Some time ago a person came to talk to me and he said that he thought it was a mistake that he had come to this planet. I didn't inquire into what he meant but assumed that he felt it was a mistake because things can be pretty bad here, but anyway I don't know what he meant, that was just my interpretation. This world as you may have heard is called the Saha world or in Japanese the Noni world which means a world, it's called the Saha world, which means a world in which it is

[01:05]

possible to practice patience. It's also a world in which it is possible to get angry. The reason why you can practice patience here is because there's some difficulty. There are some other worlds where there isn't any and so when human beings who live in this world hear about those worlds they sometimes think it's a mistake they came here. Some of them asked Buddha, how come we're practicing here, why don't we go to those other places, and because you can't practice patience in those other realms. And if you can't practice patience you can't realize enlightenment, you can be blissed

[02:09]

out for a certain period of time but everything ends and then you're going to be in trouble in some other realm, but there are some realms where there's trouble but you can't practice patience. So this is a good one because this planet you can practice patience and therefore you can realize infinite wisdom and compassion. And I didn't say that to that guy and I don't know what he meant but that's what I think, that there's some good possibilities of being on this planet. And I clicked my finger, I clicked the knuckle on my thumb and he said something like, can everybody do that, does everybody do that? And I said, I don't know, he said, I can do that too. He said, one time I clicked my knuckles on my thumb and you did it right after me and

[03:12]

I thought you were echoing it, echoing mine, did you remember that, I said, no. I said, but did you like that, he said, yeah, I thought that was fun. And I said, well I hope that made it worthwhile to come. One time here at Tassajara I hung some of my laundry on the line on a sunny day, it was a bright piece of cloth, it wasn't a sheet but it was maybe a white towel or something bright and it reflected the sun's light and when I hung it there and also I could smell it, freshly washed cloth, and I thought, this is worth it, this is worth coming, if

[04:15]

this is all I get in this lifetime to hang these clothes on this line and to see the light come off the sun onto my cloth, into my eyes, I'm willing to put up with the rest of it. And I still am willing to put up with the rest of it, for a while, eventually I'm going to check out. However, my vow is to come back to this same dump, until the whole thing, every little particle is willing to be here and willing to come back too. That's my vow. Along those lines there's this reaching out of little Shakyamuni, reaching out and saying

[05:31]

to this stable person, to this monk who had found his seat, he found his seat in the world of suffering and he said, reverse your thought, okay let's have a radical alteration in your consciousness here, young man, I want you to like take a totally new approach to what's going to come next. Reverse your thought, relinquish all your patterns, give up all your habits and then think of the thinking mind. If you just sit down and think of the thinking mind, that's just the thinking mind, right? First of all, relinquish all thought activity, cut off the mind road and with a cut off mind

[06:44]

road then think. So the Fukanza Zengi says, you know, cast off all involvement, cease all concerns, don't think good or bad, don't be concerned with right or wrong, halt the movements of the conscious mind, actually it says, cease the movements of mind, intellect and consciousness. Literally the characters there are for cease the movements of chitta, vijnana and manas. Stop the calculations of all thoughts and views, don't aim to become a Buddha. We vow to become Buddha but then as part of that vow we let go of all thought activity

[07:52]

around that vow. We don't then make that vow into another karmic trip so we don't try to make a Buddha. We give up the idea of becoming a Buddha as part of our vow to become Buddha. But another slightly different translation of this is instead of, you know, stop all movements of the conscious mind, the engaging of all calculations and thoughts and views, just don't interfere with the workings of your mind. Don't try to control the movements of your thought. Simply accept things as they are. Simply accept things as they have come to be.

