because it follows so nicely from case 29 about the meditation on the passive and active aspects of consciousness, of my mind, and passive and active aspects of thinking, subject-object dualism and all that. But I... I found that in some ways it's good when you're studying a text not to go to the interesting parts, but just to go through the text the way it's presented and eliminate the picking and choosing somewhat. So I'm going straight ahead here with case 30 this week, if that's okay with you. Also, it's sometimes hard to go back and cover your steps.

[01:01]

This case is short and simple. And it's interesting for many reasons. One of the main reasons I think it's interesting is that it's not clear why it's so interesting. And so the teacher in this case, his name is Da Sui. And the title of this case is Da Sui's Ionic Fire, or Calpic Fire. And I wanted to find out a little bit more about Dasui because I didn't know too much about him.

[02:09]

And he is, what do you call it, a grandson, one of the grandchildren of the great Zen teacher, Baijian Waihai. Baijian is the teacher who's famous for saying, a day of no work is a day of no food. And he was very, very successful in helping people and had many wonderful students. And we've already seen him several times in this book already. So one of his students was named Da'an. Da'an means great peace.

[03:11]

And then Da'an's main disciple is Da'aswi. And Da'aswi means... Is there chalk over there? Where is Da'aswi? I was going to write his name on the board. Anyway, da means great, like in his teacher, da an, great peace. His name is great. Sui, and sui means... It means to go along with, or to be in accord with, or to follow. You could even say... Thank you. You can even say, at the mercy of, if one of the possible translations...

[04:17]

Great going along, or you could say great obedience, great server, great follower, something like that. This is also related to an important word, the Soto Zen practice, which is... This is, in Japanese it's pronounced, it's a wing, and it's a shin. So it means to follow, this means body, to follow the body. And after you finish your basic training, which is called dharma training, which you become a successor in a lineage, you go into a state of training which is called zuishin, where you actually

[05:55]

you attend somebody, you follow somebody's body, as a kind of way of just really becoming intimate with somebody, just hang out with them and follow their body, zuishen. So this teacher's name is Dasui. Okay, and As a little background on this, I think the commentary already says this, but I just mention that in the early Buddhist teachings and like in the Abhidharma teaching also, they say that there's these three phases of an eon or an epoch of causation, of an epoch in, you know, in life history, and that is, what is it, arising Decay, destruction, and emptiness.

[07:01]

And then arising, decay, destruction, emptiness. These are the cycles that, cosmic cycles that happen all around. Sometimes you may have heard the expression, before the eon of emptiness. That's all I... Abiding, one of those. Oh, maybe you're right. Maybe it's arising, abiding and decaying, arising, abiding and being destroyed. Sometimes they say the fourth one is annihilation, but I think a better translation is void or empty. These are the four phases. We look now at this world, we have a world history now that we look at and in our world history we can only see one Buddha, in a Shakyamuni Buddha, but there's other cycles beyond the scope of our vision.

[08:06]

There's other cycles. But basically for now it's all, say, just... So this monk is referring to this time when the whole universe which in Chinese is the great thousand-fold, they refer to it as the great thousand, which means the great thousand-fold world, the great triciliocosm, which means three-thousand-fold world, when the great universe is burned up. Okay? So this monk comes and says, when the fire that ends the aeon rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed or not? You could also say, is this one destroyed? And the Blue Cliff, this is also case 29 in the Blue Cliff Record, and the Blue Cliff Record, the way it's translated is, when the fire rages through and burns up the entire universe, is this one destroyed or not?

[09:20]

And Dasvi says, destroyed. And the monk says, then it goes along with that. But another way you could translate it is, then it goes along with the other. And another way you could translate it is, then, does everything go with it? And Adasvi says, it goes with that, or everything goes with it. And part of the reason why I wrote his name on there is because what he said was

[10:41]

That's what he said. This is colloquial Chinese response to the guy kind of quoting a scripture. So it's kind of interesting that his response includes this character in his name, which means to go along with. He's the teacher whose name is the great going along with or the great following. And his response to this question which the monk sets up by using this, also using a character from his name, is goes along. So it goes along and then the second character means that or it or the other. And the third character means I've gone past. That's actually the story right there. And this story happened in the Tang Dynasty.

[12:10]

In the Blue Cliff Record, this is the story that appears. It appears just like this. The compiler of the Blue Cliff Record lived in the Suning Dynasty. He lived quite a long time, a couple hundred years after this story happened. And so he put this story in his collection of his favorite hundred Zen stories. But he didn't have the second part of the story, because the second part of the story happened in China at the same time that he was living. And he hadn't yet heard about it. The compiler of the Book of Serenity lived 50 or 100 years later than the compiler of the Blue Cliff record, by that time he had heard the second story about this. So, then he has the second story here, where a monk asks this teacher, Lingyi, when the fire ending the eon rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this one destroyed or not?

