We come together into this class, and we read the story, and then something happens in the class. So in some sense, the way we're studying the stories is what happens in this class, which is something. And for some of you, that may be the main way you study these stories is, you work with these stories, is to come to the class. And you may not study them or think about them too much outside of class, but some of you, I think, are actually working with them outside of class. Right? Some of you do, right? Like Bill, right? Yeah. At least when he sees me, he starts studying them. Oh, yeah, non-abiding, that's right. We're studying K74, which is about non-abiding, isn't it?

[01:02]

Sure. One of the things that I'd like to just bring up for you to consider is whether you had thought that these stories that we're studying are records of something that actually happened or not. Had you thought about whether they actually happened or not, ever? Have you considered that, where you stand on that? I was sure they happened until you said that maybe they didn't. You've been thinking that these things actually happened. So Andy Ferguson just made a book which has some of these stories in it, right? And I think, if I'm not mistaken, someplace in that book maybe it says, or at some point in that production of that book, I think the word history was used, wasn't it?

[02:15]

Was it ever used? Yeah, the word history. So sometimes people write histories, they say, that has something to do with was something that, you know, objectively happened out there. Right? Do some people think that about history? Of course, in Buddhism, that's basically a definition of delusion, that we think something's happening out there, objectively independent of us, but still. So, now history, it could be spiritual history. In other words, history in the service of spiritual life. And that might not be that you think that this thing actually happened. Like I remember one time, I was watching this movie about King Arthur. And, you know, King Arthur had a part of his career, he had this glorious court with a round table and knights in shining armor kind of thing.

[03:20]

And the men had great strength and and virtue, and then he got wounded or something. His wife had an affair with somebody, right? And then he got kind of... Yeah, he got kind of upset. And when he became, you know, not exactly psychotic, but anyway, he became dysfunctional in a certain sense. He couldn't be the king anymore. Is that right? And then wandered around looking for the Holy Grail. Is that right? No, I wasn't looking at that. Huh? What? I wasn't looking at that, but... First of all, I'm looking for... What was he doing at that time? Huh? What? Right. When I found it. But what was he doing at that time? He was just a rat, right? Yeah. On this story that I tell, he was like, he was like an arrest.

[04:30]

One day he was going through some dark area of England and walking through some, you know, England, you know, it rains a lot. And so the guy, when you walk around, you walk through mud and stuff. So he's walking through some muddy road in the rain, in the dark, and sort of had this encounter with this young kid. in the rain and so on. And I don't know, he said to the kid something like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And the kid said, I want to be like one of those guys in King Arthur's round table. And I want to be like one of those guys servants of King Arthur, like they were. And King Arthur said, well, what do you want to do that for? And the kid said, well, because of the stories about them.

[05:32]

The stories that people tell about them. I want to be like they are in those stories. So, not to say those stories aren't true, but anyway, the actual situation was King Arthur was this guy he was talking to, which was who was like right there looking at him, right? He didn't say, I want to be like you when I grow up. But he actually said, I want to be like you and your guys, right? But not like you. I want to be like the stories of you and your guys. I don't. But not like you. Not like you actually are. They never even encouraged him. But in fact, that was King Arthur right there. Part of what's going on here is that maybe Buddha's right here in the room, but in a state of having a hard time trying to find out how to live.

[06:34]

Used to be Buddha was like 16 feet tall in gold, with lots of disciples, giving great talks, and we wrote them down. He was a great teacher, right? But maybe now Buddha is like in his room and maybe none of us want to be like, you know, maybe the person in the room that's having the hardest time is the Buddha, actually. Who knows? That person might ask us, what do you want to be when you grow up? Say, I want to be Buddha. Well, how come? Well, because of the stories of Buddha. Or I want to be, even better than Buddha, I want to be a Zen master. Well, how come? Well, because of those stories. So maybe those stories happened and maybe they didn't, but some scholars really think that they didn't happen. But there's something about the nature of the text that makes some scholars feel like this is not the way Chinese people talked to each other at that time.

[07:39]

That it's not really so likely that they actually had exactly what's written down there happen. And if you look at when the story started to appear and so on and so forth, there's some reason to think that actually what happened was that at a certain phase in Zen history, in Zen history, like right now, this is like history, right? That people were interacting in a very wonderful way. That there actually was a wonderful interaction between... practitioners of the way, and they really were realizing enlightenment. But they weren't, like, writing down what they were saying. It was beyond that. Then later, somehow, at a certain point, people wanted to... Later, people felt that the practice that they were doing

[08:45]

a big part of the practice they were doing, a big part of the meaning of the practice they were doing, had something to do with the fact, or with the fact, with the possibility, with the vision that they had ancestors. In other words, they had a practice, you know. And the practice they had was, in some sense, like, what is it, like meditation? Like sitting cross-legged, living in a monastery, practicing precepts? practicing Buddhist precepts. These guys and these girls were practicing precepts. And living together and trying to be helpful and practicing generosity, all that stuff, they were doing that. But somehow they also felt that in order to really understand the fullness of this practice, of these ordinary practices, which are like practices maybe that were done in India, which you can read in the scriptures, practices of generosity, precepts, patience, enthusiasm, concentration and wisdom, studying various Buddhist scriptures, all these things had meaning in relationship to the fact that they had ancestors.

[10:11]

The Chinese people are are susceptible to this way of thinking. Before Buddhism came, they thought of themselves very much in terms of their ancestors. It was a big part of the way they lived. They lived, you know, and ate and stuff like that, and reproduced and so on and so forth. A big part of their life was, and why they behaved the way they did, was because of who they thought their ancestors were. and what they thought their ancestors were like. So when Buddhism came to China, it didn't necessarily bring with it a Chinese history and a Chinese family feeling. Matter of fact, it brought this feeling of leaving home and all that. So anyway, the Chinese, for quite a while, tried to adopt the Indian system of practice.

