Okay, so the first case, what's the name of the first case? When the world honored one ascends the throne. Yeah, the world honored one ascends the seat is the name of the first case. The name of the second case? Forty domes empties. Forty domes empties, okay. Can you recite the first case? One day the World Honored One ascended the seat. Manjushri struck the gavel and said, clearly observe the Dharma of the King of Dharma. The Dharma of the King of Dharma is thus. The World Honored One got down, got down from the seat. Second case is The Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great teacher Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths?

[01:07]

Bodhidharma said, no holy. He said, vast emptiness, no holy. Emperor said, who is it that's facing me? Bodhidharma said, don't know. That's the second case. Third case is, Bodhidharma's teacher, Prajnatara, was invited to lunch by the Raj of East India. And after the lunch, the Raj said to Bodhidharma, Why don't you read scriptures? Prajnatara said, This poor wayfarer does not dwell in the realm of body-mind when breathing in, does not get involved in myriad circumstances when breathing out.

[02:13]

I always recite such a scripture. One hundred, one thousand, one million scrolls. Okay, so we can... We can discuss that third case now. Any questions right off the bat about it? No? Why don't you recite it, see if you can recite it, just by what you heard. Just see if you can say it.

[03:15]

One, two, three, everybody together. The Raj of East India invited the 27th Buddhist patriarch Prajnuttara to a feast. The Raj of East India invited the twenty-seventh Buddhist patriarch, Prajnapara, to a feast. The Raj asked him, Why don't you read scriptures? The Raj asked him, Why don't you read scriptures? The patriarch said, Patriarch said, this poor wayfarer doesn't dwell in the realm of body-mind when breathing in, doesn't get involved in myriad circumstances when breathing out. I always reiterate such a scripture, 100,000 millions of scrolls. And here's the verse.

[04:17]

The cloud rhino gazes at the moon, its light engulfing radiance. A wood horse romps in spring, swift and unbridled. Under the eyebrows, a pair of cool blue eyes. How can reading scriptures reach the piercing of oxide? The clear moon produces vast eons. Heroic power smashes the double enclosure. In the subtle round mouth of the pivot turns the spiritual works. Hanshan forgot the road by which he came. Siddha led him back by the hand. The commentator says that cloud rhino gazes at the moon, it's engulfing radiance.

[05:24]

That's a kind of eulogy of the first, that's a eulogy of this poor weight bearer doesn't dwell in the realm of body-mind when breathing in. And a wood horse romps in the spring, free and unbridled, is a eulogy of does not get involved in married circumstances when breathing out. Any questions? Yes. You say that the eulogy, how do you connect that? I get frustrated by the fact that they don't have the background to connect those kinds of things in the first case. Well, in this particular case, I would suggest that you don't need background.

[06:30]

If you need a background, they would... This particular commentator usually tells us if you need... about the background, usually. And in this particular case, he didn't tell us the background, okay? But just the image, I think, is sufficient. Imagine a cloud rhino. Pretty bizarre. Yeah, it's bizarre. A cloud rhino gazing at the moon. It's in gulfi radius. That's about not dwelling in body and mind when breathing in. I don't think you need any background to work with that. I would never have made that connection if you hadn't said it. Oh, you wouldn't have made that connection? Well, there's no background by which you would make that connection, I don't think. But I'm curious, too, if that's some connection throughout all of the cases with the verses that I'm also not getting and I should go back and read them again.

[07:33]

Often the first two lines or the first four lines are commenting directly on the case. In the case we're studying now, Case 11, the first four lines are commenting on each of the four sicknesses. In this case, the way it's set up, you're talking about inhaling and exhaling, right? He's talking about breathing. So he's got two slightly different instructions for the breathing process. He's got one way of talking about the inhale, another way of talking about the exhale. So then his two-pronged meditation instruction is then celebrated by the first two lines of the poem. So if you have a case where they're talking about a four-fold meditation instruction, you might expect that there will be four lines celebrated, that there will be a line for each one of those.

