Welcome to the second assembly of 2014 at Norbode. The last two meetings we had here I remember that we were discussing the career of a boy named Sudhana, which means good wealth. Part of the reason I originally brought up his career was because I was encouraged to bring up stories that feature women bodhisattva activity, female bodhisattva activity.

[01:17]

And I thought, oh, I know a scripture that has lots of female bodhisattvas. giving, teaching and encouraging people. And that was this text called the Gandavyuha, which means entering into reality, entering the realm of reality. Whereas this boy goes to visit many teachers, many of whom are female. And actually one of them, the first one I brought up, she mentioned that when people come to her, she manifests as a female to them. Or rather, the Bodhisattva manifests as a she for people. And she manifests in whatever species comes to her. So not just human. But anyway, this Bodhisattva specializes in female manifestations and whatever species would be appropriate to the person coming to them, the being coming to them.

[02:24]

And so we dealt with her story and how she worked with beings, how she instructed them, and how she instructed the boy. Then the next time we also talked about a woman teacher. And then we haven't met since the last time, and in between we had this intensive at Green Gulch. And somehow it struck me this time that the intensive actually is quite intensive. there's a lot of, it's kind of intense and it's more intense in a way than a practice period because we have more meditation than we do during practice periods and more formal meals and so on. Anyway, we had this intensive and lots of stuff came up so what came up there I thought was wonderful and so I will share with you now and I'll share with you for a while.

[03:36]

what came up there, which kind of flowed from what the last two meanings here and then the flow from the last two meanings from here met the flow of the topic of the intensive and created this new thing. So the flow from here was the flow of the story of this boy who aspires to supreme enlightenment aspires to the path of the bodhisattvas. And he represents kind of the path to Buddhahood. And the path to Buddhahood, as represented in that text, is the path of going to visit good friends. Kalyana Mitras.

[04:38]

Kalyana Mitra. Mitra means friend. And Kalyana means beneficial or good. So we have this looking at that scripture and coming from this like, oh, the path to Buddhahood is the path of meeting good friends, and then good friends sending you to other good friends. 53 or 54 good friends he visits, and he starts with meeting the Bodhisattva Manjushri, who is also often typified as a young man. the boy is quite, at the beginning of this thing, he's quite young. Manjushri is also fairly young Bodhisattva. He takes the form of a young kind of androgynous male. And when he sees Manjushri, in that conjunction, this wish to realize enlightenment arises.

[05:48]

And his heart becomes set on supreme enlightenment for the welfare of all beings through this meeting with the great bodhisattva. And then it occurs to this mind, oh, well, if I want to walk this path to be a bodhisattva like this bodhisattva, maybe I should find out what the path entails, what the practice is. And then he tells Manjushri, well, now that my heart's been set on enlightenment, I probably should try to find out what the path is. And Manjushri says, right, that's good. You should wonder about that. And it would be appropriate now to go to good friends. You've met me now. It would be good to go and meet good friends who can tell you about the path of the Bodhisattva. So that's one thrust, the thrust of this friendship thing.

[06:59]

And then the other thrust is that the intensive was announced or advertised, which probably most people didn't even notice, but anyway, it was advertised as the topic was Wisdom Beyond Wisdom. That was the topic. The Perfection of Wisdom, which is, yeah, that's kind of like the Bodhisattva practice is the Perfection of Wisdom. It's a practice of developing wisdom, developing a wisdom which doesn't even abide in wisdom, constantly going beyond itself. This is the bodhisattva practice, which in the other scripture, that's what Sudhana is trying to learn about. He's trying to learn about the perfection of wisdom. The way he's trying to learn about it is through these friendships. So we bring the two together, the topic of the perfection of wisdom together with the topic of friendship.

[08:07]

So that becomes the context for the study of wisdom is good friendship. and then in my mind it came up, oh yeah, what did I hear the Buddha say about that? I heard, what did I hear the Gandhavuha Sutra say about that? What did I hear the Zen people say about that? What are all these Zen stories about? All these Zen stories are about friendship, What did the Buddha say? So the scripture comes to my mind of the historical Buddha in India.

[09:09]

He's with his attendant, who's also his cousin, Ananda. And this scripture is called Upadana. Upadana. Upadana. Upadana Sutta. Upadana, I think, means half. It's the half sutra. So, want to hear the sutra? I mean, you want to hear my rendition of it? Who knows what the Buddha actually said? We actually don't know what language he spoke. But anyway, the story, as I would tell it to you, is the Buddha is someplace and Ananda, his attendant, comes to him, comes to the Buddha, and...

[10:15]

Oh, there it is. It's Upadana Sutta. So, the attendant comes to the teacher, pays his respects, walks around the Buddha, and sits to one side. And there he is sitting with the Buddha. And he says, This is half the holy life. And when I read that, when that came to my mind and I read it, I thought I didn't get before the this. He said, this is half the holy life. In other words, here you and I are together. Here we are. I'm sitting here, you're sitting here. This is half the holy life. Lord, teacher, admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie, is half the practice.

[11:47]

So he thought, you know, this relationship we have here, that's half the practice, and then the other half is the practice. the various practices which you have taught. So there's being here together and then there's the practices which you have taught us. And the Buddha said, don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Good friendship, good companionship, good camaraderie is the whole of the holy life. It's the whole thing. By relying on this good friendship and so on, one will be able, one may be expected to practice

[12:48]

to do all the practices, to practice right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right mindfulness, right effort, and right samadhi, right concentration. In the context of this friendship, this practice will come forth. And and come to fruit. And then, one, those subject to birth will be liberated from birth. Those subject to illness will be relieved, will be freed from illness. Those subject to death will be freed of death. Those subject to lamentation, grief, and so on, will be released by doing the practice which occurs in dependence on the friendship. Some people think that you can do the practice without the friendship.