[11:14]

And they did adopt it, and they did wonderful things with it. But there's something about the Chinese environment that kind of wanted to, like, to some extent, just reject the Indian understanding of Buddhist practice and develop a, you know, sort of, you know, take it in and digest it and make it their own. And, you know, actually one of the Chinese characters, the compounds for digestion, is to destroy and transform. Which is, you know, when you chew food, first you break it up into little pieces and then it goes into your body and it gets transformed. That's one of the compounds for digestion. So in some sense there is a tendency, not just in China, but there's some tendency to want to take in the teaching and break it up and transform it into your life. So the way the Chinese would do that, the way each one of us digests is to some extent different.

[12:21]

We have slightly different patterns of digestion. Some of us have easy time with this or that, right? The Chinese way of digestion was that they, as it looks like, they took Indian practice and transformed it to some extent into ancestral The Zen people did, the people who made this lineage. And one way to see this is they started to imagine stories about their ancestors, interactions about their ancestors. that they felt would put them in touch with the actuality, would bring the actuality of the ancestors into their life. And that they would bring, there's regular, there's like, what do you call it, like, I don't know what you call this kind of time that we have here, but it's basically conceptual time.

[13:24]

Time is really, that we deal with a lot of time is conceptual, like before, during and after, that kind of thing. It's linear and You know, it doesn't go backwards, stuff like that. But then there's another kind of time called ancestral time, which is very important to Chinese people. And so one story you could make about these stories is that these stories were invented by the Chinese Zen people so that they could have this sense of communion with the enlightened ancestors. And so here we are now in America, 21st century, reading stories about Chinese people who may have, you know, who are actually supposed to be enlightened, who are Buddhas. And they're interacting in this way, and we're using these stories for some purpose.

[14:27]

So how do you understand what we're doing here? I don't want you to have a fixed understanding, but I'm just putting this up for you to help you think about what these stories are about. So one way these stories are sometimes seen, the Shobo Genzo, Dogen's work, and many of the fascicles of his work, which is the Treasury of True Dharma Eyes, the first part of the fascicle has a koan, a Zen story, and each fascicle is a dharma eye. Each fascicle is something you read, and as you read it, you develop a lens. by reading the story. It helps you develop a certain way of looking.

[15:30]

And so he, to some extent, used these stories as ways of developing your vision. So these stories were created by people, I think, to help the contemporary Chinese monks of the Zen school develop their vision. That part of our vision can be developed by imagining interactions among enlightened people. Were the people who wrote the stories enlightened? Were they? Do you think? Yeah. Well, that's something that you now can imagine. you can imagine that the people who made up the stories were enlightened. But then you can say, well, you can also say, I don't think they were, because if they were, why would they want to be imagining stories of ancestors?

[16:35]

But then you might say, no, enlightened people, one of the characteristics of being enlightened is that you do imagine, instead of passively imagining what your history is, you actually get with the programs. So the Buddha had an imagination of his history. He told us that he had ancestors, right? That was part of his shamanistic experience in his enlightenment, was to, you could say, to imagine, dash, see a history of himself. The Buddhists actually saw that he had studied with many past Buddhas, and he had names for them, and he also saw himself practicing with various people in past lives. He had a history of himself before this current life. So that's Shakyamuni who did that. We all have an imagination of our history. Don't we?

[17:40]

We have an imagination of our history. We also have an imagination of the history of the universe. Everybody does. I mean, if you don't have one, then that's yours. And each time in history, the version of the history of the universe changes. Now we have black holes and Big Bang and all that that we think about. Some of us in different ways. Some of us imagine the world, how the world expands, the universe is expanding. Some of us don't. But anyway, each of us has our own version. Each of us has a sense of the history of the world. Some people's sense of history of the world is mostly the history of Europe. But some people in this room have the history of Europe and Asia. Some people in Asia only think of the history of Asia. They don't think of the history of Europe. It's just a little appendage that recently came into play. So everybody has a history of themselves, a history of... And some parts of your history are really important to you.

[18:44]

I mean, they're like really important. These stories became really important to Zen people in the past. That's a story I'm telling you. I imagine that these stories have been important to Zen people. They took care of them and spent a lot of time talking about them. And Zen teachers have been bringing these stories up and discussing them with their students for hundreds of years. But they weren't discussing these stories at a certain point in history. And then they started to do that. And there's ways to tell. But there was a time when Buddhists were not, Buddhists in China were not discussing the history of their ancestors as part of their practice. They didn't do that. Their practice was to do things like chant, Chinese translation of Indian texts, to read manuals which describe literally, practically speaking, how to do meditation.

[19:50]

They did that stuff. But at a certain point, although in Zen schools there were manuals, in fact, very little sign that what happened was the teacher got up in front of the student and read the manuals to them and commented on them. They talked about these stories a lot. And we had classes at Zen Center, too, where we'd go through manuals on meditation. matter of fact, a priest group is studying a manual on meditation right now. It's Samvinirmocana Sutra. It's a bodhisattva meditation manual. And there's no stories in it so far. Anybody seen any stories? No stories. The whole, the sutra is set in a story, a situation where the Buddha asks various bodhisattvas ask Buddha questions. And now we're in the chapter where Maitreya The bodhisattva of love is asking the Buddha questions about tranquility and insight.

[20:51]

But they're talking about mostly like speaking of how the mind works and how you direct attention and things like that. Like stories of people coming in and having conversations and teachers, well actually it's not, it's stories where they come in and ask questions like, well what's shamatha, what's tranquility and what's insight, and the Buddha explains what tranquility and insight is. The Zen stories is the monks come in and ask what tranquility and insight, and the Zen teacher says, what do you care about that for? What's the point of discussing that? Or, you know, have you cleaned your bedroom yet? This kind of thing, this is not in the Indian scriptures so much, where the people actually ask technical questions about meditation and the Buddhist said, well, you know, have you written to your mother lately? Or, you know, who are you? This kind of thing. In some ways these stories are more like family conversations. I want you to actively participate in this process because you are actively participating in this process.

[22:15]

I want you to be aware that you're alive, that this isn't like we've got these stories and this is like they're out there and you're going to get something from them. It's like these stories are what you think they are. And you can't not think something about them. You think you understand them or you think you don't. And you think you understand them in some way or another. These stories are the product of human imagination. And at a certain point, people understood that they were imagining these stories. That they were imagining their history. And they also thought that their imagination was all the history that they had. So in some sense, even the people who created the Zen history and the Zen lineage, they also, at a certain point, created their lineage, made up who their ancestors were. You can see that. Were these people like charlatans, or were these people the real magicians of Buddhism?