[08:40]

Or another possibility would be but there'll be a line celebrating the instruction and then a comment line celebrating the instruction and comment. But anyway, there might be some kind of thing like that. Whether it's true or whether he's right or not, whether the poet had that in mind or not, still I think it's... If I think of... inhaling and not dwelling in body and mind, I think a cloud rhino gazing at the moon, it's engulfing radiance, is a perfectly good thing to say about that. But you guys could say something else too, please, go right ahead. Matter of fact, that might be a good exercise for you, to write at least two lines write a line to eulogize or celebrate the first aspect of the instruction, and then write a line to celebrate the second line of the instruction.

[09:50]

Also, if we look at the last section, added sayings, verse, those give hints again. They connect to a lot of points back. So in general, it's really impossible for a beginner to understand, to read all this linearly, one paragraph after the next, and really understand that you have to read it once, the whole thing, and then connect back and re-read it. to make a lot of these connections that are not at all apparent. Yeah. Like when you read poetry, or when I read poetry, I usually don't understand it. Sometimes if I hear somebody read poetry, I think, oh, how beautiful. But I often don't understand poetry until I read it again and again and again and again. And then some kind of understanding of why I like the poem or how much was going on for the poet. how much information is packed into the poem starts to become unpacked or revealed.

[11:12]

That's the way these religious writing is like poetry in the sense that it's concentrated like poetry is. The sentences on the right of the case, do they correlate to each thing that they're opposite from? I mean, is it another interpretation? Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. So did I tell you how these things, how the cases are built? I didn't? Okay, so first there was these stories There are... By the time this book was compiled, this book was compiled by a person... Do you know the name of the person who compiled the book?

[12:13]

Who compiled the stories? Does anybody know? His name is Tian Tong, Tong Lingzhi. And there's a different way of romanizing this. That's one. Another way to romanize it is this way. Tianpeng Hongzhi. And he lived from 1091 to 1157. So probably around 1140 or 1150 or something. He went through the all the Zen stories, he chose his favorite 100. And then he wrote a verse for each story.

[13:21]

And that became a book, a koan book, with these 100 stories and 100 verses celebrating the stories. All right, that's the first stage. The next stage is about, what is it? And his days, I think, are 1163 to 1246. He came along and he wrote a commentary on the book. So before each case, he wrote an introduction.

[14:22]

And then he would write a line of the case and make an abrupt comment, and write a line of the case and make an abrupt comment, and then a line of the case and make an abrupt comment. And then after he did that, he wrote a discursive commentary on the case. And then he recited a verse, and he'd recite a line of the verse and make a comment, a line of the verse and make a comment, a line of the verse and make a comment, like that. And then he wrote a discursive commentary on the verse. So he did that for all the cases. So then that became the book. So when you read the case and you have these comments, across the page or interspersed. Those are the commentators. The second commentator's comments on the stories. And this is a standard Chinese literary convention, that you collect stories or teachings

[15:38]

ancient stories or teachings, and then you make verses for each teaching. And then later somebody else comes by and makes further comments in this fashion. Did you follow that? So, but these comments in between the lines are not necessarily explanatory. They're often exclamatory or expressionistic. if I'm using the word expressionistic right. In other words, the person's not necessarily saying, well, this means this, but rather they just express themselves after reading the line. So probably the way the person was doing this was he would read the line of the case to his students, and then he would just say something. And he'd realign the case and just say something. And then they wrote down what he said.

[16:44]

Okay? Yeah. Are the added sayings for the case and the verse popular folk sayings of the time? Or are they personal? Popular vulgar sayings? Popular folk sayings. Folk. Folk. Folk. Or are they an individual's comments? Because they sound like... The added sayings? Yeah. They're individual comments. So the teacher, this teacher, this one son, okay? So he's a Zen teacher, right? And he has this book in front of him, which has the cases. All right? And... And so he's reciting this case, and then he says something after he's flying the case. They might be folk sayings, but they're his direct expression. If he uses a folk saying, it's still, he's chosen to say that at that time.

