The master said, It's a man who's driving a cart that won't go. Should we beat the cart or beat the ox? Darwin had no answer. The master went on, Are you studying Siddha Chan or are you studying Siddha Buddha? If you're studying Siddha Chan, Chan is not sitting still. If you're studying Siddha Buddha, Buddhahood is not a fixed form. In the non-abiding dharma, There should be no grasping or rejecting. If you're studying seated Buddha, you're killing the Buddha. If you're attached to the form of sitting, you're not reaching its principles. No, we don't have so much time, and so I would like to make some comments.

[01:07]

But with a poem, with a koan like this, what I would suggest is that you read it in its various forms, including in the book of records. And in the context of this Lancet of Seated Meditation, which is in effect a commentary on the koan, and you can't remember the whole commentary, but you can remember the koan. It's a very clear story. It's easy to remember as a story. And and let the story as a whole, and in its particulars, work in you. So that when you sit down to meditate, for instance, you feel, am I polishing a tile, or am I becoming Matsu, or Frank, etc.

[02:19]

I think the story allows us and has enough surfaces that it can keep turning in us. And in fact, I mean, let's say if you want to practice this way of Dogen and Sukhiroshi, it's just kind of du rigueur that you have to take this koan and work with it. And I can't remember how many times Sukhiroshi presented it. a hundred, I don't know, over and over again, or referred to it. And again, I want to say something about Dogen's world, because we need to shift a little in our sense of the world and what's going on. There's a word I like, a botanical word, indeterminate inflorescence. It means, I believe, that generally a branch flowers in a very particular way.

[03:42]

But some plants, it doesn't flower in a particular way. You can't tell on each twig how it's going to flower. It's indeterminate how it flowers. Is the second word inflorescent? Yeah, inflorescence. I think it means to flower. And the Chinese language, I believe, is rather free of tense compared to English, European language. And particularly in poems, they often just put the word and don't indicate whether the word's past, present, or future. And it's a little bit like the... The words float in a space, un-predicated space. So it allows lots of ways of reading it, feeling it out.

[04:46]

I started to say this yesterday. This truth abides in a state of objective reality. The features of the world are permanent. In spring, The hundred flowers are red. Doves are crying in the woods.

[06:17]

This is a statement of Dogen's. And I think it illustrates a similar pattern to the koan. which this truth abides in a state of objective reality. But that's very non-Buddhist. And the features of the world we know are not permanent. And nor are the hundred flowers red. But doves do cry in the willows. So what Dogen does, and what this is typical, I think, both of Chinese poetry, and I like what Su Kiersey said once, and I've mentioned it many times, that he said, when is a tree a tree, and when is a tree a poem? Sometimes you look at a tree and it's a poem. Sometimes a tree is a tree. So what state of mind allows a tree to always be a poem? So he starts out with something that in one level is not Buddhist.

[07:26]

But the hundred flowers are red. This is very much like a statement of equanimity or sameness or suchness. All the flowers have the same suchness. We can call them red, blue, green. It doesn't make any difference. They're all some color. And then you're into this, something extremely impermanent. Doves are crying in the willows. So it's a way of bringing you from your usual way of thinking through this into experience. Oh, yes, well, probably this is sameness or suchness. And yes, doves are crying in the willows. And there's some kind of relaxation in that. Then you can bring this back. You can start understanding this as true in some other sense, some Buddhist sense, that in some sense this truth bides in a state of objective reality. In fact, this truth that everything... is impermanent, is a state of objective reality. You have to look then at what you mean by objective.

[08:29]

And the features of the world are permanent in this sense that it begins to have another meaning again of sameness and the features, each one appears, each one arises. So a koan like this follows a similar pattern. It brings you into one way of looking at things and then begins to shift the ground under your feet Does that make sense? So as I've said before, we tend to see the world as a container. Now, if everything's connected, as I said before, it's the connectedness that's the reality, not the container. But we tend to see a container. And you said something yesterday, Chris, about if millions of people think this or something like that, but millions of people thought the world was flat.

[09:45]

I mean, this is particularly delusive because anybody who sits on a pier can see that a boat sinks from the bottom up. It's obvious the world is... As soon as you know, it's obvious that it's... But the fact that millions of people could be deluded, even in ancient times I knew the world was round, but through much of European history, you know, the world's flat. I mean, this is really not observant. I mean, you can even stand up on an observation tower and get a sense that the world is not flat. So it's quite easy for us all to be deluded. Yeah. And for all of us to misunderstand Buddhism or etc. No, I mean, we now accept or think or say that it's round, but it's floating in space. This is pretty far out. I mean, when you think of it, it is really kind of far out. Just looking, I mean, I get the...

[10:48]

chills up my spine just looking at the stars at night. And thank goodness for darkness. We would never know there were stars. And then let's again look at, because it's a useful analogy, this Big Bang. I mean, this is even farther out that everything was a micro-microscopic point and it's expanded into the Milky Way and everything else. I mean, well, can we understand it? It's a concept, but it's not understandable. But I think what's interesting and how it fits in with the Chinese view of things is that... Again, as I've said, it didn't expand into space. It created space as it expanded. And the only example I can think of is you can put, if you put your hands, two hands in one rubber glove.