[23:22]

And after they made up these stories... which they were very happy with, then those stories were what later people did talk about. So although the stories themselves may never have happened the way they were imagined, once they were imagined, then those stories were what people talked about. So now we've got the stories, plus we've got the new stories, Does it make sense in this culture to use them in the same way or a different way from the way they were used in China and Japan? And another thing about Japan is that the Chinese stories grew up in China, and after a while in China, the Zen people did not continue to study these stories.

[24:28]

So there was in China a time when Zen school was very influential, when it was like a major school of Buddhism, when it had a tremendous popularity and tremendous influence. And you can spend the rest of your life spending part of your time for the rest of your life thinking about what it was about Zen that made it so influential in China, and then of course Japan and Korea, and now in the West too. What was it about it? But anyway, it was very influential. But the time it was influential was not the golden age of Zen. The time when it was influential was the time when millions of practitioners were looking at and thinking about the Golden Age of Zen. During the Golden Age of Zen, Zen was not very influential. There was just a... There was like 175 Buddhas and their students during the Golden Age.

[25:32]

I mean, the Golden Age is a time when we said, these Buddhas lived. Not just one, but hundreds. And we have their names and addresses and stories about them. That's the Golden Age. And before them there was not stories of Buddhas. There were maybe Buddhas, but there weren't these stories about them. Or if there were, they're gone. But actually it's also possible, even during the Golden Age of Zen, the Tang Dynasty, that there weren't stories then either. There were just these Buddhas. Then later there were stories about them, and then when the people were studying the stories about these people who may not even have existed, and studying the stories about these people, even if they did exist, that may not have happened that way. In fact, they were Buddhists, and this was the only way that these people could contact them, and they did contact them, and because they did contact them, they had this very precious and vital thing

[26:42]

called a direct communication with what Buddha is. And it was like an irresistibly vital event in Chinese history. But maybe that's what was actually happening, was that these people were envisioning and imagining in this very wonderful way Buddha in the form of these stories. And so the question is now, is our envisioning of these stories, first by reading them, then by discussing them, does it have a vitality which inspires and nourishes our lives.

[27:45]

And if it doesn't, well, what's another way to use our imagination? What's another way to use our human intelligence in relationship? Should we then say, look, let's get rid of these stories. There's something else we should study which is more important. What would it be? Maybe we have to make up a whole new... non-ancestral Buddhism or a whole new set of ancestors or something anyway. They needed to do this, I guess. They went to the trouble of doing this. And what they came up with was something that here it is still. How come? Why did they want to keep this alive? And how did they keep it alive? And I stopped short there. I was saying, in Japan, the difference between Japan and China is that in China these stories grew up, were created, and created this very influential thing called Zen, but then it was over.

[28:55]

They stopped studying these stories after a while. And Zen lost its influence to a great extent. Buddhism continued to be, there continued to be many temples and many monks and nuns, But the influence of Buddhism on the culture, I would say, this is a big, kind of like broad statement, but if you watch how Buddhism influenced China during the time when Buddhism was influencing China, once again, was a time when Buddhism was Zen, and Zen was looking back at this golden era. It wasn't the golden era. During the golden era, the influence wasn't so strong. It's in the Song Dynasty. Hundreds of years after the Tang, when the Sung people were looking back at the Tang, those people influenced, transformed Chinese culture. After that, Buddhism was not transforming Chinese culture so much. Buddhism was just part of the deal.

[29:56]

And Buddhism and Confucianism and Taoism were resonating more. And other things were more influential, like communism and so on. Buddhism had very little effect on China in the last couple centuries. It was something that was part of the deal. It wasn't doing that kind of thing anymore. And particularly Zen, not so important. Just part of the background. When Zen got transmitted to Japan, it was not something that the Japanese created. As a result, The funny thing is that Japanese Zen, these Zen stories and stuff, were transmitted and recreated, and the practice of koan study was recreated and the stories were perpetuated, and they have almost as much life and use quite recently as they ever had, because it wasn't a Japanese thing. It was a Chinese thing, and in a foreign environment, it actually could just sit there and be a museum piece.

[31:01]

And so it didn't, like, what do you call it, it didn't have any, what do you call it, natural predators, like, what is it, this Lagenestra that the Italians brought over from Europe? The broom? Yeah, Scott's broom. It's not a native plant here, so it just takes over, right? And so also koans, when the Chinese Zen stuff came over, in like the 13th, 14th century from China to Japan, it just took over. There's no context in which it could actually change, and it hasn't really changed in 800 years. It's basically the same material. It had some influence, but it hasn't changed much. The Chinese went beyond it, and then it lost its face. So now what are we doing here? studying these stories. And I think it's time for us to, what do you call it, consider, like, you know, what phase in this process are we at?

[32:14]

Are we just mimicking and cranking this thing over again? Or is it time to, like, stop studying these things or, you know, be more responsible or, I don't know, responsible, yeah, more responsible, more adult about it. Are you ready to be adult about it? And what would that look like? It seems like we've got enough material now. And maybe not, though. So this is a little bit about what I'm thinking about, what I wanted to tell you at the beginning, to enlist your... to enlist your energy and your intelligence and your imagination in studying this ancient material and to open your mind up a little bit to maybe some ideas that you hadn't thought of about this stuff, like I think. When I first started studying Zen, too, I thought the stories were about, I thought they were history.

[33:20]

I thought the people that they were about were actually like people that were like us. And then I started reading what some scholars said, and they said, well, maybe Bodhidharma really never was a Bodhidharma. And I was kind of shocked by that, because that's part of what attracted me to Zen, was that there would be this lineage of person-to-person transmission right back to the Buddha. And not so much so I liked the Buddha. Actually, I didn't really... When I wasn't attracted to the Buddha, I was attracted to the behavior of Zen monks. The way they behaved was... stories that I liked. I wanted to be like those stories just like that kid. But I did like the fact that it wasn't just some random good guy or good girl. There was a gang of them, and also they had this lineage. The lineage really appealed to me, that they had some background. to this present behavior, which was so cool. So the Japanese Zen monks, the stories about them, I don't know what happened, but the stories that they told about them were stories that moved me more than the stories of the Western spiritual traditions.