[14:06]

I propose we cannot. You can't do the practice by yourself. It occurs in the context of good friendship. And the good friendship naturally, organically gives rise, the good friendship gives rise to the practice. So in the Gandha Vyuha, the boy, not just the boy, the girls, a lot of people meet Manjushri, but we're talking about this boy, meets Manjushri, and in the meeting with the good friend, here it comes. The mind, the heart is set on enlightenment, the mind, the heart realizes that training is necessary and it wants to be educated about the practice of enlightenment. And all this has risen in the context of this relationship. And actually, if I just parenthetically can mention that in recent times, in some countries where they teach the Eightfold Path, they often start with the third aspect of the Eightfold, namely Right Action and then Right Speech and Right Livelihood.

[15:49]

And part of the reason they might start there is because the first two, Right View and right intention, they understand that the right view occurs in the context of good friendship with the Buddhas. And since the Buddha's gone, where's the good friendship? On the Bodhisattva path, we don't think the Buddha's gone. We don't think the good friends are gone. So we can practice the Eightfold Path. It will be practiced in the context of good friendship. The Buddhas are present in the world here and now. And if we practice in a certain way, we will realize that. I mentioned to you before that the teachings that are offered, you could say here, but maybe I won't even say here because at this place we actually don't abide in here even.

[17:21]

We have an appearance of a here and a now, but the name of this place, the name of this here, is no abode. The name of this now is no abode. So we have a here and now and we don't abide in it. So in this non-abiding, which you could call here and now, but anyway, in this non-abiding we have a teaching which is intended for beings like this boy. beings who have their hearts set on perfect enlightenment. The teachings are offered to such beings. The teachings are offered to beings who aspire to enlightenment for the welfare of all beings and understand that this practice will proceed in the context of good friendship.

[18:24]

In other words, these teachings are for people who aspire to be bodhisattvas, who have that vow to realize enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, and also have the aspiration to develop an unshakable faith in the teachings for bodhisattvas, and who aspire to serve all Buddhas. In other words, serve all good friends. And who aspire to listen to the teaching and let the teaching permeate their body and mind to transform it into wisdom. So, aspiration for these four things, right? To develop unshakable faith in the teachings, to develop relationships with innumerable good friends, to... Oh, I forgot one.

[19:50]

And the other one is to practice the Bodhisattva practices, which we learn about, And in the practicing of them, the practicing of them creates a permeation of our mind and body, which transforms it. And then the last one is... What is it? Go ahead. the aspiration to unshakable faith, the listening to the teachings, yeah, listening to the teachings and doing the practices, both listening to the teachings and doing the practice, transforming the body. And the other one is to serve and in relationship with good friends. Those four things in which you can aspire to. And then, And then the question has been asked by some great bodhisattvas, who actually does enter into the realization of perfect wisdom?

[20:54]

Who actually understands these teachings? And it's people who have done these four things, who have developed the unshakable faith in the teachings of the bodhisattva, who have served good friends, many good friends like Sujana, who do the bodhisattva practices and develop their bodhisattva capacity and skills, and who Listen to the teachings. And listen to the teachings. The people who have done a lot of that, of each one of those, actually enter into and realize the true Dharma. And then realizing it, they then become the maintenance crew of the bodhisattva vehicle. And someone in private kindly said this to me.

[22:03]

How can I have unshakable faith in the great vehicle teachings of the Bodhisattvas when I don't understand them? And I said, yeah, well, actually you won't have, I don't know if I said this, but now I'm saying, you won't have unshakable faith in the Bodhisattva vehicle if you don't understand them. However, you can, and some people will say you will, develop unshakable faith in this teaching if you enter into listening to the teachings and you continue that. And I thought of that phrase from the teachings of Dogen where he says something like, Birds fly in the sky. Fish swim in the water or the ocean. No matter how far the fish swim, they never run out of their element.

[23:11]

No matter how far the birds fly, they never run out of the air. And then other interesting things are said Like, for example, if the bird leaves the air, it will die at once. If the fish leaves the water, it will die at once. For the bird, air is life. For the fish, water is life. And on and on, wonderful things. And then he says, now if the bird or the fish would try to reach the end of their element without moving in it, they would not be able to find their place or their way. In other words, if you try to understand the great vehicle, teachings, and have unshakable faith thereby, or if you wish to have unshakable faith

[24:15]

in the air, if you're a bird, or unshakable faith in the water, if you're a fish, without moving in it, you will not find your way or your place. You won't find the way to comprehend your life, which for a fish is water, for a bird is the sky, and for us it's karmic consciousness, etc. If we leave karmic consciousness, well, in a sense, the self is dead, gone. So we swim in the karmic consciousness, we move about in it, and by doing so, we will find our way and our place. So we move in the teaching, and if we move and move, unshakable faith develops. We do the practices, And we also need, and in the movement we need to move with friends.

[25:21]

We need to be in schools of fish and flocks of birds and whatever. Sanghas of humans, crashes of rhinoceroses, exaltations of larks, you know. different groups of beings we practice together So there are good friends, spiritual benefactors, and there are also good friendship, spiritual benefit in relationship.

