Thank you. I brought a whisk today to use it instead of as to brush away insects, I want to use it to dust off this old story.

[01:11]

The great master Yun Men... Cloud Gate. I said to the assembly, actually I think he said to one monk, anyway he just said, the old Buddha and the pillar merge. What level of function is this? What's it like in this realm? And he answered for the group, clouds crop up on South Mountain, rain falls down on North Mountain.

[02:32]

That's the way the story appears in the Blue Cliff record, and that's the way the story appears in the Book of Serenity. However, this story is an abbreviation of the story which appears in the record of the Cloud Gate's sayings and interactions with his group. In the record it says, the Buddha and the pillar merge. What level of opportunity is this? And no one answered. So he said, one belt, 30 cents.

[03:42]

A monk came forward and says, what is this one belt for 30 cents? Cloud Gates said, give. And then he answered his original question about the clouds and the rain on the mountains. But in the record, they took out that middle dialogue and just gave his question and his answer. He was one of the first Zen teachers who adopted this kind of style of teaching of asking questions and answering himself on behalf of the group.

[04:49]

I don't know exactly how that evolved. It might have evolved because of the kind of questions he asked. And so I brought this whisk to dust off these old stories, but also to talk a little bit about why I bring up dusty old stories. I think that, as I mentioned before, Our founder, Suzuki Roshi, said that the main function of a Zen priest is to encourage people to sit upright in this self-fulfilling awareness.

[05:53]

So why do we have to bring up these old stories? And in a sense, we don't have to, but he did. So I guess I partly feel like, well, if he brought the stories, maybe I should bring up the stories. But also I bring them up because studying these stories have flipped me around a number of times, and I've found them to be very encouraging, that they've actually helped. They themselves have been teachers to me to encourage me to sit, partly because when I first hear them, they're a barrier. So, the kind of person I am is that when I find something that I can't get anything from, I often find that interesting.

[06:58]

And interesting is a word that's often used around Zen Center when people don't want to say how they actually feel. Oh, that's interesting." This is a way to avoid wrong speech. But one time I asked someone, one of our people who says interesting about a number of things, I said, what do you mean by interesting? And she said, well, I think she said, I forgot what she said, but I think she said, in between, something like that. And so I looked up the etymology of interesting and interesting means, like in between, or it means what we share. And in that way, between me and these stories, there's something in between there.

[08:05]

There's a story, me, and then there's a wall. And I remember when I first started studying the Abhidharma basket of the Buddhist canon, I started studying it because I heard it was, well, an important part of the teaching. And when I first started reading it, it was like reading the telephone book, but not the Yellow Pages. the white pages. When I was a little boy, I used to read the yellow pages, and they had really nice line drawings of trucks and stuff. Remember those? They're really nice, high-quality drawings of trucks and other kinds of machinery. I enjoyed it. But the Abhidharma is more like reading the telephone book in the section, like in Minnesota, in the section on Andersons and Johnsons.

[09:08]

Well, you know, after Anderson, there'd be a little bit different. Bill Anderson, [...] Bill Anderson. Bill Anderson, [...] Bill Anderson. Bill C. Anderson, Bill D. Anderson. It was like that. And then I thought, well, what's so good about this? And so I closed it. And then sometime later I thought, well, what's so good about it? And I'd open it up again. Wendy Johnson, [...] Wendy Johnson. Well, what's so good about it? But finally, I'll tell you the truth, one day blood squirted out of the pages and went right in my face. But I spent a long time looking at that blank wall before it came alive. And so these stories are like that, that if you work on them long enough, they crack open.

[10:15]

And what was once dead and useless and someplace else gets to you and flips you and surprises you and shows you that, well, you know, things aren't necessarily the way you think they are or what they appear at first or second or third or fourth and so on. So I kind of want to share that. This story too, you know, a Buddha and a pillar merging, probably even just not even a regular like living Buddha, but maybe a Buddha like just a stone Buddha or a wooden Buddha on an altar merging with a wooden pillar, kind of cold and uninteresting. An old dusty story about a kind of old dusty Buddha and old dusty pillar. What's it about? It's so not even interesting. But it is interesting that people talked about this story all over China for hundreds of years and transmitted it to Korea and Japan and Vietnam and America.

[11:28]

Why? What's the point? Anyway, aside from the story, what is this realm that they're talking about? And so I'm interested to... However, yesterday a number of people came to me and two people in a row used the word lofty. And in a way I don't like to talk about stuff that seems to be lofty. I don't like this to be lofty. I want it to be down to the earth. But I understand it sometimes seems lofty. And one person said that actually she kind of actually wanted to get into the loftiness, but that she was having to deal with a bunch of lowly matters, kind of like dirty, grimy hate. This is the same person who a year ago in San Francisco was working on dirty, grimy judgment.

