I propose to you that language is dualistic consciousness, discriminating dualistic consciousness. We may use language to liberate dualistic consciousness. as we use language to liberate dualistic consciousness, we see that we're, yeah, that we're using sounds dualistic a lot. Can you hear me in the back of the room? There's a phrase in the writings of Dogen Zenji, which you've chanted at noon service, which goes, in English, goes something like this.

[01:14]

From the first time you meet a master, without engaging, in repentance, in confession and repentance, chanting Buddha's name, offering incense, reading scriptures, making offerings. And you can make a long list of bodhisattva practices. from the first time you meet a master without doing all these bodhisattva practices just sit and thus drop away body and mind. So I start out by suggesting that when it says from the first time you meet a master

[02:19]

when the first time you have face-to-face transmission, then you can just practice it right away. And it says, but it says, from the first time you meet a master without all these wonderful practices. So perhaps you can understand, I understand that it says, from the first time you meet a master without doing these things, which are meeting the master. You already met the master. What's the master? offering incense, bowing, chanting Buddha's name, repentance, reading scriptures. All that is meeting the master. So we thought, when you meet the master, you don't have to meet the master anymore.

[03:24]

You did it, now just sit. And thus drop off body and mind. This doesn't say don't do those practices, even though it says without doing them. And the teacher then writes many essays about doing those practices. So the practice of just wholeheartedly sitting is the way to understand the meeting with the teacher. The meeting with the teacher is transmission of the meaning of just sitting.

[04:26]

As I said yesterday, Csikszentmihalyi said to us, we say our practice is just to sit difficult to understand. Because when you're sitting, you don't seem to be offering incense, bowing, chanting Buddha's name, practicing confession, repentance, reading scriptures, and so on. So, in order to just sit in a way that's not, in a sense, nihilistic, where you don't see the offering incense, the bowing, the chanting and so on, you meet the teacher and then you understand that just sitting is the way to understand meeting the teacher, bowing, offering incense, chanting Buddha's name, confession and repentance, reading scriptures.

[05:33]

Just sitting is the way to understand those practices and those practices A way to understand just sitting. And those practices can be summed up as meeting the teacher face to face. And in the meeting we are initiated into practicing sitting to understand the initiation. Practicing sitting to understand the Bodhisattva precepts. You can also practice the bodhisattva, which involves offering incense, bowing, chanting the precepts, getting instructed, and in that process you're going to meet the teacher again. And then you sit, and in sitting you understand what these precepts are.

[06:40]

These precepts are just sitting and you practice just sitting and you realize, oh, just sitting is the precepts. But there's, in a sense, not exactly a shortcut, just an alternative path to understanding sitting an alternative to doing all these practices of offering incense, going, chanting, all those practices, an alternative to that is meet face-to-face with the teacher. Without meeting the teacher or without practicing offering incense, chanting Buddha's name, receiving the Bodhisattva precepts, practicing confession and repentance, studying the scriptures.

[07:48]

Without that, you cannot understand what just sitting is. You won't be practicing just sitting. You'll be practicing not practicing the precepts, which is practicing unreality and suffering. practicing the bodhisattva precepts, particularly with commitment to them, is peace and freedom. Living without them is misery. So then if you try to practice just sitting without all these precepts transmitted to you, you're skipping over what you have to do to do what you have to do. So some Zen teachers say you should not practice just sitting unless you have an authentic teacher.

[09:00]

What should you do? Well, you should practice the bodhisattva precepts if you don't have a teacher. And of course, if you try to practice them without a teacher, you realize, oh, I need some help with these things. I don't understand them. I don't understand what not killing means. I don't understand what embracing and sustaining formative ceremonies means. I don't understand what not stealing means. I don't understand what going for refuge means. It's kind of, yeah. So then you find somebody else. Even though you're practicing the precepts, you have a sense that you need help. Whereas just sitting, you know how to do that. Another way to say it is We meet the teacher and the meeting the teacher helps us understand what stillness is.