[08:52]

So sometimes when we use these Zen expressions like a mind like a wall, not activating the mind around objects, again, not activating the mind around objects, okay, that means don't pursue the objects, don't avoid the objects. No motion around the objects, just object. Don't interfere at all. And sometimes people that question and answer say, do you mean just to accept everything? Yeah, that's what it is, very simple. But this is an elaboration and more instruction about what it means actually to accept everything as it actually appears. Because mostly people try to accept things but they don't accept things, they dream of accepting things. They activate the mind around things, they doctor them up and tell themselves stories

[10:05]

to make it okay that things are this way. And they think, well I accept them, but there's this huge mass of goo around everything which protects them from getting angry at the thing. Actually there's this thing and there's all this stuff around it and there's antidotes all around that and that's what they call accepting things. This instruction of making your mind like a wall says don't get involved in all that stuff, just write off, flat out, cut it off. Let's have a major reorientation here. Let's have a radical alteration and it's not even an alteration of consciousness. The instruction is to the consciousness, but the instruction to the consciousness is stop doing anything about what's happening. The mind goes right ahead and does its stuff, but there's nothing done about that, just the function goes on.

[11:05]

This is the first part of the instruction, this is the reversal. Then with a mind like that, study. Then watch your thinking and you'll have a different view. Your view will be different. Then watching yourself will be like watching somebody else, and watching somebody else will be like watching yourself, and so on. Then you can see through your thinking, and this monk did that. He reversed his mind. How many years it took him to understand what that meant, how many times he went back to Yangshan and asked what he meant by reverse, we don't know. But anyway, he was in a place that Yangshan gave him this instruction and he finally applied it to his thinking accurately and saw through his thinking.

[12:10]

And he saw that there wasn't anything existing at all, he said. But when he said that, he camped out in his penetrating vision. He saw through his own thinking, but then he made a thing out of it by saying, I don't see any existence at all. That makes something exist. That makes his revolution and his breakthrough into a thing. So again, I don't know if you got this story the first time we went through, but I want to do this story again. I think it's very … I like this story, it's quite subtle and who knows, it might

[13:19]

be true history. Yangshan was studying the 30 verses and he presented his understanding to Guishan. He said, if you want me to express how I see things, at this point, he's already … at this point, there is no state of completion and there's nothing to cut off either. He thought he covered his tracks and I'm sure he was completely sincere. Anyway, then Guishan says, according to your point of view, there is still elements and you haven't got away from mind and objects. And Yangshan said, well, since there is no complete state and nothing's cut off, where

[14:30]

are there still mind and objects? Guishan said, just now, didn't you make such an interpretation? Yangshan said, yes. If so, Guishan said, then this is completely mind and objects. How can you say there are none? So, the monk here, there was still this. When he said, there's no existence at all, there was still this. And that's what Nanyue said to the Sixth Ancestor, after studying the question for eight years, what is it that's coming now? He said, I'm not going to say it's this. You ask me what's coming, but I'm not going to make it into this. I'm not going to bring it out here and make it another thing. Well then, is there no enlightenment?

[15:36]

Is there no practice? Can't we have them either? What about practice? I don't say that there's no practice. I don't say that there's no liberation. There's a story, one of my favorite stories from childhood, it's from a movie called The Song of the South, and it's about these animals that live near a briar patch. You know what briars are, Dorothea? Briars are very strong shrubs, plants that have very sharp thorns, so those are called

[16:41]

briars, and they come in thickets or briar patches, and in the South they call briar brayer. They say brayer for briar. So around this briar patch lived a bear, a fox, and a rabbit, and in the South the bears are very dumb because they eat molasses, but the foxes are very smart because they eat chickens, and the rabbits have reversed thought. But even so they sometimes slip. So one time a rabbit was walking along the road on a hot day and he saw this little baby,

[17:43]

little black baby, but this baby was not an usual baby, this baby was made out of tar. So when the rabbit went by and said to the baby, Good morning, brother, of course the tar baby didn't say anything. So he said, I said good morning to you, my friend. The tar baby still didn't talk, so he said, Hey boy, you acknowledge your friends, your elders. The tar baby still didn't say anything, so he poked the tar baby a little bit with his paw. But that day was warm, warm enough for his paw to sink into the tar, but not warm enough to pull out. So it kind of stuck in the paw, he stuck his paw in the tar baby. Now you know what to do when that happens, you just don't activate the mind around that

[18:49]

object, right, and you know what will happen if you don't do that. You will be released, that tar will melt off, you will be released and you can go about your way. You'll be a little dirty from the interaction, there'll be some disposition set up by that, which you'll have to live with for a while, but eventually, eventually they will be appeased if you just don't, you know, like get too active about the stuff on your hand. But he got active, so he tried to get rid of the stuff that he was, he tried to get rid of it, so he stuck his other hand in and then he had two hands in. So then of course he used his feet and then he used his head. So finally he was in totally entangled in the object, totally paralyzed and practically

