. I think literature comes from... to stamp or to put your mark on something. Words are putting our mark on something. But before we stamp anything or put our mark on anything, just our perception is putting our mark on things. I think many of us have trouble with the idea of will and opportunity and action as one. It's maybe for some of us a little threatening, as if we're in some

[05:01]

sort, fight, or battle of the wits, that there's some gap, there's opportunity, and then some gap, you see something, and some gap, and then you have to act. And the Zen emphasis on action means you make the gap shorter and shorter, so you have to push out some kind of energy. The gap is there, If you stop and think and want to do it right or correctly or you're afraid, if you don't compare and don't stop and think or worry, seeing itself is already action. If some activity is necessary, you'll be in it already. There's no effort required beyond being present and responsive. So the effort is to be present, not to be active. Now, what kind of present is very difficult to express?

[06:26]

Pavalokiteshvara is called the regarder of the cries of the world. Pavalokiteshvara is the epitome of the Bodhisattva as our sutra begins. So it's in, completely in transcendence or in meditation or in complete absorption, where there is no separation, and at the same time avails himself of everything. I don't know very well the roots in English and Sanskrit of these words, but I is at least the feeling of availability and avalanche. Those words in English has the sense of Avalokiteshvara. In English anyway, in Western languages they come from, to be strong.

[07:52]

to be useful, strong, that kind of sense. And the first part of Avlokiteshvara is usually said to mean to come down, to look down, But I think the sense is more... is to be a way off, a way separate from. The idea of up and down is a later addition. I would say it means, my own translation would mean, it means equidistant. Avalokiteshvara is one who is equidistant from everything. And the AU part, the beginning, the root, means to be off away, a little bit separate. So Avalokiteshvara is one who is completely separate and completely one with at the same time.

[09:23]

So Avalokiteshvara is one who regards, hears the cries of the world. But we have to start with our own cries. You should be able to hear your own cries. There's a poem. which was a Chinese or Japanese poem used in Buddhist collections, which goes, I don't know where her lovely face has gone, but the peach blossoms in the spring still laughing still in the same way laughing in the wind I don't know where her lovely face has gone but the peach blossom is still in the same way laughing in the wind

[11:10]

I like to think of what Keshavar wrote in that poem. That poem doesn't just have the sense that we find everything on one thing, or everything It doesn't matter that things change. One feeling is it doesn't matter that things change, because peach blossoms are the same. But another feeling of the poem is it does matter that things change. And it's not the same. But where is that faith?

[12:29]

But we can hear a kind of cry from that poem, or from that face. There is an article in the recent Scientific America, which is quite interesting, and as many scientific articles do nowadays, has strong Buddhist feelings. And it's an article about time. One of his examples, he says, if you take a bottle of perfume and sit it in a room, eventually all the perfume molecules will be scattered about the room. supposedly equally throughout the room, but actually not quite. And he says, at the level of elementary particles, there's no time and space in the usual sense. There's no past, present, and future for an elementary particle, he says. And the particles,

[14:09]

could reverse themselves and not disobey any laws of elementary particles, and all the perfume could go back into the bottle. But we know it won't happen. So our past is like that. Our past is... We can't get it back into the bottom. There's no way you can get it back into it. You can long for that lovely place, but it won't go back into the bottom. So when I blow today,

[15:12]

Prabhupāda looks and sees there are no… He hears the cries. Actually, Prabhupāda's cries, not he. He hears the cries and yet sees there are no beings. The cries are like the perfect, but it's not... that box doesn't exist anymore of perfect. And on the one hand we can say that your... The enlightenment is something like elementary particles which don't have time and space. Your enlightenment or liberation doesn't occur in time and space. Or when we... Suddenly we see two things.

[16:44]

And any way we look, we see through them, while before we only saw something like that. Suddenly we see through them. And we think, somehow we think that elementary particles are quite The elementary particles is just our explanation. But let's say they're as real as our instruments were, certainly. We find elementary particles quite miraculous, how they exist and don't exist. Yet somehow we think that that miraculous existence and non-existence is lost by the complexity of matter when things become more complex. But I can only suggest to you... It's not so.

[18:09]

That is just because you won't see the simplicity of your sitting here on the ground, or the leaves sticking to the ground outside. So, Aflokiteshvara's equidistance means, like elementary particles, he's free from his karma. But to hear the cries of the world means that also exists. And we find, seeing everything equally, everything is different. Everything is different, every moment is different. One face, one face, without some direction or ego, can express dozens of contradictory emotions moving across it, like clouds, shadows, at the same time. Many beings coming out.

[19:38]

So, I've been saying, don't harbour ill will, don't harbour your attitudes, etc. Maybe you could take refuge in your... perhaps it would be better to take refuge in ill will. It would be more realistic. But rather, the idea is not, okay, I'm not going to harbor ill will, I'm going to wipe it out, get rid of it, ignore it. Maybe using the same idea, harbor, I would say, set them all to sea, send them out there. Give them some recognition. Make use of them. Don't try to get rid of them. Make use of them. These cries, maybe they're your harbor full of cries, your own cries. And this is far more the reality for all of us than our physical body or our plans or anything.