[34:27]

Primarily because the stories of the Japanese Zen monks and nuns were more accessible to me. They were basically like an inch away from what I could do. Like this, you know? The difference between the clenched fist and the open hand. Like that. That's not that amazingly different. Right? I mean, it's something you can do. You can open your hand, right? But if you've got a diamond in your hand, sometimes you have trouble opening it. Japanese or Chinese? Japanese. The Japanese stories were the ones that really got me. I didn't start reading the koans in the Book of Serenity, which wasn't translated yet. I read the stories like from Zen Dust, which were mostly about Japanese. Anyway, my favorite ones were about Japanese monks. I didn't know they were Japanese necessarily, but now I know that they were Japanese. Their behavior really attracted me, that it became my ideal to become like them. And then I found out that they were part of a meditation tradition, and I went back to Buddha.

[35:30]

That gave them more credit. It enriched the picture, but it wasn't because I cared about the Buddha, but just that they were part of a tradition somehow made it really appeal to me. Yeah. Well, if you've got a dime in your hand, maybe you don't want to open your hand up because you're afraid you'll lose it, right? But you can, even if you have a dime in your hand, you can open your hand and let somebody take it. So they show an example of where you can actually do that. You can actually, when you have something that you care about in your hand, you can actually open your hand and let somebody take it. It's not, it is possible to do. It's not the same as like manifesting a diamond in your hand, which the Christian tradition was more like that. Like make a diamond appear in your hand or make, you know, they'll make the dead arise or people walking on the water or, you know, Miracles were often associated with the spiritual history of the West.

[36:33]

Things that, you know, a little bit beyond what I can actually, like, on a daily basis, on the playground, imagine doing. But on the playground, like, in an argument, to sort of say, well, maybe you're right. That's like, you know, you could imagine saying, yeah, well, you know, well, maybe you're right. And that makes all the difference in the world, just to sort of consider the other person might be right. Or even, maybe I could be wrong. It's not that big a deal, and yet it's something that can happen. And it's so cool. Isn't it? To be able to be flexible. We can do that. We don't very often, but it can happen. And these were stories, like very accessible stories. These stories that we're studying now are a little bit taking more imagination, I'd say, than knows. Those were easy. I could get them right away. And I wanted to be like that. And then I find out that this tradition involves these more challenging stories, stories which actually are making your mind... Those stories were about your mind relaxing, but didn't require your mind to relax that much to get the story.

[37:44]

These stories are about requiring your mind to relax. But part of your mind relaxing is for you to look at your mind and see how it's working. to notice the habitual patterns of imagination is part of releasing your imagination. These stories challenge you that way. Don't they? But there's more than just relaxation. There's also like taking responsibility for what are you going to contribute to the situation. And because that's part of Now I have the imagination not just of the Golden Age of Zen, but I have the imagination of the creation of the Golden Age of Zen. There never was a Golden Age of Zen. The Golden Age of Zen was something that was created after the Golden Age of Zen. And that was very wonderful and useful that that was created. It was a very inspiring vision of this Golden Age of where you could have Buddhas not just in India, but in China.

[38:49]

That Chinese people could be Buddhas. And it could be a whole bunch of them at the same time, helping each other out. Sending students back and forth. Isn't that a beautiful picture? Isn't that like... Isn't that cooler than having like one Buddha? You know, sort of everybody constellated around one Buddha in India. Isn't it nice to have many Buddhas all over the planet? Well, some people might think, yeah, that's cool. I like that vision better. and a non-localized, non-centralized Buddhism. So there it is. It's a little bit of an introduction to the study. So I can also, I have imagination, I have an imagination.

[39:51]

So I imagine, I try to imagine now, how did they do this? Did they get together in groups of two or three? Did one of them just get up in front, or did one of them who was senior in front just get up and start telling stories? Is that how it happened? Did they get together and say, you know, what do you think happened at that time? What did our ancestors do? Well, I heard this and I heard that. Did they actually hear anything? Another thing about... And another part of the history thing is that in the early histories of Buddhist monks, they told... They told... The histories were, in some sense, more like histories, He was born in such and such a place, had these parents, went to this monastery, met this teacher, blah, blah, blah, and studied these things, had these understandings, had these students, started these monasteries, wrote these texts, and died.

[41:06]

Early histories were like that. The later histories were more They had some of that, but the later histories were more these interactions. And the interactions are the things which I think there's the most sign that the interactions were the product of imagination, and less the product of actually checking birth records and things like that, and monastery registers and things like that. But more and more, the records of the monks, The record of the practitioners tended to be more of these interactions. And the focus of this training was not so much the focus on where the person was born or what high school they went to, but the conversations between this person and his teacher or this person and his students. And these conversations are the part that seem to be most likely to have been imagined. And these conversations are what we're focusing on.

[42:07]

They're the main cases here. And then in the commentary, they bring in some historical background. But the actual case that the monks were meditating on and debating about, that's a new thing in history that we find. Is that enough background? Yes? To me, it doesn't feel very important, you know, whether the stories, they can confirm whether the stories actually happened or not, you know? And I think scholars can kind of get off into spending a lot of time on that. I know, you know, there's all this debate recently about Shakespeare. Did he really write the folios? And there's this endless bickering and lots of energy going into who actually wrote it. Whereas, you know, to me, the important fact is that we have Well, the comparable thing would be, almost comparable thing would be, not so much did Shakespeare, not who wrote the plays, but did the plays actually happen?

[43:16]

Ah, I see. Did those plays happen? Those plays have shaped our minds, haven't they? Right. Our minds are shaped by those plays, to some extent. Now, some people, what's his name, Harold Bloom says, those plays have created our personality. In other words, before those plays, the Western people didn't really have personalities the way we do now. They had personalities, but they weren't like the personalities that we have now. With the aid of Hamlet and Falstaff, we got a whole new idea about what you could do with a personality. But did Falstaff actually happen? No, it's just a play. But then again, like... But in Zen tradition, we say these plays actually happen. We don't say that Falstaff is our ancestor, right? But spiritually speaking, when I read the Iliad, I felt like I was reading the history of my mind.

