So there's new people, and we have new people and the whole story. So here's the story. The story is, there's a Zen teacher named Yangshan. Yangshan means revering the mountains. He was a great Zen master. He asked a monk, where do you come from? And the monk said, You province. And Yangshan asked him, Do you think of that place? And the monk said, I always think of it. And then Yangshan said, The thinker is the mind and the thought of

[01:02]

is the environment, or the subjective mind, the subjective thought is mind and objective thought is the environment. Therein, the ability to think is the mind, that which is thought of, or that which receives thinking, is the environment. Therein, the mountains, there are mountains, rivers, and land mass, buildings, towers, halls, and chambers, people, animals, and so forth. Reverse your thought. Reverse your thinking. Turn your thinking around. and think of the thinking mind, or think of the ability to think.

[02:12]

And then he asked the monk, are there so many things there? And the monk says, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all. And Yangshan says, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. The monk said, do you have any further, any other particular way of guidance? And Yangshan said, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Based on your insight, you only get one mystery. You can take the seat and wear the robe. After this, see on your own. I'd like to... I just saw this owl here.

[03:30]

That reminds me of a quote of Hegel, which is, Minerva's owl only flies at dusk. So in this this turning, in the process of turning the mind, you go through the day. You know, you go through dusk and dawn. It's at those junctures of the light that Minerva's owl flies. You know Minerva's owl? Isn't Minerva Athena? Huh? Yeah. Didn't she burst out of Apollo's head or something like that? Huh? She burst out of Zeus's head? Anyway, she's the goddess of wisdom, right?

[04:36]

And the owl is her totem or whatever. It flies at dusk. So insight happens at this turning of the... as the mind turns or as the day turns at dusk and dawn. when the light switches on and the light switches off, these are particularly important times to be awake and watching. This happens anywhere. I mean, you know, dusk and dawn happen anywhere. Your mind keeps turning anyway. The question is whether you're awake. For me, actually, it's hard to be awake at those two times. I wonder if it's any coincidence between the fact that it's hard to be awake and it's the best time to be awake. And what is his name? Rumi said, the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

[05:46]

Don't go back to sleep. You have to say what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are walking back and forth at the threshold where the two worlds meet. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. Now this case is about where the two worlds meet, where the subjective and objective world meet. where light and dark meet. Where what you can be aware of meets what you can't be aware of. It's about turning around between these worlds and also watching the place where they meet and realizing that where they meet is where they separate, and where they separate is where they meet.

[06:49]

They're joined at the place that they separate. And you have to watch carefully that place to realize difference and union. You can't have union without difference. You can't have difference without union. So meditating on this is very important, you know, in our tradition. This case is pointing at this. And this is a... What is it? It's a... Again, I sympathize. I understand that it's difficult, this work. And at the end of class, I asked Bill about his faith. Yeah, I asked him what his faith was or something like that. And he said some things. And afterwards, I thought about something an example of, excuse the expression, a training example.

[07:53]

An example of training a dog to fetch a stick. And one dog trainer says that And I've heard this about horses too, you know, that horses, you don't teach horses how to gallop and how to walk and how to canter and how to trot. They know how to do that stuff. You just teach them when you want them to do it. And you teach them mostly through your hands and feet. You tell them, you talk to them with your hands and feet about when you want them to do these things they already know how to do And dogs, you don't, I've never myself taught a dog how to fetch a stick. I don't throw the stick and say, now go get the stick. I guess maybe some people do that, but I never did that. They seem to go for it naturally. And this person, this Vicky Hearn, this animal trainer says that this is just part of the kind of natural thing of hunting, that they go after stuff.

[09:07]

But hunting is also, you go get something and you get it and you get to keep it. So when they get something and bring it back, there's part of them, part of their nature is that what they got is theirs, and yet you threw it out there so they'd want to play with you. And so they bring it back to you so you can throw it again, because they can't throw it. Once they've got something, it's done, you know, pretty much. Unless they bury it and dig it up later. But then if somebody puts the thing out there again, then they can go get it again. They enjoy that. So if you throw it out again, they'll go and get it again and bring it back. But they don't bring it all the way back to you. They only bring it about three feet away because it's theirs. And they don't want to forget that, and they don't want you to forget that. And so formal training is to get the dog to bring it all the way back.

[10:12]

It's to get the dog to do something that it naturally does and then transform it into something it doesn't naturally do, but based on something it naturally does. To transform that. And you transform it through this conversation between the two. But she says, this is formal training and this is filled with frustration. This is very frustrating, this closing that gap. And in Zen training too, to work with what you naturally do and then bring it all the way to conclusion, to do it so thoroughly that you transcend it, that's formal training. And that is difficult and frustrating. And in the process of, for the trainer or the teacher or whatever, to say the words that make this game into formal training, these words often initiate frustration and anger.

[11:33]

But these words are also what will remove the anger. Not the same words, but it will be through words that the anger will be removed and that the training will be completed. If you just keep throwing a thing and letting the dog bring it back three feet away and going to get it and throwing it, the dog will keep doing that indefinitely. But the real intimacy between the two will not develop unless you ask something of the dog. And dogs do have respect for our language, therefore they can enter into this domestic relationship. And the trainer must have the same commitment to the process that the dog does. If they don't, it's really Well, it's just cruel.

[12:38]

But they often do. They often feel the same respect for the process that the dog does, the animal does. And this is a story about training here. The story is about training. I was talking to Stuart about this case, and we haven't emphasized too much the first question, where do you come from? It says U-Province. And... So... So what did we think maybe U-Province was, Stuart?