[19:50]

dead, but not dead enough. And then came the dumb bear and the smart fox to get their rabbit that they trapped in their tar baby. So then the bear said, I want to knock his head off. Let me club him. He had a big club and the fox said, no, [...] don't, don't do that. We're going to cook them first and you can club. I want to knock his head off. So then the rabbit said, because he had reverse thought, he said, yeah, good idea. Please club me, club me, club me. I love it. Club me. And the fox said, hey, he's just trying to trick us. No, please, please club me.

[20:52]

Said, no, we're going to boil you. He said, oh yeah, boil me. That's great. Boil me. That's even better. But please, please don't throw me in the briar patch. Don't defile me. Don't defile me. Don't make me say it's this. So, after a while the rabbit thought, well, maybe we should throw him in the briar patch. He doesn't want to. So they threw him in the briar patch and he landed in the briar patch and he screamed and hollered in extreme, excruciating cries that you gradually realize were cries of ecstasy. And he sang a song, born and raised in a briar patch. This is my home.

[21:53]

Singing and dancing, jumping up and around, climbing on the briars happily. And then the fox and the bear tried to find somebody to blame, especially the fox did, because the fox was smarter. The bear didn't exactly know what happened. And this was summer. You can imagine what he's like in the winter. So, when he said, you know, I don't say there isn't something. I don't say there isn't practice. I don't say there isn't something. I also don't say there is something. Just don't make me defile anything. And the ancestor said, this non-defiled way has been protected by all Buddhas. Now I am thus and you are thus too.

[23:04]

And when he said that, he defiled it. And that's important. That we defile it. After we don't defile it, that we defile it. So first of all, you have to reverse your mind, see through this stuff, see through your stories, and then don't defile it. Don't make it into something. Anyway, this monk made it into something. He camped out. So we're going to have, I'm going to open a store here at Tassajara, and it's going to actually be part of, it's actually going to be one store in a mall. It's going to start out with just two stores in the mall. One store in a mall, and one store in Tassajara. And that store is going to be run by Bob Hoover. It's going to be a store for not fixing anything,

[24:08]

where people that don't have anything wrong with them can come and not get fixed. And so he doesn't plan on doing much business, but anyway, and I'm going to have a store nearby his, which is called a, what is it called? A no camping equipment store. Right. And we actually have some stuff to sell there too, like zafus. In order to do this practice, in order to look at your thinking in some way that's not just going to be more thinking, you have to sit still first. Once you're sitting still and you look at your thinking, it's going to be a whole new thing. But I think probably for most of us, in order to sit still, you have to renounce everything in your life. If you're holding on to something, you're going to get pushed around by your holding on. You're actually not moving anyway.

[25:10]

And your true nature is that you're not moving. And from your true nature, if you look at what's happening, you can see what your thinking is. You can see what it is that thus comes. What it is that's thus coming. Your thinking is coming. You can see it if you don't move. But if you hold on to something, it's going to be like you're moving. You're not moving, but your attachment makes you seem like you're moving. Projecting the self out of something and then grabbing it, you're tossed about. And when you're tossed about and you look at your thinking, you just get more upset. So you figure, hey, forget it. I'm just going to curl up in a ball and not look at this show. It's not good to look at your thinking, particularly if you're moving. It's just nauseating. But it doesn't help to curl up in a ball and not look at it. That doesn't help. Because the reason why you're doing that is because you did look at it and you couldn't stand it because you were moving. The thing to do is to renounce everything and sit still.

