So does everybody have a copy of this case or the book or both? You don't? You want a book or the case? Just the case. Okay. All right. So we're still, I think we should at least say goodbye to case 34. And some people have not studied it yet, right? Okay, so let's read it. Feng Shui said, if you set up a particle, a single atom, the nation flourishes. If you don't set up a single atom, the nation perishes. That's the basic statement. And then Sui Du said sometime later, quite a while later, said, he was talking to his monks after he recited this case, and then he said to his, he was talking to his monk and he raised up his staff and said, are there any mendicants who will die the same and live the same?

[01:17]

And then the commentary says, when Suedu held forth his staff, his meaning lay in the setting up of the atom. His verse said, peasants may not unfurrow their brows, but for now, I hope the nation establishes a sturdy foundation. Crafty ministers, valiant generals, where are they now? This versifies quotes, are there any mendicants who will die the same and live the same? Ten thousand miles, pure wind, only I myself know. So he quotes these two sides.

[02:32]

By quoting the case, he quotes the two sides. One side is, if you raise an atom, the nation flourishes. If you don't raise an atom, the nation perishes. But when he holds up his staff and asks if there are any people who will live the same and die the same, he's just talking about the side of raising an atom. Okay? Any questions about that? I have no idea whether you could follow that. I probably wouldn't be able to. Couldn't? Okay. Do you have any question? No? I just don't understand. So he's the original teacher, feng shui, saying, if you raise something, the nation will flourish. Do you understand what it means to raise something? Can you think of an example of raising something? Pardon?

[03:33]

A rule. A rule, uh-huh. Anything else? A system. A thought. What? A thought. Anything else? A belief. What? A building. A building, yeah. A monastery. A what? A belief. A belief. That's going a bit far, but, you know, that's like taking Adam and then something else. But anyway, a belief. And here's Gabriel. And Alan. Do you need a text or anything, Gabriel? Do you have a text? Oh, man. I already have it. Is there a place that you can sit up here if you want to? Do you like it sitting on the floor there in that cushion? Yes.

[04:40]

Why did the translation, you use the word raise, and in the book it says set up, so are those synonyms? Yeah. I think the Chinese character can mean to raise, to lift up, or to set up. just raising a thought, but also setting something up, like setting up a school. The study in this case is an example of raising a dust. Having a course of study, having koans are an example of each koan is a particle of dust. And because of having those stories, the Zen school flourished. However, on the other side, the peasants get worried, the old peasants, the elders of our community.

[05:42]

The peasants are the Zen ancestors, right? These are not just peasants, these are the old peasants, right? the founders of the tradition itself get worried when people raise stuff up. The strictest way is not to raise anything up, okay? The strictest way is not to raise anything up or to realize that nothing ever does get raised up. Yes? That's kind of what Bodhidharma did and what happened. He went to a cave. Yeah, Bodhidharma was a little bit more on the side of not raising anything up, just going and sitting in a cave. Even he, though, raised a little bit.

[06:47]

But, yes? Well, You know, when he talks about mendicants, if the nation is rich or the nation is poor or falling down, the mendicants are still mendicants. Their lot doesn't improve or go down if the nations collapse, right? That's right. I think the part that's associated with... You guys, if you want a chair, you maybe have to go downstairs and get a chair from the dining room or something, or the library. Is it okay to sit up there? I think it's okay to sit on there. I sat on there one time and it supported my weight. As a matter of fact, there was somebody else sitting on the other end of the table, so it probably holds two medium-weight people. However, he didn't just say mendicants. He said mendicants living the same or living together and dying together. That's a little bit more of an organizational situation. And you look like that didn't follow for you.

[07:58]

Not really. I'm not the one. Well, if they're just people, if they're just mendicants living around, then we're not raising much. But if you then should say, how about living together? How about let's get together and form a little group? Then you have this, then you have the sangha. And then there's a possibility of flourishing, of the school flourishing, and the nation flourishing. However, there's a drawback in that, too, that it's a danger there. Yeah. Can nation refer to the individual or person? Can nation refer to the individual? It can refer to the individual. It can refer to the... To the total ecology of the person. I don't know the individual.

[09:02]

You can refer to the person. Person. Yeah. Yes. Can you refer to conventional? To a convention? To the conventional. Can it refer to the conventional, the nation? Yeah. Mm-hmm. In my notes, there's something that gets confusing, and I remember being composed about it when I wrote it. You described setting something up as adapting to circumstances and not setting something up as a grasping way and emphasizing the absolute.

[10:04]

Right. I don't understand that. It seems like it's kind of the other way around. She said I said something about this way of setting something up, which is sometimes called the granting way, or the way of adapting to circumstances. Okay? That's one way. For example, in China there was Bodhidharma who just sat and didn't explain what he was doing, he just sat. That's the image anyway. And when people came to study he didn't pay any attention to them and kind of said, go away. But then four generations later, particularly four generations later, there was the fourth ancestor and he adapted Zen practice a little bit to Chinese civilization. For example, he provided indoor housing for the meditators. So they didn't have to sit outdoors in the winter. Not too many people were interested in sitting outdoors in the winter with Bodhidharma.

[11:09]

Or even in unheated caves. This is northern China, right? Not southern China. Freeze, freeze. It's cold. So it was a very unpopular school. It had one person in it. Even that was a bit much. But things didn't flourish because he didn't set anything up. He didn't, you know, make little tents or provide running water or shelter for the monks. He also didn't provide them with food. And Chinese people weren't used to supporting Buddhist monks. So the mendicants were really mendicants. They had a hard time. But they made it, you know, they made a rather, what do you call it, strong impression on the land of the Chinese continent. It says, you know, because he was able to endure the autumn frost, the true savor of the school lasted.

