For about 27 years, I've been sitting at this temple called Zen Center, here in the city center in Tassajara. I don't know all the causes and circumstances that have supported me to be able to spend my life so uselessly. But today, like many other days, I'm very grateful that I've been able to sit

[01:03]

for these 27 years to sit with the Buddhas and the frogs and the mountains and all those crazy Zen ancestors of mine and yours. and also to sit with future generations of Zen practitioners. Nine years ago I started sitting on, a little bit more than nine years ago, I started sitting on this seat here that I'm in right now. And last night, We had an official ceremony where I stepped down from this seat, stepped aside, descended down to the ground.

[02:15]

And now I'm back on this seat again. But I'm going to get down again pretty soon. and sit someplace else. I don't know if there's 27 more years for me to sit, but maybe that would be okay, I guess, as long as I'm sitting upright. But even if I can't sit upright, I'll try. And hopefully, if I can't, even though I try, I'll admit that I can't. Take care of your health, and you can see how I do. And how I don't.

[03:32]

So I've been talking about this mysterious issue of uprightness, which is always at hand. It's always quite close. And the last few times I've talked here, I've referred to a story that we've been studying here the story of one of the ancestors of the Zen school, named Lu Pu. Ahem.

[04:40]

Ahem. It's a long story. So I've just told here in this big room, I've just told part of it, and today I'll remind you of the first part of it. Lupu said, as he was on the verge of death, he addressed his monks, who he practiced with, and he said, I just have one thing that I ask you about. To say that it's so is adding a head on top of your head. To say that it's not so is to cut your head off to seek life. So, I've gone into this with you for quite a few hours already, and I just refer to that initial gesture on the part of the ancestors.

[06:01]

If you approve of what's going on in your life, that's adding a head on top of your head. If you disapprove of what's going on, that's cutting your head off. to seek your life. Putting those two aside, we enter the way. This is an instruction in being upright. This is instruction in what we call making your mind like a wall. When you see objects, or hear objects, or smell them, or think of them,

[07:19]

Don't activate your mind around those objects. When you see somebody's face, just see their face. Don't approve or disapprove that face. Now, some faces are hard not to approve. And like, you know, like in the movies, they have these faces up there, like they're just... They're enchanting us to approve them or disapprove them. And a friend of mine has a dog. Every time she sees a dog, she approves of the face of the dog. Anyway, I didn't say it wasn't hard to avoid these extremes, but anyway, uprightness is not to approve or disapprove, In other words, not to get excited, just see and let what you see be what you see. Now maybe you go ahead and you get excited or depressed when you see somebody's face, but also there's somebody there who doesn't have such a good imagination.

[08:34]

Right while the clever us, clever you, clever me is saying, oh, that's subtly depressing, that's subtly exciting. There's somebody who's not that busy. There's somebody who, when you raise your hand and ask them what this is, they say, it's a hand. And they can't think of anything more to say about it. They don't know whether this is a good hand or a bad hand or whatever. Male hand, female hand, and so on. It's just a hand. And that simple mind is a mind like a wall. It doesn't get excited about objects. It doesn't sigh. It doesn't cough. It just goes, oh, a hand, a face, a sound. This is called renouncing all the activities of thought.

[09:44]

relinquishing your intelligence. Not crushing it, not promoting it. Just let it go. Let it function. This is this, that's that, that's that, they're different, that's enough. Let it function just as it is. You let it go. For some years you've been guiding it along very nicely. making sure it's on track, praising it when it is, punishing it when it isn't, receiving punishment and praise. Now it's time, if you wish, if you want to enter the realm of the ancestors, now it's time to just let it go on its own. You know, I almost always intend to give short talks.

[10:55]

But then when I'm talking, these stories come to my mind. They seem better than my talk. So then I tell you the stories, and then I sometimes go ahead with my talk. So then the talk gets inflated with all these good stories. So one just popped in my head. about when I was wanting to teach my daughter how to drive a bicycle. For years I tried to get her to learn how to ride a bicycle, not because I wanted her to ride a bicycle, but because I wanted a teacher. And not really because I wanted a teacher. I don't think of myself, it's not my identity to be a bicycle riding teacher. I mean, I don't care if I never teach anybody to ride a bicycle, but what I wanted to do is I wanted to be there when she learned to ride the bicycle. I wanted to see her learn to do that. Because a woman told me about when her father was there, when she learned how to ride a bicycle, and how that was like an important moment for her and him.