[27:02]

In the story of the boy visiting all these teachers, it's hard for me actually to see his evolution because he's such a great student right at the beginning. and then he's such a great student in the middle and he's such a great student at the end that it's hard to see him maturing. Every teacher he meets, you know, he's so enthusiastic. When he first meets them, he's so enthusiastic as they start to teach him, and then he's so enthusiastic after they send him away to the next teacher. oftentimes feeling a little sorry to leave this wonderful teacher, but also so joyful of the teaching he received, and so joyful to contemplate the teachings he's received. So as he goes from teacher one to teacher two or teacher 26 to teacher 27, he is transported in joy of meditating on the teaching as he's traveling.

[28:45]

It's not like he's, oh, I got to get to the next teacher and get the teacher. He's enjoying the teachings he's already received from teacher 26, 25, 24, and so on back to Manjushri. He's enjoying all these teachings, meditating on them full, of listening to the teachings. And he's serving, he's practicing his service and devotion to the 26 good friends. He's serving them all as he travels. They're not around. He left 25 or 20 whatever teachers. He's left them. They all sent them away. And he's still totally enjoying his relationship and his good friendship with them by remembering the teachings. This is a great joy to the teachers that the students are remembering the teachings because the teachers love the students and the teachers love the practices which they teach. So if the students, the teachers don't necessarily want the students just thinking about their face, but to use the teacher's face to remember the teachings.

[29:56]

and to enjoy the teaching as you travel. And it takes, like we had this intensive, sometimes it takes an intensive situation to kind of like imprint the teachings so that you can carry them with you as you leave the teaching situation and keep meditating on them. Part of the theory here is that it's possible to create enough intensity so that these teachings will actually be into our body. And then when they're in our body, they can then arise in our consciousness and we can enjoy them consciously. And when we enjoy them consciously and intensively, they transform our body, which then supports them to arise again. So this boy traveling and then he meets the next teacher and starts the whole process again and each teacher

[31:05]

gives them a great teaching, and then when the teacher finishes, the teacher says, I know this, and [...] I'm very happy about this, and I'm very happy you're listening to me, but how could I know or tell about bodhisattvas who are inconceivably wonderful? So go see somebody else. And again, in the intensive, and I'll do it here too, this pattern occurs literally, almost literally, in many Zen stories. That a wonderful interaction between student and teacher happens, and the teacher basically says, you know, I can't teach you, go someplace else. On and on and on and on. But in the Zen stories, often in a very short period of time, not visiting 53 teachers, often we can observe by visiting two or three teachers, we can see the mind of the student mature by the friendships.

[32:19]

Sometimes we don't see the, sometimes the story, we only see the end of the evolutionary process. the student comes and they've already visited quite a few teachers and we see the actual entry into perfect wisdom in the story. We don't know the warm-up process of evolution that was sponsored by previous friendships or by previous friendship. Because it's actually all one friendship. using different faces for different purposes. Each teacher on the bodhisattva path is trying to help the relationship not just, isn't the teacher just trying to help the student, the teacher is trying to work with the student in such a way that the relationship moves into this place of wisdom.

[33:31]

The student's coming with compassion at some level of development. The student's coming with compassion for all beings and for the teacher. And the teacher's coming with compassion, and they're coming to this meeting of compassion to find an acronym which I was visited by during the intensive, MONA. They come to find MONA, the mind of no abode. If you knew Mona like I know Mona. The relationship is guiding the participants to the place of no abode where perfect wisdom is constantly shining.

[34:39]

But sometimes, even though the attempt is to set this up, the student can't quite find her place in the setup. The karmic consciousness can't quite find this place of not abiding in the turbulence of karmic consciousness. So you can watch the teacher kind of guiding the relationship to this place. The student, being unfamiliar with this place, has difficulty saying anything or moving. And then the next teaching. And often in the Zen teachings, like in the sutra, the teacher says, I can't teach you anymore. They actually did teach them, but they can't do any more right now, they have to go someplace else. So, three particular generations of our lineage demonstrate this very nicely, this process.

[36:03]

And the three I'm thinking of are Yaoshan, Yunyuan and Dongshan. Can you say that? Yeah. So that's the 36th, 37th, and 38th ancestors in the lineage coming down to this Mona here. Those three generations demonstrate this process of friendship, creating the context for entry into perfect wisdom. They demonstrate it really nicely. I see it's almost noon and pretty soon blood sugar levels will drop, so I don't know. I don't know how they used to do it when they just go on for hours and hours.

[37:08]

One of the, you know, like... I told you about, you know, I often laugh and I... You don't know the joke yet, right? The joke is, this boy is with the great Bodhisattva Manjushri and Manjushri says, Okay, on your way, young man, young boy. Okay. And then the boy, you know, paid his respects to Manjushri and walked around him a hundred thousand times and then left. So how much older was he by the time he left? And then between a number of teachers, they said, like one, in between one, in the next 12 year travels, totally happy the whole time, meditating on the practice, no problem, but anyway 12 years. So how old is this boy by the end? He's still, you know, he's still a lovely young guy at the end.

[38:12]

Anyway, so back to the Zen thing. Yaoshan, actually I should maybe say it's four. In a way, it's Shirtou, Yaoshan, Yunyan, Dongshan. Those four generations demonstrate the process of seeking the perfect wisdom of the Buddhas on the bodhisattva path through good friendship. And we get to see these great ancestors being kind of like youngsters, in a way. even though they're maybe in their 20s, you can see their immaturity. You can see their sincerity, that they have no problem of devoting themselves to good friendship. You can see the sincerity, but you can also see the immaturity.