[11:56]

It's a heck of a way to do the dishes. But, and then you pull your hands apart, that's space. And that's the space we live in, and we are constantly, by our movement, generating this space. Now, again, I'm not trying to make science or something like that. I'm just saying that's what the Chinese thought. They did not see this as a container. They saw it as some kind of medium we were constantly generating. It was almost like they saw it as a flow, but a flow that didn't take form until you instantiate it. So the idea in Chinese thinking, which Dogen, and if anything, Japan is more of a body culture in the sense in China, is you don't interfere with the flow, but you allow it to manifest in you. And this is, again, a very Taoist way of thinking, but I think this goes beyond Taoism.

[13:00]

It's not so simple to say Taoism influenced Buddhism, but rather the whole of Chinese culture influenced the way Buddhism is understood. It's a major, major different way of looking. One of the differences is this sense of, as I said in the beginning, gestation rather than a prescription or a recipe. Again, using a woman making a baby, you can't make a baby by a recipe. Add a little of this, a few cells, you know, eyeball, you know. And if you tried to do it intentionally, you'd end up with a toenail in the middle of the cheek or something. You'd get it all mixed up. To make a baby is something that you have to let happen. And it's far more complex than anything we can do with our mind. I mean, even if we arranged, you know, to, you know, test to pregnant...

[14:03]

embryo and cloning and stuff like that. Still, all we're doing is putting the parts together. We're not actually doing it. We still have to let it happen. So the Chinese version of Buddhism and Zen's version of Buddhism, which is, I think, different than the other Buddhism, is this strong emphasis on creating the conditions where you let realization happen. And I think that's what the word figuring means. Actually, the word figuring means something like, because you probably, I don't know what your discussion means, I think in its roots, something like bread and eater. Or to make of clay and earth or something. To do it by your hands, to do it by touch. So when you see that for Dogen, the world is not a container, you can understand what he means by face-to-face. Because there's no teaching out there floating.

[15:07]

It has to be instantiated face-to-face in actual situations. It's not going to happen because it's in a text and you happen to read the text. Well, reading the text is also... But, you know, the live dragon is not... Yes? No. So it's this constant... meeting, that's reality. Not some container, but meeting after meeting. We're meeting right now. I look at you, I'm meeting you right now. I look at you, I'm meeting you. And yet we're all meeting together. This kind of reality you have to bring into yourself. if you're really going to see how these stories and teachings unfold in Zen in particular. Now I have, as you've noticed, a kind of allergy of some sort which is new to me.

[16:20]

I've had allergies, but they've always been something like... I've blown my nose since I was in fourth grade or something regularly. But I've never had... That's just all year round. Just used to it. So I don't even think of it as allergies anymore. But recently I started getting allergic reactions to something here. Now what interests me... And this... What some of you brought up yesterday was this... Uh... inherent versus generated. And we can't really, we can't be totally clear about this inherent versus generated. One, these are, it's inherent and generated are both our Western words and our limited by our ability to make use of them and understand them. My guess is what's going on is beyond either of those two words.

[17:24]

But from the point of view of practice, our emphasis is on generated, not inherent. And I think one of the differences is we tend to think of something inherent if you think, well, I'm like this, but I have an alternative, and the alternative is something more basic. It tends to lead us into think something like the more basic was there first. Well, yes, but I think this Chinese Buddhist view would be there's virtually an infinite number of things there first. Yeah, maybe they were there first, but they're so fluid, and even our brain, there's been a lot of work done on the brain, that the fluidity of the brain to change even in our own lifetime, let alone over generations, we've barely touched the possibilities. So I really think that in practice, is there an original person? No, I think we're creating a new person. I think what we do creates a person.

[18:27]

And we actually create a different kind of person in the future through practice. So the idea that we're honing towards something, yes, we hone towards something that feels more fundamental, maybe is more fundamental, but We're trying to create a kind of, in Buddhism, I would say, again, I'm emphasizing in particular this refined, more refined way of looking at Buddhism, perhaps, Chinese Buddhism, I'm not saying Chinese Buddhism is more refined, but I'm saying in our refinement of this discussion, we're concentrating on Chinese Buddhism, is that we want to create a sangha womb, let's call it that, as well as the sangha body, which generates a person in each of us.

[19:32]

So let's go back to speaking about allergies. Now we also know that that in multiple personalities it seems, and I've seen this myself, just read it, that one personality will wear glasses and one won't. One will have allergies and one won't. Well, allergies are real basic. It's quite strange to have allergies in one personality and not in another. It's fairly easy to work with. It's like a spring breeze. I mean... A serious flu is more like a winter storm. It's a lot harder to work with. So what I do playing around is... As I said to Fran yesterday, it doesn't happen when I'm in Zazen much. And so I began, I sort of noticed it. And it takes four forms, or two main forms.

[20:48]

My eyes itch and run, my throat itches, and my nose runs. Those are the different manifestations. So I notice, I kind of set my mind to, okay, this is what you're going to notice these days. And it notices that when I'm speaking, it may happen more or less. When I'm thinking, it may happen more or less. When I'm thinking certain kinds of thoughts, it's more likely to happen than other kinds of thoughts. Certain kinds of postures, it happens okay. So what I discovered in myself is there are various bodies in me, one of them is allergic, but not all of them are allergic. So I reassemble a body that's not allergic. Does that make sense? I begin to notice When I'm thinking certain kinds of thoughts, the allergy is more pronounced. So I just don't think those kinds of thoughts until the allergy goes away. Or I notice that in certain postures or a certain feeling in my cheek here, there's... Anyway, I notice all the instances where it doesn't occur or it affects my throat or affects my eyes or only my eyes and not the running but just the itching.