[17:53]

It is not a folk saying directly associated with the story, probably. But anyway, do you understand what the story is about and what the instruction here is? Yes. What comes to my mind is reading these books. First, it's the sound of that. When we're older than that, When the wooden iron sings... The second thing is the block holds in the universe, engulfing everything, energy and light, and they just There is no life, because they take it, and it is so concentrated that afterwards they explode.

[19:02]

A new universe. It's supposed that there is a new universe. Everything is the other way around. Because we say, how can a woman come from death and wouldn't have the same? If the other way around. all the others. It seems to me that the case is just to bring it the other way around. For instance, he says Why don't you read something? And he said, I can read this because you can hear. Something like this.

[20:04]

How do you want me to read if you cannot understand? Or how do you want me to read if you cannot listen to me? Something like this. It's just the other way around. He's just saying, I'm not breathing because this life is too bad, something like that. Or because, yeah, something like that. Because this breathing life when I'm young, I can breathe. Something like this. Could you speak? And at the same time, I can read where the light is being engulfed, when there is no light.

[21:11]

We still need this part of the verse. Do you know where? The engulfing radiance? Yes, engulfing radiance. There is no light there. It's bright red light. And there is where this stone woman and the other things are just appearing, showing up. This also reminds me of the South American story where a lot of these do, but this is one other way again, case two also, how We're not there to know what personalities were there and what was going on. But I forget who it was.

[22:15]

I think it was Danke, E-N-K-E-I, Japanese. And he just really emphasized that everything written down here, everything we write down, In Shia's end was something specific. One personality and another personality. And the person is saying, just knowing somehow what the other person would need. What would be compassionate with this other person. They've both done this as well. It's kind of nice, what? Can I notice if I have a similar attachment as the man that's talking more directly to him?

[23:43]

So I asked a question and nobody answered. I mean, actually, Joaquin answered, but he didn't answer directly. Do you understand what the instruction is here? Do you understand how to practice it? Yes? The practice seems to be a destruction of going beyond the body-mind or going beyond sutras. What sutra is it going beyond? I don't know how to answer that. What I'm sensing is this instruction of creating a third place or a trinity or a triangle of sort that is beyond self.

[24:56]

So that going beyond the sutra might be going beyond whatever the current teaching was. Do you have any feeling, but you don't have any feeling about what the teaching we're talking about is, in this case? Not sure. I'm not really making it too obvious, but it seems like he's talking about... to sit with your breathing is perhaps more of a teaching than to read the scriptures, when more wisdom comes from... Well, yes, except that there is a scripture here being alluded to, What is the scripture? It makes me think of the sutra on the full awareness of breathing.

[26:07]

Yeah, that's right. It's the sutra on full awareness of breathing. It's a teaching about you sit up, cross your legs, and follow your breathing. It tells you about how to follow your breathing, right? So that's a possible scripture. That's actually a scripture which you then put into practice, right? And putting it into practice, you're actually putting that scripture into practice, directly practicing that scripture. But he's also now saying, he's giving a teaching which is not in the scriptures about how to do that practice of breathing. Right? The way he's talking about it isn't in the scriptures. Did you notice that? Have you read that sutra? The way his instruction isn't in the scripture, did you notice that? It seems very similar.

[27:10]

It's very similar, but it's not in the scriptures, right? Those exact words aren't, no. Right, so he's saying something that's not in the scriptures, right? But I think his meaning is in the scriptures. The meaning is in the scriptures, yeah. So he's showing that the person asks him why he doesn't read scriptures, and then he says why he doesn't read scriptures, but yet he's at the same time he's giving a teaching which you see as in the scriptures. So is he saying that he does read the scriptures? He's telling you the scriptures that he reads, right? And the scripture he reads is just like the scripture that other people read, right? Except it's a little bit different in two ways. One way is that it actually literally isn't in the scripture. So he's reading a scripture which isn't literally in the scripture, and yet you see that it is in the scripture. Right?