[39:14]

You can see the teacher guiding them to the right position and see that they're not relaxed yet. They can't turn with it yet. So, you know, before Buddhas were Buddhas, they were just like us. Before the ancestors were really these great teachers, they were like us. They were like us, we're like them, we will be like them someday. through these friendships. And they were like us if we are as sincere as they were. Even though they were immature, they lacked not in sincerity. They lacked not in heart. They gave themselves to the practice. So if we give ourselves more and more, we approach the intensity of the imprinting situation. And We want to be gentle about this whole process.

[40:14]

And they were. And when they weren't, they regretted it and they told us about it. So that's one set. And then there's another set, which I'll tell you about if I have time someday, and that is the story of another lineage also comes from Shurto. So Shurto has these two lineages coming down from him. Shurto means either stone head or on top of the stone. I think they call him on top of the stone because he used to sit on top of a flat stone and meditate. So Shurto, Sekito Gisen Daisho, that teacher had two primary students. One is Yaoshan, and the other is Tenno Dogo, or Tianhuan Dawu.

[41:18]

So we have stories of these two lines coming down from Shinto. Both lines lead, one line leads to this tradition, the Soto school, the other line leads to two schools, So three of the five main schools of Zen come from Shinto through these two disciples. And both the stories of these two disciples, how they taught their students perfect wisdom, show this friendship and how it works, how the teaching was given and how it worked with the student and how they kept working on it. through the relationship to enter into the perfect wisdom and then transmit it further on. So I'm just showing you this family tree that offers stories of good friendship in which perfect wisdom was developed.

[42:22]

And we can see both the friendship We can see the successes and the immaturities, and we can see the maturities and see how the teaching works at different phases in the process and how the teachers dealt with the immaturity, how they worked with it, and how the immaturity was not a dead end in these stories. It was not a dead end because the student kept working, kept working. through the maturity, continuing in the process, not getting discouraged. Not that being discouraged is not allowed, but when there's discouragement, there has to be good friendship for it. If there's good friendship, discouragement is not a dead end. Yeah, so I'm very happy that we have this central teacher, sheer toe, up on top of the stone, and he has these two relationships.

[44:04]

And we can look at this, we have stories about these relationships. I'm just so happy about that. So, I don't know, it may take a couple months or a few months to get through these stories, but I'll just start with one of the stories of one generation, okay? And I would choose this side over here. This is the side of Yaoshan meeting Shirto. Can you say Yaoshan meeting Shirto? Yaoshan meeting Shirto. Okay. Yaoshan, by the way, means medicine mountain. So Yaoshan became ordained as a monk. And he studied the Buddhist scriptures extensively. And he was very diligent in practicing the ethical precepts of the Buddhas.

[45:12]

But then he humbly reflected on his understanding and he felt that he still didn't feel free from his karmic consciousness. And he heard about this Zen school where they taught a way to look at the human mind, to see its nature, and to become Buddha by seeing its nature. He'd been studying his karmic consciousness, but he hadn't been able to see his nature, he felt. And he was able to appreciate that he needed help And he went looking for helpers. He went looking for friends. Good friends. Friends who could bring him the benefit he aspired to. And if I could just make a little parenthesis here. On the other side, we'll see an example of somebody who didn't realize the necessity for friendship and wanted to go and destroy the Zen school.

[46:24]

But he will also come to a happy ending. But I'm taking the side now of somebody who wants a teacher, wants help. So he goes and somehow he has the, can you imagine? Here you are in this huge country and somehow he finds this great teacher. This great teacher, he finds him. I often felt like, how could I be so fortunate to find Sister Girishy? I said that out loud one time, and his wife said, I know why. And I never asked her. But really, I don't know why. I don't know why... in this big country, how did I wind up with such a nice teacher that was so helpful to me, that I could spend time with and live next door to?

[47:28]

I mean, if I look at my friends, they surpassed me in so many ways in intelligence and skill and ethical practice, and yet they didn't get to hang out with this great teacher. I don't understand why, but anyway, Yao Shan got to meet Shih Tzu. And he goes to him and basically he says, you know, I've been doing all this study, I've been doing all this ethical discipline, but I don't see the nature of reality. Please help me. Please show me. And Shurto says, Being just so won't do. Not being just so won't do either. Being just so and being not so won't do at all.

[48:38]

How about you? He sets the teaching in perfect wisdom. He sets the place of no abode and then how about you? But Yashan couldn't speak. I don't understand. Please, please tell me more. He set it up He's in the place, but he can't enter somehow. Some resistance still. And he wants more instruction, but Sirtot says, the karmic affinity is not here. In other words, I can't do anything more. I've just given it to you. You can't work with it, and I can't do more. He can't mess with it.

[49:40]

It's been set. This is the teaching. We're not going to negotiate. It's not the right time. Go see Master Ma. So he sends him to the other greatest teacher in China from whom all the other two schools come. So he gets to meet these two that somehow they have time for this kid, this young man. He goes to see now Master Ma And he tells Master Ma he's been sent by Shirtou. They know each other. They live at some considerable distance, but they know about each other. They send students back and forth. And so he says to Master Ma, you know, he sent me here. Please help me. And Master Ma said, sometimes There's different ways to translate this.