[22:06]

And I just sort of notice that and then slowly I focus on those parts of myself that don't have allergic reactions. Does this make sense? And I kind of generate a body that's not allergic. Now I think this is partly what is meant by figuring. that we... One of the things we're trying to do in... Okay, let's take Sashin. One of the things we're trying to do in a monastic life is we're trying to create a complete life here, but a life, a full life here. And as many of us, those of us who live here know, it's often a quite busy life. It's better to be in an apartment in Manhattan like that. But we're trying to create a complete life here, which in its details is different. In almost all its details, it's different than the outside life. And in the Zendo, we're trying to create, and if we had a Buddha hall, a kind of complete Buddha world.

[23:12]

We chant that lineage and all. And it's interesting in the Sashin, where the seventh day should be the first day if the seventh day is to be the seventh day. The first day has to be the seventh day if the seventh day is going to be the seventh day. The seventh day, you feel quite good, you could go on. It's not so difficult, etc. Although the schedule is the same as the first day. In order to have the seventh day so free, the first day has to be like the seventh day. Does that make sense now? What? The first day has to have the same schedule as the seventh day. And it's very interesting in Sashin. I mean, we just had the Sashin. I just finished a few days ago. And I made the schedule slightly more difficult. And there was a certain amount of complaints.

[24:13]

There were rumors going around that he's getting old, and when you get old, you have to be tougher. I challenged these rumors immediately. Um... I refuse to answer on grounds that ... And one of the other rumors was that I had said that some people complained the previous sesshin was too easy, but that I, in fact, had started that rumor myself. And that the Dharma Sangha CIA, I was told, could find no person who said the previous session. It was too late. Anyway. So... So it was a little more difficult. I mean, not like the sashins when we started. I don't know exactly when you started, but there were no zafas, no zavatans.

[25:19]

We sat on tatami. There was no horizontal allowed, no naps. There were... As you remember, he writes about it in the biography, there were sometimes two-hour periods and once a two-and-a-half-hour period. Because Sukershi was in charge of the bell. What? Anyway, so it wasn't tough like that, so that's, you know... But any case, it was, you know, people found it difficult. But by the third or fourth day, suddenly it's not so difficult. Why is that? Well, I would say actually because it takes somewhere between 72 and 96 hours to break the habit body. You come into a session with a certain habit body. And remember, habits are emptiness, emptiness are habits.

[26:20]

We chant it every morning. I mean, habits are form, that's all. So, patterns. Habits are... Habit forms are emptiness. Emptiness are habit forms. And as long as you're in your habit body, the sashin is quite agonizing. But at some point it cracks. And I think if you find... If you hear somebody died, for instance, somebody close to you, I mean, your presence, it takes usually probably three or four days to... to begin to feel free. Sashin is seven days long probably because the habit body takes about 72 to 96 hours to break. That's one of the reasons I don't think you can have a sashin that's three days long. In fact, if you really do a real sashin schedule for three days, you put people in a pretty bad place because their habit body breaks and they haven't reconstituted themselves. There's some reason for these forms.

[27:21]

Okay. And also people are sitting and they notice that, I mean, it can be quite agonizing and there's a slight change in your mind and there's no pain. What is that about? Now, I'm not saying your habit body is just some sort of extra and your true body is someone... No, your habit body is your true body when that's your body. As I said, if this is a corpse here, it's what makes it alive that makes it a body. Your habit body is what makes you alive. You have a certain habit body. But the question is, do you want to live in this habit body all the time? So when we break our habit body, there's some opening for Buddha's body to appear or some other body to appear. But Buddhism is so designed that the receptacle that we are, the infinite fluidity which we are—let's not use a word like infinite—we create a situation where to develop a fluidity which

[28:50]

And we call that fluidity Buddha, something like that. And you can see it in here if you look on page 200 and 201. The end of the first full paragraph. I hit them in the dark. See that? It means sitting and breaking the skin born of the mother. Page 201. First full paragraph. Unless you want to count it. It knows about touching things. The last sentence. It means sitting and breaking the skin born of the mother.

[29:53]

Do you see that? That means to break out of the thought shield and body shield. It means to break through the habit body. Breaking the skin born of the mother. So, Dogen is speaking... I mean, we could say this is quite radical, you know, but... This is just, look, this is a wisdom teaching, not based on the mundane world, but based on wisdom. And the wisdom requires this breaking the skin born of the mother. And, I mean, if you want to do adept practice, that's what you're doing. You're doing something like that. And it opens you, now look at the last sentence in that page, is to take up the mountains and rivers of the entire world and know them with all one's power.

[30:59]

When you break the skin born of the mother, everything speaks to you. You really feel these mountains aren't separate. You feel this connectedness, some sort of... We're lucky to live in a place like this where the mountains are so present and trees and... Then the mountain is a poem. The mountain is a poem when you've broken, you could say, when you've broken the skin born of the mother. And then Dogen goes on to say to the next page, without our intimate knowing of the mountains and rivers, we do not have a single knowing or even a half understanding. This means that if I try to put it in words, that there are two things happening at any point. One is the instantiation of time and space in particularity.