[44:21]

I don't think of, you know, Odysseus and those people as being my blood ancestors, but they're the ancestors of Hollywood. You know? It's like you can see Hollywood, the basic patterns of Hollywood are in that book. And before that book, you don't see it. There's nothing like that in human history before that book. But now, the images of the Iliad are the images that, you know. So Shakespeare, we don't, in some ways, we're missing out by not being able to think that Shakespeare, that those stories actually happened. But in some sense, the Zen stories are actually that we think that what those Zen monks, those little Shakespeare's, made, that we actually think those stories actually happened. Whereas actually, those stories, we don't know who they wrote, who wrote them, and maybe somebody says, we know who compiled them.

[45:24]

But we don't actually think that they happened. We actually think they happened. We did before tonight, anyway, think that they were actually happening. But in some sense, they are like little plays. Chinese plays which shaped the Chinese Zen monks' minds, and the Chinese Zen monks then shaped the minds of the Chinese people. The way Shakespeare's plays have shaped our minds, those Zen stories have shaped indirectly through the Zen practitioners, shaped the Chinese culture. Now, it's very difficult for us to write, you know, Hamlet and Henry IV now, But somebody did write it at some point. Somebody made that story and wrote that poetry. We don't know who, but somehow it was created. And also those Zen stories were created at some point. Somebody told those stories and wrote them down. Or somebody heard those stories and then wrote them down. And then they wrote them down again and they changed and being recopied.

[46:28]

But anyway, this stuff is the product of human biological functioning. And so I'm actually trying to encourage you to be little Shakespeare's, because you are. You're all making your little history plays. You're all making your little romances. You're all making your little tragedies. You're all making your little... But can the Zen tradition help you realize what you're doing? And can you see how the Zen traditions do it? Can you relate to this tradition? Can it help you take responsibility for your own functioning so you can understand it. So I think to some extent in these classes that does happen sometimes. Doesn't it? I mean, you start to become aware of yourself and what's going on with you in the class. But... Yes? Yes. But for me the difference is that it's... for me it's not so much the story of prescience but more that this... the mind, explaining the mind.

[47:41]

Yeah, that's right. Can you describe something like before and after, but... Well, okay, but the people before Shakespeare did not talk like Shakespeare, but the people after Shakespeare did talk like Shakespeare. So it's true that when Shakespeare talked, the whole world supported him to be able to talk that way. But nobody talked like him before that. But now we do talk like him. And we do think like him. If you look at the characters of other people's plays, his contemporaries, who were also good poets, Some people think that Samuel Johnson is a better poet than Shakespeare, anyway. But if you look at the characters of his plays, they're like, they're nowhere, they're not comparably complex. So in some sense you can actually say that people's personalities were less complex before Shakespeare.

[48:47]

You could make that case. Now you can argue it too, but anyway. There's no characters in any plays before Shakespeare that are comparably complex to Falstaff and Hamlet. Read the Greek plays. They don't have any personality in those plays, do they? Not much. It's a whole different... The gods are working through those people. You don't get your own personality. In Shakespeare, these people actually have their personality, and it grows. During the play, you can watch it develop. It gets... That's like us, isn't it? We have that, you know? We expect that of people now, that if they tell stories, that they had some development of this personality. There are a lot of people in Shakespeare's time who were very upset with what he did with the English language, and they wrote the King James Bible to get their point across. And that got another point across very nicely, and that now is also our mind. Equally influential, maybe, to Shakespeare. Those two things. And so, again, we have been affected to some extent by these Zen stories.

[49:55]

And I feel like I would like us to, I don't know what, talk back or talk forward from this point. And... I mean, maybe in this lifetime we'll just, you know, it's like, maybe it's too soon. Maybe it can't happen in this lifetime that Zen culture can happen here, that we can make Buddhist cultures here. Maybe we just, you know, just keep getting material and going over it for the rest of our lives. And maybe in some future lives, or some future generations, we'll actually, like, make something that their version of the history will be such that it will be so... You know, it'll be like, it'll be like really a creative thing. But at the same time, I'm sort of knocking on the door, I'm saying, are you ready to start to create and using this material as a point of departure? Or maybe we're even beyond this case and we don't even finish the show yet, because we'll find something more interesting to talk about.

[50:59]

But I think it's time to do something new. Yeah? Yeah. Would you say that the engaged Buddhism movement that's been going on for the last 30 years is having a new trend in Buddhism, or is that something that's been a consistent piece? Maybe that's it. That's possible. I don't want to cross anything off the list. But does engaged Buddhism use the koans? And if it doesn't, that's fine. Not all the schools of Chinese Buddhism imagine the history of their ancestors and use that as the basis for their practice. There's many other schools of Buddhism that coexisted with Zen. There's Pure Land Buddhism, Tendai Buddhism, Shingon Buddhism, Huayen Buddhism, Precept Buddhism, very big and influential schools.

[52:07]

But they really didn't have that much influence on Chinese culture, and they really didn't do much new over what happened in Tibet, Mongolia, and India. The new thing, the really new thing, was Zen. It somehow, it was the thing that got to be most Chinese. Yes? When you describe... very nicely how the Chinese digested the Indian version and came up with the Chinese challenge. And then I hear you also inviting us to do the same, to really digest and come up with whatever, and I also feel that happening with American Buddhism and what we're doing with Japanese Buddhism. How would you explain, I think you're saying that that didn't happen in Japan. that they took the Chinese stories and they stayed Chinese? Or did... In some sense, the way the Japanese did it was, in a typically Japanese way, is that the Japanese... Excuse me for doing this.