[12:37]

But she really got into it, and I told a story about her last time. She was noticing that her practice was better than her neighbor. And so she thought she'd check out her neighbor's neighbor. And she eventually was able to go all the way around to Zendo and come back to herself. So by thoroughly judging the whole zendo, she was able to come to a realization of what she was doing and became free of this judgment process. And it was great. By thoroughly going into the mud of judgment, she got a break from judgment. Now she's working on hate. I told her it might take more than one session.

[13:40]

I personally find judgments a little bit more stupid than hate. So anyway, I encourage her to study it thoroughly. Anyway, if she's successful during this session, she hopes to go on to lust during the next session. and then confusion, and then be all done. But still, she's somewhat ambivalent about this study because she'd like to sort of like be done with it so that she can, you know, get in, study the lofty topics that I'm bringing up. But of course I said to her that it is through studying this dirt that this lofty realm opens up. This lofty realm is actually right in the dirt.

[14:44]

It's right in the frustration you feel and the hatred you feel towards these stories and the greed you feel at trying to understand them and the confusion you feel at what I'm talking to you about. And also, I didn't point this out at the beginning of the session, but I wasn't trying to avoid work, but when a person gives a talk in Zen, sometimes this talk is supposed to be followed up by what we call sanshimonpo, which means go to the teacher and ask about the talk. Ask about the Dharma, Sanjivampo. So it's not necessarily the case that you're supposed to understand the talk, that in order to settle it, each person has a different way of, a different question about the talk.

[16:01]

And so sometimes it requires individual question and answer to settle the matter. And so some people do come to talk about it, and then they ask the questions and then they understand. So that's part of the thing, but I didn't tell you until the end, sorry. But in the future, when you don't understand something that somebody's talking about, hopefully you can just go and ask them specifically. Sometimes we have question and answer during the talk, but with such a big group, I thought, if I give a talk and then we have question and answer, you might not have lunch. And another aspect of this is that actually these stories and the type of commentary which comes from the Diamond Sutra, comes from the Prajnaparamita, is a totally foreign language to ordinary human habit.

[17:07]

It is a total reversal of the usual way of thinking. So there is actually a learning of a new language here. Some people are good at learning languages and learn them, you know, in a few years. I'm slow myself, but I have enjoyed learning this different way of thinking, this different way of talking. And again, I feel like there is encouragement in this language of Prajnaparamita, you know, that language that we've been saying. It's the language of this realm. It's the language of the realm where Buddhas and pillars merge. It's the language of the realm where Buddha understands the workings of all beings' minds.

[18:13]

Understanding the workings of all beings' minds understanding the working of all beings' mind has no workings of all beings' mind as the tathagata understand it, therefore the tathagata understands. And also I encourage you, you know, to it's similar to questioning, but if you need something, please say what it is that you need. Please ask for what you want. It's the kind of questioning that needs to be done sometimes. But still, I must admit, I'm a little insecure teaching this material. But

[19:19]

I kind of need to. And maybe, you know, I look for some opportunity that might be appropriate. I don't do it on Sunday lectures. But I think, I hope that during practice periods at Tassajara or during Sashins at Green Gulch, I can get by with it. That sitting here tenderizing your bodies and minds by sitting still, you become moistened so that this stuff can seep in. And I hear that even though at first it doesn't necessarily, you don't feel like it's going in, that later sometimes you realize it got in. I don't, I wasn't reading The New Yorker during session, exactly, but there was a New Yorker at my house and it was open.

[20:36]

And as I walked by, I glanced at a cartoon. And it was a cartoon. It had the two children in strollers, and the strollers were being pushed by elderly women dressed very elegantly. You can picture them pushing these strollers in a very high-class neighborhood in New York near Central Park, maybe. And one child, the kids in New York are very sophisticated. So one child turns to the other one and says, my parents are the same. Lots of ostentatious child care and very little direct nurturing. So I, you know, I thought, well, am I doing, is what I'm doing this very ostentatious child care?

[21:42]

giving you this, you know, really high Zen culture stuff. It sounds really great. Yunmen, right? What could be better? I'm giving you the best. You can't argue with that. And one of his most famous and profound cases are lofty cases. But is this direct nurturing? Well, I don't know. I hope so, somehow. This is called feeding in the realm beyond hearing and seeing. This is called learning how to walk in the realm beyond hearing and seeing. But not skipping over walking through the mud in this realm. This realm. This realm of mud.

