Once upon a time, there was a great disciple of the Buddha named Nanyue. And he intimately conveyed the Mind Seal to his disciple Matsu. And one day, when Matsu was sitting, Nanue went to him and said, What are you intending to do sitting there in meditation?"

[01:02]

And Matsu said, I'm intending to make a Buddha. At this point, Nanyue took a tile and began to rub it on a stone. At length, Matsu asked, Master, what are you doing? Nanyue said, I'm polishing this tile to make a mirror. During this practice period I have offered you a number of carved dragons. Here's another one.

[02:07]

It's a story. It's a carved dragon about a real dragon. Or it's a carved dragon behind which there's a real dragon. After recording this whole story, which I just gave the beginning of this morning, Dogen Zenji says something like, rather than love the carved dragon, you should go on to love the real dragon.

[03:18]

Now this story, the more I study it, the more I love it. It's a carved dragon. Now the translation says, you should cherish the true dragon instead of the carved dragon. Or more than we love the carved dragon, we should love the real dragon. So Dogen says something like that And so he's warning us not to take the story for granted. By the way, for granted, the word grant

[04:26]

has the root to believe. And one of the ways the word grant is used is a voluntary admission without insisting on the establishment of proof. So it seems that Dogen Zenji doesn't want us to take this story or any part of it for granted. Then, right after that he said, after he warns us, he says, we should learn, almost like but, we should learn that both the carved dragon and the real dragon can produce clouds and rain.

[05:35]

I add, of the Dharma. Carved dragons can produce the clouds and rain of the Dharma, just like real dragons. So first he warns us not to take the story seriously. And then don't take his warning seriously. And then he moves in to give the instruction of this practice period. Don't esteem the carved dragons. I offer you carved dragons, don't esteem them. But also do not despise or belittle them. that wouldn't be good. Rather, become intimate with them. These stories, these card dragons, are something to understand, not to believe in, without evidence.

[06:43]

Also, do not despise or esteem the real dragon either, but rather become intimate with it. So the carved dragon is the story. The real dragon is the reality that's right there. You could say behind the story. I don't like behind. Right there. What is it? The darkness of the story is right there in the light of the story. The spiritual darkness shines clearly in the light of the story. Find the middle way of the story.

[07:51]

Our practice forms are carved dragons too. Don't esteem them or despise them. Become intimate with them. I propose I propose that we need, in the practice of the Buddha way, we need a multitude of minds. Besides the multitude of minds we have already, we have some needs more. We need a parental mind, or grandmother mind. We need the mind, yeah, we need the parental mind. We need the mind of an infant. We need the mind, the make-believe mind. Infants don't have make-believe mind very much, I don't think, but little children do.

[09:09]

We need the make-believe mind. So this story is just so wonderful. Here's this guy sitting. He's sitting thinking to make a Buddha. Is he making believe? Is he pretending to make a Buddha there? Or is he doing something else and his teacher asks him, what are you doing? And he pretends to be making a Buddha. He wasn't really intending to make a Buddha, but since you asked, boss, I'm intending to make a Buddha. Just kidding, just pretending. And then what does the great teacher do? He takes a tile and starts rubbing it on the stone. What is he doing?

[10:10]

Well, he's... It's pretty clear what he's doing. He's polishing the tile on the stone. That's what he's doing. He's pretending to polish the tile on a stone. He's playing make-believe. The great Zen master is playing great make-believe with his great disciple. And then his disciple plays make-believe and says, what are you doing? It's obvious what he's doing, but he asks him, what are you doing? And then Dogen Junji says something like, Who could not notice that he's polishing a tile? And who could notice that he's polishing a tile?

[11:16]

The parental mind polishes the tile. The infant mind notices that the parental mind The inactor of Buddhahood is playing make-believe. The parental mind is playing make-believe. The grandmother mind plays make-believe with all the grandchildren. The grandmother is pretending to be a grandmother. and playing make-believe with the children. Whatever she does, she's always pretending to practice the Buddha way. When she's baking cookies, she's enacting the Buddha way.