[13:44]

U-Province is where the monk comes from. The whole, the issue of where you come from, of returning, it's a monk's source. and returning to the source or where one comes from or springs from is then the central question. And the whole question is an analog. The first question is an analog for the second question. It initiates the process of returning to that place from which one springs. And, you know, I was just, I was talking before about giving a little bit of discussion of, what you might say, a kind of alchemical discussion of initiations, and in a sense where we come from is, well, it's a cycle, you know, so you just pick a point in the cycle. But at one point in the cycle, early in our childhood, we come from a new province, you know, we were born there.

[15:01]

And in that place, subject and object are merged. There is union. We come from union. Or you can pick that point to start. Or you could say the mother. And we get away from that. we start moving away from that at some point, from that union, moving away from the mother, moving away from the union of subject and object. This is not training. This naturally happens, hopefully. And this process is completed, and when it's completed successfully, it's usually completed successfully in young adulthood. And Traditionally, the father helps this separation, helps us develop independence and separation.

[16:11]

We then are successfully settled with living in the realm of separation of subject and object, living with the pain of that. And the next stage is we go into training. Psychologically we come from union into separation, but also we physically do that too, we set up autonomy, we become autonomous. Psychologically we come into this separated state of mind, but we also as individuals become autonomous from our mother, from our source. And then formal training is to go beyond being autonomous. It's for hopefully an autonomous person to enter into a relationship where it is that you give up, without giving up your autonomy, like without forgetting that the stick is yours, in a sense, still being willing to bring it all the way back.

[17:28]

And that's to enter into formal training. And formal training, to be successful, should not crush the practitioner and make them give up their autonomy, but should integrate this autonomy in a relationship, to fold the autonomy into a relationship, to fold your sense of autonomy that is your stick into a conversation with somebody who's training you. And that's difficult. if you avoid such a training situation, your life will be, in some ways, you'll avoid a certain difficulty. But you won't have the authority, you'll never have the authority that comes from that process of integration. In this case, the teacher is saying, the teacher's showing him the process of training. The process of training is basically, first of all, this is the way the mind's built, now you study it.

[18:39]

And you study it in many ways, but in particular, I don't want you to forget to study it in this one particular way, which is to reverse the way you think. He actually wants him to study, he knows he will study many other aspects of mind and environment, but he wants him also to focus on this particular point of reversing the mind. This is not our natural thing. This is the extra three feet. Our natural thing is for the mind to go out back and forth, back and forth, without realizing the nature of awareness itself. This is what the teacher is trying to get him to do. What do you mean by natural? What do you mean by natural? Well, what you'll do sort of without any training.

[19:40]

Without, yeah, without any training. Do you think that's human's nature always? That it doesn't connect to... That doesn't reverse, the mind doesn't reverse? Is that human nature? Well, it's... What did I say? It's... No, I won't say it's human nature not for the mind to reverse. The mind can reverse it. But the tendency is to go into that phase and to stay in that phase until you die unless you enter into a training. Training is a way to do something before you die that you'll do when you die. When you die, you're going to do this anyway. You're going to reverse the mind and go back and look at awareness itself. But if you can do that before you die, it's a good idea, apparently, because you develop this integrity and authority while still alive.

[20:45]

Plus, then when you die, you re-enter... with consciousness, and the level of consciousness in this cycle keeps spiraling up. It's a spiral, you go round and round and round. Anyway, this part is where you give up your trip a little bit. Not your autonomy, but you bring the stick all the way back, or you experiment with how to do that. That's what this section of the... That's this part of the story. And this is what has been called a fiery initiation, or initiation by fire. Where you burn away not your autonomy, but just certain trips you're on. Like, for example, always turning the mind out towards objects. You give it up part of the time and turn it around. You don't have to give it up all the time. Just give it up, you know, for like, you know... a few seconds once in a while, or, you know, five minutes would be great, or an hour.

[21:50]

If you could turn your mind around for an hour, that would be, you know, you would learn so much during that hour that you could use it for the rest of your life. Or if you can turn it around for a few seconds every morning while you're sitting, you know, and a few moments while you're talking to people throughout the day, that's very good. You can do it more if you can get up maybe to half time on it or something like that. You just learn so much. You've already learned so much from having the mind going out towards objects. Now turn it around and see what you learn from that. That's the fiery initiation, which is part of formal training. And then once that's completed, which is often completed in middle age, Then you come out of that into a more dynamic situation where you, you know, you're no longer like under training.

[22:59]

But you're not just acting out either out of your, you know, impulses of separation, you know, greed, hate and delusion. You're coming from an integration of your nature and your autonomy in relationship. And now, and this is in the later middle age, you can really start expressing yourself in unique ways, just like you could before your training, but it's post-training individual expression. Like once you're a full professor, you can Once you're a full professor of physics, you can come in and talk about your summer vacation. And, you know, it isn't just they say, well, he's a full professor, so she can talk like that. I mean, it's relevant. I mean, when a full professor talks about summer vacation, it's physics. And they can show you how it is.

[24:05]

I mean, it's not a joke. It's an expression of their training, their discipline. It's not just like they're fooling around. Albert Einstein can talk about his digestive processes, and it's, you know, it's definitely, thinking in terms of physics, because that's his training. And he's just thinking, he's talking about whatever happens to him or whatever he wants to talk about, but he's gone through a training of mathematics and various other, you know, data. So he's been disciplined. He's been initiated by fire. So now, in his later middle age, he can really be expressive. And then, in the end, in old age, we go back to union. And then we die. This cycle can also happen more frequently than throughout our whole life. And one way to talk about this is that the first state of union is the static, feminine,

[25:14]

And you break out of that into the dynamic masculine, the dynamic young people. They're dynamically expressing their autonomy, their independence, their separation. And the next phase of training, which is the process of fiery initiation, is the static masculine. If you stay there too long, things go dead. But if you get initiated and don't stay there too long, you come out of the static masculine into the dynamic feminine, where you're very creative and wild. And back to the static feminine, this cycle. And the last, the dynamic feminine cycle is the watery initiation. And the dynamic feminine is what's pointed to in the later part of the story.