[28:11]

I think he's being the scripture. He's being the scripture. He's being the scripture, and at the same time that he's being the scripture, she can also see that the way he's being is in the scripture. So the person's asking him why he doesn't read, and one says, well, I am the scriptures, okay? And in fact, even though the way he is is not literally exactly the way it is in the scriptures, at the same time you can see that the scripture is sort of saying the same thing about the way he is. So there's this kind of dynamic where he is the scriptures and he isn't the scriptures, where he is reading and he isn't reading. This guy says, why don't you read? And he says, well, I do read. But the way I read is I read the way I am. As a matter of fact, I read the way everybody is. So he's giving you an instruction about reading yourself, too, as a scripture.

[29:11]

So you see, it's actually, there's not really this thing about reading or not reading. And there's not really this thing about being in the scriptures or not being in the scriptures. They're all kind of nested together, and yet there's some There's some dynamic here because, in fact, he's not reading a scripture in a literal sense, but also he is reading the scriptures in a literal sense because you can literally see what he said in the scriptures. So this kind of thing is going on, which is also part of the instruction here. the kind of instruction that's being given. And do you have, I want to know if you have a feeling for how to practice. I want to know if you have a feeling for how to read the way he reads. Yes? Well, it sounds like as you're turning to the thing you talked about last night, don't get caught up in body and mind is not getting caught up in your idea of yourself.

[30:14]

and not getting caught up in myriad circumstances is not getting caught up in the reality of the human's thoughts. You can see then a parallel between this instruction in this case 3 and the first two lights or the first two sicknesses in case 11. And it goes on and on past enlightenment. It goes from hundreds to thousands to millions. Yeah, right. Isn't that just that you keep reading? Well, yeah, that he keeps doing it forever, you know. He doesn't just do it once. He's ongoingly, he's always doing this, basically. There's no end to it, to this reading. So this case, these first three cases, in this case in particular, is a very direct instruction for meditation. and it has a particular, it has a particular quality, which is a little bit different quality, although Tess feels that when she looked in the Buddha's teaching about mindfulness of breathing, she felt like basically with the same message.

[31:27]

Right? Don't you feel? Yeah. Yeah, so, and in fact, these Zen people are Buddha's disciples, so they, in some sense, In one sense, they should be saying the same thing as Buddha because they're his disciples, right? In another sense, they're not saying the same thing as Buddha because they're his disciple. If you're really somebody's disciple, you don't say the same thing as they say. Otherwise, you're not their disciple. To be somebody's disciple, you have to say something different. But before you say something different, you have to say the same thing. that's also going on in this thing. Does that make sense? Have you heard that expression, you have to climb on your teacher's shoulders? Are you still saying the same thing in a different way? Are you saying the same thing in a different way?

[32:29]

Well, you could say that, that's okay. There's something... There's another way to say it. You can say you're saying the same thing in a different way. You can say you're saying a different thing. And what else could you say? Same thing. You could say you're saying the same thing. And what else? Like I said last night, you know, first of all, you think things out there... The things out there are not you. Next you think the things out there are the same as you. Then, next, you think that the totality is what yourself is. You know, you don't identify with the Buddha and you don't be different from the Buddha. you have a relationship with Buddha.

[33:37]

Not different, not the same. Yes? Does this have anything to do with, sort of, the discussion you could tear about and lie on and so on? Well, I wouldn't say, no, it doesn't have anything to do with it, but I would say it more has to do with a particular quality of Zen at the form of Mahayana Buddhism. And Mahayana Buddhists respect Theravada scriptures. They're supposed to. Sometimes they get weird and don't. But the point here is to extract the essential meaning from this Theravada text. These mindfulness of breathing practices are Theravada practices. Mahayana people practice them. And the Zen thing here is to get the essence of it, so that you have really the meaning of the Theravada scripture, and yet you have something fresh and new also, which is coming from your own being.