[12:24]

So that's important. This is the grasping way sticking with the absolute, not accommodating. Okay? And the granting way is accommodating to people. And it's not exactly conventional, but you could say it's conventional. It's a positive adaptation to the needs of sentient beings, whatever they need. To some extent, if it's wholesome, you adapt. But the elders worry But this adaptation will then become establishment, which it tends to do. And then you've got this establishment or these rules which are given to help people, you know, find some way to adapt to this practice. And things get complicated and the elders worry and they furrow their brow. The other way they don't worry, but there's a possibility of the nation perishing.

[13:26]

And the practice is like very, it's almost, you know, just very thin. It's very strong, but almost can get, you know, lost. And it's hard to find a successor who would sit out the cold. Yeah. Isn't that sitting out in the cold an atom itself? I mean, didn't Bodhidharma set up an atom? It's just the atom he set up is the one that people were willing to follow? Or we kind of define an atom in terms of this koan as necessarily picking something that is more likely to, more adaptable or more adaptive? I think that for me the key is not so much for me to look at Bodhidharma or me to look at the Fourth Patriarch and say, one set something up and the other one didn't. I think you always have to look in your own heart. And I think Bodhidharma, in Bodhidharma's heart, he was saying, I'm not going to set anything up.

[14:32]

Now, you could say his story looks also like he didn't set up much. Like the emperor said, well, who is this facing me? He said, I don't know. What's the merit of all the stuff I did? Nothing. What's the highest meaning of holy truth? Vast emptiness. There is no holy. This looks like he's setting up less. And the emperor actually was referring to a system already established in China at that time. So Bodhidharma looks like he's setting up less, but still you could say, well, still he's setting something up. But in his heart, was he adapting to people's needs? And there is the case where in your heart, somebody's asking you to set something up for them. You feel that request. And you feel that if you adapt to them, that you'll lose the spirit of what they're asking you to adapt. They're asking you to adapt something for their need, but you feel like, if I do this, I'll lose what they want. So you may withhold, you grasp it, you don't grant it. And you may actually grant something, and it may not look like you're granting anything, but in your heart,

[15:39]

you're granting. And you may not make any change or offer anything physical, but the person may feel a granting. And so, in some sense, the first, usually when people start practicing Buddhism, there's some granting, some warmth and adaptation to their needs. And Zen comes to establish this school and, first of all, maybe then grasps the whole to the absolute. Then again, it's a rhythm, right? It's a rhythm between perishing and flourishing. If you flourish too much and popularize too much, people get so confused handling the populace and the population and the popularity that people can't remember what the point of the school was anymore. That's the danger. On the other hand, if you hold too tightly, maybe nobody will join. The only people who could join were people who would already receive some granting.

[16:40]

They must have had some adaptation and some sense of affirmation in order to be able to endure. Who could endure those winter frosts with Bodhidharma if they hadn't had some affirmation? He already, look at his story, he had plenty of affirmation from his teacher. Plenty of affirmation before he even met his teacher. He had affirmation and his teacher affirmed him and then he was sent on a cold, lonely journey. And his teacher warned him, you know, be careful. Don't get, you know, don't get too warmed up. You know, you can be quite popular when you get there and people are going to want to talk to you a lot because you're bringing wonderful teaching. So be careful. Don't talk much. Play it cool. So he went and sat coolly. He sat coolly. kept himself warm somehow through the winter, but he sat coolly. And I have a book, you know, there's a Soto Zen magazine that has cartoons, you know, of the various Zen ancestors, and one of them was about Bodhidharma.

[17:50]

And so he chose Bodhidharma, coming to talk to the emperor, you know, this cartoon thing, and he splits, leaves the emperor, and And then he goes up north to Shaolin. There's a Shaolin little forest monastery. That's what Shaolin means. And he walks in there, and the monks there are kind of like... Actually, I couldn't read the Japanese very well. But there's pictures, right? So I could kind of tell. And I also knew the story anyway. But they're kind of like, who is this turkey? Kind of like... you know, and he walks off, you know, over and sits in this cave, you know, and then they come in, they come in, they come in, see him in the cave, they start throwing snowballs at him or something, like that weirdo, you know, and then they come back the next day, he's still sitting there, and the snow's building up, and you see them, and every day they come back and look, they're kind of like, pretty soon they're starting to sweat in the snow looking at him, you know, kind of like, hey, what is this guy?

[18:52]

And pretty soon they're kind of like, scared of what he's doing. They're no longer laughing. It's not funny anymore. It's kind of like, it gets more and more awesome, and pretty soon they can't even see him anymore. And, you know, and then later his disciple comes, which is the way the snow tries to... But it... I think, you know, he was really serious, and... This was his form of compassion. This is what he at that time thought, not thought, but this was how compassion manifested from him in China at that time. And it's not... The sweetness is not so salient in this story. The bitterness and coolness is salient, but the point is he's... His compassion is to be strict in this founding phase in China.