[10:06]

And stillness helps us understand what meeting the teacher is. Again, I'm suggesting to you that Buddha's inner, inner realization is the interrelational liberation of all beings. The interrelational

[11:11]

liberation and harmony of all beings, that is Buddha's realization. The transformation and liberation of beings is the Buddha's inner practice. The Buddha's inner practice is this inconceivable process of liberation together. Once again, from the first time you meet a master, just sit. Just sitting is a way to understand what meeting the master is.

[12:16]

Once again, meeting the master, just sit. or I should say, just sit, meeting the master, just sit. Meeting the master is a way to understand what just sitting is. Just sitting is meeting the teacher. What meeting the teacher really is, is just sitting. If you meet the teacher and understand the instructions for just sitting, okay, then you practice it and you understand in another way. You meet the teacher and you talk and you question and you listen and then you sit in stillness and you understand the meeting.

[13:29]

in stillness. Then you go talk to the teacher again and listen and ask. And then you understand what stillness is in a new way. And then you practice stillness and understand what the meeting is. So the realization of wisdom is deepened by these two practices, which are the same practice illuminating itself. So I think, you know, like you're having a meeting, you're having this face-to-face transmission, and in the face-to-face transmission you might actually think, well, that was like a kind of below-average face-to-face transmission.

[14:36]

Or you might think above-average face-to-face transmission. But anyway, there's the meeting. The meeting happened. So now you can sit. Now you can just sit. And then you just sit. And then you realize... what the meaning was. You realize that it really wasn't below average or above average. And you realize the nature of your opinions. And you realize the bodhisattva precepts are not what you thought of in that conversation. You need that conversation in order to sit still to realize what that conversation was. And you need stillness to understand what the conversation is. There are many meditation manuals in various Buddhist traditions, meditation manuals, and they start out with lots of instruction, lots of instruction actually for how to meet the teacher.

[15:59]

So it says from the first time you meet a teacher, sometimes the meeting with the teacher has, you know, a lot of rituals in order to meet the teacher. Some meditation, so you go through all these procedures to meet the teacher, and then you just meditate. And again, without those procedures, you wouldn't understand what the meditation is. And once again, when you start doing the meditation, you get a whole new take on what all those procedures were. Because those procedures were just for you to meditate and understand the procedures, which is to understand the meditation. A simple version of this is that we have this tea house over here. and you're invited to go and have tea there.

[17:05]

But the people who practice tea, they often say or hear or think, the tea tastes better in this room than in the kitchen. When you drink the tea in the room, usually you drink it after kind of having, practicing lots of precepts. So you understand what drinking tea is. And in a way, people say it takes time to understand what it is. You can drink the same tea made kind of in a similar way in the kitchen next door to the tea room. It doesn't taste the same. So the practice of the ceremony of tea, the tea tastes in a way without that face-to-face transmission. Also, when you taste the tea, you understand the rituals you just went through.

[18:12]

You realize the taste of them, the power of them, the function of them. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words, to taste it. In order to taste the truth, we need to meet face to face. And in that face to face meeting, there is transmission of the precepts, the Bodhisattva precepts. So again, in a way, there is this rumor that says don't try to practice just sitting unless you have a meeting with a teacher. Well, can I do some other practices without meeting a teacher? In a way, yeah, you can try to do the other practices.

[19:17]

Follow the schedule. Or when I said, Dogen says, from the first time you meet a master without engaging in X, you could also put on the list there lots of other practices too, like practicing loving-kindness, or following your breathing, or being mindful of your posture. In addition to all those practices, without doing them, But that means that those practices are already included in the menju, I would say. That in the face-to-face transmission of loving-kindness, there is mindfulness of the breathing. There is mindfulness of the posture. All that's there in the menju. I met with Sri Guruji one time, and he, sitting on the floor, cross-legged, he was observing my breathing.