[22:44]

And what about that other realm? Henry told me that in Islam, and I heard that Islam means surrender or something like that. In Islam, when in the realm where subject and object merge, where pillars and, well, I guess they don't have Buddhas, where pillars and Sufi saints dance, in that realm, a sound is emitted when subject and object merge, and the sound is . One of our ancestors went to visit another one of our ancestors.

[23:58]

The student's name was Liang Shan, and the teacher's name was Tung An. The teacher asked the student, what is the business under this patch robe? They were both priests. What's the business under this patched robe? Or this patch robe? And again the student was speechless. And the teacher said, To study the Buddha way and not reach this realm is most painful.

[25:06]

To study the Buddha way and not reach this realm where dusty Buddhas meet pillars is most painful. the teacher said, and then he said, now, you ask me. So the student said, Liang Shan said, what is the busyness under the patch road? And the teacher said, And Yangshan woke up in a big way and started crying and started bowing.

[26:25]

And the teacher at Tong'an said, what is the business under the patch robe? And Liangshan said, intimacy. And the teacher said, intimacy, intimacy. In the early spring of 1971, Suzuki Roshi had a gallstone gallbladder attack when we were doing a sashin in Portland, and we came back to San Francisco and he had his gallbladder removed.

[27:46]

And we thought he was gonna be more healthy after he recovered, and he was for a little And after he had recovered and was teaching again his usual style of doing zazen with us and giving talks and duksan, One time he was giving a talk in the Buddha Hall in San Francisco, and he turned, actually he turned and looked right in my direction. I was sitting right near him, and he looked me in the face and he said, things teach best when they're dying. And then a few months later... how he told us that he had cancer. When he first looked me right in the face and said, things teach best when they're dying, I kind of thought, well why is he saying that?

[29:01]

But I couldn't bring myself to I couldn't bring myself to say, what did you mean by that? Anyway, I found out later and after he told us he got cancer, he told us also because he was getting really sick and he stopped coming to the Zen Do and he stopped giving talks to the group and he stopped doing Doksan because he was just too weak. But sometimes he came downstairs and had meals with us and we used to carry him up and down the stairs. One person would go like this and another person would go like that and then you put the forearm, the other person's forearm on your forearm and then the other person puts his hand on your forearm and it makes a nice little seat

[30:04]

for Suzuki Roshi, and you carry him up and down the stairs. And he was receiving Shiatsu treatment and moxibustion. And so I said to him, could I just watch while you receive your treatments? I won't ask any questions. I'll just watch." And he said, okay. So I just watched him get his treatment. I could watch and I watched his face while he got his massage and I watched his face when the little cones burned down to his skin. And I noticed that the person who was giving him the Moksha Bhasjan would take the cones off when his wincing got to a certain level.

[31:11]

And one day the person who gave the shiatsu and the Moksha Bhasjan was sick. So he said, you do it. And so I did it and then he told me how to do it. put the things on, the burning cones on, and watched to see when he started to wince, and it took them off. And sometimes you say, you can leave them on a little longer, or that's enough. So little by little I understood what he meant by things teach best when they're dying. or the dying in things. When we see the dying in things, they teach us best. They teach us a lot about ourself.

[32:28]

I remember when I was riding back from Portland in the airplane with him, you know, knowing he was sick. You know, on the way up there, he taught me how to count people in Japanese. On the way back, he wasn't teaching me how to count or any special tricks. He was just suffering a lot. And so what he taught me by his suffering was that I could not stand to be in a seat next to him I noticed I was everywhere else but next to him. I couldn't stand to be there. So he taught me something about myself by his suffering. But in all those days I spent with him while he was sick, knowing he was dying, he didn't give me the teachings the way he used to. which I loved, you know, his long talks, sitting zazen, working with him, whatever, duksan.

[33:38]

All that was great, but when he... Sometimes I would fall asleep, you know. Even though the great teacher was teaching me, I would fall asleep. But when he was dying, I never fell asleep anymore. And I remember very clearly every little moment of those last days. He was so kind to us to let us be with him during those last days. Of course, people wanted to give Suzuki Roshi many things. And when I was ordained, I wanted to give him a present.

[34:40]

And I asked, what present can I give you? And his wife said, practice. That's the present he wants from you. We feel close to some people, but those same people we may feel some distance, and that distance may be very painful. We may feel like our heart is too small, I mean our body is too small for our heart, that we want our heart to be over on the other side of that person. How can we get our heart over another person?