[19:58]

Previous generation, when he was back in India, this feeling of strictness doesn't come across quite so strongly in him and his teacher. The want is more available in the stories, but this is the grasping way. Okay? But then again, as I said, four generations later, his disciple and then the next disciple, his disciple was, you know, Hui Ka. Hui Ka lived a long time and Hui Ka got in trouble towards the end of his life because he was offering this teaching which was not the popular teaching and he got in some trouble. There was a real famous teacher teaching, and Hui Ka was just wandering about. He started giving a little chat outside the city gates, and everybody started to congregate around him. And the establishment got upset with this wandering monk who had nothing, who was, for some reason or other, being very influential.

[21:03]

So they kind of gave him a hard time. Some people say he was bumped off. And his disciple got the hint. And his disciple was also a leper. The third ancestor was a leper. And he played it cool. He basically stayed hidden like Bodhidharma most of his life. He had one disciple. And so, because on top of having this weird teaching, he was also a leper, so you could, you know. And then his disciple, his one disciple was, I don't know, kind of like probably a different type of a person. He was Chinese, he wasn't a leper, and things had changed. He came out, and he says, well, okay, I'll give you guys housing. So suddenly, he had 450 disciples. And his disciple had even more. So then suddenly, in two generations, it blew up. The nation flourished. And then by the time of the sixth ancestor, it's a national event, this Zen school.

[22:07]

People know about it all over the country already in just two generations because they adapted it. And then you can see by that generation already there's political problems that you've heard about in that story. And the sixth patriarch has to run away from the scene to go back and sort of hide again and not set anything up for several years so that when he does set something up, it's not too devastating. And this is the cycle, back and forth, between setting something up and not setting something up. If we just keep setting up and setting up and setting up, things flourish. But the ancestors say, these people are totally off the track. You know, they've got an empire here. And sometimes even we joke at Zen Center about the struggle between the practice and the empire. How do you balance keeping this place together very nicely And the practice which doesn't really have any particular agenda about having an empire or not having an empire.

[23:14]

Either way, it's fine. If it helps people, fine. If it doesn't help people, well, forget it. Let's just, you know, split and go live in the hills or the mountains or the forest together where we can practice and not be caught up in this system, this organization. On the other hand, the organization is kind of helpful, so, you know, it's this kind of thing. And again, it's not so much for us to look, oh, there's a big organization, so it's, you know, it's a bad deal. You have to look in your own mind to see if you're setting something up and if you're holding to it. And if you're setting it up, are you really setting it up to help people? Are you setting up for some other reason? I don't know what the other reasons are. What are the other reasons? sentimentalism. But it's nice to say, hey, are there any people here who want to live together and die together?

[24:23]

That's a nice thing to say. But then he also says, you know, crafty ministers and valiant generals. It's good to have a sturdy foundation for the practice. It could be good. I grant that to you. Want to build a monastery? Okay, go ahead and build a monastery. And then we'll have crafty ministers and valiant generals in the monastery. So then that's that. Yes? I remember after the apocalypse, after the big blow-up at Zen Center in 1983, Lange, in some lecture or another, said this thing about, is there any monks who want to live together or die together?

[25:34]

Which, to me, was a response to the fact that people were leaving, many people were leaving, and everything seemed to be dispersing, and who was going to really hang in there, be together? But I didn't realize that that was exactly, that was the response to the fact that the nation Right. I mean, I don't think that she knew. I don't think she knew this reference. Yeah, it was the perfect, that was what it was. Yeah, right. I didn't realize that. Yeah, in some sense Zen Center went through a phase where there was a very strong granting, which turned into a kind of, like you should stay there, you should stay and hold the place up kind of feeling. Don't leave, Zen Center will fall apart. There was some feeling like that. you know, stay here and make this place, take care of the empire, right? And then people said, I don't have enough of taking care of the empire, I'm splitting. And... So... Yeah.

[26:45]

Whenever we make reference to this, we always say, live together and die together, but it says, die the same, or die together and live together, It seems much more natural to talk about living before dying, and I just wondered whether or not you feel that that's probably just coincidental that... Would you say that again, please? Whenever we say what? We, whenever we're talking about this verse, we always turn the last two phrases around in our heads. It's the way that makes more sense to us to mention living before dying. Yes. But in the koan... Shredu says, there are many kids that want to die the same and live the same. He puts it in the sort of illogical order, and I just wondered if that's really just sort of, am I sort of just nitpicking at words here? What? What does that mean? I don't think it's nitpicking. No, I don't think it's nitpicking either. Let's have a little nitpicking here later. I think in terms of practice, you know, first die together, then live together.

[28:01]

That's more logical in terms of practice. People are already living together. Now let's get together and die together. And then, after that, we can live together from that, after having died together. Isn't there a stronger suggestion of being the same rather than this sort of dying and living together? There's more of a... That's what it says. We will die the same and live the same, but we're all equals. We don't need generals and we don't need... Can't we do this to life as equals? Well, I'm so much bonded more... I'm so much bonded through being equal, I just can't. You could have that interpretation, but then he said, the same person said, peasants may furrow their brows, but for now I hope the nation will establish a sturdy foundation, crafting ministers and valiant generals. Where are they now? So in the context of That's his reflection on that same statement.