[12:09]

So I was always yearning for that moment with my daughter, but she didn't want to get on the bicycle. I got her a little tiny bicycle, you know, second hand, and I fixed it all up and repainted it, painted the tires and got a new seat for it and new little handles with little things on them and rear view mirror and a radio. But she didn't want to get on it. She wouldn't even get on it. And looking back, I can guess part of the reason why she didn't want to get on it was she wasn't ready to ride a bicycle. Another reason was it had training wheels, too. Another reason was she didn't want to. Another reason was she didn't want to fail with her dad there. And then there was another larger bicycle I tried. She didn't want that either. And then one day she, I guess, was with some friends of hers. And when I wasn't around, she got on a bicycle and kind of like tried it out a little bit.

[13:13]

And she came and just said, now I'm ready. You can teach me to ride a bicycle. So we got a bicycle, which she chose the size of. We went out to Golden Gate Park. And I held the seat. And I a little bit had my arm ready to help guide the steering bars, the handlebars. But mostly I just held the seat. She was little enough so I could hold the seat and the bicycle would be stable. And she could do pretty much whatever and it wouldn't fall over. And so I just walked and ran behind her as she tried to do various things. So finally, it didn't require much for me to hold the bicycle up. She was actually balancing it and motivating it with her own intelligence and strength. She was really riding it. I was hardly holding on at all. And she said, OK, now you can let go, Dad. So I let go, and off she went.

[14:18]

This is what you should do with everything. Except now it's everything he's actually saying, now it's time to let go dad or mom. Things that will do all right without you holding on to them. Maybe not little babies on bicycles, OK. But everything in your mind anyway. Everything in the way you think about things. This part, you can just let these things function. This is called having a mind like a wall. This is called relinquishing the activities of your mind. It's also called renouncing worldly affairs. It's also called being upright, being still, and being quiet.

[15:20]

It's also called giving up yourself. Who you think needs to guide what's happening, control what's happening, make things this way or that way. Can you hear me in the back? I told you one story about one of our ancestors. Remember his name? Hmm? Lupu. Now, if you want to, you could say Lupu. And when you say Lupu, you're just like some monks who lived in the Tang Dynasty. Walking around in those Chinese mountains, they were going around saying Lupu. There's a world which I think you're familiar with.

[16:33]

What I mean by there's a world I think you're familiar with, what I mean is there's a world you're familiar with. Do you know that world? If you don't, it's just the one that you're familiar with. That's the one I'm talking about. I think the world I'm familiar with is the world where people are living in it that are familiar with some world. They're not familiar with the world I'm familiar with. but they are familiar with some world everybody's got a world they're familiar with and everybody's world is different but the thing that's similar about all the worlds is that each world is familiar to that each person and the other worlds are unfamiliar and some are more or less unfamiliar this may be familiar to you. So are you all in your familiar world now?

[17:45]

Anybody not in their familiar world? There's another world which is not familiar to any of us. How would I know? I don't. Because it's not familiar to me either. And yet, that world which is not familiar to me or to you, and actually happens to be the same world for all of us, is sponsoring me to tell you that there's a world that we're not familiar with. It lets me talk like that. It's an inconceivable world which sponsors me to tell you that you are all supported by everything.

[18:53]

It's a world that cannot be grasped. And there's nothing you can say about it. And because there's nothing you can say about it that's really about it, we say that it's peaceful. It's completely tranquil and peaceful. And that is not a characteristic of it. That's just the way we're sponsored to speak about it. And that's not really what it's like. But when we talk about it, it quivers with us. Last night in the ceremony we had, I quoted one of our great ancestors who said that this world we're familiar with which we call samsara, or the world where birth and death happens, the world of rhythmical, cyclic, enslaved misery, that that world, there's nothing about it by which you can distinguish it

[20:24]

from the world of infinite peace and joy. And the world of infinite peace and joy which is called Nirvana, which means extinction or vanishing, which means the extinction of suffering and bondage, the vanishing of misery, that world of the vanishing of misery, there's nothing about that world by which you can distinguish it from the world of birth and death. They're indistinguishable and simultaneous. And yet it is possible to not experience that simultaneity and be stuck perhaps in one or the other, but particularly the problem seems to be stuck in birth and death.