[26:16]

The thing to do is to reverse the mind. Learn the backward step. Reverse the mind. Then immediately body and mind drop off and you can see. But it does require ... Again, I don't know if it requires that you give up everything. It's just that you require giving up everything that you don't want to give up. There's a bunch of stuff that maybe if you were holding on to that, it wouldn't count and you'd never get pulled around by it. I don't know. There may be some things you don't have to give up. But why don't you just give up everything for starters and then see if later you can hold on to some stuff. Because mostly I think we get moved around because we're holding something. If you let go of everything, I'm sure that you'll be able to be still. And then you can see with your original eyeballs and original face, you'll be able to see

[27:24]

what your thinking is, how it produces these concepts. And if you can see it, you get liberated from the cluster, from the briar patch, from the tar baby of conception. then at that point, that point of realizing mere concept, then you have to be careful and stay still, don't move. That's when you get excited. Get a little excited. Then it becomes a pitfall. And you pull it out and make it into this again. Especially if, like, you can imagine, you know, if you had an audience with the sixth patriarch and he says, well, what is it? What did you find? To hold back, you know,

[28:29]

and not make it into something to give to the Buddha. It's just a test, you know. It just shows you that actually you want to give yourself something. And then you can see that you want to give yourself something when Buddha asks you. Another time, Guishan and Yangshan were sitting around on the terrace of case 37. They moved forward five cases and had another conversation. And Guishan said to Yangshan, if someone comes up to you all of a sudden and says, you know, all living beings, all human beings particularly, just have karmic consciousness,

[29:31]

boundless and unclear with no fundamental to rely on. How would you, you know, give them an experiential test on this? This is a quote from a scripture from some strange religion that grew up in response to misery. All living beings just have active consciousness. In other words, all they've got is a consciousness which gets active around objects. That's all they've got. They don't have another kind of consciousness. In other words, all they have is troublesome consciousness, that when you give it an object, it pursues it or avoids it or tells stories about it or makes antidotes to it or whatever. That's what we've got. And you say, well, what about enlightened consciousness? Blah, blah, blah.

[30:36]

Again, enlightened consciousness, when you talk about it that way, you make it into this. We don't have enlightened consciousness. We don't have a consciousness which doesn't do this. As soon as you've got a consciousness which doesn't mess everything up and play with everything, including practice and realization, as soon as you've got a consciousness like that, you've got this again. You've defiled the mind which is not consciousness. We don't have the buddhic mind. We are the buddhic mind, but we don't have it. As soon as we have it, we bring it around, make it into a thing, and then it's karmic consciousness time again. Munch on it, hold it, protect it. Say you've got it and somebody else doesn't, or vice versa, etc. This is all we've got. We do have karmic consciousness now.

[31:37]

And because we've got it, it throws us for a loop. So what we've got to do is we've got to let go of this karmic consciousness. Alright? So, how would you test somebody around this issue? And this karmic consciousness, all we've got is karmic consciousness. And they also say it's boundless. It's not like it's just in certain neighborhoods or around certain people. It is boundless. There's no place it doesn't reach. And there's no like deep down kind of like well, finally you get to the bottom where it's really a nice, clear, healthy consciousness. It doesn't have a nice bottom. It actually is all we've got and there's nothing to it. And this is good news. Now you don't have to worry anymore. You know what you've got and you know what you have to relinquish. You have to relinquish karmic consciousness. Now, let's see how they test it.

[32:37]

So Yangshan said, okay, he said, see that monk over there? He said, yeah. He said, okay, watch. He said, hey you. The monk turns his head and then he says, what is it? And the monk was speechless. And then he says, all you have is karmic consciousness boundless and unclear with no fundamental to rely on. And his teacher Guishan said, good. Good test. Good boy. Now to eliminate what happened there is another story which is basically the same story but helps understand and that is two other Zen monks were sitting around

[33:39]

talking and one of them said to the other, you know in the Avatamsaka Sutra it says that the the fundamental affliction of ignorance which all beings are all human beings are subject to is itself the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. This seems rather difficult to understand. He said to Master Nan and Nan said, hmm, doesn't seem difficult to me. It seems kind of clear. He said, I'll show you. Watch. And there happened to be another monk nearby so he said, see that monk? He said, yeah. This monk was sweeping. A young monk. He said, hey you. And the monk turned his head. Like in the previous one. Hey you, they turned their head. Instead of saying, what is it?