[29:06]

So he seems to say that the same situation will evoke these crafty ministers. It's almost a dangerous proposition, but it has to be a dangerous proposition. It has to be what? It's almost a dangerous proposition. He's already saying, he's pointing out the difficulties in doing this. Exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah, now he's coming back to point out that, again, whenever you set anything up, the elders worry. They furrow their brows. They worry, will this be all right? Now, sometimes you set things up like when you first set, like if you go to, I've watched, you know, when I first came to Zen Center, Zen Center was a smaller organization. It had a certain quality. And then Zen Center grew bigger. And then sometimes I'd go out around traveling a little bit and visit other Zen Centers that were starting, like I visited the Minnesota Zen Center and Los Angeles Zen Center, some other Zen Centers. When they're starting, I noticed that when the Zen Center starts, it almost always has that same flavor. There's a certain type of people that are there at the beginning of a Zen center, you know, certain types of people, and there's a certain flavor, a certain quality of participation, which is really sweet, because when it's small, a lot of people can participate.

[30:14]

Like a person can walk in the door and be a big boss a week later, you know. If they've got some energy and don't have a job, they can, like, basically take over the Zen center, you know, because everybody else has got a job, you know. And there's a quality of a newcomer having a lot of say, which creates a certain kind of feeling in the environment. And I also heard of a small monastery in Japan where they switched positions. So the abbot was sometimes the tenzo, and the abbot was sometimes the ino, and so on and so forth. They had three or four monks, and they just switched the positions. They had a nice feeling, you know? But as the organization gets bigger and bigger, you tend not to, you know, sometimes I think of, I see some talented young person, I think, boy, they could be president of Zen Center, but they can't be president of Zen Center because people won't let them be president of Zen Center because that's the way it is in big organizations. People say, you can't let that brand new person be president. They won't support them.

[31:15]

But in a small group, you can have somebody who's been around, the person who's been around the longest has been around six months, so you can have a person who's been around one month be the president, just because they're the only one who has time. But then two years later, then people will say, well, you have to be around two years to be president. At a Zen center now, when I was president at a Zen center, I had been around, what, five years. But now if someone's been around five years, we would think, oh, five years, he can be president. As a matter of fact, someone said to me the other day, this person's been around Zen Center for five years and they're Eno at Tassajara. What's going on? So that's what happens. When the organization gets older, you have to... It's hard for a five-year student or a ten-year student to take a position of seniority over 30-year students and 40-year students. They feel like, geez, I'm the supervisor of my seniors.

[32:19]

It's a problem. But it's also nice to have seniors and to have an organization that lasts long enough so you have people that have been around for 30 years. But there's a drawback, too. This is part of the dilemma that's being presented here. But also, it always goes back to your own heart. This thing is going on in your own heart all day long between being strict and not setting anything up in your interactions with people and adapting to people. Yeah. Yeah. To follow up to what Chris was saying, dying together and living together, or dying the same and living the same, one side of it is like, can we do it together? Yes. But also could be read, I think, as you were saying now, to live or die with the same heart, with the same mind, with the same way. Yeah. Whether or not we want to do it again. Yeah. Do you know what this character is, the same?

[33:22]

I don't know the character. It's the same. Okay. And, you know, also the Zen, you've heard of Manjushri, has a double-edged sword, right? Giving and taking life freely. Okay? The sword that's being raised up here. The giving life is this granting way. You give life, you grant life. The other way, you take it. There's no life, you know? There's just Dharma. And there's no adhesions or adaptations of it. Do you think there's any meditation or instruction that has come up? Well, the one as I just said is to watch your own, throughout the day, watch how you, how you, you know, keep the pure mindfulness and don't grant it, you know, and just hold to that and don't grant any adaptation of it.

[34:38]

And then watch how you adapt it, if it seems to be helpful to people. So don't you have some problem with that? Don't you have to struggle with that? Like tonight, you know, people are sitting in Tangario, so all day long they're quiet. And sticking with silence. Silence is a kind of absolute. And some people try to be that way all day long. But if you hold to it too long, it may be inappropriate when you meet people around here. Is there a way to meet people and bow to them and respect them and still, you know, not be granting anything? And sometimes not granting anything, it really inspires people. Sometimes it really inspires them to see someone who's not granting anything to anybody. Because nobody needs it.

[35:40]

So some people around here who don't need to grant anything to anybody, nobody needs them to do that. They can just concentrate on their practice and nobody will be bothered And those people are the people who have the least responsibility in some ways. I mean, you know, they're least asked to, you know, hold up the nation. So that's the advantage of being a simple mendicant new monk, is you can be very strict and it's okay. But if you have a big empire and you're a leader in it, then people feel like, well, you know, come on. Since you've adapted so much already, why don't you adapt some more? It stretches the umbrella of the organization to include and support these forms of practice, too. Let's look at the verse. I think it's also a meditation instruction.

[36:42]

So the verse says, as a gray beard raising from rising from a hut by the Wei River, how does it compare to those who starved in purity on Mount Shuyang? Hunt? Hunt. Oh, hunt. Oh, rising from the hunt, or rising from the fish. How does this compare with those who starved in purity on Mount Shuyang? It just lies in a single atom, distinguishing change, changing conditions. Fame and accomplishment are both, are both, no, both are hard to efface. So the interpretation of this is that... I like this image, you know, I picture in my mind, you know, this, you know the story, this guy, what was his name, Shibo went hunting, went out hunting, and before he went hunting, I guess he maybe threw the I Ching or something, right, to see what he was going to catch.

[37:59]

And the divination said he wouldn't catch a tiger or a bear, but he would catch a leader of the state, of the... And so he went down this river and he met this guy. And I kind of picture him walking down the river and this old guy sort of just being squatting down by the river, just kind of like... Just picture this guy down by the river just sort of kind of stands up, you know. And they meet there on the riverbank and they sit down and they have a talk. And he finds this person there. And this person is the person that the former emperor had been looking for. He realized he had found, you know, found the leader for the nation, found the sage leader in this older guy hanging out by the river.