[34:53]

Yes? Joe had asked you one night in class if there were some changes in the way that things needed to be applied, medications, etc., because of changes in the circumstances. And is that part of how things evolve between a teacher and a disciple, is that the disciple has to respond to what's happening at that time? Yes, and also the disciple has to respond to what's going to happen in the future. The disciple is the future of the teacher. So that's why teachers really have to respect their students, because the students are... they're going to be doing something that the teacher had never done before. They're going to be going off and opening up new frontiers for the teacher, in a way. And the teacher cannot do it. So that's the great thing about the student, is the student opens up, is the fresh new life of the whole enterprise.

[36:05]

Usually people don't understand this instruction right away, but are you not understanding and not saying so, or do you understand that with this instruction of pride and doubt. Yes. This is certainly a comment that will... Since I've been listening to the koans and reading them, listening to your interpretation, for me I have to kind of listen to what you say and then I have to put it into my realm of knowledge. And what I see that... or comprehension. What I see is this is many of these koans are like the law. If you are a lawyer, the art or the understanding or how you win the case or how you go up before is the law may say one thing, but how you interpret the law and how you convince how the law is interpreted.

[37:23]

And this is how I see these stories say all the time, and then that was reinforced when you said that about the disciples and the students, that there's a case written, and it's somewhat black and white in an abstract manner, as Derek mentioned, or whatever you want to say it, but how everyone receives it and then expresses it is what the true meaning is. Is that correct? It's not so much the true meaning, it's the life of the thing. Oh, the life, okay. So you're saying there's no real right or wrong answer to this? Are you saying that? Yeah, kind of, yeah. But a little bit, I think it goes on beyond that a little bit, but... Every time I read these things, then when I listen in the classes, and certainly justice is totally new to me, I have to relate back to something that's practical in my realm of knowledge. Yeah, that's good.

[38:25]

However, another little kicker in here is that even though you don't have to have the same interpretation of your teacher, You do need to understand what your teacher's interpretation is before you make your own. You can't just go at it and make up your own and come up with a... You can go at it and come up with your own, that's fine. But I propose that if you go at it and understand and hear your teachers and understand your teachers and then do your own, that's more vital than just to go and come up with your own. Why can't they be simultaneous? I think you have to have digestion going. They can't be simultaneous, I don't think, because yours will be different from your teacher. Right. Well... I don't think you can understand your teachers at the same moment that you do your own original work. I think they're two different moments. Yeah, I'm just arguing that I don't see that they necessarily have to come in a certain order. That's all I'm saying.

[39:28]

Well, I think... This is a digression. I think... No, I think... Well, it's maybe a digression, but I think they do go in a certain order. I think first you come with the koan or the story, and if you have an interpretation, probably usually your interpretation is not the same as your teacher's, but it might be. If it is, then you understand it the same as your teacher, and then you understand it different than your teacher later. Another possibility is you come at it and you have an interpretation, and then you find out it's different from your teachers, and then you don't get rid of your interpretation, but you learn the teachers. But after you understand the teachers, the interpretation you have here, if it comes out to be the same again, it won't be the same. It probably won't be the same. It'll probably be a news thing. And you should actually cut it. and be different from the teacher. It's like a plant, you know. It's actually cut from the old plant to plant a new one. Because it's multi-level.

[40:34]

It seems like things are just multi-multi-leveled. I mean, every time I hear you talk, and if you revert back to, you know, the basic underlying... and then there's just multiple layers. Yeah, multiple layers, right. When you read these cases, do you always interpret them the same way? No. Does it depend on what's happening in your life? It depends on what happens in my life. Also, I come into these classes, and oftentimes in my leading classes, I understand the koan differently than when I came into the class, just like you do. I maybe change as much as you do. Sometimes I don't change so much and you change a lot. Sometimes I change maybe more than some of you do. Some of you might come in with an understanding of the koan before the class and be kind of the same after the class. Sometimes I come in and have a really different attitude about the koan at the end of the class.