[34:42]

He said, what is Buddha? And then the monk, you know, dropped his broom and stumbled off. But between the lines he said something. So he said, he said, watch this. He said, hey you to the monk. The monk turned his head and he said, is this not the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas? Then he said, what is Buddha? The monk got confused and stumbled off. He said, is this not the fundamental affliction of ignorance? When you say, hey you, it's possible that you don't activate the mind around that. He just, hey you. Boom. Laundry hanging on the line.

[35:45]

Knuckles echoing each other. That's it. And it's worth coming for. But when you say, what's Buddha? Or a Zen teacher says, what is it to you? You bring it out in front. Because you got to have an answer. You got to have something. You project the self onto the, what's Buddha? You grab it and you're done for. You're paralyzed. You're reaching for something outside yourself. So this monk you know got to the place of, hey you, turned his head, you know. He turned around. He looked at his thinking and his thinking got to be like, hey you, yeah? Hey you, yeah? But then he thought, oh, the teacher wants to know so I'll bring it out to show him. And then he lost it.

[36:48]

Yangshan did that with Guishan. This monk did it with Guishan. Yangshan did this with Guishan. This monk did it with Yangshan. It is a normal thing to do in the process of learning this is to make emptiness into something. And the thing that we usually make emptiness into is a nothing. That's what we usually make it into. Seems like a good candidate. Yes. I sense that you understand but I may be wrong. But I'm ready to move on to the next phase of this process of what it's like

[37:55]

when you don't fall down. Of what it's like when you reverse your mind, look at your thinking, see through it, and then don't take what you've seen through and make that into something again. That you reverse your mind, look at yourself and forget yourself. And then don't pick yourself up again to report that you've lost yourself. But what do you use to report? Well, see, they know that they're not supposed to use, they're not supposed to make their experience into something so they often report nothing. The typical report, but it doesn't work. Because the teacher can feel that there's still something there, there's still somebody interpreting and seeing an object out there and saying that's it. You can feel it, the language shows,

[38:55]

fortunately. It leaves a trace in the choice of words. Now, after the monk says this, Yangshan says, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. Stage of faith, this is right, you have followed the instructions, you are a faithful practitioner, you're now in the Buddhist group. He has entered, he has seen through his self, but he flinched and made it back into something. There's another stage where you don't do that and anyway, he says to the monk, you get one mystery, not three. Now, based on your insight,

[39:56]

you get a seat and a robe. From now on, see on your own. And there's different interpretations of what the seat might be. One interpretation is that the seat is emptiness. And he did, I think this monk did, find at his seat, he found his seat. He reversed his mind, he looked at what was happening and he found, he found his seat, he found the insubstantiality of the place he was and the place he was is the place we are, is what we're thinking. You know? Now, concepts of objects and location, you have to be thinking to have a location.

[40:57]

When you have a location, that's always thinking. That's one of the ways you can tell what you think is going on is whether you have a location. So, when you have a seat and you sit on it and you see through it, then you also see the emptiness of your place. This monk understood the emptiness of his place. He realized the emptiness of his seat. His seat was his realization and he gets a robe to to take care of himself. But after this, see on your own, what's that about? What more is there to see? And that's where that poem of the national teacher Da Shao comes in. Crossing the summit of the mystic peak, it's not the human world.

[42:04]

Outside the mind, there are no things. The monk got that far. After this, see on your own. See what? Filling the eyes are blue mountains. Filling the eyes are blue mountains. Blue mountains filling the eyes. Outside the mind, there are no things. Blue mountains filling the eyes. Filling the eyes, blue mountains. Once you realize

[43:07]

the emptiness of your thinking, you go forward from there. You walk from there. Your faith takes you to realize the emptiness of your own mind, your own thoughts. Realize the emptiness of the world. And you go one step further and another step. You keep walking from that place. You have no other place to go. And when you take the next step, you realize that your seat, which was empty, that the form of your seat is the essence of emptiness. You realize that there's nothing. And because of realizing that, because of this nothing, there is everything. You realize that nothing matters

[44:12]

and then you realize everything matters. Your seat doesn't matter. Therefore your seat does matter because your seat is the revelation of what makes everything possible. Your thinking, your thinking, because it's not anything, makes everything possible. So, as I was talking to somebody and it's like, you know, you you have these stories which are thinking. Stories come to you through thinking. That's how you know