[21:34]

In the world of birth and death we have alternatives, like we can be alive or dead, male or female, good or bad, suffering or not suffering, upset or depressed, and so on. We can choose to go right or left, and so on. There's alternatives, and because there's alternatives, we're constantly complaining. Even when things are quite good, We're complaining that they don't last or worrying that they won't last. The problem is what we've done is we have made what is unknown and unknowable into something familiar. This familiar world is what we've done to the unfamiliar world.

[22:55]

give us an unfamiliar world, we don't just sit there and say, oh my God, an unfamiliar world. Actually, we do sit there and say, oh my God, an unfamiliar world. In other words, we make an unfamiliar world into, oh my God, an unfamiliar world. We don't just sit there without doing something. We make it into something in our world. We bring it into something familiar. We always do that. You can't stop that. If you try to stop that, that's cutting your head off to protect yourself from making the unknown into the familiar. When you make the unknown into the familiar, you create anxiety. Because you know, on some level you know, this unknown is not going to just sit here and let me make it into the familiar. It's going to jump up and do something uncontrolled pretty soon. And it does. But we snap quickly and make that into something familiar too, so then we continue to be anxious.

[24:01]

If we would just be surprised and shocked and not know why or how, we wouldn't be anxious anymore. Anyway, the entrance into the world of peace the world where there's no alternative, where there isn't birth and death, you and me, where there isn't any disturbance and disharmonies, the entrance into that realm is by making your mind like a wall. But another way to make your mind like a wall is to develop, is to remember the ancestors. Like, remember Lu Pu. It's kind of a Zen slogan, remember Lu Pu. Remembering these ancestors is a door to the world of peace.

[25:18]

Not just remembering them, though, like, you know, kind of like, oh, there's Lupu who lived in the Tang Dynasty, China, but having a living relationship with a dead man. In the world of birth and death, you can't have living relationships with dead people. But in the world of peace, you know dead people as well as you know living people. In the world of alternatives we think we know some people better than others. In the world of peace we realize we know almost nothing about anybody and we never will. We know as much about each other who we're living with now as we do about Tang dynasties and masters. And we can have a living relationship with our contemporaries and we can have a living relationship with our ancestors.

[26:22]

This is not a familiar world, right? The world where you have a close living relationship with a Tang Dynasty Zen master named Lu Pu. And you realize in that dynamic relationship that you're not even sure the correct pronunciation of his name. We don't know exactly how they said Lu Pu in the Tang Dynasty. But you go ahead and say it, just like when you meet somebody now, you mispronounce their name. But if you're going to mispronounce their name, I recommend that you mispronounce it loudly. And the same with the names of his ancestors. And the ancestors that are living in this other world, and there's no way to distinguish between this world and the other way, don't forget, There's no way to distinguish.

[27:26]

There's no means by which you can distinguish this world of peace and freedom from this one. And all the Buddhas and ancestors are living there. In this world, this familiar one, all the Buddhas and ancestors are not living here. Have you noticed? They're not here. They're dead here. In that world, they're as alive as we are. And they're ready to hang out with us. And they welcome us when we come in. And they say goodbye when we leave. They, however, cannot leave that world. They need us. We're our messengers from the familiar, limited world of suffering. We keep bringing back information about what it's like to be in bondage. But when we come back to them, it's a joke. Here's another story about an ancestor.

[28:28]

He's also dead. His name's Zhao Zhou. Now I bring this story up to help you develop your relationship with the ancestors, to have a living relationship. Because there's an infinite number of them, so you have to start, you know, it's not just one, but several. But you can start with one. Anyway, here's a number two. Zhao Zhou said hi. Didn't really say that. That was a joke. That's a Johnny Carson technique, right? Is Johnny Carson alive or dead? So anyway, Zhao Zhou was living in his monastery and a monk came to see him and said, Here I am.