[13:32]

And Long, it's Longji, huh? Longji, I have a misprint here. Longji said, not destroyed. The monk said, why is it not destroyed? Or actually he said, how is it not destroyed? He didn't say why. And Longji said, because it is the same as the universe. Okay, so that shows that a couple hundred years later they were still talking about this story, just like we're talking about it several hundred or about a thousand years later. One of the key issues here is this phrase, going along with the other, you know, completely or throughout, going along with it.

[14:53]

Or you could say everything goes with it. In the Blue Cliff Record and also in the Book of Serenity, there's something particularly appreciated about this phrase, these three characters. Not being native speakers, in one sense, we're at a disadvantage, but in another sense, we're maybe at an advantage, because we can notice these simple facts, like the character is repeated. this character and his name appears. And in the introduction, again, there's the question, how does that require a single phrase?

[16:03]

obliterating all obstructions, cutting off all sides, smashing the mass of doubt. How does that require a single phrase? The capital is not an inch of a step away. The Great Mountain only weighs three pounds. But tell me, based on what order can one dare to speak this way? What order? Over those three characters are an order upon which one can speak this way. These words are the way that you verify that you don't have to do anything. So, in Soto Zen, basically, what do we do?

[17:05]

We don't do anything, really. We just sit there. and just be ourselves. And that realizes the Buddha way. But you have to prove that somehow. You have to have some phrase, some order upon which you actually can prove that that's so. Otherwise we could just be kind of like loafing or kidding ourselves. are just being depressed and saying, that's OK. This says it is the same as the university is. Another name of his name is Shisha. He's the same one. He says he hears both differences.

[18:08]

Case 17. He's the distance . He's the one who's having the conversation in case 17. Well, it reminds me, there's a typo in the previous case. If you want to know. Pardon? The names? The names, right. Did you notice that? It's on the 127 in the bound text. You don't want to explain it to people where it is? On page 127, around the first paragraph break, between the first paragraph and the second paragraph, the last sentence of the first paragraph says, In the first sentence of the next paragraph, both have the but I'm thinking by the logic of the discourse, it's got to be .

[19:27]

Actually, it's the end of the second paragraph, about the middle of the page, or 27. Maybe a little beach. Okay, so are you referring to a place where it says Feng Shui told Nanyuan? That one? Nope. Huh? Or the one up above there? One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. The pairing is different. Yeah, what sentence? Where it says the food drops, I don't know. The first paragraph. Cast a hook, fishing for whales, and caught a frog. Preparing these two phrases to... Preparing these two phrases. [...] Well, on page 126, I think there is a Shui Fong, there is Shui Fong in Feng Shui, and I think he kept it straight there.

[20:42]

On 127. Okay. Just so you won't be confused. Okay. I just wanted to ask, is this mistake three times or twice? Three times. At the beginning of the last paragraph, the governor had studied from Huang Fei for a long time. Is that Huang Fei or not? The governor had studied with Feng Shui. I was, that one I wasn't sure about.

[21:47]

I wasn't sure, too. Maybe he had... Feng Shui, Xue Feng was Feng Shui's teacher. Right, so it's possible. Maybe he studied with his teacher. It's possible, but... The other two, anyway, for sure. The first two are... All three. Yeah, all three. Actually, I looked in the Chinese and it's all three. Oh, okay. So feng shui means wind cave and shui feng means snowy precipice or snowy peak. Back to case 30. So again, it says to break off the ball of doubt, what phrase can be adopted? So what doubt is there in Zen practice? Ruth? Anybody laugh? Is there some doubt in Zen practice? What's the doubt? Anybody have any doubt?

[22:48]

Yes? The doubt that the way that things are, the way that you are, that you don't need to fix things. Right. The doubt and the teaching that you don't have to fix things, and that transformation comes from a non-defiled understanding of the way things are, rather than, like, trying to manipulate things into some other state. That, you know, basically trusting that being still is the entryway, the upright sitting, is the gate. We have some existential doubt about that. This isn't corrosive doubt. This isn't like, well, I wonder if the practice is good or that kind of stuff. It's more doubt about your actual existence. And so what phrase can be adopted to

[23:54]

Break off that doubt and hear the phrase that was offered. Not the destroyed, somehow. Oh, that's okay too. But rather the, it goes along with that. And that, you see, was set up by the monk who said, then does it go along with that? and he says, it goes along with that. So, in one sense, we can sit here and try to figure out what's so good about that, which is fine, and when you figure it out, then, what are you going to say? Or you can just try to say something right away. If someone had asked you, But the thing is, if they ask the same question as a monk, you're kind of fixed.

[25:00]

It's going to be hard not to say what he said, because it's kind of a setup. But if someone asked you, if it is destroyed when the universe is destroyed, and you said destroyed, then someone might ask you a different question after that, and then you could give a different answer. Yes? Do you think that Jumon's question is somebody asking if they will exist after they die?