[12:24]

She's making everything she does. And she doesn't have any trouble remembering that she's doing everything as a performance of the Buddha way. And the infant sees that and enjoys. So when the teacher is playing make-believe, then the The offspring says, what are you doing? And this again, this is held up as the model of how to study the Buddha way. What are you doing? This is saying, avoid deciding that what you see is what you see. When the teacher is pretending to polish a tile, you pretend, you don't pretend, you avoid deciding that what you see is what you see.

[13:39]

So you say, what are you doing? You're convinced you're convinced to realize that there is an essential meaning behind every activity. I propose to you that for Dogen Zenji, this polishing the tile is the practice. There's no end to tile polishing. And also, what are you doing is also tile polishing. When you first read the story, or I don't know, the first few times you read the story, the first thousand times you read the story, I haven't read it a thousand times, but anyway, many times, and I'm happy to say during this session, I have a new understanding that tile polishing is the Buddha way.

[15:22]

And what are you doing is the Buddha way. Matsu, the student, is pretending to ask a question when he knows what the teacher is doing. But also he avoids, he enacts avoiding deciding that what he knows the teacher is doing is what the teacher is doing, that what he sees is what he sees. It's hard, it's hard not to decide that what you see is what you see. It takes quite a bit of effort. Perhaps I should say again, we need this grandmother mind, and the grandmother mind is the mind which devotes or dedicates every action to the Buddha way.

[17:31]

The mind which offers every action as a ritual enactment of Buddhahood. The word hood is one of the special words today. Hood means, one meaning of hood is kind of like a soft piece of cloth that you wear over your head, often connected to a cloak. popular piece of clothing in America today and spreading to other parts of the world. I think that kind of outfit's called a hoodie, is that right? And hood also means, it's not so commonly used anymore, but hood also is short for hoodlum. Do you know what hoodlum means?

[18:34]

Hoodlum is like a gangster or a thug. Do you know what thug is? Do you know thug? Anybody, tell them what thug is, Anna. Thug is like a tough guy. Yeah. It's kind of a, you know, gangster? Thug is a synonym for gangster. It also, hood also means a tough-looking youth. So one time, Richard Baker, Baker Rushie, my teacher and I were sitting in a tea room and there was a tea ceremony going on. And he turned to me and he said something like, here we are, a couple of hoods, in parentheses, doing this very dignified, non-hoody type of thing.

[19:43]

And he said, we've got them hoodwinked. Do you know what hoodwinked means? Hoodwinked means, well, hood means like something you put over somebody's head and wink, you know, wink. Hoodwinked is like trick people. We've got them tricked. They think we're like, I don't know what. Zen priests, and Zen priests in tea ceremony are often given the high seat. the roshis get to sit ahead of the tea masters in the positioning. So here we are in the guest of honor position, two hoods. We had them hoodwinked. We were pretending to be, what is it, honored guests. They said, would you be honored guests? We said, okay, we'll make believe. Once upon a time, Bakeroshi and Reb went to tea ceremony.

[20:54]

And Bakeroshi said to Reb, here we are, a couple of hoods. Couldn't you get some better people to lead the Buddhist community besides a couple of hoods? Nope. All we've got is carved dragons here. So Dogen Zenji said, don't accept this carved dragon for granted. But also, remember, the carved dragon is as efficacious as the real dragon. Someone said to me, she came to Zen because she sensed that the

[21:55]

that there was something efficacious here. The carved dragons, the make-believe is efficacious on an equal basis with the real dragon, with the truth. But you shouldn't grasp one or the other. you should be intimate with both. You should be as devoted to the carved as to the real. And don't... Yeah. Both. Also, Big Roshi said to me one time, he said... I'm sorry. Anyway, this is just a truth. No, these are just carved dragons.