[45:13]

what story it is. It's by which what you're thinking about. And you study these stories from this reversed point of view. You see through the stories and this person says, well then can I later can I tell more stories? Will I have to like give up storytelling? No. As a matter of fact, when you reverse the mind you were still telling stories after that. And then you studied the stories you were telling. You watched your stories. You examined the stories which you were telling. No one told, but people think that when you reverse the mind that you stop telling stories. No. You don't stop telling stories. You don't. Because that's all you've got is the stories you're telling. And you're not going to stop. The question is can you look at these stories you're telling with this reversed attitude? If you can, you can see through the stories and be liberated from the stories. In other words, you can see

[46:13]

that your stories do not matter. I mean, not for me to tell you your stories don't matter. It's for you to look at your stories with a revolutionized attitude with a radically altered consciousness. In other words, with no consciousness. It's for you to look at your mind as it's functioning to produce these stories and for you to see that these stories don't matter. Yeah, but he really did punch me in the nose. I mean, he really... Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not for me to tell you that that doesn't matter. I mean, I know you people have been abused. And I could say, well, I have too. And you could say, well, not as much as me. And we could...

[47:17]

we could argue and try to figure out who's been most abused in our shopping mall. We could... that's another store. A store where you can figure out who's been most abused. Also, they have a store called Pain-O-Meter store to figure out whose pain is actually greatest. Which means who's most eluded, right? Anyway, it's not for me to tell you that your stories don't matter. It's for you to find out that they don't matter because if you don't find out that they don't matter, then you won't find out how they do matter. They do matter. Blue Mountains are filling the eyes that's the stage of the person. These stories are filling your eyes. They do matter, but they all matter, not just some. It isn't, you know, it isn't just your

[48:19]

big-scale abuse that counts, it's the little abuses that counts too. The people even that have almost no abuse, they're just as important as you. So, you get there and you look at your stories of abuse, you look at it, you sit there and you look and you look and you look with this revolved, reversed thinking and you see that hey, this is just a dream. I just made this up. I made this up. This is my version. I could change the story. I could change a punch into a kiss. I could change, I could see how the fact that I'm trying to prove that I was abused proves that I wasn't. The proving proves that it isn't. The proving that it is proves that it isn't. You can make that switch. You can, what do you call it? What do you call it? You can have

[49:19]

complete liberation, happiness, joy and love or your misery back. Don't worry, you can get it back if you want it, but just try it. You can also look at this thing and see it a totally different way and be relieved from your story. Your story, not my story about you. You can't get relieved with that. But that's not the one that bothers you. That's the one just that will test whether you've gotten rid of yours. My story is not really about you. My story is about whether you are free of your story. See, it didn't convince me that you don't fall for what story you're telling. See, it didn't convince me that you think that you see that your story doesn't matter. And the way I can tell if you see that is whether all stories matter to you equally. Including my story that you haven't yet got to the place of seeing that all your stories are not equal. Well, it looks like you like that one better than that one. You like me saying this

[50:21]

less than me saying that. Anyway, I won't really test you. I'll talk about that later about this thing about later seeing on your own. So anyway, she says, this woman says, well, can I tell stories afterwards? Yes, you can. You can tell stories during, you can watch your stories during, then once you see through them you can tell a whole new set of stories. You can even tell your old stories, but from the point of view of how stupid you were to have those stories and believe them. You can make these comedies about your old stories. And then after that one's over, you know, then you can like tell new stories about, you know, about how, you know, about how, whatever. Edward Albee just recently wrote a story about himself when he was young. He had to do all those other stories before he could

[51:22]

tell, go back and tell the story about, you know, that he believed. Anyway, I'll try to stay away from that. So once you relieve your old stories, you can tell new stories. You can be a great novelist. You can be a playwright. You can put on all kinds of, what do you call problems, choreographies. You can open a shopping mall, whatever. Everything. This is entering into the dynamic, feminine, creative phase. You can loop those new threads of spring into the ancient brocade and you can really have a ball. You can watch these things coming, bursting out of emptiness. Filling your eyes with blue and green and purple. Yeah. So there's two more