[50:43]

One way to translate it would be, sometimes I make her raise her eyebrows and blink. Carolyn just raised her eyebrows. But she didn't blink. Sometimes I make her raise her eyebrows and blink. You could also translate it, sometimes I raise the eyebrows and blink. Or sometimes I make him raise his eyebrows and blink. Or sometimes the eyebrows are raised and blink. Anyway, Sometimes I don't make her raise her eyebrows and blink. Sometimes raising the eyebrows and blinking works. Sometimes raising the eyebrows and winking doesn't work. How about you? And now Yashan enters into the place of no abode. This time, this time there's no resistance.

[51:44]

He enters that place that the relationship is set up. And he starts to do prostrations to express his gratitude. So you can just... We don't see his early training, but we see in working with the one teacher, taking this trip to the next teacher, reflecting on the teachings of the first teacher, and then, goodbye Maria, thanks for coming. And then we see now with the second teacher, and now the karmic affinity, the karmic conditions are right, he can enter. Both situations he's very sincere, Now the tumblers fall in place, he can enter. He bows to express his joy in perfect wisdom.

[52:47]

And then Mads says, the great master says, what have you realized that you are now bowing? And he says, now I see that when I was with Shurto, I was like a mosquito trying to mount an iron bull. and we can do a lot with that story, that part there. Sometimes they translate it as like a mosquito trying to bite an iron bull, but actually the character actually means to mount. And in one version of the story, Master Ma says, although this is so, in other words, although you have entered and now you realize your relationship with Shirtou, and although you've awakened with me, he's your teacher.

[53:59]

But that's one version of the story. The other version of the story is three years of training intervene between the entry, and when he goes back to Shirtoh. They're together, Masu. our nice lineage of Yaoshan, we partake of three years of Yaoshan being with the greatest master of the other side of the Zen world. And then he comes back and spends a number more years with Shirto. So he has this great friendship, another great friendship, and then comes back to spend more time with the original friendship. And all the while, he's moving towards entry, and then after entry, he studies with the teacher for three years, and then he goes back after studying with the teacher after entry, more years of post-enlightenment, post-wisdom realization training.

[55:05]

So here's a model of just two teachers, but really one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, three. Many, many maturing moments working together in friendship to enter wisdom, to prepare for wisdom, to enter it, and then to express it in daily life together. This is the model of the Zen story, but it's the same as the Aptamsaka Sutra, the Gandhavyuha, the same process. It's not that you get enlightened and then that's it. The enlightenment is deepened. In the Bodhisattva path, we have authentic awakening and it just gets continually deepened in the friendship context, by working in relationship. It goes deeper and deeper. So, it might be good if I told you about his time with Matsu, right?

[56:16]

Rather than just skip over it and go back home to his first teacher, we could talk about his time with Matsu, which is quite interesting. And then, we can go back and look at how things were when he got back with Shinto. Because there too, I can just tell you beforehand, you can watch him further develop, further mature, with his teacher until finally basically he's equal to his teacher. You can see that they're on, finally they're, it's not the little boy on, it's not, I don't know what it is anymore, it's not a mosquito exactly trying to bite an iron bull. I don't know if it's two mosquitoes or two iron bulls. I don't know what it is. They didn't say what kind of imagery. But they do have poems that they wrote about what it was like later in their relationship. So again, he says, the original teacher said, your karmic affinity is not here.

[57:18]

In other words, this isn't the right time. You can't work with me anymore. You've got to accept what I gave you, and that's it. go work with the other teacher, but then he comes back and they work more. So sometimes, even though your relationship with the teacher isn't over, in fact, what the teacher has given you is over. And you've got to work with that, and I'm not going to argue about it anymore. Just work with it. It's not the end of the story, though. You can go visit a hundred other teachers and come back and work some more, maybe. It's just for now... And again, this pattern you'll see in other stories repeated. Our ancestors were given a teaching. They didn't get it. They want more, and the teacher won't give it to them. It sends them off. And then the next teacher, basically the same teacher, and they can enter it. And then they understand the previous teacher. So... But... I don't feel like I should give you the next installment of teacher-student friendship now.

[58:22]

I think that's enough, and maybe have just some 5,000 questions you'd like to pick up. Yes? One. As a teacher, is it really, really hard to send a student away like that? Do you want to just keep them there and keep trying to teach them and keep trying to be what they need? As a human being, I must confess, I do sometimes want to keep excellent students forever. And knowing that, really, you should send them off. Yes. It doesn't say in the Gandha Viha that they had a hard time sending their teachers, sending their good students off. It does say sometimes that the student looked back again and again at their wonderful teacher as they approached the next one. So as a human being, yes, I think I would sometimes

[59:27]

some attachment may develop. And therefore, when it's time for the student to go, it may be some grieving will come to be done. But sometimes, things are, what do you call it? Clean as a whistle, is that what you say? Clean as a whistle. It's like, great student, bye-bye. I give you away to the world. Bye-bye. Sometimes just... And sometimes... One time there was a young man and he was... Anyway, he was kind of like the student I was always looking for. just my ideal student. And things were going along quite well.

[60:34]

And then he wanted to go to Tassajara, the monastery. But before going to Tassajara, we had this policy that you should do a practice period at Green Gulcher City Center before you go to Tassajara. We've had that practice for a long time, some preparation before going. And he said, well, if you make me follow that, if you require that of me, I'm probably just going to leave. You know, he wasn't going to do the prerequisite. He would go, but he wouldn't do the prerequisite. And I confess, I was tempted to let him go without the prerequisite. Otherwise, I would lose him. And I really felt like the thing to do, even though I did not want him to go away, was to not make an exception for him.

