Those people who just walked away and just stopped, that's ridiculous, those are tragic lives, if that's as far as they went. But the phase of thinking this is ridiculous is quite common because this dharma is not going to be in a form that makes sense to you, that goes with your program. So when you're walking around in a certain world, and I'm walking around in a certain world, and certain things are not ridiculous in this world, and certain things are, and a lot of things that are ridiculous are things that I've never heard of before, are totally refuted, everything I've been thinking, or at least suggest that maybe I'm a little off, or maybe even suggest that I'm way off. And things that suggest I'm way off, generally speaking, I think they're ridiculous. That's just the way I am, you know. How come all those people have been studying with this guy, and it's so peaceful up there,

[01:11]

you know? And everybody was nice to me, and even when I grumbled and I left and I said that he was ridiculous, people didn't, you know, they said, well, nice to just see you, everybody was really nice to me, and they didn't say, you know, you're going to burn in hell! So maybe I'll go back and try again. So that story is repeated quite a few times, that students thought the teachers were way off, and they went back and checked, and somehow the meeting occurred, the face-to-face transmission occurred. So I think, don't push yourself to believe, and I don't think that's good. Let yourself disagree. And I think, you know, most of those teachers let those people disagree. They didn't say, you have to agree with me, or you're going to get in trouble, you're going to go to hell if you don't agree with me. They kind of went... And sometimes the guy leaves, and somebody says, that guy really was rude, and sometimes

[02:14]

the teacher says, he's good, he'll be back. He's fine, don't worry about that guy. In some other cases, the guy comes and he acts like he is disrespectful. Actually, I told the story at Sunday about Dushan, the guy who was an expert in the diamond suture, and the lady at the tea cake, did you hear that story? The tea cake lady? Anyway, that story about Dushan, later in Dushan's career he went to see Guishan, and he stormed into Guishan's place and acted like he thought he was hot stuff, and put down Guishan and stormed out. But Guishan said, he's good. So sometimes the person who appears to be rude is really exercising his deep face-to-face transmission with the teacher. So that apparent disagreement or disrespect can sometimes really just be a way to emphasize

[03:18]

the deep meeting between teacher and student. And oftentimes the teachers are the ones who say, yeah, that was a great meeting we had. I know it didn't look like it, but... And then later, after the teacher dies, the person says, the meeting was a great moment in my life. And I know I acted very rudely, but that was really great. Yes. So why is it a... Excuse me. Yes. Have you met the Buddha? We've spoken about your experience. Have I met the Buddha? No. You mean, have I had divine inspiration? Well, you're talking about meeting the Buddha. That's something that was discussed a few minutes ago. If I say that I have, I think I would perhaps be bragging and going against a precept to claim that I've had such a meeting. And if I say that I didn't, I would be lying.

[04:21]

Yes. Yes. Yes, Lane Arun. Lane. Oh. That's just a piggyback on Antoine's inquiry. Yes. So you said... That's better than him piggybacking on you. The people who listen to the tape, they probably don't understand that. But if you were here, you would. Yes. So if a seeker goes to see the Zen Master, and decides the Zen Master is ridiculous, and the Dharma is ridiculous, and leaves, and then that's the end of the story. You said that's a tragedy. Is that different than saying, like, oh, he'll burn in hell? I just wonder why it's a tragedy.

[05:31]

I think to say that somebody will burn in hell... Well, actually, if the person rejects the Dharma, and then leaves, and the teacher could see that the person was rejecting the Dharma, the teacher might say... If people ask the teacher, how's that guy doing? The teacher might say, this guy's going to burn in hell. I was talking about saying it to the person, to threaten them. Usually Buddhists don't do that. I'm wondering what the difference is between, I guess, between accusing the seeker, or just acknowledging to yourself, the Zen Master acknowledging to himself, or to another monk, that this man is on a downward spiral, or something. The difference between accusing the person? Yes.