[26:18]

So you can see the story as the middle part of the story is the monk has come as an independent meditator in his young, probably in his young adulthood or whatever, he meets the teacher, the teacher gives him the instruction of reversing the mind, and then we don't know how many years happened between that instruction when the monk and when the teacher says, is there anything there, is there anything existing in that place? Are there so many things there? When he asks that question, there might be several years. The monk might have gone from young adulthood to middle age in that process. We don't know. Or it could have been, you know, immediately or at that time. The next phase is where the teacher then says, this is good for the stage of faith, but not yet for the stage of person. This is the teacher initiating the beginning, saying to this guy, enter into this dynamic feminine.

[27:23]

You know, go beyond your training now. Be creative. Let's see how you put it to work. You get the seat. By going through the training process, you get the seat. You deserve a seat. You get a robe. You get clothes of an initiate. But you haven't reached the stage of the person. Now you have to go forward and see on your own. See what you come up with. See what you run into. See what you're going to make of it. You go on your own. Yeah? You only get one mystery. That's right. He only gets one mystery rather than three. That's because he didn't yet get to the stage of the person. he'll have to find these other mysteries himself. I think I'll just jump ahead since we're on this. And this one time at this is okay now. And we'll come back to it again. The national teacher, Da Shao, you find that verse?

[28:29]

It's a little verse after the big verse. Right here. It's on page 144. Did you find it? Good. So, the National Teacher says, crossing the summit of Mystic Peak, right? Yeah. Crossing the stomach of mystic feet. Crossing the summit. See the summit? See mystic feet? Crossing the summit. This is the environment that you think of. Okay? And the monk did this. The monk thought of the environment. All right? He came from Yul province and then he came to the teacher and he thought of the environment. It's not the human world.

[29:45]

This is the mind that thinks. Outside the mind there is nothing. This is the monk saying, when I get there I don't see anything at all. This is the stage of faith. He finished his training, he did his assignment, he was faithful. He followed through on what he wanted to learn and he learned it. And he could say, when I get there I don't see anything at all. That's outside the mind. There are no things. Filling the eyes are blue mountains. And then the commentator says, just this one phrase separates the monk and the national teacher. So, Just this one phrase separates the monk and the national teacher, separates the monk and Yangshan, separates stage of faith and stage of person, separates one mystery from three mysteries.

[31:09]

He needed to say this next line. Filling the eyes are the Blue Mountains. He didn't say that or anything like that. He just said, outside the mind there are no things. The National Teacher says this too. But then the National Teacher takes one more step and becomes a person whose eyes are filled with Blue Mountains. This is to break out of the place where there's nothing at all and to have the world support your wings. You don't fly with no atmosphere. There's air holding you up. There's molecules under your armpits. That's how the Garuda flies. There's blue mountains filling your eyes, lifting you into the sky.

[32:15]

And the dragon stomps around on the ocean and the ocean gets all splashed up and flips around by the activity of coming out of this place where there's nothing at all and entering the water. That's the water initiation. And when you get in the water you say various things like there's blue mountains filling my eyeballs my webbed feet are getting all soggy and my wings are, you know, rolling on this air. That's what you have to say about your situation, whatever it is. Or, you know, it's hot today. Whatever. You have to speak from where you are, whatever it is. This is a dynamic feminine. And through this process of working with what comes to you, you... you complete the process, and then you become not just a wise person, an initiate, but you find you become a compassionate bodhisattva.

[33:28]

So that's why the verse also says, if you stay back where this monk is, you know, you stay in meditation, the wine is sweet, it is sweet, but the guests fall asleep and don't get to see you know, their own personal expression. And the tummies are full, but the farmers are ruined. The stage of the person is, the guests, you know, are still out acting and the farmers have work. And that's the watery initiation, and that's the part that this monk is being told to do on his own. Yes? What about the one mystery and three mysteries? You mean what about the other two mysteries? What's a mystery? What's a mystery? What are the three mysteries? Well, just, you know, standard three mysteries of Buddhism.

[34:30]

And after you enter into this dynamic feminine, you get the other two mysteries. What's the first one? The first is, well, the first is, what do you call it, you know, disentanglement. Disentanglement from objects. The first comes to you by turning the mind around and realizing the nature of consciousness and then realizing that there's nothing at all. In other words, understanding emptiness of all phenomena. That's the first mystery. Yeah, it's a mystery. Very subtle. And then the next ones are to go beyond realizing disentanglement, to get re-entangled, to get back into an entanglement of personal expression again.

[35:34]

which is to offer, you know, like to, what do you call it, you know, since you have a seat, give somebody else a seat. Say, here, sit down. Let's have a talk. Come on. Sit down here. Come into this room. Sit down and have a talk. That also creates entanglement. And you're there. You're there meeting these persons, these people. entering into this practice wherever they're at, and also maybe talking to them and making them angry because you're asking them to bring the stick all the way back, or whatever. Or they tell you and you have to say, well, that's fine, but... That's not what I mean by bringing the stick down. And that's part of what we're going through here is people talking about what it's like to start turning and the various experiences they have as they start to turn and just making clear what's the difference between turning and having turned.