[61:38]

That that would be bad for the community, bad for my heart, bad for him. But I really loved him and I wanted him to stay and practice. And maybe he knew, and he was playing, like, can I get you to make an exception for me to show me that you think I'm special? I did think he was special, but I thought all the more not to make an exception for him. For somebody that maybe, for students I'd want to get rid of, I should make exceptions for them so they can stay. That's probably good for them and for me. But what's really corrupting is to make exceptions for the people you want to keep. That's really poisonous. And I didn't do it. However, I, what do you call it, I thought, well, maybe I'm being too strict. So I talked to Mel about it, who was co-abbot with me at that time.

[62:41]

And he concurred. So I said, no, I'm not going to make an exception for you. If you do practice period here, then you can go to Shasahar. And he left. He did leave, pretty much immediately. Not real pissed off, but just, he just left, like in a couple of days. And I felt so good. You know, I'm sorry to see him go, but I felt so good. I really felt like I did the right thing. I gave up. his friendship for good friendship. It was actually good friendship that I wouldn't do that for him. And he went to, he left and went to Harvard Divinity School. And then I saw him, you know, and I saw him several years later, and then I told him, at the time I didn't tell him, at the time I didn't say, you know,

[63:46]

I really love you, you have tremendous potential, and I don't want to lose you, but I can't make this exception for you." I didn't tell him about that. I'd like to try to talk him into staying, you know, you really are special even though I'm not making this exception. I didn't tell him that. I'm glad I didn't do it. But then years later I told him, I said, you know, our relationship was a great lesson for me because I was really tempted to corrupt it in order to have... One of the ways teachers can be greedy is to have excellent students, right? I got the best students. I could even not criticize Suzuki Roshi exactly, but just tell you a story which looks almost like he was proud to have his students. One time, one of his fellow Japanese priests was coming to visit, and he went out in the hall and lined up all the big shoes outside the zendo.

[64:51]

And he said, I want my friend to think I teach giants. I think he was a little bit proud that he had these many students well over six feet. And he was pretty close to five. And their shoes were about twice as big as his. So, you know, there's some humanness there, but, you know, don't be addicted to it. Give it up, you know. For the sake of the students, for the sake of the students, give the students up. Show them that you're willing to give them up for them and for the world. But it is sometimes hard. and also give them up even if it's easy.

[65:52]

Anything else? Yes? So what did your student who went away, and then you saw him again many years later, and you said, how you... I don't remember exactly, but I think he was happy to hear, I think he already knew, but I think he was happy to hear how much I appreciated him And that I didn't, in some sense, I didn't sacrifice his welfare for my having a good student. It would be bad for him if I did that. I put his welfare above my having him. I think he could get it, but I couldn't tell him at the time because it might have been a sneaky way to still get him to stay. Maybe. I didn't want to do that.

[66:56]

But later I think it was just right, and he understood, and I think he was grateful that it had gone that way. He was doing fine. And maybe he didn't really want to do Zen practice. A lot of people who I'd like to be doing Zen practice with me aren't. I don't know. I'm interested in them, but they're not interested in them. I don't think Suzuki Roshi really particularly wanted me as a student, but he couldn't get away from it because I was like, I wanted to do it, you know. He had no choice. I think maybe he too, there's some students he would like to have that he didn't get to have. They didn't want to do it. They didn't want to do Zen. They wanted to do maybe Pieces of Grocery's Pal, which is fine. But I was willing to be there for the practice, so there it is. So the people who want to do the practice are the people you practice with, not the people you like necessarily.

[68:01]

And you might like them, but that's not the issue. The issue is, do they want to practice the way? And those are the people you're devoted to in the Bodhisattva way, regardless of whether, you know, regardless of your feelings. It's the practice that's going to help them. You're more concerned with their welfare than your feelings. Of course, you're going to be very happy if they do the practice. And Sri Sri Krishna was very happy when anybody did the practice and he was unhappy when they didn't, even though he really liked them. Yes? Did he ever send anyone away? Did he send anyone away? Yeah, he sent people to study with him. He was going to send me away, actually, not too long before he died. He employed a Japanese tutor for me. Two.

[69:07]

One, he didn't pay. He was visiting a doctor from Japan. He asked that person to give me calligraphy instruction. And he hired the famous, not the famous, the great Buddhist scholar Karl Bielefeld is married to a Japanese woman. who was quite good at Japanese, and he had Zen Center hire her to be my language tutor because he wanted me to learn Japanese because he wanted me to go to Japan and study with some teachers who he told me their names, you know? So he was preparing me to send me away to Japan to study Zen with some other teachers as his student. And he also gave me a scroll, which I still have, and he didn't sign it. He said, I'm not going to sign it because it's a scroll that you would hang when you visit temples, you hang the scroll in your room. It's a traditional thing to do, this particular scroll. He said, I'm not going to sign it so that the teachers won't think you're my student. So they'll feel free to teach you.

[70:10]

So he was actually preparing me to go away from him to study with other teachers in Japan. However, he became ill and then he didn't want me to leave anymore. He wanted me to stay. I wouldn't say he wanted me to stay. It's just that a lot of his plans for developing his students were foreshortened and we had this opportunity to be together and then I could study with other people later. I think he had the idea of going and studying with them and then come back and study with him after getting training there. that I couldn't get from him in America. But then I could bring that back and he could work with it. And I've also told the story of a Japanese teacher came to Tatsuhara and he was a great chanting teacher and he sent me to Tatsuhara to learn chanting from that teacher. And then after I received that chanting, Suzuki Rishi came to Tatsuhara and then he could work with me on what I'd learned from him.