[06:31]

I would think we shouldn't accuse them unless it would be beneficial, and usually it's not beneficial to yell at people, and tell them that they're going to get in trouble if they do that. So the Buddha didn't usually do that. As a matter of fact, he was careful not to give the teaching if he thought someone would think it was ridiculous. So I'm actually being a little... I'm taking a risk here to tell you about this story, because there's a risk that you'll reject it long term. And I don't want that. But I hope that by telling you that it's a story, and you don't have to believe it, but you can just listen to it, and encourage you not to reject it, and drop it at that. But just if you feel like, not for me today, that's fine. But be careful not to reject it. But at the same time, I'm not really the Buddha saying that, so what I say is not so important if you reject it. It's not quite as bad as if you would reject what the Buddha gives you.

[07:32]

Rejecting what a bodhisattva gives you is much more harmful. And if a bodhisattva offered you something, and you rejected it, and then they walked away, and people said, Was that okay? You might be able to see, No, it wasn't okay. I'm really sorry. There's a number of stories of where the person has a really good meeting with the Buddha, and then goes away and has some kind of unfortunate thing happen. There's a couple of examples where the person had a really good meeting, and the person wanted to become a monk, and the Buddha said, Go get Robin Bowles and come back, and I'll ordain you. And in two cases, the person got killed by some kind of physical accident. And in both cases, the monk said, Gee, that guy had this really good meeting with you, and he was going to come back and get ordained. Is he okay? And the Buddha said, Yeah, he's fine. I know of some other examples where the Buddha pointed out

[08:33]

that somebody was heading for some big trouble, but in Buddhism, burning in hell isn't a permanent thing. So, in Buddhism, if you reject the Dharma, you go burn in hell, but then you can be brought out and reincorporated into the path. And if you again reject the teaching, you'll go burn in hell again. So, burn in hell means, if you reject Buddha's compassion, you will go to hell. You will experience great suffering if you reject great love. It's very painful for us to reject the thing we want most. And if you do reject it, then it's a tragedy. If you really want to be miserable and you reject love, then it's not a tragedy. But if the thing you want is happiness and peace and love among all beings,

[09:35]

and then it's offered to you, and you slap it in the face, it's a tragedy because it's exactly what you don't want. And I just remember a story that Kadagiri Rishi told me one time about this monk he practiced with in a Zen monastery. You know, in Zen monks' clean monasteries, right? They clean the halls every day, you know. And so, they were cleaning and after the cleaning was over, the teacher came to this guy and he pointed to a piece of paper that had missed cleaning. And the teacher said, what's that? And the guy picked it up and said, what's this? And the teacher said, yeah. And he said, it's a piece of paper. He tossed it out the window and left the monastery. And, you know, and then the guy had a really very unhappy life after that. Even though he was like doing okay, you know, practicing there,

[10:38]

kind of like harmoniously getting along, having a nice life as a monk. And then he kind of said, blank you. Blank you, Buddha. Blank you, Zen master. I'm not going to play this cleaning the temple thing anymore. I think a lot of people who are cleaning the temple are kind of saying, well, what's the point of this? And again, you can say to the teacher, I don't get the point of this. I don't see why we're doing this. But to say, you know, blank you, you know, and to spit on the tradition, that may do irreparable damage to your heart. Not irreparable, but I would say long-term damage to your heart. To reject a practice which, you know, actually, it may be right on the verge of coming to fruit for you. And it gets very difficult. And if you get impatient and disrespectful of the practice

[11:42]

or the people you're practicing with, and forget that anybody could be a bodhisattva, and also being a little cynical is okay, but if you get too cynical, you might reject something that's really important to you. So it's dangerous. And in some ways, if you don't get into spiritual practice, in some ways it's not so tragic, because you're so far from doing what's going to bring you happiness, that you can't make certain mistakes, such tragic mistakes, that when you're really getting close to this meeting, and it gets difficult, you kind of go... But you don't usually do that if you never even get close to it. From a distance, you say, so what? But as you get closer, it can get more difficult. So that's why we really need to be tranquil. You need to take your meditation sedative. Sedative? What is sedative? So that we don't blow up,