[20:23]

He was mindful of my breathing. And he said, your breathing seems rather natural. So in the face-to-face meeting there is loving-kindness. In the face-to-face meeting with a master, there's loving-kindness, there's confession and repentance, there's chanting Buddha's name, there's, you know, all these practices are there in the meeting. And then just sit, and in sitting you understand what loving-kindness, what mindfulness of the breath is, what meeting with the teacher is, what repentance is. You understand inwardly. I probably shouldn't tell this story, but here it is.

[21:34]

One time I was at a... a drive-in where they make ice cream dishes, originally. It was called the Dairy Queen. I was there one day, and it was a place for... I was like in high school, and it was a place where lots of high school kids hung out. ice cream drinks and did teenage interactions. And I was there one time and I was outside in the parking lot and these two young men were standing next to me but they were like much taller than me. They were like 6'4", 6'6". And one of them said to the other one, I heard that Reb Anderson's here somewhere. And when one said to the other one, the other one

[22:59]

up to see where Rev. Anderson was. They thought maybe Rev. Anderson was about 6'10". At that time I was a couple of inches taller than I am now. So I didn't want them to know how little Rev Anderson was. So I just quietly walked away and let them look around for me in the sky. If I had practiced just sitting, we all would have realized who I am. The meeting was already there. We already had met, but they didn't understand who I was or who they are. But the meeting had occurred.

[24:02]

I met them, they met me, and they were talking about me, and I was observing them. We were together in a way like strangers in a parking lot. But without sitting, they don't know who I am, and they don't know who they are, and I don't know who I am. I mean, I know my name, but I couldn't stay there and fully realize who I was because I had some personal interest. There was a Apparently there was a great teacher who lived in China, and he had a Chinese name, Nanchuan, which means south spring.

[25:04]

In Japanese it's called Nansen. Same characters. One day, Nanchuan. side of the monastic buildings cutting grass with his scythe. Is it scythe? Sickle. Cutting with his sickle. A scythe is bigger? Yeah. I guess. And a monk came walking through the fields and said, I'm looking for Nanchuan. He met Nanjuan and he said to Nanjuan, I'm looking for Nanjuan. And Nanjuan said to the monk, this sickle is sharp.

[26:25]

They met again. And the monk did not understand the meeting that was going on. The menju was happening, the face-to-face transmission was happening. They met, it happened. The monk asked a question, it happened. Nanchuan raised the sickle, it happens. Nanchuan says, this sickle, here's the menju. hears the bodhisattva precepts being transmitted face to face. But the monk doesn't understand because he has not yet sat in silence with the teacher. The teacher is instructing him about how to meet the teacher. And he hasn't quite sat yet.

[27:34]

Nanchuan could have said, I've come, I'm looking for Nanchuan, I want to meet Nanchuan. Nanchuan could have said, just sit. Or Nanchuan could have said, Otherwise, don't look other places for non-chuan. But if the monk had met another monk in the monastery and they said to him, I'm looking for non-chuan, instead of pointing over to non-chuan, that monk could have said, don't look otherwise. Don't look otherwise. Look here for other-wear and under-wear. other where, etc.

[28:43]

But anyway, he actually was looking for Nanchuan and he met Nanchuan and Nanchuan met him and Nanchuan told him that he met him and he had a sickle and he showed it and he said it. And the monk said, I don't really care about the sickle. I want to meet Nanchuan. And Nanchuan said, it costs $30. Can you see? He's teaching this monk just sitting. He's teaching him stillness so he can understand that he's meeting who he wants to meet. He wants to meet Nanjuan, he is meeting Nanjuan, but he wants to do it a different way than this.

[29:50]

We want to meet the teacher. We traveled a long way to meet the teacher and now we're meeting the teacher and the teacher is saying, well, just don't move and you'll meet the teacher. And we say, I want to meet a different teacher. The teacher said, you want to meet me? Just sit. You're already meeting me. You want to meet me? You want to know what this meeting is? Remember stillness. We had one of our founders of this farm and temple, which is a man named Harry Roberts. He lived here for a while, and he lived in this part of California for a long time.