[52:25]

things I'd like to talk about. One more thing, basically, is what to do with these people who have seen that their stories don't matter. So, you know, Tien Tung, celebrating the situation of after that, after the stage of faith, he says, bursting out of the empty sky, the Garuda takes wing on the wind. Thunder accompanies the dragon as it treads over the ocean. What are we going to do with these dragons and Garudas? We have to have some kind of like theme park for them. So that will be what I'll talk about tomorrow. Is what to do with these post-graduate weirdos who do not take their own story seriously anymore. It doesn't mean they don't take other people's stories seriously. It doesn't mean

[53:28]

they do take them seriously either, but they do take seriously other people's suffering as they tread upon the waves and hang out in the wind. They do take other people's suffering and they know from personal experience that their suffering comes from believing their stories, and they believe their stories because they're moving. So they want to help, but also the way that they also are kind of out of control. So what do you do with these people? What's their relationship to karma and cause and effect? That's what I would like to discuss tomorrow. And I'd like to end by telling you a long story about a guy who really was a girl. His name was Sudong Po. He's supposed to be a great poet, but I never

[54:29]

could get the hang of him. Anyway, he's considered to be one of the greatest poets, painters, calligraphers, and scholars of the Sung dynasty. He was, of course, kind of smart, and he was an expert on the Confucian classics, but he also spent time studying Buddhism, and he memorized the entire Chinese Buddhist canon. Isn't that impressive? Anyway, he passed the highest exams for ministers, and he got appointed to be the emperor's official representative in four provinces. He traveled around visiting

[55:29]

all the government facilities, and he also got to visit Buddhist monasteries, which were under the government at that time, too, but he did that for fun because he loved to go to the monasteries and quiz the teachers on Buddhism. So he would ask questions like, okay, what are the last five words of chapter 43 of the Upanishad? And, you know, most of these Buddhist monks would say, well, they might get one, but they wouldn't get the second one. Oh, I don't know. And then he would tease them and stuff about how lazy they were and stuff. Finally, he actually took his story seriously, that these Buddhist monks were a bunch of no-good, lazy retards. And he kind of lost interest in Buddhism after

[56:29]

making the effort of memorizing the entire canon. But then somebody said to him, hey, I know of a Zen master that you might be able to be encouraged by. Maybe you could respect him. Go see him. So he went to see the Zen teacher, and usually when you go to monastery, you come to the gate, you get off your horse if you got a horse, and he did, because he was a big official. You get off your horse, you ring a little bell, hit the han, bop, bop, the shikha comes out and says yes sir, or yes ma'am, and you say I'd like to visit, maybe even meet the teacher. You say okay, just a minute, and they go, say come in now, and you go and sit down, and the teacher comes in to see you. Well, he rode his horse in through the gate, up to the Buddha Hall, walked into the Buddha Hall, sat in front of the Buddha with his back to the Buddha, and waited to see who would come to visit him. Eventually,

[57:31]

the little old master came in. He wasn't actually little, he was seven feet tall, but he came in real low, and humble, because Sudangpa was the imperial representative of four provinces. So he came in low and said, to what honor do we, blah, blah, blah, to have your great presence here, sir? And he said, well, I came to do my thing. My name is Mr. Scales. You know why they call me Mr. Scales? And the Zen master said, no, sir, I don't. He said, because I weigh the understanding of all the Buddhist teachers. And the Zen master said, ah!

[58:32]

And he said to Sudangpa, how much does that weigh? So, so Su looked through his, ah, through his card files, of all the scriptures he had read and memorized, and he couldn't find any answer for that one. Isn't that something? People can think of new things. And he was, ah, he was, ah, he was impressed. And he thought, maybe I'll reconsider Buddhism after all. And he bowed reverently to the teacher and he vowed to, to start studying Buddhism seriously, not just, ah, in order to tease the monks. So he did. And he was transferred to another province and he met a Zen teacher, ah, named, ah,

[59:33]