[29:41]

I'm in your monastery now. I've received Buddhist precepts and I request the teacher to give me some instruction. And Zhao Zhou said, Have you had breakfast, sweetheart? No. Now, of course, this was in Chinese, right? This is nothing unusual for a Chinese person to say. The first thing they ask you is, have you eaten? When you come to visit, even today they say that to you. The first thing they say. Not your health or the weather. They say, have you eaten? Anyway, he says, have you had breakfast? And the monk said, yes, I have eaten. And Zhao Zhou said, then wash your bowl. This is Zhao Zhou's instruction to the monk.

[30:45]

And now that comes down to you, And you can have a living relationship with Zhaozhou by listening to that instruction. This instruction is also a way to have a mind like a wall. And you may think having a mind like a wall would be, no more breakfast for me. Or if I'm having breakfast, I won't admit it. What meal are you having now? I do not know. Could be breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even a snack. And besides that, you might say, language is relative, so even if I say it's lunch, what is it really? Doesn't mean that, although it could. This is instruction about how to make your mind like a wall.

[31:56]

How do you make your mind like a wall? Well, at breakfast time, let breakfast be breakfast. And then if you eat breakfast, which is up to you, really, the ancestors are not in control of your eating habits. They're not controlling you. That's not a living relationship with the ancestors. They're not sending you little messages, you know, dietary hints. Like, eat your breakfast if you want to be friends with us. Or don't eat your breakfast. Or be non-dairy. They aren't doing that kind of thing. That's not what the ancestors are about. That's the world of misery, which is fine. You have plenty of that. You figure out what to eat. That's your problem. That's not their problem. The thing that ancestors are instructing you about is, at breakfast time, it's breakfast time. Like my dad used to say, Easter time is a time for eggs and the time for eggs is Easter time. He used to pat his knees when he did that.

[33:03]

Breakfast time is the time for breakfast. At breakfast time, have breakfast. Then, after you've had breakfast, wash your bowl. That's the ancestor's instruction. And you can, by continuing to be who you are, also if you don't have breakfast, you can also do it. If you don't have breakfast, then don't wash your bowl. So you can apply this to every experience and you can apply this to your breathing practice. So every experience is having breakfast. This applies to every experience. Are you feeling a twitch in your nose? Then feel a twitch in your nose and wash it away.

[34:17]

And move on to the next thing. So inhaling, you can inhale, and when you inhale, eat your breakfast. When you exhale, wash your bowl. Inhale, eat your breath. Exhale, wash your bowl. This is what you're doing anyway. The ancestors, the Buddhas, want you to be just like you are, without moving from that in the slightest, without meddling with that in the least. To be who you are without any interference or meddling is Buddha. That's what the Buddhas want for all beings.

[35:21]

And Buddhas are watching us right now be exactly as we are, and tears of joys are running from their eye at seeing us be just like we are. If we can join ourselves just as we are, we immediately leap into the world of no alternative from what we are. And in that world, we develop a living relationship with the ancestors. We teach them, they teach us. We bring the news from the world of alternatives. They tell us about the world where everything has always been the same. They tell us about how we've always been with them and will never leave them. And when we come back to the world of alternatives, we become ancestors. And after we die, succeeding generations develop living relationships with us.

[36:24]

A mind like a wall has no address. A mind like a wall is a mind which has no abode. It's the mind of a bodhisattva. And if your mind has no address, you can't find it, I can't find it, the Buddhas can't find it, and the Lord of Death can't find it. This mind never begins and never ends. And there's not There's nothing by which you can tell the difference between this mind which has no address, this mind which never dies and never is disturbed. There's no way you can tell the difference between that and the one you have right now, which seems to come and go and which won't last and doesn't last.

[37:31]

So I've been, to use an old time expression, I've been loitering about the frontiers of this world of peace, this world of nirvana. I've been loitering about the frontiers with you just this morning so far. I've been jumping back and forth across the gate. touching, reaching over, and tickling the ancestors and getting tickled, bringing you back and forth across. And now I'm going to try to, I'm going to move, I'm not actually going to go into this other world, but I'm going to kind of go in there and I'm going to kind of tell you what I've heard it's like or what I remember hearing what it was like or how it is. Now I'm being kind of, I imagine for some of you, I'm being kind of, I don't know what.