[39:04]

So that's a kind of meditation instruction for me. I mean, to me, to look for that person, to keep your eye open for that person around the world, somebody who's just rising up out of the vegetable washing sink or turning the corner from the office or, you know, just anybody, any place in some ordinary situation who just sort of rises up and you meet. But then in this case this person was made into the leader and this was a great accomplishment. This relates to great accomplishment. Now the next story is about these guys who were very ashamed of what the state did. They were very ashamed of what the empire did and they decided to be very pure and not adapt to circumstances. So they went off in the mountains and didn't adapt to circumstances And they died of starvation.

[40:08]

But they were pure. And they, you know, they're famous. They didn't accomplish anything, but they're famous for thousands of years because they were very pure. They showed that some human beings care a lot about purity. And when they see some state or some establishment do something cruel, they say, I'm not going to have anything to do with that cruelty. I'm out of here. And they don't survive. But the state does. And what is it? I think Gary Snyder quotes Nanao Sasaki where he says something like... What's that phrase, the Chinese phrase where it says... There's a famous poem. Yeah. I think Li Bo, one of the great Chinese poets, says, well, the states will vanish, but the mountains and rivers survive.

[41:11]

Right. He turned it around and said, the mountains and rivers are being destroyed, but the states survive. Yeah. So... Yeah. So... So these guys, they saw the state surviving and the mountains and rivers being destroyed. So they boycotted the state and they didn't survive. And in fact, the state did survive and the state did wreck the mountains and rivers. The Chinese state did wreck the mountains and rivers and did survive. But still, the people who accomplished this destruction were great people. A lot of the leaders were incredible people. But when the state flourished, it hurt the land. And so the elders worried for good reason. So that's what's talking about in these first two lines. And this is the part that I've been referring to. It just lies in a single atom, in the single atom of your thought, in the single atom of your action, in the single thing you set up.

[42:19]

The diverse functions are right in that single action. You need to watch that. You need to study that thing. In that speck of dust, the many functions can be distinguished. In that one little action, you can tell whether you're adapting, you can see whether you're adapting and accommodating, or whether you're, you know, holding. And that's also something we were talking about the other day and I brought up too, is that the balance between stating your position strongly, holding to your position, stating your truth, and accommodating to other people's. Asserting your position and listening to others, those two sides, and you can see that in every little action, whether it's leaning to the side of a strong assertion but not listening very much, or listening but not really asserting. How do you do the two? They're both right there in every little action, actually. It's just a question of, over on this side of that, on this side of the action is too much assertion, on this side of action is too much accommodation.

[43:25]

But the center of the action is always this perfect balance. But it's hard to look at the center because it's so bright. Now, these people, famous and accomplished were, right there around the center, you know. And maybe they veered, one veered slight little bit off to one side and the other veered a little off to the left side, the other side. And one led to great accomplishment, the other one led to great fame. But this issue is there every moment of our life to watch that. Yeah. It didn't seem like these two cases in the verse only veered a little bit. It seemed like they went to the absolute extremes of both of these ends. A hair's breadth deviation is like the difference between heaven and earth. It's a slight bit off if you multiply it times a country.

[44:29]

It can make lasting fame or big-time destruction. Look at the atomic bomb. A tiny little thing multiplied by a very large number makes a huge explosion. A tiny gap. And yet... These are people that sort of went to extremes. One was offered his job as the emperor's assistant. That's like the ultimate insider and going with the system and setting up atoms. And the others decided that before they even you know, take a handout from the system, they'd just die, starve to death on the mountain. I guess I'm sort of wondering whether or not there's advice here on how to know when to go one side or the other, or whether or not that kind of advice is impossible to offer, and that's sort of the point of the question that asks at the very beginning, tell me is there a fundamental basis for that.

[45:36]

For fundamental basis for what? Well, in the last sense of the introduction says, you know, it's going to tell me if they're a fundamental basis or not. Yeah, right. Well, even if you say no, there isn't. Still, there is the issue of balance. And I think it seems to me that it's pretty clear that what's being addressed here is that these two people, although one made great accomplishment and the other two were famous, and it's hard to forget that. It's hard to erase the effects of their life. In fact, they were off. They were off. These two sides missed the point. They both missed the point on the success of the former, of the damage done by the former. Setting up that dynasty caused damage. But these guys also kind of got off the track too because if everybody does that, that's not necessarily the way either to starve to death.

[46:43]

But these are great people too, so even great people can get off. So how about us? So of course we can get off. So in one sense, realize we probably will get off. And most of the time we're off. You can't get a hold of the middle way. Nobody says you can grasp it. It's ungraspable. But you should be able to sense quite frequently that you're off, one side or the other. So just by being off you're already on track to keep… No, no, it's not by being off that you're on track, it's by noticing that you're off, that you're on track. Yeah, but that being aware of… Yeah, it's recognized, it's relentless recognition. or you might say ruthless recognition of being off, is the way you stay on the path. Because when you're off, you're back on. As soon as you're off, you're pointed back on. This is to remind me that, you know, in some sense, a Buddhist should be willing to do something like what these people did in order not to break the precepts, for example.