[53:16]

You know, this is like the history of Japan all of a sudden here. The Japanese did something which you do not find the Chinese doing. The Chinese do not take things in from other cultures in order to maintain China. They don't do that. China never worried about other cultures like, you know, overwhelming them. That's actually a problem they have, actually. Japan always looked at China and also America, big continental cultures, as threatening them. And what the Japanese did from early times was they would... China was the first big example. They took Chinese culture into them in order to protect Japanese from Chinese. So they take the foreign culture and learn it very well in order to continue to be Japanese. They actually looked at China. The Japanese could see that China did not take in the Western things to protect themselves from the Western people.

[54:19]

They could see that China was being overwhelmed by the West, which it was, and partly because China was not worried about the West overwhelming them. They just said, we can absorb anything. That was their history. All the invaders just come into China and pretty soon they become Chinese. That's the history of China, basically, except the West did the same thing. The Chinese are still Chinese. It's just that the West mauled them for centuries and, you know, really gave them a hard time and enslaved them, partly because they let the West come in and just do that, because they weren't worried. The Japanese never let anybody do that. And the way they protect themselves is when they see the enemy coming, they find out what the enemy got, they learn the stuff, they become just as good at what the enemy does, and then they continue to be Japanese. So first they did it basically with the Chinese, and then they did it with America or European culture. They learned it really well, and they learned all these things, and they continue to be Japanese.

[55:20]

They haven't really changed that much. They're still this unique people, and they've been able to continue to be these people because they've learned the foreign ways as well as the foreigners, pretty much. So they did it with Buddhism, too. It's a kind of digestion to protect the status quo. And they were shocked by the superiority of Chinese culture, and they were shocked by the superiority of Western firepower and technology. And they just, at a certain point, they said, let's learn that so we can continue to be Japanese. So they learned, but the Western things then don't evolve so much in Japan because they're imports. And so Buddhism, although I think Buddhism was taken on partly to protect Japanese culture, it didn't evolve so much because it was a foreign invention in the first place.

[56:26]

But they made their own Buddhism which was a uniquely Japanese version of it. And Americans have a similar thing to Chinese. We're not afraid of anybody taking over America, right? We can absorb a lot, anyway. Maybe our absorptive history is not the same as the Chinese. But the Chinese have not only absorbed, but basically, if you go over China, it's still basically one race. Whereas America is really different and new in that way of being all these races mixed together. So we have something new here, and maybe that will be one of the key factors. of what we do here with Buddhism. But anyway, you take a plant from a foreign place and you plant it, and if it thrives, if it can make it, it sometimes doesn't evolve the way it would evolve back home. At home it may evolve and become, you know, go out of existence by its natural habitat.

[57:27]

Here it may not survive at all, but if it does survive, it may be like It doesn't change the way it would have changed back home. Like immigrants. Huh? Like immigrants. Yeah. Right. Yes. I have like this, I don't want to be complacent either with the way you study, but that, you know, each of us who come to this class, I have a tale I told myself that we're deeply affected by this study. And then we go out in the world and interact with hundreds of people every year, every day, and somehow, then in some way, you know, to the degree that we are affected by our study, we are forming a new way of studying it. Yeah. So if that's what's happening, how do you see that? This is the way you see it. And something else I'd like to say is that the way we're studying these cases is, as far as I know, and I don't know that much, but... As far as I know, it's unprecedented.

[58:27]

And some people who trained at studying koans in Japan or Korea, they would say, what are you people doing? This isn't the way you do it. You don't do this. This isn't the way to study koans. Well, it's because it's not the way they did before. That's why. In fact, it isn't. That's pretty clear. This is not something that's done before. What's going on here had not happened before. This is not... Now, of course, in the traditions where they think they're doing what they did before, well, that's, of course, what they mean is it's like what was done before. Of course, it's new. But basically, they think they're following a traditional way. We don't think that, do we? Or maybe some of you think it is, but it's not. This isn't a traditional way. These are traditional stories, but the way we're studying them is not traditional. This is a new thing which you are experiencing here, you know. So your invitations are us.

[59:35]

The invitation is new, for example. So instead of saying, this is how we're studying it, because we have a story about how it's been done, and we're trying to do it too, you're inviting us to pay attention to what it is we're doing, like what it is. Exactly. By doing this. And not just that, do we want to keep doing this, but... It's like we've been looking at ancestors because we think, and the way we're looking at ancestors is the way we think the ancestors looked at the ancestors. And it's like looking at ancestors... It might be. You might think that. Oh, okay. That might be one of the visions you have. Yes. And so that's all in that time. And there's the other time of ancestors too. that are there that are going to be studying how we have studied.

[60:41]

Come on. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Or the next generation maybe do something really... They may look at what we're doing but do something really different and not try to copy us. So that's very exciting to me, to look at the process What it is that we do. And that's very, to me, the juiciness of the koan. For myself, that's how I've come. Like, what is it? Right. Let's see. Is your name Catherine again, back there? Catherine? I wanted to say something more about what the Japanese did, but before that I just wanted to say that there is some tendency in various kinds of traditional studies for the teacher of the traditional study to say, this is what we're doing. If you're interested, fine, but this is what we're doing.

[61:44]

But I'm not going to change it for you. So a koan study is sometimes presented that way, too, as a system. This is what we're doing. If you want to do this study, fine. And that can have some vitality or some juiciness, too. It's just the question is, is that the way you want to do it? And if you do, that's available. But this is not going to be that way, because it isn't that way. Another example of Japanese I just want to quickly mention is that we have in Soto Zen, we have a shuso ceremony. And in Japan, the way they do it is that the head monk, the shiso, learns all the questions that will be asked during the ceremony and learns all the answers. And then the monks who are asking the questions, I think all they've got to do is learn the questions.

[62:48]

And they get a question, and then they ask the question, and then the head monk hears the question, which they've studied the question, and they study the answer, and he gives the answer. They say, And the head monk says, And they say, That's a pretty good answer. That's a pretty good answer. But I have a question. And then he goes on and then asks them more, and then he says, congratulations. And everybody does that same thing. They yell out the thing, head monk, ask the question, and they all say, pretty good answer, pretty good answer. And then they ask a little bit more, and then he says, thank you. So that's the ceremony. But the head monk, most head monks, when they're studying these questions and answers, it's in classical Chinese. Most of the monks are not educated enough in classical Chinese to understand what the question and answer means, to really deeply understand it, but maybe not even superficially.