[32:04]

And the other is everything all at once. Now, this is thinking in terms of timelessness, so we're not thinking of past and future. We're thinking of past, future, everything combined in this moment, as in fact it is. I mean, just look. I mean, if you want to start feeling magical, I mean, here all this appears. But the past is gone and the future isn't here yet. What's here? It seems awfully real to us, but it's still just appearing. And so breaking the skin of the born of the mother is also to feel the all-at-onceness of everything. And that Dogen is trying to express this all-at-onceness by saying that this intimate knowing of mountains and rivers, by that he means everything all at once, is the basis of knowing.

[33:07]

Now, on the previous page, 200, We talked yesterday about great function, and you see it pointed out right here in the first paragraph underneath the Lancet poem. The Lancet, in this Lancet of seated meditation, means the manifestation of the great function, the comportment beyond sight and sound. In other words, to function beyond your senses, beyond the world that the senses present to us. The world we know, as I've always jokingly said, look at all the television stations in this room, and cellular phone calls, etc. But there's a whole lot going on here, not just cellular phone calls, we just don't know what's going on. but we can begin to function in terms of it, although it's not within our sight and sound.

[34:21]

And what does Dogen call this? The juncture before your parents were born. There's the juncture of your parents which led to your birth. but the juncture before your parents are born. This is a wonderful way to talk about original mind or how we exist, not limited to our usual, how we exist as part of everything, not only the particularity of this body we have. And then Dogen says, it means you'd better not slander the Buddhism patriarchs. And then, down here, at the end of page 200, to try to... And we were talking about paradigm shifts. Now, this is a real paradigm shift.

[35:23]

When we turn the head and reverse the face, that means I turn my head back like this and then I pull my face around like somebody in, you know, one of those current science fiction movies. Turn my head and I pull my face around and put it at the back of my head. This is quite far out. This is quite a far out image for paradigm shift. Both looking back to our ancestors, but having this other... And he says it's the essential function of the Buddhists. It's the functioning essence of all the Buddha ancestors. It knows without touching things. For perception is of little measure. Yeah.

[36:29]

Now, just the sentence that Robert brought up. And I think Robert's... It sounded like the discussion was a good one. I'm sorry I didn't participate in all of it, but I came in and Robert happened to mention this polishing the tile. The polishing the tile refers to, first of all, what Matsu is doing. And we can understand that, at that first level, that you can't sit expecting to make a Buddha. But the polishing the tile also means the relationship between, as you implied, the relationship between Nanue and Matsu. The whole case is about them polishing the tile. to make a Buddha. Them rubbing against each other.

[37:45]

And I think that's why, one of the reasons why Dogen transposes the story so that Matsu has now received the seal of enlightenment and is not the student anymore. Because Dogen's trying to avoid the boring punchline of all Zen stories and now he was enlightened. And he gets kind of tiresome reading these stories. What's the punchline? Oh, he was enlightened. Oh, great. But then there goes another one. And that sort of ends the story. What do you do? There it is. Oh, he was enlightened. Shit. I read that story. It didn't happen to me. So Dogen is trying to here, I think, say, okay, let's study this story not as leading to enlightenment, but the making of a Buddha, of maturing enlightenment, of these two people still continuing this never-ending process of investigation.

[39:01]

So Russell might be sitting and I might feel perfectly good about everything Russell's doing, but I might say something to provoke him a little bit or say, what are you doing, Russell? And Russell says, oh, I'm doing this. And the polishing of the tile is also us reading the story. So the third level is, this refers to us doing just this. And the story is written not for Matsu and not for Nanui. This story is written for us. So really this story is about our doing just what we're doing is polishing the tile and making a Buddha. And making us a mirror. You can see the mirror right here, can't you? And so this sentence here, the precipitate assumption that the phenomena before one's eyes offers no further passage, the way I would understand that is that generally, now I don't know the Japanese again, but generally we say, talk about everything arising.

[40:19]

And when we speak about things arising, it arises in the mind, so it emphasizes the mind in which things arises. Now that's enlightenment practice, to do that. The precipitate assumption means something that's going down, precipitating. So it emphasizes what's come down, not the mind it comes up in. Does that make sense? So Dogen here is emphasizing the assumption that you take as real, not the mind in which it arises. So he's emphasizing this different direction, a downward movement instead of an upward movement. And that the phenomena before one's eyes offers no further passage, that would be to view the world as a container. It's a container and it's sort of permanent, but when you see it as a invisible medium which is always taking form in each thing, then each moment, because you're participating in it taking form, each moment is a dharmagate or a samsaragate.

[41:26]

So he says it offers no further passage. Yes, that's delusion. Each moment is what? Try the two roads meeting. And I think for some of us, you know, some of us are quite good at sitting and some of us are not so good like me and some of us are even worse than me. And Dogen likely gives us an out on 141, you know. If you're not attached, if you're attached to the form of sitting, you're not reaching its clinch. So Dogen isn't just saying that we have to do this seated Buddha, but I think he is saying that the most direct experience of this and maturation of this occurs in seated posture. Now, for example, during Zazen, this first period, I spoke a little bit. What I spoke about would be very hard to speak about, speak about with you or experience in ordinary activity.