[23:00]

Once upon a time, Richard Baker, Roshi, the second abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, said to the future fourth abbot of Zen Center, you carry with you a sense of great enthusiasm for practice. you convey great confidence that practicing this way is great. He said, but you should have two six guns. That's what I laughed at when I thought of telling you about the two six guns. You should have two six guns. One is practice is great. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And the other is, if you don't practice, it's fine. If this doesn't work for you, it's just as good. If you'd rather play the piano or whatever, it's really just as good.

[24:08]

I think he was kind of feeling like I wasn't conveying that other side enough. Buddha Hood. Buddha Hood. So this is a day to remember Richard Baker. And it's a day to remember Jerome Peterson. And remembering one for me is close to remembering the other because We three are old timers. They're older than me, but we're old timers of this situation here. What was Jerome's age, do you know? 79 or 80. Yeah. Jerome is 79 or 80. And Richard Baker, I think, is 74.

[25:12]

in Abbott's cabin. You know, I'm not complaining, really. I'm not complaining. But there was a picture of the founder, and it was in a frame, and the frame was scotch taped together. And it was amazing that the whole thing didn't fall on the floor, but anyway it didn't. So I gave this picture of our founder to Reverend Gilkoden and asked her to reframe it, and she did, or had it reframed, and now it's nicely framed. You can go look at it if you want. It's a popular photograph of the founder standing in front of the dorm there. you know, when there used to be steps. He's actually kind of standing in front of the bridge. It's his face in this particular photograph. And I looked at it just yesterday or the day before, and I looked at him and I thought, in that picture, he was younger than me.

[26:26]

That old man, that old Zen master in that picture, when that picture was taken, is younger than me. This is like wonderful. And it's also a carved dragon, of course. Please enjoy. It's efficacious. Jerome Peterson was born in Minnesota, I think. I think he was. He definitely grew up in Minnesota. He had a house in Tyler, Minnesota, which is on the border between Minnesota and South Dakota, I believe. He came to San Francisco, and I think he was at Zen Center before me. And he used to take the bus from some other part of San Francisco and come to early morning Zazen. I myself, when I came to San Francisco, I drove up.

[27:30]

When I came, I moved to San Francisco. I drove up in my hearse, parked it, and walked into an apartment building across from Zen Center. And a high school friend lived there, and so I could move in right away across the street from Zen Center. So I lived across the street from Zen Center in Japantown on Bush Street. And in the early morning before Zazen, I would see Jerome standing in front of a grocery store that was closed because there was a light there, reading a book until Zazen started. His, what do you call it, his bus would get in there early. So he was practicing Zazen at Soul Koji before me. And Jerome and I did Tangadio together down in the old Zendo. And And as I've told you, the first few days, the first few minutes and the first few days of work after Tongariah were quite memorable to me.

[28:41]

The one story that my attendant likes was that at the beginning, at the work meeting, the work leader, Dan Welch, said, does anybody know how to drive a truck, big truck? And I said, I do. So I had this big flatbed truck and it was parked out in front of where the bathrooms are now with its engine pointing to the dorm. So I got in and started the truck and then started to drive forward and put on the brakes, but the brakes didn't work. So the truck was coasting to the dorm. And I pulled the emergency brake and it did work. So that was the end of that assignment. So then I got reassigned to a crew that was filling a trench that had been created by our good old stream here, which we now call Cabarga Creek, which didn't have a name in those days.

[29:54]

During Tangario, there was a big storm. And as you know, sometimes when the stream gets full, it doesn't turn the corner and comes down the road. So it'd come down the road and made a big trench in the road. And so me and some other people, one of them being Jerome, were filling the trench with rocks first. So I was about 24 or whatever, and I was picking up rocks somewhere in the neighborhood of the size of a human head or a human body and putting them in the trench, because the trench was a big hole. And Jerome was sitting next to the trench tossing pebbles in. You know, not like, pop, [...] but more like, pop, pop, pop.