[35:49]

How can we get our heart into Suzuki Roshi? Well, one way is to practice his practice, or not his practice, but practice your practice I told you yesterday, I knew my father loved me. I really, and I did all the way along, I knew he loved me. I wanted more than that, but I knew he loved me. And now, sometimes people say, you know, that they love me, and actually recently somebody said, I love you.

[36:52]

But then she changed it and she said, well, I love what you love. And somebody else said, I love what you stand for or what you sit for. And if somebody tells me they love what I stand for or they love what I love, I like to hear that. But what really makes me feel like my heart's not trapped in my body is when that person practices. when that person practices upright sitting and enters the realm,

[38:12]

enters a realm where we do not... where we're very close to Buddha, but we don't grab Buddha. Where we walk around Buddha all the time without identifying with Buddha. Where we are the same, but there's difference. Or we're different, And we're the same. Or we surrender to our true dynamic nature. Or we say yes to the contradictory nature of our self. People, if I tell a story like yesterday about what a bad boy I was, people come up and say thank you to me afterwards.

[39:54]

Thank you for reminding me that you're really human or worse than human. People never thank me for lofty talk. Gee, that was great lofty talk, thanks. I never hear that. That was so abstruse. It was wonderful. I didn't understand anything. It was way out there. And I think that part of the Zen trip is to be kind of lofty so that when it comes time to die, there's some dynamism there. It's not like a wreck dying. It's like something dying.

[40:58]

or something being a wreck rather than a wreck being a wreck. After Suzuki Roshi died, another Zen teacher came from Japan who reminded me a lot of Suzuki Roshi. His name was Yamada Unmon. Unmon means no gate. Like in Mumon Khan, the gateless barrier. Mumon Yamada came to visit and he was about 70 when he came to visit first Kazan Center. And he was like a ziggurat. He was small and like a bird, you know. I went to his hotel to visit him, and he was like hopping around the hotel room, you know, and like hop up in his bed.

[42:04]

And then he would take a piece of paper, you know, to do some calligraphy, and he would hold the paper in his hand like this, you know, rice paper in his hand, all wrinkles falling all over the place, and write on it this beautiful calligraphy. And... And he was also a very strong Zen teacher. And I went to Japan and visited him a few times and I've told you many great stories about meeting him there. I'll tell you one story. I was there with Dekoroshi, the former abbot of Zen Center. We were visiting, and we were having vegetarian feast.

[43:09]

We have three courses here. That meal had 20. It wasn't in the Zendo. It was in the abbot's private quarters, and it was his birthday. party, so we had a 20-course vegetarian meal, and there was also served along with the food was beer and sake. And his attendant, Jisha's job was to keep giving us sake and beer. So I think, I can't remember, I think we had two cups, one for sake and one for beer, I don't remember exactly. When they served it to you, if you drank it, then immediately they would fill it. And then if you didn't drink it, they would come and poke at you. And then you felt sort of like maybe you should drink some. And if you drank it, then they would fill it.

[44:12]

And in a very friendly, skillful, pushy way. And then Baker Roshi leaned over to me at one point and he said, you're younger than me. If you accept, they'll leave me alone. And I must admit, before that, I was a little bit, I was trying to stop them because I didn't want to get like totally, you know. Yeah. totally drunk and then started spilling food all over my robes and not be able to walk and stuff like that. I didn't want that to happen to me, so I was kind of like restraining myself from accepting this offering. But then to help Baker Roshi, I thought, okay. So I just relaxed and as soon as they brought it, I just took it right down.

[45:16]

And I'm going to combine this story with another one. Because I visited him again a couple years later, and the same thing happened. Except that time, what do you call it? I was alone. Nobody was telling me that I had to drink in order to save him. But in both cases, anyway, at the end of the meal, they served another big bowl of rice. Damburi bowls are pretty big. And that, we finished the rice. Then they would come and dump all the leftover sake and beer into the big bowl. You're supposed to drink it. So when they did that, I looked down at the bowl and I said in Japanese, which is Japanese for it's an ocean." And he said, in English, you must drown.

[46:35]

So I drank it. And after I drank it, and after all that was over, looking out, across his room into the lovely garden, thinking, this is Japanese Zen, huh? And noticing that I was not drunk. A few years later, I went back to Japan again with a group of people from Zen Center to attend Munmon Roshi's installation as the abbot of Myoshinji. Before that, he was abbot of several important temples. But Mishinji is the head of 3,500 temples. He was an emperor, sent a messenger and all that. It was one of the major installations of Japanese culture to be head of this great monastery, which had had imperial patronage for hundreds and hundreds of years. And so we went to the ceremony where he was installed as the abbot, and he climbed up on the dharma seat, which is like halfway up to the ceiling here,

[47:52]

to be installed with a huge dragon on the ceiling and so on. Thousands of people. The great Zen master. He went through that. And then I heard, when we got back to America, I heard a few years later that Munmun Roshi was getting old. And then I heard that he had retired. And then I went to Japan to visit again and I didn't expect to see him because he was so gotten so old and he had retired. But still I went to his temple because I was friends with his disciple, the guy who was kind of getting me to drink all the time. And so we were having tea and so on and suddenly he said, Let's go see Roshi."