[63:52]

They just memorize these Chinese characters. But during the ceremony sometimes, they understand what it's about. So it is possible by rote memory of something you don't understand even, not just to Like if you could memorize, like Shakespeare. You can memorize Shakespeare, but if you've read Shakespeare, sometimes you don't understand what they're saying, right? You don't quite get it. You know the words, you can say all the words, but you don't get it. And then sometimes you do get it. Suddenly, you get it. And so you can imagine if you were doing a Shakespeare play or reciting a sonnet or something, And suddenly you might get it. So that's the Japanese way that they do the ceremony. When Americans hear that, it seems really strange that you would memorize the questions and answers and then get up there and the person asks you the question. Do you say what you memorized? That's really strange. We would think you'd actually ask a real question that has to do with your actual practice.

[64:52]

And we actually instruct people to ask the questions that way. Ask questions about your actual practice. Not theoretical or Buddhist-sounding things, but something that really relates to your life. and it's not too esoteric so that other people can understand. In a Japanese thing, the head monk doesn't know what his answer means, doesn't know what the questions mean, and all the people listening don't know what they're talking about. But the head monk, the head monk being in the center of that often has a really good understanding in the ceremony. The other people sometimes do it too, but the head monk... putting all that effort into it and being the center of all that energy, sometimes they have an initiation right there. It does happen. You can do it that way. But I don't think Americans are going to do it that way. I don't think so. I don't think we're going to learn Chinese and then speak to each other in Chinese. I don't think we're going to do it. An English translation doesn't work either because it's not poetic enough.

[65:56]

Because as soon as you translate it into English, you understand it. It's not hard enough in English. We have to make new poetry that we don't understand to have the equivalent experience. So that's another way of the difference between the way Japanese would do things and the way the Chinese do things and the way the Americans do things, is we do not need to copy to protect ourselves. We have more room to be creative. We have the security of being a continent people, and the arrogance of it, too, in a way. So there. Was there something else? Just like the records, like a new quick record. Yes. My experience on it is always that I need to approach it as if it were poetry.

[66:58]

As if it were what? Portrait. I mean, it's hard in the same way, and it's also kind of funny in the same way, and it's also not rational in the same way. You know. It's sort of, the stories aren't hard enough in translation, but those stories are. I mean, you know. I mean, they feel like poetry. The koans, like also Susan said, koans are hard enough. We don't read the koans and just, we don't, you wouldn't, you don't read through a koan and just go on. You stop and say, well, I don't know what that means. Like poetry, right? So maybe, actually, if we did translate those questions and answers from the head monk ceremony and did them, they might be mysterious enough for us.

[67:59]

If not, you could translate them into Latin. There's another element. Which is that the Japanese is a much more body-based or conscious culture, so that when they were asking and answering, it's like, you know, as you demonstrated, your whole body is involved. It's not just head monk, what does it mean, blah, blah, blah. It's, you know, there's a tremendous amount of energy there, and we don't do it that way. So I think that that... helps create that situation where some understanding can come out. Right. I think that we've been doing that. In the last few times, I feel like we've shifted in terms of how we've been sitting with the koans. And I think that there's this... I like that more of us who are being involved and coming up to the front and talking and sharing and taking aspects of the koan and having the moment of not knowing that leads to a moment of aliveness.

[69:02]

Right. So part of what I invite you to do is to imagine ways that we can concentrate our physical experience in our meetings. One of the ways we've been trying is have people come up here and sit in my lap or sit next to me or have people come up here and speak to the whole group. This focuses your energy and puts you in the head monk's seat for a moment. These are ways we can do it. So... But I'd like you to participate in creating the opportunities to have your whole body involved in this study. I've been thinking about it, but I invite you to do it too. And also remember that what we're studying is not separate from our... It's not like those are stories out there that are created and stand separate from our bodily... concentration in our bodily practice.

[70:03]

Yes, Andy. Part of the transformation between classical and the Golden Ages and the Song Dynasty was the dynamic between teacher and students. As you pointed out, during the Song Dynasty, the use of the stories about the Golden Age became prevalent as a form of teaching. during the Golden Age itself, a common form of intercourse between the teacher and the students was to challenge the students in front of the group. And I think that when you ask people to come up and speak to the group, that that is actually harking back to that earlier era and creates that dynamic more effectively than what developed in the summer. So I don't know if we can limp our way through this text, but in some sense, to create that dynamic, maybe we shouldn't have a text.

[71:13]

We should just get together, and students should come forward and be challenged without relying on a text. which also means without not relying on a text. You could bring forth the text, but you wouldn't have to. But maybe we would just require that you did, not because we need the text, but just because you don't want to use a text. Because a text is a thing you know the least about. You know, just so you don't bring forward what you know about, like, okay, I'm a... I'm a mechanic or something, but maybe it's okay. We could have the mechanics come forward and talk about being mechanics, and the farmers come forward and talk. Maybe they could talk from their point of strength. Maybe that's fine, to challenge them on what they know something about. Maybe we should also experiment with being challenged about something we don't understand. Yes? Well, as you described the strength of the Japanese, I think that's very right, is the enormous ability to simulate, to completely take it on.

[72:27]

I know it from the field I was working in. They didn't have a jewelry tradition. And within one century, they got a better technique than, anybody else. I mean, it's just amazing. Right. And that protects them from foreign jewelry. Right. Because then they're not dependent on the foreign jewelry. They don't have to buy it from the foreign people. They can make it their own and export it. They did the same thing with guns. They got guns from the Portuguese, and after a few years, they were making more guns and better guns than any place in Europe. And they were exporting guns all over the world. But they did that to... So that's the thing. They learn it and learn it better so that they're not dependent on the foreign thing. Because the foreign thing, if they don't have it, then the foreign people can do that. And the Chinese, they did that... The English did that with opium, right? The Chinese didn't want opium. The English had a war with them to force them to take opium so the Chinese would become dependent on the opium sources. Earl Grey.