[42:36]

But still, it doesn't mean we're limited to sitting. And I think that I'm basically commenting on the koan. It may not sound like it, but I think I am. I figured to do so anyway. I recommend that if you can... You sit every day. If you want to mature this experience, it's the best way to do it. It doesn't mean it matures only in zazen. But I want to give you a kind of concept of how I see it.

[43:43]

How I see it is that there's innumerable possible configurations Through our habit body and our particular culture, we give form to one. And we need to, to function, you know, simple. But practice says, if you want to study Buddhism, if you want to study human life in its fullness, you should see through beyond your habit body and not just be contained in it. That's dangerous. You'll feel crazy or something, you know, particularly Anyway, and so we need some way to not feel crazy, but open ourselves, what one of the koans says, exposed in the golden wind. One of the reasons our brocade cloth, which is meant to represent space, as I told Eno the other day, the background is often gold.

[44:48]

It's the sense that we live in a golden wind, in a golden space that we don't usually recognize. When you practice zazen or practice mindfulness, whatever your practices are, when you work with a phrase, and Dogen lists a whole bunch of different ways to do your figuring, you tend to gather. It's a little bit like... You know, you're trying to make a soup stock, and I think one of the things you can put in, you can put in cornstarch or something, right? And it thickens it, right? So there's certain things you do which thicken the Buddha body in our cosmic soup. So zazen tends to thicken the Buddha body.

[45:50]

It's like putting a little cornstarch in your daily life. Now, if you say that you have a habit of when you get up in the morning of washing your face and blah, blah, blah, shaving, if you happen to have to shave or combing your hair, whatever you do, say that usually takes half an hour. And you do it every day. But some mornings you wake up 45 minutes late and you don't have that half hour. And you just rush out of the house and you feel lousy. Your face feels all sticky. But if you take just a few minutes, one minute, wash your face quickly, brush your teeth, come here, out. So you've done your half hour routine in one and a half minutes. Then you actually feel pretty good. It's not quite the same as the full half hour, you know, you're a little rushed, but still, it's a big difference from not doing anything, right?

[46:54]

Well, Zazen, I think Zazen is like that. Is that if you don't have time to sit, you sit for one minute, two minutes. And what happens is you awaken this other possibility, this other configuration of a Buddha body, and it surfaces. Because the Buddha body, what we're calling the Buddha body or Zen mind, is there, it's just underneath the surface of consciousness all the time. If you stop practicing, it sinks farther and farther below the surface of consciousness. And consciousness tends to dominate. So what we're trying to do is practice. We're saying, okay, we have chosen this way. There are other ways, I don't know. I don't know about them, but I'm confident there are. But in this way, we begin to find what we call emptiness in the midst of consciousness. This other subtle body

[47:59]

which can feel, as I said this morning in Zazen, which can feel wide, boundaryless, and imperturbable at the same time. It can feel extremely solid, and it can feel... In your own paradigm, you can, oh, well, that's a nice experience during Zazen. It's just as real as your habit body, maybe more real. And so part of practice is just to give yourself permission, say, hey, this is also my body. Everything in your daily life reinforces your habit body. You need to do something that awakens the cornstarch of the Buddha body. So even if you do one or two minutes of sitting, or if sitting is difficult, you just stop for a minute, concentrate on your breath for a few minutes, and then go do your day. Zen mind, as we understand it and experience it, particularly once you start practicing, is always in your daily life.

[49:09]

It's just sometimes quite far under. And the more you practice, the more it begins to surface, and the more you practice, the more it begins to permeate your daily life. And we're talking not here just about interdependence, but also interpenetration. Things aren't just interdependent, they also interpenetrate. So I think this is... If you just read the koan, it's hard to get this. You really have to go into the koan to get what I'm talking about. But I think if you get the world Dogen's coming from, This world is not a container. You can begin to feel this world which is also womb, this world of these... Anyway.

[50:13]

Then the koan begins to work in you differently and more thoroughly. That's more than enough. So there's something we should discuss. When you talk about the container world, in Indian Buddhism, that almost exact phrase is used frequently.

[51:18]

Which exact phrase? Container world. I can't remember the Sanskrit for it. And it's used as a... Well, it uses a reference just for the rupadhatu, the form world, and it's the enlightened world of the other realm is posited as... Rupadhatu? No, it's just that it's used as a reference for what you don't, for what you're not actually striving for in practice. Well, I think loka dhatu means self-created world, moment by moment created, that you generate on each moment. Is that right? Yeah. And loka dhatu is more certainly the Buddhism that, as I understand it, is emphasized. There is another phrase, a technical phrase, that literally means container world.

[52:21]

It means the phenomenal world. Does it mean it from the point of view of delusion? No. It's just a factual designation of existence. But it sounds like what you're saying, the Chinese culture sort of already starts from a different assumption than apparently the Indian... It seems like it does, yes. And again, I'm not enough of a scholar to say for sure. I don't know if anybody knows, really. But it does seem that Chinese... And you know, in China and Asia, in East Asia, they see India as the beginning of the West, while we see India as the beginning of Asia, I think. So in Indian Buddhism, one of the challenges is to find some way to see past the vessel world, the container world.