[26:11]

That's one level you can understand this, that he's asking a question. There's two levels to understanding this question. One is, he's saying, well, I... Will I go on? Personally, will this existence go on? The other thing is, you could also understand, as it says in the commentary, that what it means is some kind of fundamental reality. Right? Will that go on? Will cosmic order go on? Will the principle here, demonstrated, go on? But you can also translate that into your own personal existence. Will the principle of the path go on? What does he mean, he says the whole universe is destroyed? I mean, without that context, it's sort of hard to figure out. What does the monk mean? Yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, you alluded to it earlier by saying that there are these four stages.

[27:14]

But, I mean, the whole universe is being destroyed. Well, it's hard for me to say what the monk means, okay? But again... the commentators, both the original commentator in the earlier text and the later commentary, both think that this monk did not understand what it means when they say that the universe is destroyed at the end of the kalpa. So part of what's going on here is understanding what it means that in Buddhist teaching that an era lasts a certain amount of time and then a fire comes and destroys everything. and then you start another cycle. This monk doesn't seem to understand this properly. So part of what's going on here is, what is the proper understanding of that teaching? And the proper understanding of that teaching has something to do with this, everything goes along with it. Is physical the same as when the sun goes to supernova, what happens after that?

[28:20]

Is that the same question or is there something else? Is it the same question? Well, it's a little different because this is like out of a scripture. So, and also it's interesting that there's also in the commentary, they had this example of where this, a Chinese emperor had a lake dug, a trench dug for a lake, and they found ashes in the bottom of the lake. And he asked, you know, some people about, you know, what happens if the ashes get in the bottom of the lake? And somebody said, well, you should ask some monks from India when they come, because they know about this stuff. So then finally some Indian monk came, and his successor asked them, and they said, those are ashes from a previous eon. I mean, so I'm just saying, you know, this, again, we have this subject-object thing going on here again.

[29:23]

So, what was this monk's understanding is kind of hard to arrive at, but he didn't, people don't seem to think he understood it very well, his teaching. And the teacher responding, why it's destroyed, and how much do we have to How much do we need this in order to know the meaning of this phrase that perhaps has the function of eliminating doubt? It seems to be on the other side of a very high wall at this point. You're doing a lot of work tonight, but go ahead. Well, part of the problem for me is part of the intentional problem is that when something is destroyed, it seems like it has to be destroyed in relation to something else that's existing in order for it to be destroyed.

[30:45]

And so the concept of the whole universe being destroyed is a paradox. Because the conservation of energy. Right. The whole universe is destroyed by that. Something must be created at the same time. Right. So what does it mean when they talk about that the aeon goes through these cycles and it is destroyed, and then is recreated again. It also says it here that universes are created and destroyed at the same moment. This text is a text, to some extent anyway, is not pitched at the level of, what do you call it, is not taking into account people's frailties and inabilities

[31:53]

to understand the simultaneity of the whole Buddhist process. And what people often do is they translate a simultaneous event into a narrative because people like narratives. So a simultaneous event has been translated into a narrative. A narrative is Eons arise, are maintained and destroyed, and then there's a space, and then they arise, are maintained and destroyed. That's a narrative about something. What's it about? It's about this moment. Pardon? It's about the breath. It's about the breath. Yes? It seems like a separation is trying to be made between things that are just really one.

[32:58]

Right, that's a narrative too. They make a separation between something that's one, and then people feel they can get a hold of it then. And another part of this story, which is alluded to in the Blue Cliff Record and here also, is that after this first monk heard the teacher Da Sui say this Sui Ta Go, after he heard that, he then walked from Sichuan over to the east side of China to ask another teacher about this. And when he got there, One story said the teacher was dead, and he walked back to Sichuan to talk to Da Sui again, and Da Sui had died. Another story is, which is probably more true, is that he walked to the other side of China and talked to this teacher, whose name is Tosu, and Tosu sent him back to Da Sui, but when he got back to Da Sui, Da Sui was dead.

[34:10]

So there's this part of the story too, which is saying, you know, it's kind of saying, this story, you know, should not be overlooked. It's kind of just that part of both, that part of these two presentations of the story is saying, this is an important story for some reason. It's kind of humbly put forward and it's simple. And this is the story about this Zen teacher. This is the story about this guy, about all there is. And people like this story. And this monk finally realized how important it was when he was there with him and got this response. And he made a big effort, but he went away. from where he should have stayed and worked more deeply. We don't have to stay on this case forever, but I think this case is really pointing to some small little thing you can use that can turn your life around.

[35:28]

And you could use this, if not just saying that, but you could use this case, this thing, these two little words, to make all the difference in the universe. Not leaving here tonight and going far away to try to figure out what happened here. Relax, Seth, you can talk about this.