[36:41]

What's the difference between a full rotation and a half turn? This kind of thing. To encourage and be honest about where we feel we are in the process and not one-sidedly either. Then the other mystery starts to unfold out of that relationship. Yeah. I was just going to say, along those lines of the difference between having turned and the process of turning, what do you think about, when I think of turning the mind around to think of that which thinks, sometimes I feel like I'll kind of settle for this self-awareness where There's me, and there's something that's aware of me, and I feel like, okay, now I'm doing it, now I'm turning the mind around to think of that which thinks. But on the other hand, I don't think that's really having turned the mind around.

[37:42]

Good, you're right. That's right. That's an intermediate process. That's like an intermediate turn, or like I say, the real turning is not like, it's not a 180 degree turn, it's a reversal, but it's a revolutionary reversal, it's not just the opposite. It's like you flip around and come right back to where you were, so that you're like, you're still looking at me, I'm still looking at you, but... So the difference is not something that I can like, it isn't like I'm looking at you and then there's a little sign across your forehead that says, turned. Look the same. There's no, there's no way, there's no, there's no mark by which to show you turned. But from show me that I turned in relationship to you as an object. So the, however you've changed, so you have to do it while the thing you're looking at is changing. So basically the thing doesn't, it isn't that the objects start looking different, the difference is not some formed, it's not a formed thing, it's a formless difference.

[38:45]

But there will be many formal, I shouldn't say formal, but there will be various forms or signs of change as you try to turn. And that's one example. And there's millions of other examples of what we call intermediate experience before you actually make the full change, which won't make any difference that you can point to as a form. The change will not have a sign or mark or characteristic. Having a mark will be one of the ways you'll know that you haven't really done it yet. If you're depending on a mark to determine that you've turned, then you know you haven't turned yet. So what does he say, the Buddha asked the Buddha, is there any dharma, any characteristic, any phenomena by which the Buddha attained utmost right and perfect enlightenment? And there is no dharma, there is no sign by which the Buddha attained at most by the perfect enlightenment. That's section 22 of the Diamond Sutra.

[39:50]

And then section 23 is... Well, and still section 22 is... Because there is no Dharma by which the Buddha attained utmost right and perfect enlightenment. That's why it's called utmost right and perfect enlightenment. Because it doesn't require fiddling with the world. It is something you attain without using anything to attain it. That's what this turning should be like in the end. And this enlightenment is completely self-identical. There's nothing at variance with it. And it's self-identical through a lack of self. That's why, that's how it's self-identical. And that's why it's utmost ready, perfect, enlightened. So when you turn, there's no dharma by which you turn, there's no dharma by which you determine that you turned.

[40:55]

And yet, somehow, you can turn, you do it all the time anyway, and When you can say that you've turned without using any dharma to show that you've turned, you probably will be trusted by your trainer. When you describe your turn honestly as the dharma by which you're turning, or the dharma by which you determine that you've turned, then we know you haven't turned yet. Even though the turning is even though the dharma by which you turn is often very interesting, you've never seen anything like it before, it sounds really revolutionary, still you're dealing with mind and object. And to eliminate mind and object as a way of having there be no mind and object, would be using the elimination of mind and object as a means by which you had no mind and object. So when he says, when I get here there's nothing at all, he doesn't mean that there's a thing called no more mind and object.

[42:00]

There's not even that. There's not even like mind and object get disturbed at all. They don't get disturbed the tiniest little bit. And that's what he says, nothing at all. All the things that he saw, all the things that there are in the world, haven't been touched. And that is how it is when there's nothing at all. There's nothing at all means nothing's been touched, nothing's been damaged, nothing's been altered, except of course the world's changing all the time and that process is going on. But what's changed is that you see that there's nothing at all without needing to change anything. It doesn't depend on anything. That's a total revolution.

[43:05]

That's reversing the mind. Or that's what you understand by reversing the mind. Reversing the mind is a way to understand that. But it's good to notice the... the things you see as you try that, it's good to notice them, and to notice that things do happen, unusual things do happen when you try to turn. You do turn... 90 degrees, 180 degrees, 270 degrees, you do turn these, you do turn partially as you try to turn completely. You do turn and still hold on to something, and as you turn and try to hold on to something, things start to get different. Unusual phenomena happen as you start to turn. And you start to get awake, you know, your wakefulness starts to be more round, sort of round the clock sort of thing, and you start seeing, you know, what do you call them, bats and owls flying by. You say, I never saw an owl before.

[44:08]

Well, fine, that's good. That's not turning. The owl flying flies, but the owls are actually just a harbinger. And that's part of the bringing the stick all the way back. It's also not bringing the final three feet, but it's also not bringing six feet. It's bringing it right back to where the other person's talking about and working that out somehow. And if they're being unreasonable, you know, express yourself. Yeah. So the monk did bring the stick all the way back, but then he didn't sort of jump up and lick the guy and wag his tail and... Do something. I mean, express it. He brought the stick all the way back. Yeah, that's a good way. He brought the stick all the way back, but it's like he brought the stick all the way back and then... somehow something was missing there when he got back. I don't know what that was like in terms of, I don't know what a dog would do that wouldn't be appropriate when it brought the stick back finally, you know, when the dog finally made that really appropriate response.

[45:11]

He doesn't let go. He doesn't let go. He didn't let go. That's it. And, you know, Vicki Hearn also talks about how some people who have problems like borderline psychotics and so on, one way to train them is to give them a dog and a good dog trainer, and then have them learn how to train the dog. Have the dog trainer, not the dog trainer train the person, but the dog trainer help the person learn how to train the dog. The dog trainer can say to the person, you know, it is fetch, not son of a bitch. Say fetch, you know. And the person says fetch. And the dog hears fetch rather than son of a bitch.