[53:23]

Whereas in Chinese, this wouldn't be a goal at all, because it's already Easter. Well, no. Still, the habit is, and Dogen wouldn't say, to see the world in front of you with the precipitate assumption that it's not a passage. In fact, most of, I mean, we all, no matter whether we're Asians or Westerners or whatever, we tend to see things three-dimensionally. We tend to create this world. There may be a different kind of emphasis. There may be different teachings within it. But I think it requires a teaching to see it differently. And whether that teaching is real present in the culture or hard to find or you're put in jail for, you know, for professing it or something. You know, Dan and I have both read this book of David Chadwick's. One thing that's interesting in it, and I guess it's okay to say this, is Hoichi, his son, had a hard time understanding Siddharth Kirsi.

[54:31]

And Huichi is somewhat tired of hearing of his great father and all that stuff, you know, because he knew him as a father who was rather strict and difficult. And I think Huichi actually... Part of the problem is Huichi didn't know Sukershi in America, but also Sukershi became a different person in America. He took on a body that we helped him generate, in fact. And he came to America and put himself in a situation because he wanted that to happen to him. It wasn't like it just happened accidentally. He tried to create a situation where it would happen. And it was there present, as I understand him, always when he... But he didn't find a way to bring it out the way he wanted to in Japan. So, I mean, on the one hand, Hoichi didn't know... Sukhi Rishi in that way, but also Vichy doesn't have this, even though he's Japanese and in this Chinese yoga culture, he himself thinks of people as being consistent and not different kinds of people appearing.

[55:44]

But what I'm adjusting to now, jet lag is only part of it, is Crestone, as I said to a couple of you at dinner the other night, is a different body for me. And it's funny, like in Sashin, when you You know, I love the gruel in sashi. But if I went to a restaurant and they served me gruel, I'd say, come on, you know. So, it's not, there's a different, because I genuinely love the gruel. And I eat things steadily without the gamashio and stuff, and it just tastes just, it's a different pace, it's a different, and you know, it's a different body eating the food. I think we have to understand it that way. The food is, because you serve the same food somewhere else, you'd say, you should pay me to eat this. In actual fact, I think much of our food would fly in a restaurant.

[56:50]

Dan, you were about to say something. In May of this year, there was a conference held at Stanford on Suzuki Roshi. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend. And Hoishi was there, and after many people spoke, he got up and, although he spoke in Japanese, it was translated, cause translated. He said he was overwhelmed, and tears came out. He said, I never knew this was my father. I never knew this man is my father. And I think what was the turning point was hearing so many personal stories from people. Because he'd heard about his father, this great teacher. So I'm bringing this up just to nudge us into a little different way of looking at ourselves than at other people. And I think it opens us to recognizing this seated Buddha is present as something we can generate.

[57:53]

The possibilities are there. It's not something that arrives in the future. It's already arriving and your attention is your most precious commodity, non-commodity. The preciousness of our existence is attention. What you bring your attention to generates a body. So just notice what your attention goes to. Whatever your attention goes to is creating a love. Attention. Intention can be behind attention, but attention is the actual mental, physical act of paying, giving, bringing attention to something. And I think it's useful to inventory where your attention is. If you inventory where your attention is, you'll see where your life is at. If you want to be a Buddha, you have to bring your attention to the Buddha body, bring your attention to mind itself.

[59:05]

And I think Dogen says something like that in there, I can't remember exactly where. And You know, we have flashes of understanding sometimes, and we have flashes of understanding which cause us to change our life or to start to practice and things like that. But these flashes of understanding are swamped by all the other details of our lives, usually.

[60:25]

But if you really shift your sense and recognize, feel these flashes of understanding, and you continue practicing, you can have a confidence that they mature, even though you continue your ordinary life, etc. And I think if they didn't, then we'd have a practice just limited to some lucky person or exceptional person. But practice is not exceptional. How can I, what words can I say to... It's no more exceptional than a tree growing, but you have to know where to put the roots.

[61:29]

And your attention is where you put the roots. So, if you, through your attention, you put your roots in your life a little differently, a different kind of tree grows. So, anybody want to say something? Sorry, I start talking about these things, I kind of make it hard to talk about it because I... Maybe I... I have a question. Yeah. In this Goan, parallel is drawn between polishing the tiles to make a mirror and sitting in meditation to make a Buddha.

[62:37]

And there's this dialectic in it that You can't make a mirror by polishing a tile, and you can't make a ruler by sitting in a meditation, yet you have to do it. And it's kind of like I feel like I'm stuck in understanding it. You're stuck because you feel that you have to do it to make a Buddha, but doing it doesn't make a Buddha? Well, the view is that you're already Buddha. That's all. So you accept your... As Sukyoshi would say, all of us are just showing what kind of Buddhas we are. Whatever you do, you're showing what kind of Buddha you are. And so you accept yourself as an imperfect Buddha, that's all.

[63:39]

So when you're sitting, you're not you sitting, it's an imperfect Buddha sitting. And that attitude changes things. An attitude is like the surface of a mind and the gate to a mind. And so because Zen is not prescriptive, as I've been speaking. It works with attitudes a lot. It doesn't tell you what you're going to experience, but it says, if you hold this attitude, something will happen. Does that make sense? So as I've pointed out many times, I used to listen to, after about several years of sutra, I thought, what the heck is he teaching anyway? And I examined it. Everything he's teaching was an attitude. Didn't tell me where I was going or what would happen or anything, but he kept giving me attitudes to work with. And then to let those attitudes affect.