[39:03]

But when I go in this other realm, things may get a little bit more that way. And some of you, even some of my closest friends, who have great energy and intelligence, when they get in that world, they sometimes get discouraged and, what do you call it, think that they have learning disabilities. Maybe you do, but everybody has a hard time learning in this new world because this new world is really unfamiliar. I mean, it's big time unfamiliar. It's like totally unfamiliar. And it will never get familiar, but you can love it when you get there. You just can't think about whether you're good at being there or not. Because then you're back in this one with some nightmares. I... when I was at Tassajara talking about this realm just before I gave one of my most upsetting talks I mean a talk that I thought was going to be upsetting and I was afraid to give it but I found this far side cartoon which encouraged me it has this picture of a dog a dog

[40:31]

riding a bicycle without his father's assistance on a tightrope above a huge crowd of people. I think they're people rather than dogs. He's riding a bicycle and working a hula hoop. On the bicycle, and on the hula hoop is a cat running on the hula hoop. And he has a vase balanced on his head, and she's juggling four balls. Okay? And the caption says, High above the hushed crowd, Rex tried to remain focused. Are you focused now?

[41:56]

Still, he couldn't shake one nagging thought. He was an old dog. And this was a new trick. So you ready to jump into the other world?

[43:11]

Ready? I'll get you ready now. Ready? I'll count to three and then we're going to jump. We're going to jump into an inconceivable world. When we jump there, there's going to be no way to tell the difference between that world and this world. We're just going to jump through our living relationship with these dead people. We're going to jump. You're all going to do it, too, whether you like it or not. We're going to drag you with us. One. Two. Three. Jump. Now we're there. This is it. This is how it is.

[44:17]

Now, if you try to make this familiar, you'll become anxious. But if you just leave it, just like it is, without converting it into something familiar, you won't be anxious about it. But maybe you can feel your mind wanting to make whatever this is familiar. Can you feel it? It's like, hey, come on, mom, let's bring it in back home. Do the familiar. Then you'll become anxious again. If you do become anxious, just stop. Make your mind like a wall. And enter again. It's quiet. It's not moving. It's not the slightest bit different from this ordinary life. You continue to breathe.

[45:55]

Your breathing doesn't have to be any different. Here's another rendition of Old Man River. It's the same tune but different words. And I thought I might tell you beforehand that one of the things that appears in this translation is no probs. No probs. No problem. No probs. No problem. But it says no probs. Oh, I forgot my pitch bite. I got a pitch pipe. That golden Buddha, that golden Buddha, she must know something, but don't say nothing.

[47:18]

She just keeps sitting. She keeps on sitting. No problem. If we feel angry, if we feel rotten, she just keeps smiling. And it's soon forgotten, that golden Buddha, she just keeps sitting, no progs. You and me, we sit and strain. Body all aching and wracked with pain. Cross those legs, straighten that back. Get a little tired and we slump like a sack. If you get weary and life's a trial, just keep on sitting.

[48:21]

It's all worthwhile. That golden Buddha, she just keeps sitting. No probs. And then the next text... This is called, what's the other one? The other one's called Far Out? Farside. Farside. This is called Outland. This is Far Outland, yeah. And the name is very interesting. The name is Berkeley Breathed. Breathed? How do you spell breathed? How do you spell breathed? Is such a word as breathed? Berkeley breathed. Okay, so this looks like a duck-filled platypus, is it? It's an opus?

[49:21]

An opus is something that looks like a duck but is not. It's like a penguin? Okay, it's a penguin. By the way, I've been invited to spend a summer in Antarctica. Huh? I'd like to, but I don't know who's going to pay for the trip. Anybody want to sponsor me going to Antarctica? People say, well, what do you do now? I say, I'm going to Antarctica. So anyway, this guy, this penguin is sitting on top of a rock and reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And somebody rose up, looks like some little bald-headed scientist, and he said, I've spent all week on the calculations and there's no mistakes. Galileo was wrong. The world revolves around me. And he joyfully throws his calculations and rose off. And the penguin said, boy, are you ever wrong.

[50:22]

It goes around me. I think that's true. The world goes around each of us. That's what the world is. It's the thing that goes around us. And nirvana doesn't go around us. And it's not any different from going around us. Anything else? What? Is that it? An upside-down muffin. Pass. A question to it. Toothcrust is over. Yes?