[47:53]

Some people should be willing to die rather than to kill. But even though you may be willing to die rather than to kill, if you hold to that, that can set a bad example. So how can you rather die and be willing to die rather than to kill without holding that too strongly? That's the holding way. That's the grasping way. That's the, in some sense, the death-taking-away way. But we should have that kind of possibility, and yet without veering off in that direction. However, in fact, that possibility is not something you can grasp, but just something you can direct yourself back towards when you do veer off. And that's a similarity, I think, between science and meditation. Yeah.

[48:56]

Yeah. What do you veer yourself back to, the other side? Well, you don't veer yourself towards anything. You just catch yourself at an error. If you veer yourself towards something, that's another error. What's at the center? Pardon? You said you see the extreme that you're at, and so it gives you an opportunity to turn. The mind... You're turning towards what? The mind that sees this action as error is turned towards truth. Mm-hmm. And you can also say, yes, you are turned towards what? You're turned towards the truth, but you're not trying to map your fantasy onto the truth. You're not trying to get the truth to match your fantasy. But if you think that your fantasies are the truth, then you have a chance to realize that's an error. Meantime, you're always generating fantasies. You're not going to stop generating fantasies. And a Buddha is constantly catching the tendency to think that the fantasy is the truth.

[49:59]

That's an error. A fantasy is not an error. It's the thinking that a fantasy is the truth that's an error. That's a mistake. A fantasy is not a mistake. It's just like the opening of a flower. But to think the opening of a flower is the truth, that's a mistake. Once you realize that, then you're back towards the ungraspable middle way. But who can catch themselves at that all the time. And you can catch yourself at that by going in the granting way or the grasping way. You can catch yourself at that by setting something up and refusing to set something up. You can be off refusing to set something up because if you don't set something up, the nation perishes. So not setting something up is off and setting something up is off. The middle way is neither setting up nor not setting up. So the turning point, you're not... You're obviously not turning towards a predetermined direction. You just catch it as an error. You say, oh, there I set something up.

[51:00]

I set something up. There I did. That's the turning point. The turning point is admitting, is being honest. I set something up. I'm heading in the direction of worrying the elders and prosperous nation. This is the yuppie way. The other way is I'm not a yuppie. But I'm also heading towards starvation. And I don't know if everybody wants to be homeless. So Bodhidharma looks like he's saying, okay, let's be homeless, let's be poor, let's sit out in the cold all the time. But in his heart, he was also like going back and forth on this all the time. Well, you know, should I adapt to this cave or not? Should I make myself a little more comfortable or not? He was doing it all the time, sitting there for nine years, you know, veering off towards being too strict with himself and being too, you know, easy on himself. Say, well, maybe, you know, I can lean against the cave wall and move on.

[52:04]

But really, I think that by dealing with that issue all the time, I think he was catching himself all the time veering off, veering off, veering off, this way, that way. Maybe he most often veered in one way rather than another. That's possible that you have a style of being off, that you mostly veer in this direction. It doesn't really matter which side you go to the most on. The point is that you catch yourself. The Buddha catches herself all the time. Oh, there I go. [...] Somebody who goes through the day and doesn't catch themselves going off one way or the other is an unconscious person. Isn't it also as in one to be actually involved in actually making these animals? Isn't it as important to basically making these errors? Because if you don't make any errors, you don't see them move anywhere, you don't see them... That's right. So you have to turn up for life and make mistakes, that's how you start to... You have to do what?

[53:06]

You have to turn up for life, in other words, fully engage in whatever's... That's right, you have to fully engage. And because the only place that you can grow blessing is in the field of errors. But everybody's doing that, so nobody's got a problem on this. And the more fully you engage in this and own up to this, the easier it is to spot and catch yourself with this. And the more you catch yourself with this, the more awake you are. And the more awake you are, the more you're on the middle way between these extremes. But it's not because they're not happening. You're catching yourself out all the time. As Dogen said, it's one continual mistake. And if you have big gaps in your mistakes, then you're just not awake. If you have three mistakes a day, then you're not very awake. If you have 50,000 a day, you're more awake. If you have 100,000 a day, you're more awake. A Buddha has an incalculable number of mistakes a day. They're constantly veering off.

[54:09]

The Buddha mind is constantly catching itself. The Buddha mind is not veering off. The Buddha mind is catching this veering constantly, constantly. Every little action is slightly off. A little bit too much emphasis on doing it the right way. A little bit too much emphasis on letting go of the right way and adapting to circumstances. Not being too uptight. A little bit too much on not being too uptight. The traditional way, you know. This is the way this move is done. This is the way a bow is done. This is the way we sit. This is the way we chant. This is the precepts. This is what they mean. This is the correct understanding. A little bit too much of that. A little bit too much of, well, nobody knows what they mean. A little bit too much of that. Everybody, you can't, you cannot match your experience to the truth. You cannot, they cannot meet. This is not possible. Your fantasies, your truth, your image, your experience is just a little production that you have available to you now and

[55:14]

If you have a slightly wrong take on that, in terms of saying that's it or not it, you veer off. But you can catch yourself at that. And then the style that you're presenting can also, you can see, I'm actually caught up now in the ramifications of this, that actually... although somebody might be able to catch herself or himself in this complex situation, I can't. So I've got to actually change the style of my life and live more simply so that I can catch myself at this. And Bodhidharma says, okay, even while living simply, he still was doing this all the time, but he chose that simple way. Then later, people had a way that looked like it manifested this side of adapting. But within whatever lifestyle it is, You always have to look to your own thing. And the fame and accomplishment are hard to efface. And there's consequences here you have to live with.