[64:45]

Attitude is maybe like a mirror. You reflect your attention with an attitude towards it. It's the same, it embodies the same attitude as Thich Nhat Hanh's, you know, saying, just now arriving. Just now arriving, just now arriving. You know, when somebody dies, You hear, perhaps you know somebody pretty well, but you haven't seen them in a while, and you hear, oh, you know so-and-so died. And you think, oh, that's funny. Your mind just accepts it. They're dead. Do you know what I mean?

[65:46]

You know, just sitting here, some movie star or some friend. I just heard a while ago, Joe Yosef. What the heck was his name? From Russia. Quite a good friend of mine. I didn't know he died. I heard it. When he first came to America, he said to me, Deek, that's the Russian way of saying Dick. He called me Deek. He said, I now know why America is necessary. Joseph Golden was his name. Joseph Golden, yeah. But there's a certain finality to it, you know, and maybe it takes, if it's somebody close to you, it takes a while for your habit body to... But it's amazing how thoroughly we accept, up until somebody's dead, if there's somebody that's... sick and you're connected with them, you don't want them to die, you don't want them to die and you're with them, then they die and you're, oh, okay, they're dead.

[66:50]

It's just like something happens. And that's way-seeking mind. That's a way to understand what way-seeking mind is. That mind which just accepts, oh, they're dead. And way-seeking mind is close to this zen mind or this end-it or magnanimous mind. But it's a kind of knowing. But it doesn't do anything. It's just, oh, they're dead. I mean, one day you'll hear, you know, Richard Baker, I heard that. And you'll say, oh, dead, huh? If I'm sick, you'll say, well, I hope he doesn't die. I mean, maybe, I hope he doesn't die. But if I'm dead, you just... And that feeling that you have, oh, he or she is no longer here. It's amazing, if we didn't have that mind, we couldn't go on.

[67:52]

We'd be so tortured by everybody who dies and suffering, et cetera, but somehow we can just accept the most extraordinary things. And that mind is, we can, I think, understand as way-seeking minds. The more that mind is present, the more it's a kind of knowing or entering into the world with intimacy, unbiased, seeing both sides, that kind of feeling. So let me see if there's anything else we should look at or anybody wants to bring something out. Then we can sit for a few minutes and stop. I wish I had a quick, maybe a quick question.

[68:55]

Some of us have never been to a Shoshone ceremony. I was wondering if it's not to be now, but at some point before the ceremony, you might say a little bit about our part in the ceremony. a little lecture platform instead of a baton. And we can change it around a little. But basically, we'll arrange it so that the first questions are asked by somebody who's done it before. And you just do what they do. Does that answer your question? And generally you come up and there's a custom of bowing and then asking your question and I say something and then you can if you say yet you say thank you or you come back with one or two what you mean or what you mean and then usually if that doesn't satisfy it you have to you say I don't know.

[70:14]

He was not in line. Yeah. You just make space for the next person. Yes? At Kasahara, when we first started doing the Shosu Asano Rojo with Suzuki Roshi, he gave a little talk about it. And one of the things that I recall he said was, don't ask a question about something that you are not familiar with or that you don't know about. Okay. Present what you are familiar with or what you understand. Present it as a question. And be open to what comes back. Not really now, is it? Thank you, Dan. Maybe this point, if you grasp the mark of sitting, you're not reaching its principle.

[71:33]

I think Carl makes it fairly clear what that means, but it means you realize the mark of sitting. It doesn't mean the mark of sitting isn't important. It means you realize the mark of sitting, you just don't grasp it. That makes sense? So there are various realizations... and marks of sitting. And you should know them, but you just don't grasp them. And I think Carl's footnotes in this are often at least as interesting as the text itself. It's wonderful he did all this for us. We skip over, and I skip over, which is right after Master answered, How can you make a Buddha by sitting in meditation?

[72:43]

Dali says, What should I do? Master says, If a man is driving a cart that won't go, should he beat the cart or beat the ox? Dali had no answer. Everybody has a problem with that. Well, obviously you hit the horse. But it probably works too if you bang on the cart. But sometimes it's understood that the cart is the body and etc. But this is a statement like when you come to a fort, take it. It's meant to push your mind outside of the categories of, do I hit the cart, or do I hit... It pushes it to, when you come to a fork, take it. So you hit both, or hit nothing. Can I read the koan to you? During the Kaiyuan era, 713 to 41, there was a certain Saramana,

[73:49]

Ramana Matsutaotaoyi, who lived at the Chuanfa Hermitage and practiced seated meditation all day. Poor fellow. The master, Nanyue, knowing that he was a vessel of the Dharma... It's a wonderful feeling knowing someone is a vessel of the Dharma. It makes you a vessel of the Dharma. in that knowing, and went to him and asked, virtuous one, what are you figuring to do sitting there in meditation? And I like the innocence of Dowie's remark. I'm figuring to make a Buddha. I don't know what exactly, only Carl translates it as figuring. I'm figuring to make a Buddha. And anyway,

[74:55]

then took up a tile. My guess is he probably walked away and was around. And then later, 10 or 15 minutes later, you know, he's sitting and he hears outside the door something that's kind of... Who the hell is bothering you? What the hell are you doing out there? What do you think? There's a certain humor in this. Oh, what do you think I'm doing? I'm making a mirror from this tile. How can you make a mirror by polishing a tile? Well, how can you make a Buddha by sitting in meditation? Well, then what should I do? If a man is driving a cart that won't go, should he beat the cart or beat the ox? So he means it's not in the category of this kind of decision.