[51:23]

Tanya? Pardon? What are you going to be doing? This? I'm doing this. Pardon? Besides sitting? Well, I'm thinking of becoming a massage therapist. I hope you don't mind the competition. I'll grease my head up. Yes? Who wrote the worst? I don't know. I was teaching a course in England, and the people who were sitting with me wrote this. They were having a lot of trouble. But if they were happy, no problems. Want to hear another song they wrote?

[52:31]

This one, this is another rendition of Red Red Robin. There's a person there who rang the wake-up bell for the group. You know how here we ring a wake-up bell in the morning so people can get up and go to meditation before they would ordinarily do such a thing? We capitalize on the herd instinct. You make a lot of noise early in the morning. Now Dana's doing that. Aren't you, Dana? Every day. It makes a lot of noise. People go to Zazen. So here's this guy named Bruce. I think somebody wrote this for Bruce, the person. They say, When the red, red rock, when the red, red rooster is Bruce, Bruce bouncing along, along. There'll be no more sleeping when he starts screeching before it's dawn. Wake up, wake up, the time is near. Take up, take up, just sitting here.

[53:36]

Put down, put down that fixed idea. Mountains, rivers, chiopee. C-H-I-A-P-I, what's that? Do you mean anything? Okay. Don't you know it's true? So I'm silent through dinner time. My sponge make listen. Well, if I have to tell you this, we had formal meals there. I wanted to give a sample of formal dinners. And when we have formal meals here, we clean our own bowls. And these people got very upset about sanitation practices. Yeah. you know, using, they had a sponge, you know, we used sponges to clean, and they thought the sponges would, you know, develop various forms of bacteria and so on, so they were upset about that, so.

[54:40]

Don't you know it's true, now I'm silent through dinner time. My sponge may glisten, but still the fairies are wishing to dine and dine. I'm simply sitting then, don't know what to do again, hearing the gong. When the reb-reb-rebel is sing-sing-singing his song... Yes? Before, when you offered me a flower, I said no. Well, I wonder what that felt like to you. It felt right on. Right on no. And I was right on no. I wondered if no can ever be... I thought it was right on no. It was right on no because I didn't need a flower then. And I didn't meet right then. I didn't meet right then. But there you were.

[55:44]

And there you were. So can no ever be from a place of... Not disapproval, not rejection, but right on. Wasn't that? I thought so. I thought so, too. There was a mess there, and there was no... Would you like flour? Did you ask your question? Oh, yeah, you wanted to know who wrote it, so you took care of us. That's three. Is there a fourth question? Do I hear a fourth? Yes. How can you be conscious or aware of the state of nirvana? You cannot be conscious of the state of nirvana. Oh, how can you be conscious in the state of nirvana? Like this. Like you are right now.

[56:46]

It's how you be conscious in the state of nirvana. This is how you're conscious in the state of nirvana. Well, actually, when I was... Don't look over there. You're doing it again. You're looking over there. Do you want to know what it's like to have conscious state of nirvana? No. Okay, fine, all right. Okay, we're on now. How can you... have future plans and goals. Do you have future plans right now? Yes. This is how you do it. I got it. Anything else? Yes. When I was walking down the path this morning, there was a slug in the road.

[57:51]

And I looked at that slug, and I was upset that it was squished by a car. But I thought about looming it, and I walked along, but I couldn't resist it. And I looked back, and I picked this slug out, and looked pretty much beside the road. And then I thought about Oh my gosh. What if the slug was halfway across the road? I picked it up and I put it on the side. It stuck all over. Maybe it would have made it across. I just let things beat. So you took it across the other side? Well, you should have taken it across the other side, and then you could have thought, I wonder if it really wanted to go. And then you should probably go back and sit down with a slug and have a deep conversation. Thank you.

[58:57]

We appreciate it. I don't know what you're saying. You don't know which was that? Well, one of them would be adding a head on top of your head and the other one would be cutting your head off. That would be which one was which. Well, if you approve of what you did, then that's adding a head on top. You did something. Do I have to either approve or disapprove? If you're going to do anything, you're going to have to approve or disapprove of it. you can't avoid, unless you want to do this special thing called, I'm not going to do either. That's called cutting your head off. I'm not even going to get involved in thinking in terms of doing things and not doing things. I'm going to be totally pure. Like when I said, I'm not even going to think a thought anymore. That's cutting your head off.