[21:22]

And if you interfere with this delicate balance too much, people get sick, physically get sick, get cancer, get all kinds of problems. And there's some danger, I think, in Zen practice. It should be clearer. This way of life in which we create constraints for ourselves is a special way of life. Practice for 90 days or 1,000 days or 3,000, 5,000 days. One thousand days is about three years with a month off each year. That's one term in a monastery. Three months is one term, and then the longer period for beginners is a thousand days. But there's some danger in our community

[22:51]

of thinking that we should create constraints for ourselves, always. And I think some people in our community are suffering from it. We need to let constraints create themselves. But how to have our liberation or free opportunity under constraints is very, very important. So we create this kind of situation as an experiment. And you should know it's a kind of experiment. You may get so used to it, it's your way of life. That's perfectly okay. But as a practice, if it becomes your way of life,

[24:13]

We have to change it. Your teacher must make it more unexpected, or difficult, or easy. For the ones who are seeking something hard, you have to give them something soft, and vice versa. Now, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara has 1,000 eyes, 1,000 arms and 11 heads or infinite number of heads to respond to all the cries. But it also means another kind of space. You tend to think. We tend to think. Three people share the same space. Four people are four people in the same space. Five people are five people in the same space. But it's not so. It's more like Paul said, Jus so sermo.

[25:55]

about the branch over the moon. The branch over the moon is not the same moon, and maybe, we can say, is the same moon. But three people are the space of three of us. Zen Center's community is about 240 people who have been together an average of four and a half years. Some of us together as long as 17 years. Over a hundred people have been together from 5 to 17 years. This totals 1,038 years. It's a different kind of space. And many people can't cope with it. They can't cope with a space of three.

[27:19]

because you cannot have the usual idea of Google and have complex space. You always have to turn the space into something you can handle, and you make the person into stereotypes to control your space. You always are defining everything, every person, And if they say something, you add a little twist to it to make it plug into your space without disturbing. But Avalokiteshvara has thousands of arms and eyes and spaces. You must hear the cries of reward. In your zazen you're finding out your own perfume bottles, your own space. And how in your own space of many demons and people and things you regret and that fill you with some pleasure, how do you remain equidistant

[28:49]

and give these many beings space. Noah Rembrandt is always, in his poems, filled with this multi-space of demons and people and events. All his poems talk about this space, which is irreversible. skillful means is an attempt to suggest this irreversible, unrepeatable universe. And when each moment is an entirely new condition,

[30:06]

And to enter that you need composure, you need Avalokiteshvara's absorption. So good. Detached and yet not separate from it. The ability to hear the cries of the world, to have this intimacy, requires this detachment, this awful way. And the first realm you experience it in is your ghassan, when many bad and good memories and failures, and beings you wanted to be come up. And if it's difficult, you are better off, because you'll find out how to exist in it with equanimity, with detachment, equidistant.

[31:41]

It's easier to find out there than in society. We can get away with more than we think. helm to guide or steer or lead, the root means just to take hold of. And it's said that Avalokiteshvara has taken hold of emptiness. I would say, from yesterday, take hold of the bending grass.

[33:09]

take hold of three pounds of flax. Just to take hold is enough. When you see completely that there is no way to reverse your life, no way to get anything back in the bottle, And you see, there are many millions of conditions. Because, you see, once you give up trying to reverse it, you see there are so many conditions, you can't plan anything. All you can do is take hold here. in your own mythology, in your own body, in the midst of your own cries. And let everything go as it goes. Let everything appear as it appears.

[34:38]

your strength of your equidistance or equanimity can sustain. One idea we have is space is something, as I said, something abstract, which we exist in, some absolute which we exist in, unconditioned by us.

[37:01]

We know that's not so, but we feel that. Even if we know that space is only a set of conditions, still, we think our participation in that is minimal. So we tend to think that the universe or the cosmos or some collection of objects or some mathematical entity, neutral, no personality, no intelligence, which we somehow exist in,

[38:07]

Either God made us better, or chemistry made us better, or something made us unusual. And Buddhism would say, and our meditation experience says, it's not so. Tsukiyoshi would say that if we have to name it, he would name it one unconditioned being. And the entrance to this being is the freedom of this multiple space, multiple conditions. which means no ego. You have to exist in some particular form, of course, but

[39:38]

It doesn't matter what form anymore. And you'll find out by your practice that you don't feel the kinds of anger and disturbance, uneasiness, ill-will that come from attachment after a while. and you then can begin to find out how to drop entities, when they don't stick so much, and pick them up as necessary. So in a monastic life like this, we get everything in order as much as possible, without forcing ourselves too much, and we all do mostly the same thing. And it's like lining up like that. You may have some chance that way, to see,

[41:13]

this complex space by simplifying in the monastic life and to get to the ability to exist in your own prize and everyone's prize. without unfamiliarity. Many Buddhist stories try to get at this from various directions. Where is the mind before we exist, before people exist?

[42:57]

What is the path of Buddhism? What is Buddhism? What are we? If you can't answer, definitely give up all those. If you see you can't answer, definitely give up all those. temporal answers. If you have some great work to do and it has you fixed on a goal, Still, you should be able to be free from it completely and do it too. Otherwise, it will become corrupted by other people's space.

[44:38]

So in Buddhist life we take very special concern with how we take care of things, how we do things. Details, details of how we exist in this sphere. As a practice at first, and finally as alertness. the Fifth Patriarch, when he, according to the story, when he acknowledged, confirmed my name, he told him just what he'd heard in the beginning, unsupported by anything that manifests your mind. Where do you think

[47:04]

Avalokiteshvara exists. You will become Avalokiteshvara? Some person walking around is Avalokiteshvara? What idea of being do you actually have? That unsupported thought of sixth patriarch is Avalokiteshvara. Dr. Komzey says, wisdom which has gone beyond and by that has left nothing of the world behind. Avalokiteshvara exists now in us.

[48:07]

with us, all of us, woven in our thoughts. Starting to hear is Avalokiteshvara. What you hear is Avalokiteshvara.

[48:37]

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