[12:46]

so we don't blow up and somebody touches us. Like sleep? What? I didn't understand sedative. Sedative is like a relaxing drug. They give you sedative when you have an operation. Do you understand now? But we both need it. It makes you sleep. I should take meditation as a sedative. Huh? You want us to take meditation as a sedative? Samatha is a sedative. Samatha means sedative. Is that? Yeah. It relaxes you, it makes you relaxed. So people can come up to you and poke you, and you don't like blow up. But you still feel the poke, right? You still feel the poke, yeah. Sedative don't mean you don't feel anything, it just means that you don't go, No, I did not! Like when I broke my leg,

[13:48]

they wanted to move it to take an x-ray, and I said, I just can't let you do that. I just... You know, I had these two kind of swords in my thigh, you know, going like this, and they wanted to move those things. I just can't let you do that. So they gave me a sedative. Then they could, you know, put them in a line again. But there are certain times, you know, the pain is too much, you're going to blow up. And sometimes that's not... So it's kind of... People are having some difficulty with each other sometimes, right? It's normal. So we need to practice... Tranquility needs to be part of... We need to have a lot of tranquility floating among us to absorb all these difficulties we're having. And then...

[14:51]

But alert, too. Thank you. John? I want to talk about cleaning the temple basement. You know, spending all the time with the headpiece, you know. Yeah, I think that... I think it's... You know, there's this cartoon that you probably see in New Yorker where they have this beautiful Zen temple and there's a lovely screen there. And behind the screen is all these, you know, old TVs and computer screens and, you know, molded boxes of books. So it is kind of silly that you have this pristine situation and then chaos below. Right? It's ridiculous, isn't it? What?

[15:52]

It's just like... Aren't the tools and the basement floor just as important? Does that help? Totally. And I think... And Zen is... Zen is sort of known for emphasizing that. I know, but it doesn't seem like it. It does seem like that. Zen is known for that. Well, that's why I came. Right. But that's what it's known for. What it actually is is what you see. Right? You see what the way it really is. But if it was known for that, no one would come. So, you know... So they make these brochures and they don't take pictures of... But maybe if you were in charge

[16:57]

of your guest program here, you'd take pictures of the basement and put them in there and people would say, that was really a nightmare. Everybody would be honest there and say, oh, what a sloppy place. But really, that's what really does... Of course, it touches our heart when we go into a nice clean Zen. It's beautiful. But in a way, it touches our heart more when we go back into the closet and we find that somebody's gone in there and straightened it out. It really touches... You know, like going to tools or put back with mindfulness. That's where no one would see. That really touches our heart. Yeah, or just like the tools are rusting or things like that. Exactly. So... And... In some sense, that's really more the point rather than putting a big front, you know, like... So I totally agree with you, but we're working towards this ideal. Zen's known for its ideals.

[17:58]

Its ideal is that we would take care of the dirty part with the same... In some sense, we treat the dirty part like we treat the clean part. When we say we would take care of the small things as though they were heavy, we take care of the heavy things as though they were small, or light. To have a balanced attitude towards our own mind in everything is a direct realization of this teaching we're talking about right now. And no matter what it is, it's not like there's this low thing and this high thing. It's all really mind. And therefore, everything is this Buddha mind. And there's nothing we shouldn't take care of. I feel like at the same time I'm having this kind of increase. I feel like I'm having an increase in uncertainty. Or maybe not uncertainty, but kind of no faith or doubt

[19:00]

or something. Like this feeling of well, maybe it's this way, maybe it's really not. And I feel like it's been keeping me going. I remember a long time ago just reading the Dalai Lama saying religion is kindness. I feel like that's kind of always been keeping me going. It's been hard for me to integrate that feeling that I have of kindness or love with a teaching that's so intellectual. Is there any way that you can help me with that? can you be kind towards a teaching that's intellectual? I can try. You can try. It's hard though, right? Do you find some things that are easy to be kind to? That's nice. That's the easy part of your practice. There's other things. Certain people that are doing certain things it's maybe harder for you to be kind. So if somebody's being