[71:17]

So I think he wanted me to get teachings from other teachers that he couldn't give me, but then he could refine it after I got it from somebody else. So I think he did want me to work with other teachers, and he was preparing for me to go off to other places. And he sent other teachers to Japan also. He sent Richard Baker to Japan, and he sent Paul Disko, my Dharma brother, to Japan, but in his case he had him study temple carpentry. So he did send some of his students away to get training with other teachers, even though he was our original teacher, sort of our root teacher, he did have that concept. Yes? I'm curious about this person who left, that he wanted to go to Pasahara. Yes. I'm curious, what was his intentions?

[72:21]

Did he feel that where he was was not right for him, that he wanted to go to Tassajara? Well, I think Tassajara had then and has now the reputation of being more rigorous being the most rigorous training place of Zen Center is three places. It has longer days. It's more, you know, there's less, everybody stays there together. There's almost, in the winter anyway, during practice period, it really is very concentrated. And there's very little coming and going with outside and so on. Whereas Green Gulch, although it's a wonderful place to practice, except for intensives, there's a lot of coming and going and It's not as concentrated in some ways. I think he wanted to go to the most intense practice place. But he also didn't want to deal with part of the intensity, which is to do things according to certain procedures.

[73:21]

So actually, he wanted to go to the place where we follow the procedures maybe most closely, but he didn't want to go to the procedure of going to that place. So it was a contradiction there. to me is the whole idea of the transformation is to transform so there is no coming and going. So there is no what? No coming and going. No coming, yeah, right. So wherever you are... Right. Yeah, that's right. The location, does it matter? I don't understand why the location matters. Well, the karmic setup does matter. Yeah, some situations will help you realize, enter the wisdom, which is free of coming and going, and other situations may not be appropriate.

[74:31]

But in his case, he thought that situation would be better for me, and I didn't think so. I disagreed. I thought he should do this other thing first, that doing this first actually would be more appropriate to realizing wisdom than going to a place that he thinks is better. That's part of the friendship thing, is you don't decide all by yourself what you're going to deal with. Like somebody comes to you and says, give me these teachings. Not that one. This one. And the teacher, in a friendly way, he responds to that. And sometimes it's quite dramatic, the friendly response to the student instructing what teachings will be given. Sometimes it's like... This is another funny story. I think it's funny. You haven't heard it yet. So the Buddha was talking to one of his great disciples, Shariputra.

[75:39]

And he was... Shariputra was asking him about the... And the Buddha's before Buddha. And Buddha said, there's six before me. And... And he told them a little about the six. He says all six, when they met people, they were able to interact with them and basically they were able to set the stage for the people to enter wisdom. They could all do that. Not necessarily instantly, but anyway, that's what they could do. They could meet people and set the stage through the relationship for them entering into wisdom. Enlightenment. They could do that. They all could do that. They were Buddhas. They could do it. They could teach. But three of them, their Dharma, after they passed away, their Dharma didn't last very long. And three of them, their Dharma lasted a long time. And Shariputra said to the Shakyamuni Buddha, well, what was the difference between the ones that were short-lived after their after their departure, and the ones that lived long said, the ones that gave the ethical precepts lasted long, the ones that didn't, didn't last so long.

[76:50]

So they could enlighten people, and some of their students then could enlighten others, but the ones that could enlighten others, who could enlighten others, who could enlighten others, the more long-lasting transmissions of the wisdom teachings were together with the ethical precepts also being transmitted. And the Buddha said, it's like piling up wheat or stalks of wheat or stalks of rice. If you lean them together, they'll stay up for a while. But eventually the wind will blow them down or whatever. But if you tie them together, they can stay up longer. Kind of like that. And then Shariputra said to the Buddha, well, then the Lord should give these precepts. And the Buddha said, I will decide when to give them. He didn't say, how dare you instruct me about when I'm going to do it. He said, I will decide when to give them.

[77:52]

And then Shariputra says, well, when are you going to give them? And the Buddha said, I will give them when the community gets so big that people can't really be close to me anymore. And when we develop so many facilities, like when people give us so many retreat spots or so on, that it's just too big for people to know what to do, then we will set up procedures and regulations about how to behave. And when it did get big, then he started to establish these ethical precepts. When people are close to the great teacher, they don't veer off from ethics. The presence of the compassion and wisdom make it very easy to be a good girl and a good boy.

[78:53]

And I saw that, you know. Sukhriyashi wasn't necessarily equal to Shakyamuni Buddha, but he was good enough so that when we were near him, we weren't smoking dope, we weren't abusing sexuality, we wouldn't steal anything. We might try to steal his time, actually, but then he would gently... point out to us that that wouldn't be good to steal our time, this time, you know. If we try to get more attention than our neighbor, he would kind of like show us how silly that was, that actually we should help our fellow students get his attention rather than get it all for ourselves. Somehow that could be conveyed by his presence. But some of us about 50 feet away from him, would do things which he would never think we would do because he only saw us when we were close, right? And we were good girls and good boys when we were close. But some people not too far away from him would do unwholesome things.

[79:59]

So as the community gets bigger and people get farther from the teacher, they need some rules like no marijuana in the monastery, no alcohol, no heroin, no cocaine in the monastery. And if you get outside, be careful too, please. And then other certain policies were necessary because people, when there's a big community, when they weren't in this presence, they kind of get disoriented. The same with the Buddha. In the presence of the Buddha, there's very little, very little. But fortunately, there are a few examples of people, even in the presence of the Buddha, still wanted to do unwholesome things, like somebody wanted to kill him. Two people wanted to kill him at least. So even in the presence of the Buddha, some people do need some instruction on precepts. And he gave it. So nobody did kill him.