[31:02]

Wasn't he barefoot also? He wasn't barefoot that day. Jerome had no problem with the cold. He was comfortable in the coldest weather. He had a terrible time in the summer. Jerome had an unusual body. His mind was quite sharp and clear a lot of the time. He read profound teachings, but he had some neurological problems. I heard his mother was 53 when he was born, and some kind of neurological problem. So he was unusual. And so he was just very warm physically and very comfortable here in the winter. But the summer, he couldn't stand. I think he would have liked to live at Tassajara, but he couldn't stand the summers and left. I think we invited him to be here during summers and he tried one and that was about it.

[32:14]

And he practiced sitting for many years. Just sit, sit, sit. During Richard Baker Roshi's first practice parade where he was leading it, the fall of 1972, I was here at Shusso, and that was his first practice period as abbot. We had a Shosan ceremony down in the old Zendo, and I remember Jerome's question. It went something like this. Amazing! Unprecedented! Never seen before! Matcha-flavored snow cones. That was his question to the abbot.

[33:22]

And Baker, my memory is he was quite gracious about it, but he didn't know what to say. He didn't get angry. He's more kind of like, you know, what can I, you know, it was nice. But he didn't have anything to say, really. And I guess many of you have heard the story of Jerome serving me in the Zendo, right? How many people have heard the story of Jerome serving in the Zendo? Yeah. Yeah, the Crouton story. I'd like to hear it. Go ahead. Please tell us. Well, just, you know, it's about Jerome and me.

[34:33]

So during that first practice period that we did together there was lots of storms and the roads were washed out. We had our teacher, Suzuki Reshi, the person we came here to study with, never made it to the practice period. First because he was sick and then he recovered somewhat but then with his fragile health I guess people advised him not to try to come in over the road when it was washed out because no vehicles could come in because the road was like gone pretty much. He could have climbed over the holes, you know, but he didn't. So that was our practice period of not having a teacher, just us kids here. And it was a wonderful practice period. We never really ran out of food. We didn't starve. But the food got very, very simple. We ran out of kerosene.

[35:37]

We ran out of a lot of things. But we did have meals. But one day, somehow, our dear Tenzo, Ed Brown, got it together to make some bread. And then after the bread was, there was some leftover from the bread, there was some bread to dry and make croutons and put the croutons in soup. And mostly our food had become miner's lock and Miners, lettuce, and curly dock was our vegetable. And our other food was very soupy. Everything was soupy. Nothing to bite, nothing to chew on. So something that you could bite was really welcome. And you can chew on croutons. So somehow word got out that there was going to be croutons in this soup.

[36:39]

And the croutons... the croutons, these particular croutons sunk to the bottom. I don't know how we knew this, but the croutons were at the bottom of the soup and at the top of the soup was some kind of clear liquid. And the zendo was laid out with dividers like this, a long thin zendo as you can see if you go down there. It had four rows and one main, one divider dividing two rows from two rows. And I was sitting on the north side and so I was waiting for the server to come. down my row, server was coming, and the server that was coming was a server which I was watching the server and they were, I noticed that they were putting the ladle down into the lower area of the pot and coming up with croutons. And then on the other side, I saw Jerome coming.

[37:46]

And I knew from experience that Jerome was a top scooper. And I'm not accusing him of, like, trying to save what's at the bottom for the serving crew. I'm not accusing him of that. But anyway, I knew from experience that that's the way Jerome served, and the server on my side was coming to bring me the croutons. Getting closer and closer. And then I saw to my right, kind of like a car turning on two wheels, I saw Jerome moving very rapidly, turning that corner, coming around the corner at a very high speed.

[38:50]

It looked like he was going to get to me from way over the other side of Zendo before this other server. And sure enough, there he came and he got there. And he served me from the top. So that was one of the... These are the reasons why it was such a great practice period. We have great practice periods now too, but they were great back then for reasons like this, that people were like really interested in things like croutons. Jerome and I were there. And so we've been, Jerome and I have been practicing together for way over 40 years. And now he's gone away. And he's one of the people who upheld the Buddha Way at the beginning of Zen Center.