[59:58]

Or having lobotomy. Now we can have lobotomies instead of cutting the whole head off. Just cut the thinking area off. Oh, I guess since that's what I did, I can just take it that that was part of it. So it's karma. And I did that. No, it's part of your karma. On my own. I thought about that, too. That's why I was concerned. Anything you do is your karma, not somebody else's. Everybody has to deal with you as you're doing things. And how we deal with you, that's our karma, if we think that we're doing it. So in the world of where you do things by yourself, where there's you who does things, then that's your karma. And we're tempted into approving or disapproving of what we're doing, or we're tempted to try to get out of the whole ballgame of that mess. Those are our ways of relating to the situation.

[61:01]

our habitual ways, our entrenched, sentimental way. And to try to not do that again is to try to cut your head off. So, Zhao Zhou's teacher says, you should go straight into samsara. You should go straight into that world of, there's a slug, I'm going to do something or not do something. That's the way I think about it. I'm in that world, and I think this is true, too. I admit this. I'm in samsara. I'm in birth and death. I'm trapped. And I think I'm right. And anybody who doesn't agree with me is wrong. That's where I'm at. That's samsara. Here I am. And by admitting that, I'm purified. By admitting that, I'm not trying to run away from being a human being. I'm sitting still and quiet. When you admit what you're doing, you're quiet. Confession should not be noisy.

[62:05]

You just call a spade a spade and stop. You don't call a spade a spade and then say, now what? Or does that help? Or how does that help? You just say, a spade is a spade, that's it. You just say, not killing, not stealing, not lying, that's it. And then you're open to the inconceivable working of Buddha. and something will happen. And then again if you get into approving or disapproving of how that is, you're back caught again, you admit that again. But you can also, for a second there, just let things happen and appreciate and learn and understand When you're there, the whole world becomes docile, and you become docile, so that things teach you, everything that happens teaches you. You're learning all the time. Everything's a learning experience. When you learn something, it's not what you already knew.

[63:07]

You learn a new face, a new face, a new face. Even though I think I've seen these faces before, I learn a new face, a new face. It's hard to stand learning new faces when you meet old faces, but they're new faces. And they want you to see them as new because although they tolerate us seeing them in terms of what they were before, they like us to be surprised because they can feel us opening into their total mystery. But that freedom comes from admitting that we're into that world of right and wrong, we're in that karmic world, so we should go straight in there. and just be a human being. Buddha was just like that before she was enlightened. It wasn't like Buddha sort of like got better and better and then leaped into perfect enlightenment. No, it's the other way around. Buddha sat still and stopped running away from being human.

[64:12]

How does the idea of destiny fit in with Buddhism? I mean, Buddha was told at his birth that he was going to be someone special. He would either be a king or he'd be a spiritual leader. Did he understand right away what they were saying? No. I mean, he didn't. He was an infant. These people came up to him and told him, but he didn't understand. No, the seer told father. So there is a concept of destiny, or I'll call it destiny. What do you mean by destiny? What I mean by destiny is... Well, it's something I'm grappling with now. Is there something that I'm supposed to be doing? And what is it? And do I go in search of it? Do I just let it be and stay in the moment? Do I pursue it?

[65:17]

Is there some activity that needs to be... participated in or followed? Or do you just stay in the moment and one thought follows another, one action follows another, and it happens in a natural way? Or are we all like Buddhas in some way if there was someone around to say, oh, you are going to be such and such at such a period in your life? Well, let's go back. I mean, you're probably maybe in the same situation. What comes next? Yeah, they asked me, didn't they? She wanted to know what's going on. So... Now tell me again what destiny is. Don't say all that stuff, just a short answer. Is there something that was meant to be? Yes. This is it right now. This was meant to be. There's no other way. The whole universe is causing it to be like this. Why are you convinced of this? I don't answer white questions.