[46:13]

And the person learns what they have to say to the dog to get the dog to do the thing that they're trying to learn how to do. And when the dog does the thing, that they're trying to do, then the schizophrenic is not a schizophrenic anymore. Because the schizophrenic is now talking a language that has meaning and gets a response that goes with that language. And that's, you know, at that moment anyway, there's no more schizophrenics around. There's dog and person. So that's very much like this kind of thing here. If Yangshan's instruction, it's Yangshan's instruction, and then there's people alive today to help you understand what that is, right? So it's a traditional, very old Buddhist instruction of turning the mind. And then if you can do this, then you can bring it back. And I think that's a good example. The dog brings it back. But the dog wouldn't just bring it back and just, there would be something that would be appropriate.

[47:18]

I don't know what the dog would do. It might jump and lick you. It might just stand, bring the dog back, bring it, boom, give it to you and might stand there and it might just sit there and radiate happiness. I don't know what it would do. The point is you don't know what it would do. It's a creative feminine. You don't know what the dog would do. But it does something. It doesn't just... It's not an inauthentic response. It's not this. It's not nothing at all. And this didn't work. Now, somebody else could have come and said, it's nothing at all. And that would have been a more complicated story. And Yangshan could have approved it. But what we want is something. We want the monk to come back, the teacher to say, is there anything at all? And him to say, no. And the blue mountains are filling my eyes. or whatever it was, you know, at that time. He could have said, no, but there's clouds rising on South Mountain and there's rain coming down on North Mountain. It depends on the situation, we can't say.

[48:19]

But there's something, yeah. One of the things I feel, and it's mentioned in the commentary that the monk's answer was pretty good. Yeah. One of the things I like about his answer so much is when I get here, that's where I miss a piece of what the interaction was. Because I get a sense of his physical presence and him presenting himself to the teacher in the way, where do you come from? Where do I get here? So I don't get exactly where he came up short, except when he wants instruction later, again, in terms of the exchange, that he feels something's still missing. But I like the physicality of not, you know, in my mind, in that turning someplace else, but where do I want to get here? Yeah, and somebody else could have even asked the second question, do you have any further instruction? And it could have been a very ironic playfulness, you know. But in this case, it seems like Yangshan actually didn't, felt like, as it says in the commentary too, that he felt that the monk was still involved in mind and object, even though he got to the place where mind and object are merged and there isn't anything, still,

[49:29]

The total demonstration that you freed yourself from the duality of mind and object is to get involved in them again. And he didn't somehow, he couldn't do it, I guess. These other stories in here we can look at too if we have time here. You can watch Yangshan also himself evolve in his interactions about this same point in the commentary. He also went through some stages where he's working with the same issue and where he evolved in the relationship to his teacher around this. So let's see, what should we do next? There was a hand in the back. There was a hand in the back. Whose was it? Oh, Sarah. I'm trying to understand the difference between formal training and, say, cultural socialization. We've talked about that. the training with dogs, and I think of being like domesticated in my group, domesticated, trying to do the wild, being for how we want to be, like our nature.

[50:47]

And so what's the difference between formal training, making them do something like that, and normally what we're doing and being in society where they're telling you to act a certain way and do certain things a certain way, is there a difference? What is the difference? They're closely related, because there are societies, I mean, there are clubs, you know, training clubs for various things, right? if you want to have authority around some dimension of human personality, then in some sense you enter into some social situation. And it's not so much that you get in a situation where you're supposed to then do what they want you to do. That's not so much it. Because it might be, for example, that you would be doing

[51:49]

what they want to do, and that might happen to be just exactly what you want to do, and that wouldn't be training. Training means that you integrate and that you kind of start having a conversation with somebody where you express your respect for the other, where you incorporate the other into your autonomy. It isn't just that you're doing what they want. They may have that problem that they want you to do something, And I myself used to have the feeling of I wanted people to be a certain way, that I ordained some people to be priests and I was going to train them, and I wanted to train them basically to be like me. I thought that would be a good idea. Well, I wasn't exactly going to train them to be like me. I was going to train them to be like an ideal of me. Like me minus all my problems.

[52:51]

I thought that would be very kind of neat because I had a good idea of what that would be like. Basically, all my good points, they should be like that and eliminate all their bad points. But somehow it didn't work. They wouldn't go for it. So I gave up on that one and started to train them according to their own autonomy, their own nature. which means where they're at and where they have authority, where they're coming from, but still in a conversation with me. So they want to go do such and such, or they want to go be a certain way. I don't tell them to do another thing, but I ask them to talk to me about everything they do. That is a big change in their life. So this wild side, this dynamic female, how does that, like, you train the dog, but does the dog, how does the dog return to its wild state, doesn't it?

[54:05]

How does it get there? This, uh, uh, This is very much part of this, okay? This wild thing. Wild means... The way I'm using wild is wild is the people who aren't talking to you. Wild are those things which you don't have a way to talk to. They don't respect your language. Those are the wild things. For wolves, the other wolves are not wild. For wolves, we are wild, and wolves don't trust us. Dogs and horses are not wild, and we can trust them. As a matter of fact, we can trust them better than we can trust ourselves or other people sometimes. Like if you're riding a horse through a minefield, horses, I hear anyway, are nervous when they get around mines.