[39:59]

And I'm happy that he was able to stay at Zen Center and the people at City Center took really good care of him. I'm so happy that this is possible. So I'm just offering you a carved dragon of the relationship between these great masters and my carved dragon is that they were playing together and that they were making believe and that they were carrying on the Buddha way. They were

[41:05]

pretending to be polishing a tile and pretending to wonder what he was doing. And they were pretending to make a Buddha. I don't know if they did. I could pretend that they did. But I really don't know if they did. But like I said before, even if they didn't, I want to be in their hood. Hood also means a group. I want to be in their group. I think they're really cool guys. And their girlfriends were cool too. I think. Being in a patriarchal situation, we don't know exactly who their girlfriends were. But they had girlfriends.

[42:09]

Once upon a time they had a girlfriend. Dogen tells the story of one Zen master who used to go out of the monastery and go visit his girlfriend. His girlfriend was about 85 years old, but it was that kind of girlfriend, used to go out of the monastery and she would make him lunch or something. They would have luncheons together. Again and again, a thought arises in my mind that I'm deeply touched by the great effort that you've made in this practice period.

[43:15]

And I thank you very much for being who you are, and I thank all the causes and conditions that support you to be able to practice the way you practice. Oh, sorry. It's not by popular request. It's by Will's request. By Will's request. Yeah. Now, I don't know this song very well, but he gave me the lyrics, but I thought I needed to add some lyrics before the lyrics you gave me. Maybe I got it wrong, but I thought it goes something like... Oh... Oh yes, I'm the great pretender.

[44:25]

Pretending that I'm doing fine. I seem to be, but I'm not, you see. I'm wearing my face like a clown. Oh yes, I'm the great pretender. Pretending to be doing fine. What I seem to be I'm not, you see. I wear my face like a clown. Yeah. And also not by popular request. Something, what is it? She sits in the Zendo.

[45:30]

She sits in the Zendo all... Yeah, she sits in the Zendo all day long, hopping and bopping and singing her song. Everybody... All the little birdies on Jaybird Street love to hear the Buddha go tweet, tweet, tweet. Rockin' Buddha, tweet, tweet, tweet. Rockin' Buddha, tweet, tweet, tweet. Oh, Rockin' Buddha, you're really gonna rock tonight. that may be the last card dragon I'm giving you. Don't esteem it or despise it. And I guess I don't feel like telling you to be intimate with it because I think some of you don't want to be intimate with it, so I'm not going to pressure you.

[46:35]

But I just thought I might mention that if you want to realize the Buddha way, that's required. You don't have to like my singing, you don't have to hate my singing, but you must become intimate with it. But also, it may take a while. Quite a while. So the kitchen's going to leave in a minute, I guess. And then maybe you'll come back and we'll formally thank you. Is that right? Do you have that on your schedule? We're going to pretend to say thank you. We're going to make believe that they did a really great job this practice period.

[47:41]

And our make believe gratitude is equally efficacious with true gratitude, which we also should work at. Just that true gratitude is unconstructed, so it's a little hard to get a grip on it. The gratitude that you can get a hold of is pretend gratitude. You may think, no, no, this is real. Well, I disagree. all things are devoid of fixed marks. Compassion, Buddha, gratitude, they have no fixed marks. And the good news is, therefore, it's very difficult to avoid them. You already know that cruelty is difficult to avoid.

[48:45]

And it is. Pain is difficult to avoid. Fear is difficult to avoid. Laziness is difficult to avoid. Repulsion and hatred are difficult to avoid. You know that already. The reason why they're difficult to avoid is they have no marks either. Can't get away from them either. But you can't get away from Buddha either. So Buddha's right there with all these troublesome guests because Buddha has no fixed mark. But you've got to do the tile polishing, otherwise you won't realize that Buddha is right here with all of our problems. Who rings the bell? Do you ring the bell? Is it time to ring the bell?

[49:46]

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