[81:04]

Catherine? So many things. Thank you so much. I was thinking that we're all cells in the body of Buddha. Yeah. So many Buddhas, so many faces, but reflecting the same maybe vibration. We're all cells in the body of Buddha, or you could say we're all in one cell of the body of Buddha. And inside of our cells are many Buddhas. Each cell of our body has many Buddhas, many Buddhas, in whom are the cells of the bodies of innumerable beings, and so on. Yeah, that's the situation. It's just inconceivably wonderful. our marrow or life's blood is made coming from that authentic place, that that's where it must reside. Yeah, right.

[82:13]

Yes. You've been talking about friendship between people who are practicing the way. How does that work with someone who's practicing the way and someone who's not? Well, the person who's practicing the way offers good friendship, and some people are not interested, like I said before. I offered it to him. He wasn't interested. I offered him good friendship, which was probably the best thing for you to just follow the same procedures as ordinary people do follow. Everybody else, I followed that procedure. Why don't you do it too? Actually, I didn't follow that procedure because when I went to Tassajara, there was not that policy yet. that policy developed because people went to Tassajara and being unprepared they had a really hard time and quit. So at the time I went, but anyway I was trying to be a good friend to him and I think I was and he wasn't really interested in that kind of friendship.

[83:29]

He wanted He wanted to be special and be treated differently from the ordinary students. And for me to go along with that would not be good friendship. That's not the friendship of somebody who's practicing the way the person who's practicing the way does what's good for the person rather than what's good for their fame or something. That's not good friendship. But that's the friendship some people like. That's not good friendship. That's a friendship of somebody who's not practicing. And I often thought, how come? I knew Suzuki Roshi was offering friendship to some people and I couldn't understand why they weren't there receiving it. I knew he wanted to give it to them. And I said, why aren't they here? They were not availing themselves of his friendship as much as they could have. So it's offered, but people who don't want it, they don't want it.

[84:36]

I think I'm asking more about in my neighborhood. Yes. I live around a lot of people who seem to me that they are not practicing the way... I don't want to separate myself from them. No, be friendly to them. Don't separate yourself, be friendly to them. But not in a way that... is not a good friend. And a lot of people, if you're not a friend to them in a way that's not a good friend, they're not interested in you. And you accept that, that you'd be a very unpopular person in your neighborhood. Possibly. And you don't do things so that you will be popular. You can do things to please people, But sometimes you do things to please people, but you don't care whether they like you for doing it. You can do things to please people, they don't even know you did it, but you still wanted to please them.

[85:38]

Not necessarily you wanted to do something that they found pleasing so that they would like you better, or even know you did it. Did you see that story in the New York Times or something about that? hundreds of people, lots and lots of people that were involved in somebody getting a kidney transplant or something. Did you see that? So this person needed a kidney transplant from this person, but this person couldn't give it to them. And it showed that the line of people who gave donations finally brought around the donation to this person. This person didn't know all those people that made it possible for this final transmission to occur. But all those people were being generous. So you may do things in your neighborhood that no one knows you're doing. You're totally devoted to the people in your neighborhood, and none of them know that they've got a good friend in you.

[86:43]

And you're not concerned with that. If you're this kind of good friend, you don't care if anybody knows that you're being a good friend. they will eventually need to know that they have a good friend. But actually, it may be that they know somebody else is a good friend, that you have enabled that person to be a good friend to them. Like, you told, she told me a story about somebody else today, so that I know through you that friendship I have with that person. And somebody else said to me, I'll just tell you a story. These people were getting married, and I was going to perform the wedding ceremony. And they went to a jeweler. And they found the rings they wanted. And the jeweler told them the price. And they just didn't feel good about how much he wanted to get for the rings. And they didn't storm out of the shop. They just felt like, not quite right about the price.

[87:47]

And... And they noticed that the jeweler had some Buddha statues in the shop. And they said, oh, we see you have, we see you have, they didn't say, we see you have Buddhas, so don't you think you should give us a better price? Wouldn't the Buddha want you to give us a better price? They didn't do that. But they just said, oh, I see the Buddhas. Do you practice Buddhism? He said, yeah. He said, blah, blah, blah. Who's your teacher? They said, oh, Reb Anderson. And they said, oh, really? Well, he's performing the ceremony. He said, oh, really? So then they told me, they said, you don't know the effect of your practice. You don't know how your practice is making some people be generous all around the world. You don't know. We do not know. And we should not be trying to find out about it. But we do sometimes find out about it and go, hmm, that's interesting. We don't know how it works. It actually works in this It works beyond any idea we have of good or bad.

[88:52]

It's the actual process of liberation, which is not my idea of it. And they told me that story, and I don't really know how that worked. But when they say that I don't know how it works, that I agree with. In other words, I'm not saying the way it works is the story they told. But that story shows that we don't know. And the guy, the jeweler didn't know it either. He didn't know that this was going to happen to him either. But it does. Somehow we move around and we open up and we let go and we change because the practice is working through us and we don't know how. And that's friendship, that process. And some people don't appear to be interested. But we keep working at it. And they eventually... They'll embrace it, or it will embrace them. Is that enough for before lunch? Thank you very much. May our intentions equally extend to heaven.

[89:58]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_84.72