[36:37]

Nobody knows what this is about. One of the things that's got us is language. Yes. And another way of turning what you just said a moment ago is a few words can make all the difference in the universe. Linking with what you said about narratives. as we start making differences in the universe, we'll get linearly linguistic. The structure of the guy going away and coming back is also the structure of the eons. At least with some of the Hindu or Indian cosmologies, it all goes away and it all comes back. And at the same time, there's no going away, coming back, because it's all, in some of the cosmologies, So the question I have is,

[37:57]

There seems a clue in here, a key in here, about how to be with language and how to be with the... It's just some double song. How... Obviously, one song is saying these apparent opposites, destroyed, not destroyed, function the same, can function the same. Not that much. Which is sort of a lot about colon work. So I'm feeling it's pointed towards, but I don't have it personally. You have to work with words. You have to work with language. What you were saying at the outset about needing to demonstrate or have an order to show the difference, I'm not sure what you were saying, between just hanging out, loafing, and a sort of non-defiled, factistic presence.

[39:04]

Or another way to put it is that, you know, Buddhism does have a goal. The goal is to benefit all beings. But there is also a practice which, in a sense, is a goal-less practice, or is a practice which is not goal-less, it is a practice which is the result, it's a goal practice, it is the practice of the goal, or it is actually the fruit is the practice. And the reason that's so is because of egolessness. But again, if it's true egolessness, there should be some way to demonstrate it. Prove it as a principle or a phrase that can be used. So, how are we going to... He said he had a clue, but I didn't hear what the clue was exactly.

[40:08]

How are you going to work with... How can you use this case in your life? Yes. It reminds me a little bit of a moon columnist, K-16. There's a phrase in there, by making an even presentation, the shop is thrown wide open. And I sense that happening here by the inclusion of both destroy and not destroy. Say that again, please. The what's thrown wide open? The shop. The shop. Yeah, the shop is thrown wide open. by making an even case, a shakti's going on with it. And the same phrase appears in the comment here that appears in there. What is it? And a great person is turned about by the flow of words, which also appears in the case in the mukha one.

[41:10]

So, again here, this is another story about somebody being turned about in the flow of the worries. The monk is turned about, he hears this teaching about the about the cosmic cycles and he gets turned by it. He doesn't understand it, he gets flipped around by it and asks this question from kind of this being affected by his worries. And the teacher says, destroyed, and then he has another question. But his question is good too, because his question demonstrates his being turned by the words. You see? So when you get enchanted or whatever, and then you have a response, and then you interact with someone, and then you have another response, your response can be used. The way you get turned is also the way you'd be turned again.

[42:14]

But it's hard for us to go with what, with the turning that's happening that's teaching us, which again is this thing about going along with it, going along with the word. It's, you know, I have a strong feeling about this case when I was studying it. And I mean, I didn't want to get a hold of it too tightly. I felt like it was working very nicely. It was, I felt very good about the way the koan was, the stories were working in this world that I lived in with, I lived in the world with this story. I do live in the world with this story. I feel this is our friend here, and it's working. It's interesting also that the word that they used for universe is great, thousand, and the next character is like, means equipment or an instrument.

[43:33]

great thousand-fold instrument. The universe is an instrument. The story is an instrument to be used. Yes. When I sort of contemplate along these lines, I don't know if this is the way it is. What lines do you mean by these? Oh, about the concept of that I become destroyed. Here it There are kind of two parts to that. And if I'm at one part of it, the kind of destroyed part, I feel great fear. But if I get the other part of it, which is the I, it brings an incredible sort of a joy. So if I can... Does that make sense? You mean what's happening to me? No. No. No, in terms of this cave... I don't understand. You said it doesn't make sense, and I said, do you mean what's happening to you?

[44:45]

And you said no. Mm-hmm. What's happening with you? Now? Yes. Just, you know, expressing my idea. Yes. What's happening to you? Nothing. Which phase is the culprit of this? The building phase. The rising phase? Which phase is it for me? Vining.

[45:54]

Right. Now which phase? Anybody know? Destroy. What? Destroy. Destroy. Now where is it? Is that a quadruple barrier? Do you feel relaxed now? Are you feeling relaxed? Please, try. Work with it. Aren't you being turned by these words? What's happening to you? You're welcome to...

[46:56]

What do you mean? What does this mean? I have to go to the bathroom. Let's hold him along with this. I feel the turning in both the answers, too, because the first response, I think, to Lung felt like, oh, gee, this, what this is, can't be destroyed. the teacher turned it. And the second response was, oh, it's not destroyed, expecting some elucidation on how it's destroyed. I feel this continual, I think that's what, that's the way I understand the double barrier, that trying to go through one, there's another barrier. Something that I can get from the teacher as much as that continual being with me in the turning. So how, show us how the barrier works with your hands or something. He's talking about the double barrier of how to interrelate with the other person over these stories.