[41:37]

So for me, When I study the koans by myself, something happens while I'm studying them. Then, if I meditate with them, something happens with them. When I come into class, something happens with them. It's evolving. They don't stay the same. Some things kind of stay the same, but they don't stay the same just for a while, and later even they change. So it's a... But I don't forget usually the earlier understandings that I had. I usually can remember that I thought it meant that and I had that understanding. There's some kind of... I can usually remember the evolution of my understanding, which is, you know, it's kind of part of what contributes and accumulates to create new understandings as the past understandings. And I sometimes completely reverse the way I understand these things. Basically, the reason religions have scriptures, so that you can, you know, constantly be asking this kind of question to yourself.

[42:47]

Yeah. The scriptures are to help you question yourself. The scriptures are to help you understand yourself. Which you might be able to do without the scriptures, but... If, you know, Buddha, all the religious leaders say that somebody taught them stuff. Nobody seems to have made this stuff up without any kind of teaching. But everybody seems to come up with something different from what they were taught, too. There's life in their religion. Let's see the tie between the two. Well, you said at one point that the way we're studying these koans in class is different from what we're doing in this meditation practice. And the way we're doing it in class is you come out, maybe not with as many levels of understanding as we could now, but at least it makes sense in some sense, whatever level we're at, and come out with some...

[43:57]

intellectual and maybe emotional, and of course, wrath and these things. But as I understand, which is very low, about what we would be doing to study this word inside practice, what would we be doing different with these koans if we were doing them in meditation than what we're doing here in the clinics? What would getting it be, there versus here? As I was saying earlier today, there's three levels, there's three kinds of insight. And this is not a Buddhist thing. This is also found in Western and non-Buddhist Eastern religions. There's these three levels of insight. First level is called wisdom or insight.

[44:57]

through hearing. Next one is called insight through You can say thinking or reflection. The third one's called insight or wisdom through, oh, that's called cinta. The next one's called insight through being. Kill the soil, plow, plow.

[46:04]

or also cultivate, and til means to work also, or to til, like toil and work. So it's, this one's through like working with it, not just thinking about it, but working with it by cultivation or meditation sometimes. And this is called bhavana, be bhavana, my pride here. Last night when I was talking about the scrubbing part of the path where after you have insight you scrub all your habits, that's called bhavana marga, the path of bhavana, the path of cultivation or the path of kind of scrubbing it into you. So, when you first hear a teaching or like when you first read a koan, the first level is you have to, you know, understand what the words are and understand the context.

[47:10]

So that's what we do in our class. And people have different understandings and then they say what they think and then I say something and they say something and then they discuss it among themselves during the week and then the... After one or two classes, the words become clear and your intellectual understanding becomes clear and you kind of get most of the information you get from the outside. You get in and you understand at a certain point, hopefully. Then after that, which can almost be simultaneous, you start thinking about it and reflecting it in relationship to your past experience and your own thoughts and your own opinions. and your knowledge of Buddhist teachings or Christian teachings or whatever. And then, as that reflection goes on and on, you have another level of insight. And then finally, the level of insight is to really deeply integrate it with everything in your daily life.

[48:16]

So, like these stories, For example, this one's a meditation instruction, very clearly. So right now I'm talking with you to see if you understand, at the level of words and the level we can discuss, I'm seeing if you understand the instruction. and I still haven't heard from you really about it, but maybe I will before the day's over. And then the next thing is, after we talk about it for a while, you might go away from this and think about it and reflect on what you heard in class. And you might come back and have further discussions to clarify some points, to realize you weren't sure about some things, and you might think about it some more. And after that, it might be time to go and sit with it. And when you go sit with it, usually you... See, now you've heard it, you've read it, you've heard the story, you've heard the commentary of the story, you've discussed it with the other people in the class and with the instructor, you've clarified the meanings, you've tried out some ideas and maybe been told that's not what it means, it means this, you've argued and said, I know, I think it means this, and finally you've come to some understanding.