Fu Yin. And he studied with him and became really good friends with him. He, ah, what do you call it, they were like brothers. They were really close friends. And, ah, one day he went to visit his friend, and for some reason or other he got all dressed up. He wore like, ah, you know, his big, his official silks, ah, like, yellow and, ah, purple silk gown and a stitching of gold thread. And he wore his, ah, his, what do you call it, his official belt, big jade belt, you know. And, ah, and he came to see the teacher and the teacher said, oh, wow, you know, ah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, your majesty, I have no suitable, you know, seats for such a august presence. And,

[60:36]

ah, all I have is these simple cushions that I usually sit on. And, Tsutomu Po said, don't worry, I'll just sit on you. So the teacher said, okay, I'll make a deal with you. I'll ask you a question. If you can answer the question, you can use me as a chair. And if you can't, give me your belt. And Tsutomu Po said, okay, it's a deal. So that the, that, ah, his friend, ah, says, Fu Yin says,

[61:36]

ah, it says in the Heart Sutra that, ah, this form, this color, itself, is the essence of emptiness. And, that emptiness, of course, itself, is this form. Now, if you use me as a chair, isn't this clinging to form? Without understanding its essential non-existence? But, if things don't really exist, then what will you sit on? Etc. Tsutomu Po was stumped. And, and, his friend said, you see, you're still clinging even now. Do away

[62:41]

with all activities of thought. Renounce worldly affairs. Reverse your thought. Then you'll understand. Tsutomu Po handed over his jade belt, and from then on, he did Zen with greater ardor. He meditated at all times, read many Zen books, and went to visit the Master whenever he could. So, this lecture is going on so long, but I have to tell you this story about Suzuki Roshi. I'll make it really fast. I'll say it, I'll talk really fast. He went to the Narrows one day. He jumped in the water. What? What? What?

[63:42]

Don't rush? What did you say over there? I can't hear you. This is a leg story. I wasn't going to say that part because I was trying to go fast, but... Anyway, he went swimming at the Narrows, but he forgot in his exuberance that he didn't know how to swim. So, of course, he went down to where the bass are and the trout. And the students saw him go down and not come up, and they thought, oh, the Master can really hold his breath a long time. He really is a great yogi. But after some period of time, they thought, well, maybe not. Maybe he's a bad swimmer. So they went down and got him and pulled him up, and he was very embarrassed. Laughter So he told that story one time during a sashin about himself and how embarrassed he was during a sashin in San Francisco. Oh, by the way, when he was down under the water, he saw the lady's legs. Beautiful lady's legs he saw.

[64:43]

Back in those days, we had beautiful lady's legs, too. Laughter Zykiewicz's legs were really cute. Laughter They were kind of short and the feet Laughter The feet were the feet were really little, but they were they were, you know, nice and straight across the front, and he took good care of his toenails. Laughter Anyway, then he said, after that, I really started to practice Zen hard. And then, at dinner that night, we said, somebody said to him, Roshi, you said that after that, you really started to practice hard, but weren't you practicing hard before that? He said, yes, but then I really started to practice hard. So now, Su Dong Po is really practicing hard. Okay? Laughter He's been embarrassed enough. He's going to get it together. Laughter

[65:47]

So, there was a temple called the Ascending Dragon, and there was a famous Zen teacher there named Chang Tsung. So Su Dong Po went to see him, and, you know, in the state of really practicing hard and reading all these Zen texts and stuff, after also, of course, memorizing all of them when he was a kid and stuff, he walks in the door to see this person who is like the embodiment of infinite compassion. Right? And, the guy started shouting at him, how dare you come to seek dead words from me? Why don't you open your eyes to the living words of the material world? Why don't you go listen to the teachings of nature? I can't teach someone who knows so much about Zen. Go away. So he stumbled

[66:54]

out of the room, somehow got on his horse, and his horse took him for a walk, and, for a ride, I mean. And, suddenly, he came to a waterfall, and the sound of the waterfall struck his ear, his left ear, and he understood. The blue mountains filled his eyes, and then he wrote a poem. The Roaring Waterfall is the Buddha's golden mouth.

[67:55]

The mountains in the distance are her pure body of luminousness. How many thousands of poems have flowed through me tonight, and tomorrow I won't be able to repeat even one word. So, you see, even after such a great realization, he still went ahead and defiled it. May our intention be equally penetrated every being and place with the true merit of whoever's

[68:56]

way.

[68:57]

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