[48:29]

You have to keep using the relationship to keep turning. Right? I asked him to show with his hands how that would work. Can the barrier be the words themselves? That... Destroyed, not destroyed. Destroyed, not destroyed. I mean, that itself, when you try to use the word, you're automatically putting labels on things, and maybe that's a barrier itself. Yes, that's right. But these barriers are all we have for realization.

[49:30]

So we're stuck with them. We're not stuck with them. They're how we get unstuck. We're stuck. with words, and words are what we use to get unstuck. And we talk with someone else, too, about this. We don't just do it all by ourselves. You can do it by yourself, because you're not by yourself, but you also should do it with somebody else. You should be able to do it with yourself and with somebody else. So the key that locks the door is the key that opens it. Right. A couple of barriers that I'll start to overcome, Tom, go further. Barrier duality. Uh-huh. Think of some problem you've got. Think of some binder in your life and see if you can tell us about it and how you can use it, how you can work with these words.

[50:36]

But maybe now that you're in this case, you have no problems anymore. I mean, you remember the problems you had when you came into the class, but now you see. Now you see that they're just, boom. Do you feel that? Are you ready to go and face your life? by means of this teaching, of this story? I feel we're encouraged to... Less than gripping. Less than you're gripping. I was thinking about... Over the past ten minutes or so, the story keeps coming down to grasping. I kept saying, what stops the turning? And there's a sense of holding.

[51:58]

I'm holding. Yeah. I'm holding on to. Right. And then I was thinking, in relationship to what you asked about the problem, about my continual grasping and wanting to understand, particularly in my work. Yes. And it's... when I'm with somebody in relationship to him, they're telling me something of problem, sickness, something, pain. There's this sense of continuous comparison that I'm doing with a so-called body of knowledge that I carry. Right. It's always this... And they kind of want you to do that too, at some level. Yeah, yeah. But in... It's different if the few times, in practicing during the day, the few times in just listening, that's quite different.

[53:00]

The other, it's sort of like it gets quieter. And I was reminded also of a phrase you said before about, can you trust in the stillness and let go? You're right. So, Part of what I was saying in relation to the previous case is that if you're a doctor and you think that you can do certain things, like you can do this, you can do that, you know this, you can do that, this kind of thinking, there's things that go along according to that way. Yeah, it looks like very well. Huh? It looks like... Well, sometimes very well, sometimes not very well. And I have this giant structure to verify it. Right, exactly. But there's many other possibilities than the ones that people usually think are possible. And those possibilities, I propose, are manifested when you concentrate on the fact that you think, along with the system, that you think that you can do things by yourself, according to your own knowledge.

[54:15]

If you put emphasis on watching yourself think that way, you're changing the way you're at work. And also you open up other dimensions of healing. Or rather, you open up the possibility of them arriving right there in the midst of all that situation. But in this case, this story here, when I was reading it and studying it, I had a light touch with it. I didn't want to, particularly with this story, I didn't want to come into this class and explain to you. I didn't want to give you the principle or the phrase. I didn't want to give you another one. I pointed to one that's in here already, that was given in the moment of the story. But I felt really good of studying with this kind of open-minded attitude. I felt, although I wasn't getting a hold of it, I felt something cooking, something turning, something working, and I felt very close, I felt very close to you when I was studying that way.

[55:29]

I felt like you had, by studying the way that you had kind of as much access as I do to this working. Whereas if I present it another way, it looks like I've got more access than you, and you, through me, can get access. But I approach it differently, and I feel more a sense that you folks can teach us and me about how to use this case. That's the way I studied it and it led me to feel that way. And so this is the way you're doing it. Although I wish you'd say a little bit more. We could take our clothes off. Isn't that as cold?

[56:35]

I had sort of a destroyed-not-destroyed conundrum last week. I wasn't here, I was on retreat with the Vipassana folks. And one night, three or four days into the retreat, I had an experience where I sort of left their instructions Rather than being mindful of any particular experiences, it was just what seemed like a mindfulness of no object, but an awareness of awareness, something very immediate, very just presence. And a lot of bliss, a lot of joy, a lot of gratitude. I woke up the next morning feeling sort of the normal guy again, spoke to one of the teachers there about this sort of choice it felt like I had during the meditation.

[57:39]

I could either go with this sort of not very egoic feeling sense of I am. I am that I am. Isn't this happening? That anything at all is happening is the miracle. Or I could go with following the instructions of being mindful of the pleasantness, neutrality, unpleasantness of various body sensations. And that I was wanting to go towards this sort of just naked is-ness. And he says, you know, we need to do relationships too. Be in your body. And I didn't want to be in my body. I spent the rest of the day fighting, being my body. The next day's instruction was, look at, be mindful of your intentions. And I didn't want to be a being that had any intentions. I wanted to be this just I am.