[49:32]

Then you've thought about it and thought about it, until you really feel like you're ready to sort of go to work with it. And when you go to work with it, you know the whole story. The whole story is clear to you. You know the whole story, and you also know the commentaries in the story and the verse in the story. You know the characters in the story. You know other stories about the characters in the story. All that you know, but you don't think about all that in meditation necessarily. In meditation, you might just take one word from the story. to collect the whole story. And the stories have, in the story there's what we call eyes, you know, like eyeball. The stories have eyes in them. And the commentaries may have eyes in them too. Like in the commentary there may be other stories which also have eyes. And the I is like your body is part of the story.

[50:33]

It's a particular part of the story, like one word or one phrase or a couple of words that are like the I of the whole story. And it's possible to have more than one I in the story, but often there's just one I. And you take that I and you concentrate on that I. In meditation, for example, as you breathe, you put that eye into your breath. You look through that eye or you look at that eye while you're meditating. That eye, the whole story is all around that eye. So you're taking the whole story with you, but you just look at that eye because you can't concentrate on the whole story at once. You can't say the whole story. So you just take that eye, that crucial point. Well, ahuatu is basically the same thing. Ahuatu means, hua means word, and du or to means the head.

[51:39]

So like this story, you could find the head of the story, like maybe the first word in the story, or the last word in the story, or the first or last word in the sentence of the story. And you could take that off, and that will be a word that you can also just take that word, and then the whole sentence will come along behind that word, or the whole sentence will follow that word. So by taking these I's or these words and concentrating on them, we collect the whole story is collected in that. Plus also, another thing about these also called turning words. They're called head words, they're called eyes, and they're also called turning words because the whole story can turn on one word. Like in case eight, look at case eight. How many people have not read case eight?

[52:42]

Okay, well, in case eight, the old man asks the teacher, please give me a turning word. He himself was asked a question in earlier times, a yes or no question, and he gave the wrong answer. Now he wants the teacher to take the dialogue which he had, which sent him to a tremendous karmic retribution, and he wants the teacher to... No. No. And he asked the teacher for a turning word. He told the story, and he wanted the teacher to pick the word and turn the story to show him how to become free. And the teacher actually did take a word and turned it. And look in there.

[53:44]

You can look in that story. Look at case A and see if you can find a turning word. It's not that difficult in this particular case. So if you're going to meditate, if you're going to actually concentrate... After you've gotten all the information and you've thought about it, then you're ready to pick the I, and then you pick the I and you take the I into your meditation with you, right into your breath and your body. You circulate that I through yourself until basically you are that I. That's all that's happening is that I, which means that all that's happening is the story. But you... It's easier to become one with just the I or just the one word than it is to become one with a sentence or a paragraph or not to mention several pages of words. That's how you would work on meditation. That's not Rinzai, that's just how you meditate on a koan. You make it, you find the I. So it's good when these koans

[54:46]

as a regular matter of course, to look at all these stories and see if you can find the I's, or I, or see if you can find a turning word or a turning phrase in the story. Yeah. What would be the purpose of meditating right after you've found how it's working in your life, after it's become something that you can use or you can perceive in your life, or you can... Why would you go that step further to meditate on, to expand upon that? Well, I think that what you're talking about probably, you know, I'll offer this for you to think about. We can talk about it later because it's time for you to go to Zazen, but the level of benefit or the level of learning, what you're talking about, is probably either one or two of these first one or first two. to bring it into this next level is not necessarily something which you might feel quite benefited by.