[73:30]

Earl Grey. That was who Earl Grey was? Thank you, Earl Grey. Thank you. So yeah, they do that. Yes, go ahead. I would then say, and what is more specific here is like improvised on a classic, like for example, like jazz or like something like that. That's kind of the things for you. You have some kind of frame, but then you go completely from there. It's like emerging or like California kitchen, for example. I mean, this... California cooking, you mean? Yeah. I think that is the strength here. So when you say, well... The strength here is what? Is maybe going from... One thing is like the merging, like the mixing, really bringing completely different things together. Yes. And the other thing is, like, go from a certain frame, kind of like a classic bassist, and then improvise into this completely open.

[74:39]

Right. That's the virtue of continuing to study the cases. Right. Yeah. Rather than just coming here with whatever, right? That maybe not... Maybe we need to agree on some point of concentration, and why not these stories? I keep getting this image of a sand... creating the pearl. I mean, I see these clones as irritating. And I think the fact that they're foreign is, for me, important. I think part of my observation of American culture is we're lazy. and we're arrogant, and we think the whole world is like us. And it is. It'll be more and more so. So to bring something in that's really, really, you know, makes my mind, my mind can't fit around these. So... Or even if your mind did fit around them, some Chinese person could come in and tell you that that's not what the character means. And you would say, oh. But if it's an American story, you think,

[75:39]

Nobody can refute my understanding of an American story, and I understand it anyway. So we're more, in some sense, we're more vulnerable when we study these. That's the advantage of these. So maybe we can continue to study these cases, this poetry, both the poetry of the story and the poetry of the poem celebrating the case, But I invite you to think of ways and bring up ways to make it more a concentrated and challenging experience. And, yes? I was thinking about what Ana was saying about improvisation. And when I've done theater improvisation, what I find really wonderful is that I'm simultaneously being challenged and met at the same time. and so is the other person. So it's a very particular kind of interaction. Yes. So I just wanted to go... Well, you said challenged and met, and I would say another characteristic of effective improvisation, you're challenged, you're met, and you're supported.

[76:47]

So part of what I maybe mentioned to you before that there was this game, which is still going on, but which I participated in for a while called theater sports. And one of the rules of theater sports was when somebody offered you something, you couldn't reject it. You had to accept it and promote it. And if you had two teams and this team would offer this other team something, if this team would say, we don't like that or try to put it down, they would lose points. You have to receive what's offered by the other team and elevate it, promote it, you know, like really use what they offer. And you're promoting what they offered, you get points for that. And if you accept it in a kind of mild way, you know, just like, oh, okay, that's nice, that's called wimping. A wimpy acceptance, you lose, you either get, I think you get a minor deduction for wimping. In other words, it's like, oh, okay. Like somebody walked up to you and said, no, you're a frog.

[77:53]

And you say, uh-huh, I'm a frog. That's like a wimping. But somebody come up and say, you're a frog, and you start going, walk, [...] and jump around on the stage. This would, like, promote their suggestion, and your team would get points for that. So the other team's trying to give you something that you won't be, that you'll have trouble promoting, that you'll have trouble supporting, trouble developing. And if you can develop it anyway, then you get points. And then if they can respond to your development of their thing and develop what you did, then they get points. But if they just sit there and watch you, you just get more and more points and they get nothing. And if they reject you or fight you or undermine you, you basically immediately lose the game. But you don't lose the game by being passive. You can stay in the game if you're black passively, let them do it. But if you oppose them or disagree with them, you lose it right away. I think that was the rule. Block is called blocking. And blocking, we immediately disqualified for blocking.

[78:54]

Blocking and wimping. Promoting. So I think that's basically part of what we do here, too. And also, I was listening to this. He was a bass player. a jazz bassist. I think maybe he just died. He was on Terry Gross. And he was like, or he's still alive, but he's 93 or something. He played with all the old greats. But almost none of you know his name. But there's lots of music. A lot of your favorite records, if you listen to them, he's there. And he says it's an interesting position to be a bass player because basically your job is to try to make other people sound good. the bass actually can make them sound better. And once in a while, they let the bass player, you know, go . But most of the time, the bass player is trying to make a sound to make the other people, to make their singing or their guitar playing or their piano playing sound a little better. So it's a very supportive role. And I think the bass, in some ways, is the bass.

[79:57]

It's the bass of the jazz, this kind of supporting environment. They're not trying to outdo each other. They're doing this collaborative thing. And that's, again, if you're talking about America, this is like a possibility that in a competitive society like America, you can get together and make music in a collaborative, supportive way. And so if we can use this ancient tradition, which is offering something a little different to the West, but bring our own... energy to it and support each other in this process of study. Find ways of helping each other study these koans and try ways to, you know, bring out and develop whatever's being offered using this material. I think this maybe is what we can do here. Somebody else, like for me,

[81:02]

When you people come forward and express yourselves fully, this is like my success, right? Can you feel that about all your classmates? That when they're able to come forward and express themselves in a very vivid, honest, authentic way, that this is your success, that that's part of what makes you, you know, happy to come to this class, is that somebody else could do that on some night. I think if we could all feel that way and each of us dare to play that role part of the time, both as performer and supporter, that this would be part of the environment that we could create here with these stories. So that's what I'd like to do in the classes, something like that. And again, if you have other ways of talking about this, to develop this and support this, please bring them up inside, outside class.

[82:04]

Talk about the class outside of class, too. Discuss it with each other. Find other ways to bring it out. And practice outside the class, too. Do the same thing outside of class. So in that way, again, it will extend into our lives together in this world. So it isn't just this little group of people who are lucky enough to come together and study this ancient lore, but somehow we use this as a resource to help everybody that we meet. And there's a wide range. That's the nice thing about this class, too, is that it's not just people at Green Gulch. You're coming from all over the Bay Area, and so you're bringing all that, and you can take all this back to them. So this, I think, to me, Again, that's more the Chinese thing, is that it wasn't just the monks.

[83:04]

They actually were... People were coming in from outside the monastery and interacting with the monks. Some of the most important stories are the interaction with the people in the society. At least, that was the imagination, right? But even when they were... Even when they were imagining stories like that, the people who were gathering to imagine the stories were also diverse. And... Thank you very much.

[83:33]

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