[56:19]

So we're dealing with, you know, on one side what's called a wholesome awareness, effectively wholesomely adapting to circumstances. We're talking about wholesome adaptation. And on the other side we're talking about something which is beyond wholesomeness and unwholesomeness. how to balance those two sides and live in the world. That's the challenge of this case. Is wholesome as your idea? Yeah, yeah. Well, that's how you adapt. You do what you think is wholesome. But when you do what you think is wholesome, you don't have to, like, You don't have to veer off when you think something's wholesome. It can just be a thought that something's wholesome, and you can act on that, which is wholesome.

[57:37]

And if you're wrong, if you're wrong, then it's wholesome to be able to be corrected. Part of wholesomeness is to say, oh, that didn't work. Oh, I'm sorry. That wasn't my intention. That's part of wholesomeness. This is part of it. But to make that into truth, which we do, is an error. You have to take it as an absolute. Whereas wholesomeness is contingent on the environment. What's wholesome today was not wholesome 100 years ago. Wholesomeness is contextual. It's historical. It's contingent. And if you forget that, then you've made a mistake. But if you catch that mistake, you're right. You're correct. There's nothing to your correctness other than the mistake, however. Yes? Isn't there a sense of sort of a technical definition of wholesomeness?

[58:41]

Is that kind of sort of weakening? It isn't just a general idea about what's wholesome like? I don't know. necessarily brushing your teeth like that. No, it includes that too. It includes that too. It has a spiritual and a material dimension, wholesomeness. Brushing your teeth is both materially advantageous and also spiritually advantageous. It is conducive towards enlightenment to brush your teeth. It's conducive to enlightenment to get along with the rules of the societal group you're in. They're more likely to allow you to meditate if you play along with them. That's usually wholesome. But if the group you're in is causing trouble, like making war or something, then it's not wholesome to go along with them in that case. In that case, you wouldn't do it. And it's wholesome to be generous.

[59:44]

It's both materially wholesome and also conducive to spiritual opportunity, to give, to give joyfully. But did I miss something in what you said? No? Not really, it looked like something happened there. I guess what happens there is that my feeling is that it is good to get along socially because for reasons that it is insofar as it's conducive creating an environment for awakening.

[60:49]

But getting along socially, or brushing one's teeth, or changing one's socks, or dressing in a particular way, that the social definition of wholesomeness isn't particularly what's meant by wholesome in context. There's a discussion like this, that the test of wholesomeness isn't so much our opinion of what's a neat idea, but the test of wholesomeness is, do people wake up? Right. Well, in Abhidharma Kosha it says, when discussing wholesome and unwholesome karma, it says, but aren't both wholesome and unwholesome karma unwholesome? In other words, isn't even wholesome karma unwholesome? And it says, yes, it is, because wholesome karma leads to, for example, material success. And then that may set up the possibility of becoming attached to your material success. So wholesomeness is actually unwholesome, ultimately.

[61:53]

The only thing that is ultimately wholesomeness is liberation. But they still use wholesome for doing things which will promote your health. And, for example, if you make donations, one of the things that happens to you when you make donations is wise people tend to hang around with you. For two reasons. One is that Wise people often are wise not to have anything, but they need somebody to give them something. And also, they like to hang around with generous people because generous people are nice to hang around with, and they know that. So if you're generous, you tend to attract wholesome, wise people. So that's one of the advantages of being generous. And then you get spiritual opportunities increased, too, because you're hanging around with these spiritually advanced people who have a nose for generosity. In hearing you talk, I invented a teeter-totter with the boot on both sides continually going back and forth.

[63:11]

You have to sit in the middle. Pardon? Just sit in the middle, both sides going back and forth. Yeah, that's right. It doesn't sit in the middle, two sides going back and forth, right? But then there's this kind of like with the halo that kind of points over, kind of connects them. It's kind of the communication between, there's like three bodies of Buddha, right? One body Buddha is the tough guy, the absolute body of Buddha. which is just the way everything is and don't tamper with anything. The other one is adapting to circumstances, whatever people need. It's called the transformation body. It transforms into whatever form you need. That's the two sides, right? But these two sides are in communication with each other. There's a social dimension between these two types of Buddha.

[64:12]

There's a joyful communion between the tough absolute side and the adaptive transformation side, and that's called the Sambhogakaya Buddha. That's the bliss that these two sides are actually in perfect union, actually. So you don't have to veer off to either side, actually. And when you don't veer off to either side, then you have all three bodies, and you can enjoy the fact that the adaptation is a communion with the non-adaptation, that the granting way is never separate from this tough way. And feeling that is the communion between these two sides. So they are bouncing back and forth. So the two extremes are the absolute Dharmakaya Buddha and the relative, adaptive Nirmanakaya Buddha. Those two are... So our lives are the Nirmanakaya Buddha as we seem to be manifesting. But we also have to be... Our life needs to be constantly bouncing back and forth with the absolute Buddha.

[65:15]

And when the communion occurs, there's this bliss, this reward for our faith. And our faith is that we study this. That's our faith. Our faith is to study. is the current atom, is to study that atom and watch these diverse functions of granting and grasping, of holding to the absolute and adapting to circumstances, watching these diverse functions happen in each moment, studying that, that's our faith, that's the Zen faith or the Buddhist faith, is to watch this this drama, to watch this thing and to watch it veering off, veering off, to catch ourselves and to confess that we're off, we're off, that wasn't quite right, and to know which side it was off on. Not just generally say, well, yeah, I probably made a mistake, but notice which side you're overemphasizing. Will you be too strict or too adaptive?