[20:01]

intellectual maybe it's hard for you to feel kind towards them. So that's the growing edge of your practice. So that's where you're having some challenge is to be kind in situations where or to go to some place where people don't seem to be taking care of things very well. You have a kind response to it. You know like if you see children not cleaning up after themselves you could get angry at them or not. Or you could tell them to clean up and maybe they do and then ten seconds later it's a mess again. And then you could be kind towards that patient and generous and respectful and attached to of these messy children or you could be not kind. But it's kind of hard sometimes. And where it's hard is where it's hard but that's also where we grow in our kindness. And for some people

[21:01]

it's very hard to be kind towards intellectual presentations because they're very you know we're uncomfortable with them sometimes. And it's sometimes hard to be patient with our discomfort and patience is the main ingredient of compassion. So yeah. Well so we got to sort of the main teaching here about stem healing and so we can continue to go into it more deeply if you wish. Enough for this morning? You can keep those or you can return them and pass them out again. But you're welcome to keep these if you like.

[22:01]

We're not going to make a new set of copies for each class. So we can't just bring the book suture book that we can't do? Well the problem with that is if you want to bring your copy from suture book and bring your copy back to your place but if we bring them all collect them all it's hard to get them back to the place system. If you want to bring yours and bring it back you can do it but I don't want to bring all of them over here and bring all of them back to the place system. Could you say something small before we go? Something small? Sure. As the person in a conceptual way responsible for the basement I felt a very personal sense of distress at Doug's remark even though I am in no way literally able to clean that basement up by myself and I've been asking for a long time but it just

[23:04]

it felt really personal to me and I know it wasn't aimed at me or anything but I received this sense of distress at the basement. I just want to express that. Grace and I and a couple of others spent a good amount of time yesterday working on gathering the things in the basement which it's hard to believe that we do that at least twice a year sometimes three times a year but the kindness part has to come from the fact that so many people come in and out of here and the treasures that we find that we've left in there are sort of amazing. I mean they're really actually kind of we had a wondrous time with what we found yesterday. Also show how cleaned up the cage just three months ago it was beautifully cleaned out and already it's full of stuff and we keep accumulating. We just got

[24:05]

this image of it wasn't that important it's free I got it someone else got my tree in the basement. The collective unconscious or the unconscious collecting. This is so crazy. I feel like for me it's it's not any one particular thing it's this feeling of having a high and low and it's not I don't feel like I feel like it's a metaphor and it's also a reality. I feel like there's two elements to it and there's you know it's not any particular person you know

[25:05]

like I don't know anyone who makes the decision that like okay we're going to take this tradition of like cleaning the altar three times a day or whatever I don't know how often it's done but we're not going to bother with something else that might also be equally important. Like I said it's not trouble it's all this yeah the distinguishedness. So you're having some trouble. Yeah and I definitely did not mean it as a slight against anyone here. So you're just expressing you're having some trouble with this world and I was just thinking you know it's not exactly that we put the zendo I say the zendo is more important but it is higher than the basement and we have to deal with this thing of altitude and also people do not usually ask if they can store their bicycle in the zendo and if they didn't

[26:06]

probably say why don't you do it someplace else and they say well where? And then we have a meeting where can people store their bicycles they want to put them in the zendo we don't want them in the zendo where can we put them you see in the basement people want to store their old computers in the zendo well we don't want them in the zendo where can they put them you know up at the basement so it's kind of like it's kind of a problem where we put the stuff so I said well let's just kick all these people out of here but then after they leave we'll just destroy them where are we going to put the stuff where are we going to put the ashes the ashes after we burn them we can have a really nice place to put all the ashes but there will be no people here we don't have any people here anymore well at least we don't have any mess anymore

[27:06]

but if we had people yes I just wanted to say that it looks like my life I feel I have a shining area and a very very messy area and I wouldn't be able to show up here unless it looked like this that was something I was fairly aware of that was one of the reasons if it would all look shiny here I don't think I dare cross the threshold because it's this way it's enabled me to come here for 12 years so I have to say that I'm sorry I didn't mean to say that well no matter what we hear we still have difficulty if we don't we can't grow beings

[28:21]

are numberless I vow to save them illusions are inexhaustible I vow to mend them dharma gates are boundless I vow to enter them the way is unsurpassable I vow to become it I vow I vow I vow to become it to become it

[28:53]

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