[55:09]

And if you just let the horse go where it wants to go, it will get you through the minefield. Dogs, you know, are the first ones to notice certain types of people that some people can notice. But dogs get them like that. They can tell your enemies like that because they're in your team. Wolves can never be watchdogs because they never really join your group. So domesticated means they're in your house. And wild means that they're not in your house. You can train wild animals by stimulus response training, but they never really respect your language. And wild, you know, I just listened to this, what's this woman, what's her name? That woman who, Western to the Dark, what's her name? Yeah, Beryl, what? Beryl Markham. She told a story about this tame lion.

[56:14]

You know? Tame lion. But it wasn't tame. It just one day, it just mauled her. You know? Lions, chimpanzees... with wolves. These animals are wild. They'll never join our camp. You can train them, but then all of a sudden, after many years of training, they, you know, rip your kid's head off. But isn't that trying to train them? Isn't that not really respecting them? I agree. These animals, this is the irony, these animals should not be in cages. The animals that should be in cages are dogs and people. They're the ones that should be in cages because for us, cages are our house. This is our house. To put a wolf in here is a cage because they're wild.

[57:15]

It is not respectful to them, that's true. We shouldn't try to train them because it doesn't seem right to train them. And in fact, in the long run, you're not going to want them in your house. Because they're not domesticated or domesticatable creatures, you can't train them. You can't train them, and this is also, you can't train them means you can't train them morally, ethically you can't train them. You should not train them. It is wrong to train them because you can't have a conversation with them. And that way, if they were highly intelligent beings, you would have to crush them to train them. And you'd just be manipulating them. There would never be our mutual respect and a mutual commitment. So, we're not... The dynamic feminine is not wildness in the sense of a wild animal we can't talk to.

[58:17]

It is a person who has been trained and who won't hurt anybody. And because they've been trained, they can be wild in a sense of completely creative, unpredictable animals. you know, and wild in that sense, but not wild in the sense that they'll hurt anybody, because they've been trained to not do that. So this is also part of this thing, is what's wild and what's domestic. And domestic, we, dogs have domesticated us too. They can get us to cry, you know. Horses have domesticated us, and we have domesticated horses. But we have not domesticated wolves, and wolves have not domesticated us. Lions have not domesticated us, and we have not domesticated them. Up until recently, anyway, lions still just attack people, and we have no way to talk to them about it. But there are ways to train them, cruelly, I would say, by playing on their instincts, like with a whip and a chair, you can get lions to move.

[59:22]

You know how they do that? It's kind of cruel. It's not really training according to the way you train a dog or the way you train a Zen student. And the most important, the most dangerous thing, the greatest danger in Zen training is to crush the autonomy of the student. Second, or maybe equally dangerous, is to crush the autonomy of the teacher. I don't know which is worse. I guess it's worse to crush the autonomy of the student, because if the student's autonomy is maintained, there's always a chance that they can become a teacher and that they won't get crushed. Just to share an image that came to my mind that plays on those two ways of understanding training as either impositional or liberating was Michelangelo's attitude towards his work and his marble.

[60:24]

Rather than carving, imposing a form, he felt like he was letting out or removing things in order for what was already there to be there. The end The end of training is self-expression. And self-expression is also part of the training before the end. You should express yourself all the way through. But you also should have respect for the other. And if you do, If you do, it isn't that you then squelch your self-expression. I don't think it's ever good to squelch your self-expression unless it's going to be harmful to somebody. But you should self-express yourself, self-express yourself all the way through training, but in conversation with feedback. And when that training is completed, then self-expression is just the most wonderful thing.

[61:25]

and then you're ready to die. Yes? Yeah, I think that the distinction between, you know, using the word training, it's a word that in English has two meanings. I mean, one, training can be coercion. Right. Manipulation, such as training to bear your own bicycle. Right. Or you have an athlete who you're training at any time. Through drills or whatever, repetition, you are developing and ask it with their true nature. So it's not coercive or naked until it's developed mindful. And I would assume that that's the training that you're referring to here is forms of lifting weights or whatever that's going to allow the thinking mind to return to the top level. And then allow the person to really express themselves from that place. So, for example before you realize this place that this monk got to and then come forth from there when you relate to stealing you're probably dealing with it in terms of, well, if you want something and it's not yours you stop yourself from doing that.

[62:50]

I mean, excuse me in terms of the precept of don't steal, you try to stop yourself from stealing something if you have the impulse to steal something. But the Zen teaching on the precept of stealing is, of not stealing is, commented upon by saying, in the suchness of mind and object, the doors of liberation open. When you understand the relationship between mind and object, That is the precept of not stealing. And when you realize the mind which understands the relationship between these two, you're liberated from breaking this precept. And you practice non-stealing, but not by stopping yourself from stealing, but you just understand the relationship between you or your mind and the objects. That's where these precepts come from, is this kind of mind. Yes?

[63:52]

When I try that, when I do that, it just feels like a window. It's just like an open window. How do you mean? It feels like, you know this phrase, filling the eyes of blue mountains. Yes. It's just, things are just there. I don't have to change them. Yeah. I've stopped working in that moment. Yeah. And it feels very free, very open, very airy. It's like looking in a window. In your window. No glass. Another thing that Stuart mentioned to me about, you know, in this book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, this meditation of reversing the mind is the central meditation of this text.

[64:54]

This is a Taoist text that picked up this Buddhist meditation. And here in Chapter 3 it says, the words, focus on the center, are most sublime. And I was talking to Stuart about the word center. And if you focus on the center, not on a point, but just on the idea of center, it's another way for your mind to turn around, because the center has no dimension. You can't get a center. If you get a hold of it, it still has some size, so you haven't got to the center yet. And the center, in its fineness, fits into spacelessness. And the greatness of a center is utterly beyond location. So that's another instruction on turning the mind. Focus on the center.