[58:41]

And I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this story, other than that's what I'm reminded of, was I had a dilemma that seems kind of like destroyed, not destroyed. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, again, if you want to be in just the pure is-ness, that's fine, but then you have to, again, you have to come forth with a phrase, otherwise you're going to be still driven by anxiety, even in their is-ness. You have to prove it with some words, I'd say. And the thing about pure their is-ness or is-ness, it doesn't obstruct at all talking. It goes along with everything. It goes along with the other, completely. So you could talk. You can respond more freely and more fully, far beyond your wildest dreams, or even far beyond forming emptiness, which can just be like

[59:54]

sewing one of these little boxes. As an expression of beyond form and emptiness. You can also take it off and put it on the shelf. You can speak. Like we were talking about last week. Sometimes I make him raise his eyebrows and blink Sometimes I don't make him raise his eyebrows and blink. Sometimes raising the eyebrows and blinking is okay. Sometimes raising the eyebrows and blinking isn't okay. How about you? So here we are right now, how about you? Let's have some eyebrow blinking, yes. Well, I don't know.

[60:57]

Just when I had to go to the bathroom. I mean, usually, you know, I really don't like to leave the room and be disruptive. It just seems like the thing you do to rip the bathroom is... Yes. I didn't know what moment... Do you think that you disrupted the class? No. You don't think you did? No. Well, yeah, I might have, but... You didn't. This class cannot be disrupted. Please be honest with me. Sometimes in this class we think it is being disrupted, but that... I remember a few weeks ago some guys came in, some... I don't know where they came from, but they came in and they talked a lot. Remember those guys? They're not here tonight. They're not here tonight. They went along with it. There are some new people here tonight that are being very quiet.

[62:00]

So they don't give this sense of disruption. That's my dilemma, whether to let new people in, the potential that they'll ask a near-relevant question. Those guys... Those guys weren't afraid. But who were they? Who were those guys? Were they deities? Visitings? This story, for me, says that things are always changing. Things are never the same. There are no rules. There are no rules? No rules. Well, I disagree. I think there are rules and there's no one. But that's what a rule is. Just like that. Thank you for giving us one.

[63:06]

Thank you. So again, I'd like you to see if you can get into this spinningness, the turning of this, the going along with this. Can you see how this destroyed and not destroyed is happening at the same time? And can you see that that's how we go along with everything? Can you follow this, Bhasko? This destroyed and not destroyed? Yes. Can you follow this going along with everything? Yes, I can. Pardon? Yes. Good. Well, I'm an English speaker who saw one of these little things and I don't follow it. I keep resisting it. I mean, I keep doubting it. What are you resisting? What's your resistance?

[64:08]

I don't know. I doubt that everything's okay. Right. Right. We know. So, now, what phrase... Well, what phrase can you use to cut off your doubt? You just presented this, I doubt that everything is... Did you say all right? Well, no, I think just that I doubt. You doubt that this is ultimate reality here? You doubt that this is a manifestation of ultimate reality? No, I don't doubt that. And it's so abstract that there's no... No doubt.

[65:09]

Maybe doubt is the wrong word. What are you trying to tell us? What's happening over there? How are you feeling? Separate from. Separate from. I mean, I can explain all that. That's not what I'm looking for. You're not looking to explain? Yeah. Yeah, we don't want that either. I want turning. I'd like to see this turning, this working, this going along with it here. I'd like to see cosmic cycles enacted in this room. I'd like to see non-narrative understanding expressed and proven. Another way to put it is... About the aspect of time.

[66:14]

Yeah. Where there's no time, there's no such thing as destroyed or not destroyed. That's right. So, can you cure us of our doubt about... Well, either cure us of our doubt that there's no time, which is the same as our belief that... We believe that time flows, you know, That's the usual idea. People believe time flows like a river. Or that these cycles are arising, maintaining and going away. This is the usual idea of time. This is a time of birth and death. This is a time of misery. Okay? So if you can understand that birth and death is not really like... It isn't like birth, then death, then birth. That's not... It's not like that. that that's a story about a moment, that's a simultaneous, a story about simultaneity.

[67:16]

Just like it's not really that Buddha was born and then grew up and went to high school and got left home, you know, did some practices and got enlightened and taught and died. It's not like that. That's a story about the present. That's a story about each moment of your life. And that that story is told in order for us to eventually understand each moment of our life. And since people have trouble understanding that each moment of our life is like that, they tell a story like that, so you can get a hold of it. To say that Buddha doesn't come or go, people say, well, fine, see you later. I can't work with that. So we say, okay, Buddha comes and goes, fine. And stays around for a while before Buddha goes. And then there's a lag time between when he comes again. So we tell that story and people say, fine, good. And they want to hear various versions of that story, which is fine.