[55:57]

A lot of people feel very good if they have the first one. I think I've seen a number of you struggle to get the first one, feel very frustrated because you couldn't even get the first one, and these call-ons are sometimes quite difficult just to get the first one. And working hard and not getting the first one can be quite a frustrating experience. So when you actually get the first one, you feel pretty good. And then you get the second one, too, this could be quite difficult. And to get that, too, and have that kind of level of understanding could be quite satisfying. You might say, that's enough. I don't particularly want to take this into meditation. And that might be true, that at that particular koan, you do not want to take into meditation with you. You don't care that much about that koan to actually make that be like the eye of your meditation. You might be satisfied, but there should be something that you're taking into your meditation like that. But it might not be a koan. These are stories, right? These are instructions. You might have another instruction that's not a classical koan that you have as the center of your meditation.

[57:02]

Breath meditation, like in this koan here, is what a lot of you are doing. The eye of your meditation is the word breath. And this is about breath too, and he's now giving you further instructions about how he meditates on his breath, which if you read that and understood that and discussed that, which we haven't been able to do today actually yet, then that might alter your understanding what the word breath or what breath breathing means, and then the I would be a different I than the I you now have, perhaps, I may not. But by studying this koan and discussing this koan, the I called breathing or the I called inhaling, or the I called exhaling, might be a little bit different because it would have a different surround now. So that's why this koan might be a koan where the word breathing would be the I, perhaps, or the turning word, and where a lot of you might be able to take this koan into your meditation just by meditating on breath.

[58:05]

But if you study this koan and discuss it, then if you go and you're concentrating on breath, this koan then would be... would you be taking this koan to your meditation? And then you should be able to write a verse celebrating this koan, expressing your feeling about your meditation practice based on taking this koan to the cushion. But I think a lot of you are already sort of taking the teaching with this koan is is talking about, you already are doing it, this koan is now just pointing to a particular unique teacher's kind of way of talking about how you meditate on breath, and how that is actually reading scriptures. But you might not want to take all koans to the Christian, but you might want to still read them at least at the first level, because later, sometimes later you go,

[59:10]

that koan is about this, and then you go back and study it, and then you go and you take it to the cushion, you know. Or you're talking to somebody and you see, by the kind of meditation experience they have, that this koan would be just right for them, that they're talking about exactly what that koan is talking about, and then it comes in handy. So you might read this koan, and they go read it, and it's just a great instruction for their particular slant on meditation at that point in their practice. So, you know, just... These are our teachings, these are our folk teachings, these stories, and they all have a different function and perform a little different service to help us understand ourselves. So we're going through these and we're getting some understanding of our life, I think, but later you may come back and specialize in one of these koans at some point in your life.

[60:11]

It would be wonderful to live long enough to thoroughly study each one and bring each one to your meditation practice and actually sit and deeply bring the I of each one of these stories into your practice for a while. But you see, you have to do quite a bit of prep work, so to speak, to actually find the I and bring the I with the rest of the body of the Kalan. If I tell you the I, like if I say the word breathing is the I, and you bring the word breathing before you read the koan, or before you understand it, then the koan hasn't really done much to you, and you're just bringing the word breathing if you already have. But you just study this koan for a while, and then you bring the word breathing to you as the I of your meditation. You have a different meditation, and you feel Prajnaparam Bodhidharma there kind of with you in a way. And that's a good thing too, to feel like you have all these Buddhas and ancestors helping you do your meditation because their teaching is embedded in the word breathing now. The word breathing is not changed.

[61:16]

It's a more, it's kind of a... Imagine if you grew up in a house where they talked about breathing at the dinner table all the time, you know. Where that was really a big thing in your family. Then if you... Then, you know, if you went to meditate, it would have more density for you. Not to say it's better than before, but it would just be different. So I'd like to think about whether you understand this instruction of Project Tara about the breathing. And I think we'll have another review class. We didn't quite do one case today. But I'll just tell you, these first three cases are... very direct meditation instructions, sent meditation instructions, and there's a lot there

[62:11]

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