[65:55]

What you could also say is focus on spacelessness, or think of, or focus, or meditate on space, make your mind like space. Anyway, this instruction is the one that's given here, of reversing the mind. And each of you may find a slightly different way that helps for you. For me, the way I find that helps, the one that works best for me personally is I think of the ability or the capacity to think. For me to think of the thinker is a little bit distracting because I think I make it into a person that's thinking. And I get this little thinker of it. But when I think of the capacity or the ability to think, then that works best for me. But focusing on the center is another way to do it. And no matter what's happening, it's also always possible to focus on this dimensionless center.

[67:03]

And you don't know whether it's immeasurably small or immeasurably big. You don't know exactly whether you're imploding or exploding. but you're willing to look at that because you're being voluntarily submitting to this instruction about reversing the mind, turning the light around. Yes? Yes. Yes, you may. Mind is the organ, phenomena are the objects.

[68:09]

Both are like flaws in a mirror. When the defilement of the flaws is gone, only then does the light appear. When mind and phenomena are both forgotten, nature is identical to reality. And then it says, when you get here, be like a fool, like a blockhead, and then you will perceive this public case. If you do not reach his throne, you will just be running around in the words. What end will there ever be? What are you reading? I'm reading from a book of record, Case 34. Oh, you have different translations. That's a verse you're reading? Yeah. Well, it's not the verse. It's just... Oh, it's the commentary. It's the commentary. Yeah. Sorry. Perhaps a commentary on the verse. I don't know how this... It's a commentary on the verse, right. Yeah. So, only then does the light appear.

[69:18]

It's mostly referring to reversing in life. But I don't know how to understand the flaws. Because it seems like there's no flaws there. Could you read it again? Do you want me to read it again? Mind is the organ. Phenomena are the objects. Both are like flaws in a mirror. Okay, would you stop there? Do you understand why they're flaws in a mirror? No. Okay. Well, let's just stop right there then. So, mind and object. Mind is the organ, object are the phenomena. They're both like flaws in a mirror.

[70:19]

Why would somebody say they're like flaws in a mirror? Because there's separation in the mind. Because there's separation in something that there's not separation in. Or you have a mirror, which is like this and the mirror, right? And there's separation. There's a flaw. It's a cut. It's a wound. It's a flaw. It's a scrape. It's an abrasion. That's step one. Is that okay? Anybody have any questions about that? Somebody does? No? Yes? It seems to me that talking about it that way causes more separation. It seems that you're following that thought, the ritual. To me, it makes...

[71:21]

It's more soothing, at least, to think of them as ripples in the water, right? They're silver water. They're still part of what is. Yes. Yes, I agree that's a more soothing way to think about it. As a matter of fact, there is a poem like that. I think it goes something like this. Smooth water, full moon, the wind moves, the water moves, bright light or sparkling light. In other words, when the water is smooth, there's no ripples, there's no waves, okay? Then there's just maybe the water with the moon in it, okay?

[72:27]

But when the wind blows and disturbs the surface, when mind and object are separated, the wind blows and causes many little waves. And then the moon is broken up and it sparkles much more. You know what I mean? The light gets brighter when the water is not so smooth. Okay? So, it's a disturbance, it's a flaw, but it makes more light. Or it makes the light more... One time, actually, I took a walk with Paul and Mark Alexander in Green Gulch, 1976. We took a walk in the hills after the main, the biggest snowfall I ever saw here. Remember that walk? It was a lot of snow. It snowed way down here in Green Gulch, a lot. You know, I don't know, a lot. Six inches or three inches or something like that. We went up in the hills, and because it's... And the snow fell on the, you know, coyote... coyote bushes and on top of all the grasses.

[73:35]

But since it's California, all the vegetation is still flourishing in the middle of winter, right? So when the snow falls, it isn't falling like on trees that don't have any leaves or anything. So it's like, when you usually go up in the hills, it's beautiful to see the plants and to see the leaves, right? It's beautiful. We like to see them. We like to see that the plants have several different leaves on them, right? It's lovely. But when the snow was on them, somehow, because of the snow, each leaf was more clearly outlined than usual. And the level of articulation that was possible to see with the snow on the trees was just so heightened that it was just incredibly impressive. And I think I said to them, why do we like to look at this so much? And it's because we can see how incredibly articulated our mind can be. It's beautiful to see our mind reflected back by this incredible articulation that we can just take in like that.

[74:39]

So one way to look at this is it's a scar or a wound. But the other way to look at it is it's extremely brilliant. But first, anyway, first there's a disturbance. And they're not trying to get you to, at this point, he's not trying to get you to soothe you. He's trying to say, first there's disturbance. Then later the soothing message will come, but it won't become by giving you a more soothing version of a disturbance. Instead of saying a wound or jagged waves, to say ripples sounds softer. You know what I mean by ripples, when the moon hits the ripples? It's not as shocking as when those little tiny waves are more shocking, more bright, aren't they? They're more piercing. So there's various images which will have, each one will have a different psychic impact. But here, the point of this meditation is not to present more or less soothing images, but to look at basically how the mind is disturbed.

[75:51]

And the mind is disturbed by... Any object disturbs the mind. And by observing that, we are encouraged to look back at the mind which can think of things and causes this disturbance. And by looking back at it, it's no longer a matter of being soothed by changing the image, but being soothed by no more images. Basically, not no more images, but no more external images. That is the primary principle of soothing. That's the primary principle of soothing, is no objects of mind. Then, after that, come forth from there. But that's the flaw, is that separation.