[30:59]

He taught us about how to relate to the land. He was trained in... I think he was partly Yurok Indian, Yurok Native American, and also a lot Irish. Anyway, he... He told us the story one time of his teacher. And people would come to his teacher who was a Yurok shaman. And shamans know sometimes about plants. And people would come and ask to study with the teacher. And the teacher would say to them, find me 20 native grasses. Show me 20 native grasses. And if the student went someplace to look for native grasses, he would say, you can't study with me.

[32:08]

If they would look down at the ground where they were standing, the relationship would develop from there. And some people say, why didn't he just say, find me, I'm going to tell you something now, but don't look otherwhere. Don't look for someplace else. Okay, now find me 20 grasses. But Nanjuan didn't say that either. The guy says, I want to meet Nanjuan. Nanjuan says, okay, now, don't look otherwhere for Nanjuan. Don't look other where. Other where? No. Well, where do you think Nanchuan is? The monk might say, here or nearby.

[33:12]

Yes. And who do you think Nanchuan is? And the monk might say, you? No. I thought you were 6'10". And you're so, you're so ugly. I thought I heard you were really good looking. You're really nonchalant? But not really. Nonchalant is otherwise from what you see before you. And nonchalant is here. and everywhere. The meeting with the teacher is a situation in which the bodhisattva precepts are appearing and being transmitted.

[35:03]

And these precepts are a way to understand our inner life. And the relationship where the precepts are transmitted is also a relationship The stillness is transmitted. So in that relationship, the precepts are transmitted and stillness is transmitted. And the stillness is transmitted to help us understand the precepts that are transmitted. And the precepts are transmitted to help us understand the stillness that is transmitted. Almost all Zen students do not understand that sitting still is going for . That sitting still is not killing.

[36:06]

That sitting still is not lying. They don't understand that. Or even if they do, they need help in going beyond their understanding to a deeper understanding. Stillness helps us understand what stillness is. Stillness helps us understand that stillness is not killing, that not killing is living in stillness. But also, not killing helps us understand what stillness is. So stillness helps us understand the precepts. The precepts help us understand stillness. And these precepts and stillness are living in that meeting in stillness. So I wasn't intending to talk about the story about Nan Chuan, but there it came up because these Zen stories are about transmitting precepts and transmitting stillness.

[37:24]

And people asking for the precepts and then someone transmitting stillness to them so they can understand what they're asking for. Or people are asking for stillness, and people transmit the precepts so they understand what the stillness is they're asking for. So people come, I'd like to learn about stillness, and they get taught precepts. I didn't want to hear about the precepts. I want to hear about stillness. Wow. Really? Well, that's like not killing. That you want to learn about stillness. I want to learn about stillness, not about the precepts. Oh, well, that's not killing. I don't want to learn about not killing. I want to learn about stillness. Oh, well, that's not stealing. Stillness is not stealing. Stillness is not taking what's not given. I want to learn about those precepts. I want to hear about, you know, etc. Or I don't want to hear about sitting still.

[38:26]

That's just too boring. Well, how about you want to hear about the Bodhisattva precepts? Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. Well, you want to hear about Bodhisattva precepts? Mm-hmm. Well, there's stillness. I want to hear about the precepts. Oh. Well, the precepts are stillness. I'd stop that. Okay. And that's stillness. I don't want to hear about that stillness. You don't? No. Is that the way you are? Yeah. That stillness. Stop that. I want to hear about the precepts. I want to hear about stillness. All that can happen, no problem. That's all going on in stillness. And that's also all going on in meeting with the teacher. So these two sides illuminate and deepen the wisdom

[39:27]

which is pivoting on these two sides. The pivotal activity of Buddhas is this turning of the precepts in stillness and the stillness in the precepts. So all these stories of face-to-face transmission just keep popping up in the discussion of stillness. Zen stories about stillness keep popping up in the discussion of the precepts, as you may have noticed. So then at the table we have dinner conversation or lunch conversation or breakfast conversation. about our family stories of meeting with the teacher and the teacher meeting with the student and practicing just sitting to understand the meeting and people practicing just sitting and meeting with the teacher to understand just sitting