[68:18]

But these are just ways to get us into the moment where we can face this obstruction, you know, this pain and settle it and be willing to live in it. You know, the skins of the Santa Rosa plum are very sour, but I keep eating them anyway because I keep expecting to be able to taste the color, the purple. You're a curable romantic. Do you really keep eating them? I do. Do you eat them on time? I eat them on my own time.

[69:22]

Do you have any on you? No, but actually I gave some to Emila and she said she would put them in the student snack. Whatever was left. There are lots in the tree in our garden. What color are they? Some are purple. Did Luther Burbank invent that poem? Did he? I think he did. We're building a little shed at Green Gullies now called the Luther Burbank Shed. It was his workshop, and somebody gave it to us. It was being torn down in Santa Rosa, and they gave us the shop, so now we're reconstructing it down in the chicken yard. Is that what you say? It's a secret. This is a secret teaching.

[70:24]

I was just kidding. I was just kidding. He's not really Luther Burbanks. He's George Washington Carver's hut. It's in the peanut field. Well, so, everybody okay? All the people who are quiet, really this is working for you, and you're just being polite and not taking up a lot of space, airspace, yes? I feel like what this story is doing to me, maybe I came in, I think I came in with this story. Yes. It has to do with losing control, some control that I gain with the fact that the world is in time. There's something about this idea of everything happening all at once that's very scary.

[71:30]

Yeah, and... I don't know about losing control, giving up control, but after giving up control, if it's a real thing, you should be able to come back with, here's my hand, or use it, or give me your hand, I'll want to use it. It's not like you have no function after you give up control. You have more function. There should be more function. And again, this zuishin, you know, following the body, it isn't like you sort of like, it's too subtle to like somebody tell you about it. You just got to like be there and go with the movements of it. And you will be able to, well, be followed yourself. Be able to teach. You will also become a teacher in this way. And there are many bodies to follow, yes?

[72:35]

No, you, you haven't talked. Okay. Well, I was just going to admit that, well, I can envision destroyed and not destroyed. I mean, I can, in my mind, I can say, okay, that's great. But, you know, it comes down to the day that I lived in, I can't, I think one of them's wrong. You know, I mean, it's like when I first read the story a couple weeks ago, it was like, one of these guys is wrong with my take. Who's wrong? Which one? Well, my hit was that the not-destroyed mate was the one I like. You know, I stopped the guy and said, hey, so I'm not ready to present my understanding of both of them being... simultaneous because I'm still very much going with the destroyed message and not at all able to penetrate the destroyed message so there's my right well I don't

[73:54]

to get you moving a little bit, just to get you moving, is that I don't see this teacher as being right or wrong by saying destroyed. He's talking to a person. You didn't mean what? No, sorry, please. You didn't mean what? I didn't mean that he was wrong as much as I didn't... I couldn't fathom how it could be destroyed. Yeah, well, that's right, but that's not what he's talking about. In the Blue Cliff Record it says, When fish swim through, the water is muddied. When birds fly by, feathers drop down. He clearly discriminates host and guest. He penetratingly distinguishes initiate and outsider. That's just about the first part.

[74:56]

That's just about the first part. The monk comes in and says this thing, right? By saying this, by saying these words, it's like the fish swimming through the water. The teacher can see, by what he's saying, how he's swimming. Okay? So now he's swimming this way, so the teacher says... He gives a response to the movement. He says, huh? He gives a response to the turn. or whatever, he says it's destroyed, and then he watches. And then the guy flips out of the water. And then the teacher flips out of the water. And people feel it's very beautiful the way the teacher, first of all, responded to him in terms of his lack of understanding of what that means. But his lack of understanding isn't wrong either, it's just he didn't understand. That's the way he swims. He swims, he expresses his understanding by the way he swims.

[75:59]

And his swimming was such that the teacher swam in relationship to that. You know, to kind of like, oh, you're swimming like this? Oh, you're swimming like this. You're swimming like this? Oh, you're swimming like this. Kind of like that. You just flipped your tail that way, didn't you? to show, either flip your tail that way or to grab the tail and say, look where my arm went. Then you let go and the guy does this other thing and then you do this other thing. He's very much playing with this guy, responding to him according to the circumstances. And the other guy had a different monk whose understanding was different because he's now quoting somebody else's, you know, way of swimming, which a hundred years before was an expression of not understanding what this is about. Where was he at?

[77:01]

That teacher gives a different answer. They're playing out. And one thing I wanted to mention to you all that I forgot to mention is that we have sometimes at Zen Center these, one of the phases of training a priest is to become what we call shuso, a head monk. And in Japan what they do is they have set questions and set answers. And the head monk learns all the questions and all the answers. And in the ceremony people ask those set questions and he gives the set answers. And these are classical questions and classical answers. And they learn the Chinese characters, which they pronounce in Japan and Japanese, which seems very artificial to us, right? Kind of like a stage play. But what happens for many monks is that they learn the questions and they learn the answers, which is quite a feat, because you have to memorize it just that way.