[66:20]

How can you imagine that? Huh? How can you imagine that? Please find out and tell me about it. Or knowing and not knowing. That being a two experience. Yeah, knowing and not knowing. I'm saying, oh, you can't know. You're at one end or looking for something different. There isn't necessarily anything. Anyways, you must sometimes be sure. and hold and feel bad about it. And other times you must feel like you were too lax and that wasn't helpful. Yeah, but it's always relative. That's what I mean. I mean, it's relative to what I think before is right. And then I try something out and then my experience I may change, and I may have another perception, but it's still my perception. Yes. It's still your perception, yes. So no matter how... And you have some... So I don't really believe that there is some perception that at the end there is the truth, because that would be... You say you don't believe that, but in the short run, moment by moment, most people do believe in their perceptions as reality.

[67:35]

Right, but that's the trap, isn't it? Yeah, that's a trap. And all I'm asking you to do is please catch yourself being trapped. And then see if you measure, well, I really got trapped. This is way off. Well, this is a little off. But try to catch yourself at the little and big deviations you make in terms of believing that your perceptions, that your fantasies about what's going on, that those are reality. Catch yourself at that Own up to that, and that process will set you free of the karmas which are generated from that. That's the idea. Well, I was standing before the motel and we were talking about why, I mean, I can see clearly in that that I have more tendency to one side than to the other, and maybe, you know, a lot of us have to have, like, a... Yes. ...characteristical mood. Yes. And I was kind of asking myself, where does that come from?

[68:38]

Kind of like, where does it start? Because in a way it's relative, I mean, my own judgment on things, but on the other hand I was kind of asking myself, why does it start off differently? You know, where's the point where one is more absolute or the other one is more adaptive in general to things? If we do all have the same original nature, so where's that point? And I was thinking of circumstances. Yes, circumstances. When I'm in such situations, I sometimes feel like, hey, it's time for me to put my foot down here. Other times I feel like everybody in the room is putting their foot down. I feel like saying, hey, relax, kids. You're getting too uptight on this one. So at Tassajara, people get very picky about tiny little points of monastic forming. And sometimes you feel like, you people are...

[69:39]

You're getting a little out of touch. And in some other situations, people lose track of the value of forms and you just have to say, well, I'm sorry, I just can't go along with this. It's important that you come on time. And I'm not going to come to these meetings anymore if people don't come on time. You might feel like that. Under those circumstances, you just put your foot down and say, this is really important. And other times you feel like you're putting too much weight on it. You may feel that way. But even in those cases, still, were you right on when you said that? It's possible to say, I'm not coming anymore if you're going to be late. I'm not going to come to these meetings anymore if people don't come on time. You could say that and be right on the mark. However, usually we're not. Or you could say, okay, don't be so worried about... At least we all got here, you know. And we love each other, you know, that's what's really important. There's that side too.

[70:44]

Either one of those statements could be off and probably would be. Probably in either one of those cases, you could be a little bit off. Actually, that's what really happens all the time. I mean, that's what creates a whole lot of problems in all our interactions. Right, right. And that's what each of our job is, is to notice an aspect of dust which is raised or not raised. that we're off a little bit. And the more we can catch that we're off, the more we get back on the path. Because the path is not a fixed thing that you can get a hold of. But getting a hold of anything as the path, as the truth, as compassion, anything you hold on to is a veering off. But if you catch yourself at that, the catching is the path. It's the catching the error, which is the bodhi mind. And that sets you back in the path. You don't know what it is, But you also don't not know what it is. I mean, you don't know what it is, but you also don't know what it is. You're free of those two extremes when you catch yourself at the error. And you're correct.

[71:44]

It is an error. And you can catch yourself at error. You can catch yourself at error. And we do make errors. We do believe that our fantasies are realities. We do that. And it only counts for us to catch it. It doesn't count for other people to catch it. Now, when you can catch yourself, you can probably, you can guess that other people are like that too, but you can't catch them. You can only encourage them to do that for themselves by doing it yourself. You don't tell them that they should do it, but by doing it yourself and telling them what you're doing and telling them that you believe in this, they pick up your faith and they're willing to try it too. And you even have scriptures and stuff to back you up and case koans like this to show you that this isn't an essential issue. This is an essential dimension of meditation practice is to balance these two sides. To work with forms and feelings and perceptions, to work with all these little particles and to watch this thing and to notice these diverse functions happening in this...

[72:49]

single atom. And you should just be able to distinguish these conditions constantly changing. And so on. You can't do it for other people, though, but you can encourage other people. And in fact, when people come and tell me about their observations of themselves, when they watch themselves do this and they tell me that, I think, geez, that's really, you know, good, and I want to do it myself. And when I am doing it myself, then it encourages other people to do it. So we help each other by doing our own work. And these ancestors helped us by doing their work. And also they helped us by making these mistakes. And these great people made mistakes. So if they made mistakes, well, probably we make mistakes too, right? So check it out. Is that enough on case 34? Ready for case 35? You're not?

[73:51]

Next time. That's what I mean. I mean next time. Next time. Yeah, next time. So please study case 35. Just the text of the case and the verse. Yeah, I think I would suggest that you treat yourself by just reading the case and the verse and don't read the commentary. Just live with the simple life as though you lived during the time before there was a commentary, and just heard this story as you were wandering around in the mountains.

[74:22]

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