[40:57]

Okay. The talks have been short, so the kitchen was able to attend them all, but today the talk's getting really long. So I'm sorry, but I'm going to tell a story now. You have to leave. I'm sorry if you have to leave. But there's a story coming, and maybe you can hear about it later. I'm not telling you you have to leave, but I think you do. What do you think? Looks like they agree with me. Bye-bye. And, you know, it's a really good story. Actually, I have two stories, and they're really... Actually, they're kind of huge, long stories, because they just go on forever.

[42:28]

There's no end to them. But there is kind of a beginning. And... I kind of feel like maybe I should wait till tomorrow to tell you one or two of these stories, if you can stand that. You didn't come to hear those stories, did you? You won't be disappointed that they didn't happen? They're both stories about... wonderful bodhisattva Zen masters, when they were students, these great bodhisattvas meeting their teacher. And they both demonstrate, in one case it demonstrates that, yeah,

[43:34]

the monk, the student, was very happy to practice the bodhisattva precepts with the teacher, but the monk thought that the kind of like the essential meditation practice, the essential mind of Buddha was something different than his practice of the bodhisattva precepts with the teacher. And so it's a story about the revelation that the just sitting is actually going on in our daily interactions. And the other one is also about practicing the bodhisattva precepts with the teacher and gradually finding out that the process Gradually, the gradual revelation, practicing the precepts with the teacher, the gradual revelation of the just sitting that's going on.

[44:46]

So in our relationship with the teacher, we're interacting, and we realize through the interaction that there was stillness the whole time. Sitting the whole time, we're going through all this drama. But we needed the drama to realize that the stillness is in the drama. And, yeah, so we need the drama to realize that just sitting is not our idea of just sitting. Just like we realize that the teacher is not our idea of the teacher. In the drama with the teacher, we realize the teacher was always there. And then we realize, oh, the teacher was always here. And the teaching was already here. And just sitting was already here. Yeah, so I have some stories about that.

[45:51]

But there's such great stories that... Yeah, it just seems like they... They're just too great to squeeze in before lunch, which is probably going to happen. Right? We need it. But these stories are really huge and they probably won't end before lunch. Unless I squeeze them. I don't want to squeeze them. I want to embrace them without squeezing. I don't want to constrict them. So anyway, I promise to tell you these stories. And tomorrow you can say, tell me a story, tell me a story, tell me a story, you promised that you would.

[46:52]

I promise I will. Two stories. Maybe not both tomorrow, but... But we have two more storytelling sessions, right? So probably we can do it. These stories are so... In my opinion. And they're so relevant to what we're doing here. They're really stories about what we're doing here. Yes, Rosie? Could we possibly have at least a few lines of specificity of the first word? Yeah, well, I'll tell you the names of the people. Oh, these stories took place in China. These stories took place in China. And the student in one story, when he became a master, his name was Dragon Pond.

[48:06]

Dragon Pond. Or sometimes, Swamp. Lung Tan. And the other person, the other teacher's name is Fu Shan. Fu Shan. Lung Tan. Zhong Xin. And Fu Shan, Fu Yuan, these two great teachers. There are stories about when they were studying with their teacher and when both of them were totally into practicing the Bodhi and had some interactions with their teacher and things went really well and also somewhat difficultly. And then, part of why these stories are so great is then their life went on after that, and then we find out what the next generation of this face-to-face meeting is, is also like really important.

[49:30]

That's why it's like... You can't stop these stories from going all over the place and jumping into next generations. I mean, I can't. Verses are released, they just take me. So that's why I just felt like this is enough for today, okay? So I'm laughing because I thought how funny it would be to say to you guys, hold on to your seat. May our intention equally extend to it.

[50:14]

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