[78:09]

But they, you know, and they have a little bit of understanding or some understanding of that. But then in the ceremony, when they play it up, they often understand, but in the ceremony, what they couldn't understand when they were studying. So here we have an example of where in the original story was nobody, it was, there was no script. It was this immediate moment of dancing together. which people said, boy, it wasn't so much the teacher said this brilliant thing like he said this brilliant thing. It was that the teacher was so beautifully responsive to catching on to what the student was doing. It didn't work. But it did work in a way. In a way, it did. It was sad the way it worked. It sent this guy flying across China. And back. So the impact of this intimacy, the vitality of that dance was, you know, I mean, it pervades over thousands of years in all directions, right?

[79:24]

But that's, so it's not so much... that you, I don't know what to destroy it. It's how do you, how do I respond to your question today? Which I did, and so we'll see how I did. By how carefully you drive home tonight. Hopefully you'll get home and bring blessings to your family. We'll see, you know. We'll see also by what you've said tonight, what blessings come to all beings by your participation with this story. And how do you take this story back to the people you meet tomorrow? And how does this story teach you to listen to them and watch them? And watch yourself and your understanding of how you see what you're doing. Yes.

[80:25]

One of the interpretations of the story that occurred when she said that is that when you take it into everyday life, one of the double barriers is freedom and not freedom. And actually, I'm familiar with a lot of it. It occurs to me the different barriers that we work with in the class, but it seems to be freedom and not freedom, which is the barrier that that I can't quite cut through because it's so brilliant it's hard to look at. Yes. And taking the blinders off, taking the shades down, is such a wonderful event that I think it's too scary to do it. Yeah, so let's... It's too easy.

[81:34]

Well, so this case, for me... It's too easy? Yeah, it's too easy. This case is an invitation to enter the room, you know, to enter the bright room of this double barrier. The double barrier, in a sense, is not to be... It's to be used. It's useful. And by the way you use it, by the way you talk to it, and with it, and about it, will be the way that you can eliminate your doubt, and not only that, but eliminate the doubts of others, to demonstrate what you're celebrating by your zazen practice. Which is that zazen practice is not that you sit there and control yourself into something. It isn't that you sit there and get yourself to be a Buddha, to make yourself into a Buddha, or that you do it even.

[82:39]

It's the way you enter into practicing with all beings in a beneficial way. Right? But there's some doubt about that, at least in terms of appreciating it moment by moment. When I read a case like this, and talk to you about it, I feel encouraged to enter that world again, to enter that kind of interaction. But it's... For me, this class is an easy time to do it. Yes, Miriam? Well, he's mean. He's a great follower. Great follower, great following. Great obedience. No doubt. No doubt. You know, it means no doubting. That's right. It means no doubting. It means really going along with what's happening. It means appreciating the great function and seeing that the great function is working through your life and through everyone else's life and entering into that mutuality.

[83:54]

Is it about having the confidence? Yes. Yes. It's almost like you're saying what is said is not so important here. There is a relationship between the two. The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. The meaning is not in the words, but the meaning responds to the arrival of your energy. Your energy is always arriving. or not even your energy, but your energy is arriving, the energy is arriving all the time. That word energy also means, you know, it's the word, it's in my name, ki. It means energy, opportunity, working, function, right? The whole works. The whole works. And the whole works. It's always right here, working. Yes. Yes.

[85:01]

So this case, you know, is... We could spend a long time on it, but I... I guess I'd like to see... I hope that it can become part of your life, this story, and particularly the meaning of relationship and how we work together and how we respond to each other, that meditation on dependent core arising, in other words, meditation on how we mutually support and create each other, to sit there and enjoy watching the dependent core arising of our life, of all beings. And so, in a way, I feel like, you know, we can just go on to the next case, even though we certainly have not finished this case.

[86:14]

I feel like we've been reading in and out of Buddha, Luther, in the case before, and we've been talking about that, being as the guide for the West. So, I hope you just So, when we come to class next week, you know, I may not be able to get off, I may have to do some more on this, and you'll probably forgive me. But you might go ahead and start studying Case 31, just in case we're able to get off this case and look at Yunmun's pillar. Can you believe it? Aren't we lucky that we can study Yunman's pillar? How rare! That is a nice poem, isn't it? Yeah, that's in the Blue Cliff Record, Case 29, that poem. Yeah.

[87:14]

It's hard not to discuss that, isn't it? But we don't need to. We don't need to discuss that. But we probably will. So some of you people I know are really smart, and you didn't say anything tonight. And please, the ones who didn't talk, next week kind of say something, OK? Or come forth a little bit more. I appreciate it. Oh, it's okay what you did. It'd be nice if you came forth a little bit more so we can see what you've got to say. I know you do have something to say.

[88:08]

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