[76:00]

It's not in the category I'm trying to make a Buddha or not make a Buddha. And he had no answer because it's not something that you're supposed to answer. Now I would say... you know, this has two sides, and it's not important, really, what Matsu understood, but rather, it has two sides. One is, you didn't have an answer. So that's our experience. Why don't we have an answer? That's one of the answers there, is we don't have an answer. Another answer, another way of understanding it's like this. You have, and not one, one of the levels is not right. Both levels are right. One level is, didn't have an answer. Another level is, it's not, you answer by saying nothing because it's not in the category of answers. So showing is not in the category of answers, of answering or not answering.

[77:03]

So Nanue said, well, are you studying seated Zen, or are you studying seated Buddha? So this brings it back home, too. to Matsu, and I understand that Nanue is trying to refine Matsu's understanding and also trying to express his own understanding or get his own understanding shared with Matsu. If you're studying seated Zen, then Zen is not sitting still. If you're studying seated Buddha, Buddhahood is not a fixed form.

[78:16]

That's what I've just been telling you. It's this fluidity you keep bringing together. Buddhahood is not a fixed form. These statues are receptacles for something that's not a fixed form. Do you understand that as a fixed form? No. Every time you look at this wonderful statue, there's something a little different. If it's a real statue, it brings a different feeling when you look at it. It's not the same feeling every time. Some statues, it's the same feeling every time. You don't want to look the third time. But with a real statue, something fluid happens. In non-abiding Dharma, this truth abides in objective reality. In a non-abiding Dharma, there should be no grasping or rejecting. Now, sometimes we grasp and reject. But we should also know that mind, like, as I said, way-seeking mind, which doesn't grasp or reject, oh, she's dead, he's dead.

[79:24]

There's no grasping or rejecting in that. It's just, oh. So we can't live all the time. It's not like you should always be in a mind where there's no grasping or rejecting. But we should know in this non-abiding Dharma that body which also neither rejects nor grasps. And that's quite subtle. That's also very much like non-interfering observing consciousness. A consciousness which doesn't... The way I usually describe it, just to give you... It's like when you are first practicing and you begin to have samadhi or some feeling of uninterrupted bliss or something, as soon as you notice it, it ends. And that just means you're not very skillful. Don't yet have your yogic skills honed. Because eventually, that bliss or that empty feeling or that no thoughts, you can observe and not interfere with it.

[80:28]

It doesn't stop. You can observe it. And that's an essential tool for practice, this non-interfering observing consciousness. And by the way, you should accept the difference between thoughts which are thinking, and particularly thoughts which are narrative, and thoughts which are reports. Thoughts which are reports are not a problem. In other words, while you're sitting you notice you're sitting quite still. If it just stays a report, it kind of takes the form of a thought, but it's not really thinking. It's just a kind of telegram you've received. Something like that. If you're studying seated Buddha... Now you see, in this one, in the first one, he says, if you're studying seated Chan, Chan is not sitting still. So that's correct. Chan is not sitting still. If you're studying seated Buddha, Buddhahood is not a fixed form.

[81:31]

He states something and then he says it's correct. He says in a non-abiding dharma there should be no grasping or rejection. That's his statement. He says you're studying seated Buddha, you're killing the Buddha. That's not true. Because when he says you're killing the Buddha, he means you're becoming Buddha. So he doesn't... These phrases aren't parallel in their meaning. He expects you to know that. And just because it's in the same sentence, it's not the same meaning. So here it means if you're studying seated Buddha, you're killing the Buddha. If you're attached to the form of sitting, you're not reaching its principle. And... The last sentence is quite good where he says, Carl is good on this, the religious implications.

[82:33]

So this isn't just, you know, like a yogic skill you're developing. When approaching meditation, one must not only abandon ideas of the secular world, which we're trying to do, like we're trying to create something here that's not not the usual, our usual habit body. This is just a secular, I mean, I know what you mean, but it's not our usual habit body. But we should also surrender attachments to the spiritual life. So we don't shift to now saying, okay, I'm dropping the secular, now I'm going to have this religious life. In fact, you accept whatever its results and forms are. And this is sort of like what you're just saying, that you're an imperfect Buddha, or whatever happens, you can sit, you can't sit. You just accept it as... So we're back to this dialogue between being informed by Buddha and accepting your own posture.

[83:37]

And they're one activity. And accepting your own posture is also being Buddha. Whatever that is. You know, busted knee. We used to call him the busted knee Buddha. I like those stories. Two stories of guys with bad legs. Daito Kokushin. You know that story about his bad leg? He never worked. He couldn't sit really. Just before he died, he said, you didn't obey me in life, you're going to obey me in death. Yeah. I mean Zen does like a little drama yeah I apologize for the seminar not having enough discussion but maybe we can design it next time so we have more discussion if we have a next time

[84:46]

So let's sit for a few. Mmm.

[85:19]

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