[76:54]

And to believe that that separation is real is the basic delusion, which causes not only disturbing the mind, but causes misery. This separation disturbs the mind. To attribute reality to it causes misery. And we do... Because when the mind is separated and there's awareness of object, then the sense of self is born at that point. Just the separation causes disturbance and agitates the mind. But then in addition to that, at that point there is a sense of an actor or an agent or an identity that is responsible for this and a self is born. And then that elaborates into various other problems. If we can watch this fundamental process, when the defilement of the flaws is gone, only then does the light appear. When the mind and phenomena are both forgotten, nature is identical to reality.

[78:07]

But that is just the stage of faith. And you must come from the place where nature... Nature? Can you give an example, some examples of nature? Mind. Where mind is like reality. It's kind of like an example of reality. This mind which you can't grasp. Nothing can be grasped. And then you look at the part of your mind that's like everything else. And so you make, you choose the part of nature that's like reality. And that's the basic, that's the fundamental, the primary liberating principle. But that's not enough. Then you must come from there back into the primary bonding principle, because that's the bodhisattva's function, is to re-enter the world after having been relieved of the world.

[79:11]

Then you're capable of real compassion, which is a compassion where you no longer see things as objects. Ultimate compassion is objectless compassion. And objectless compassion is based on understanding objectlessness or entering the realm where you've cured yourself of the subject-object split. So, when he says, like, be a fool and block it, it's going to be, well, don't try to beat your lap. If you get there, I'll try to figure it out. When you get here, be like a fool, like a blockhead, and then you will perceive this case. Then you will, if you forgive me for saying so, you will be able to tell why Yangshan didn't accept his answer.

[80:23]

wouldn't that be swell? And be a fool, a blockhead means, you know, I don't know, when you get to that place and the person says to you, well, now that you're, when you get here, are there many things? Okay? What does a fool do then? Huh? What does a fool do? Themself. Yeah. Now, it's a pretty smart answer right out of the sutras. When I get here, there's nothing at all. It's good. But, was he really Apparently, Yangshan didn't think he was really himself, as foolish as he was. So in other words, be somebody who has no idea of how to proceed once you get there. Before that, you should have an idea of how to proceed. In other words, you should have some instruction in meditation, and you should follow the instruction. Yes? In that third stage, I mean the stage of personhood, Isn't there still the mind sees objects, but maybe it's not disturbed?

[81:27]

I mean, you're back in the world, a compassionate one, recognizing that the nature of mind is to actually see objects. I mean, it seems like the creative chairman is someone who is back in the world, back in that sense of seeing the emptiness of objects, but didn't Not even seeing the emptiness. Not even seeing it. Just objects. But now all objects hold you up in the air. Now all objects are what you splash in and play in. Now objects, all objects, are not objects. But you're totally back into them, and you can talk about them, and people ask you, how is it here? Are there many things? You can answer that question according to your circumstances.

[82:29]

And all you can say is objects. It's all you've got to work with. That's your flight. That's your playground. And you're not disturbed. You're not disturbed because all there is is disturbance. The whole world is just disturbance, and that's the vitality of your functioning, to show people that they actually can be themselves. It's okay. And if they want to get, if they want to, if they need any more instruction than that, okay, they could just simply take it from there, but most people can't, so they need to take this backward step first. Actually, you see, the final product shows that you can just be who you are. That's the final answer. That's the final demonstration. But most people get lost if they just try to start from there. So here's a step to help us get to the place where we can be ourselves.

[83:33]

What is the nature of that getting lost? A lack of faith. Insufficient faith in yourself. Like Tayo showed me a quote today, the end of which was, and the people who don't understand the limits of happiness, happy people who don't understand, perfectly happy people who don't understand the limits of happiness, conceive the idea that they're not happy and waste this leading light. I mean, the people in this room are happy people. But some of them have conceived the idea that they're not happy. Or once in a while they conceive of it, or something like that. This practice here of turning the mind around is a cure of this concept that you're not happy.

[84:39]

And then you come forth and be a happy so-and-so again. Okay? Oh, there's more. We have more classes. There's more in this case, more stuff in this case. Not much, just a little bit. And then we'll go on to the next one, which is, I don't know what to say about that one because we haven't got there yet. Also, we have to go back to Case 31 a little bit. I promise that. There's some more psychological goodies that relate from 31 back to 30. Oh, one more thing, excuse me. But I think Maya asked me this morning about when you turn the mind around, is that an unsupported thought? And I said, what did I say? What did I say? When the mind is reversed, and you understand the nature of the ability to think, and you're freed of objects, is that an unsupported thought?

[85:54]

No. Right! Because I agree with that. What's an unsupported thought? Unsupported thought is a thought that comes out of that. Unsupported thought is the Garuda. Unsupported thought is you take a walk from there. You make a mess. But that mess is not supported by anything. That thought is not supported by anything. It's producing a thought that has no basis. It's a thought on Monday night. It's a Monday night thought that's not supported by Monday night. Not to mention Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on. It's not supported by... Green Gulch Farm is not supported by anything. Nothing that you can name supports this thought, and yet it's a thought. The step before that, there's no thought. So, reversing the mind is not quite yet what a bodhisattva has to do. A bodhisattva has to reverse the mind and then produce a thought. Okay?

[86:55]

So you, you're all good, we're all good at producing thoughts, got that down, Now reverse the mind. And then after you reverse it, don't forget then to do what you know how to do. But first of all, let's reverse the mind. Let's reverse the mind. Let's look back. Let's turn the light around and look back and illuminate what we are. Okay? Let's do that. If you think it's appropriate. If not, that's fine too. Maybe some of you, you don't want to do this practice right now. That's fine. Okay. Okay, thank you very much.

[87:36]

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