[48:55]

I said, okay. And they said, wait a minute, I'll get him up. And a little while later he said, okay, he's ready, come on. So he went in to see him and there he was sitting actually in a formal chair with all his robes on in his chair and he was drooling. And so they were, he had attendants there dapping the drool and my friend said, Roshi,

[49:56]

Do you remember Tenshin-san? Remember San Francisco Zen Center? There was absolutely nothing, no response at all. And I was very uncomfortable and shocked to see what the Great Zen Master had become. And his disciple, my friend, kept trying to get him to recognize me, yelling real loud to get him to respond, but there was nothing.

[51:19]

So then we left. And the next day I came back and had tea again. And again he wanted me to go see the Roshi, the old master. Actually, I was a little bit afraid to go see him again. This time was an early morning. And I thought, you know, I'd be more comfortable visiting him just with him lying in bed. It would seem more appropriate. But for them to get him all dressed up in his fancy robes and prop him up in his elegant lacquer and gold chair, it seemed... I felt uncomfortable with it, but they did it again. And this time there were two of his oldest female disciples there, lay disciples, and they were talking to him and they were crying a lot. And again his disciple brought me up real close, said, get up real close, and got my face up real close to his, and then he started yelling at him again, saying, Roshi, Roshi, attention's on you, remember?

[52:27]

And then, you know, he kind of looked up to me and he kind of went, eh, a little bit. And he looked, there was something. And then he went back. Anyway, he was great. He was a great Zen master. Really he was. He had wonderful disciples and I had some great times with him. But the greatest impact he had on me was when he couldn't do anything anymore. And I'm not criticizing great Zen masters or great teachers. I'm not criticizing the time in our life when we can talk and walk and sit upright and bow and offer incense and yell and stuff.

[53:38]

That's great. But these two teachers in their state of collapse were able to impress me. was something about our human trip. It was hard, it's hard to reach the realm where we're the same as these old men.

[55:34]

And of course different too. It's hard for them to reach the realm where they're the same and different for us. So I talked about this session. Three old men I knew that taught me a lot while they were dying. And thinking back about them, I feel very grateful to have had some time with them.

[57:15]

And I have some more time, a little bit more time, I guess, to spend with you people and with some other people. I hope to reach this realm And the nature of the realm is that I can't be there alone. The nature of the realm is that we're already there and we're not alone. The funny thing about this is, this is the mudra's thirst, that we're reaching for where we already are.

[59:06]

And we reach for where we already are through what we think is not us. And, you know, if I look at all of you, each one of you is, I have to reach through each one of you, and each one of you is not me. But there's certain things about each one of you which are really not me. And those are the parts I would like to kind of like have a detour around. Some parts of you are, I call, not me, but really are kind of like an amplification of me in the way I already feel about myself.

[60:13]

But the part of you, for example, that doesn't appreciate my old stories... that thinks I'm not helpful and not kind, that's my hard path to get to where I am. But, you know, don't fake it. Don't just, you know, don't just say you hate me to have an effect. You should be honest. But I invite you, if you have problems with me, talk to me first.

[61:22]

And if it doesn't work, go get some help. But I'd rather not have you go to somebody else before you talk to me. Show me the raw, not me. This is called asking for trouble. Fortunately, I'm leaving town soon. Some people ask me, also people, like I say, they never thank me for my lofty talk, but they often thank me for my confessions and my songs.

[62:51]

You may not recognize what I just have been saying as a song, but to me, it's my song. It doesn't have much of a melody, I guess, but it's my song. So I couldn't think of another one today, sorry. Anybody have a song other than what's happened so far? Old Man River. That's a song.

[63:56]

Minnesota Hats Off to Thee. Minnesota Hats Off to Thee. Are you from Minnesota? No, I'm not from... I'm people from Minnesota. Would you... You don't remember it? I remember part of it. Well, that's a song that some of us can sing. Ready? That was kind of low, wasn't it? Minnesota hats off to thee, to our scholars. Firm and strong united will be, are we.

[65:13]

Firm and strong united are we. We are the gophers. Is that a Beatles song? We are the gopher. We are the groundhog. How does that go? We are the walrus.

[65:34]

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