[66:18]

How did you come to be convinced of this? It's my destiny. It's my destiny to talk to you like this because you just said to me, is there some way that it comes to be like this? Is it supposed to come to be some way? And yes, your destiny is a moment. Destiny doesn't happen some other time. If it does, we don't care. Destiny happens now. This is your destiny. And what is recommended in Buddhism is to go along with your destiny moment by moment. But what about in the case of Buddha, it was told to him that he would be something in 20 years or something, whatever the time frame was. So you have to deal with that. Somebody may tell you and they may say, your hair is going to fall out. And then they say that to you. And when they tell you that your destiny is somebody who's talking to you like that.

[67:26]

Right now your destiny is I'm talking like this. This is your destiny. This is my destiny. It's my destiny that because you brought that question up, I'm talking to you about it. It's my destiny that at this time in the history of the universe, you have come to my life and asked me about this word. And I didn't know what the word was, but I asked you and you told me what you meant. And it's my destiny that I'm willing to talk to you about what you mean by destiny. Destiny infers something in the future. For you. For me. You infer something about destiny. I put that meaning into it. And so is there something out there that there's a path to or a way to? I think that the implication that destiny is in the future... I don't know if... If you want to talk about destiny as something about in the future... then we could talk about that. If you want to talk about that, I'll shift. But I think the way I thought you meant about destiny, you said, is there something that's meant to be?

[68:42]

And for me, I could say, yes, this. The universe doesn't make mistakes. It was meant to be that this terrible thing happened in Japan. That's meant to be. It happened. We have to work with that. That's the destiny of us, too, that that happened. Now what's our response? And you can say, and if you mean that destiny is about something in the future, then let's change the conversation. I could follow the conversation. If you say destiny is dealing with the question, is something meant to be? And I would say, okay, yes, fine, this. Moment by moment, what's happening is meant to be. However, we always have the freedom of how to respond to what's happening. In Buddhism we have this term Gatti which you may have heard sometimes Gatti is sometimes translated as world the six worlds the worlds of humans, of gods and goddesses, of animals, hungry ghosts, hell dwellers, and fighting demons.

[69:54]

These five, these are called five Gatti or five destinies. Gatti means, is a kind of an inflected form of the word, Gatte, Gatte, you know, Gatte, Gatte, Paragatte, Parasangatte, Bodhisattva, gone. It's where you go. And we go to these five types of places. We wind up in these five situations. Your destiny is that you're a human woman. That's your destiny. It's come to be. It's not a mistake. This is what you work with. If you change, then that's your destiny. Your destiny is not something you're doing. Your destiny, in a sense, is your address. And because you have an address, you're trapped. And by completely accepting your destiny and going along with it, without moving, in silence, you develop this relationship with other worlds. If you struggle with your destiny and fight about your destiny, then you always stay trapped in your destiny because when you fight against something, you become enslaved by it.

[70:59]

If you can settle with your destiny and be exactly your destiny, then by the principle of liberation, you are immediately completely liberated. Just like if you confess that you're off, you're immediately purified. When you are just what you are, you are in the inconceivable realm of liberation. Because being what you are cannot be used, cannot be grasped. The fact that you're who you are cannot be grasped. You can be grasped. You can be grasped. Your destiny is grasped. But the fact that your destiny is your destiny cannot be grasped. The fact that your destiny is your location. And the Lord of Death can find you exactly at your destiny. Moment by moment, change can find you because you're this destiny and this destiny. You're always going to be found. But the fact that you are this destiny cannot be found. So the practice is

[72:00]

to completely go into your destiny and be totally harmonized and at one with your destiny without the slightest bit of being ahead or behind your destiny. And if someone talks to you about the future, you say, oh, someone's talking to me about the future. In the present, they're talking about the future. But you don't think that you're someplace else. You realize you're in the present having a discussion about the future. You're in the present thinking of Tuesday. You're in the present with a pen in your hand writing tea. You. E. Not even S, but the top part of the S. You're there. You're making these little dots with your pen. You're there. That's your destiny. And you're not ahead. You're not towards the end of the S. You're in the beginning of the S. You're right there. That's your destiny. And you're not talking about your destiny. You just are your destiny. You being that. is the inconceivable realm of liberation. No one can get you there. No one can move you from there. All the Buddhas are with you. They're all with you there.

[73:01]

That's where all of them are. They're all at the same place. Everybody's in the same place in Buddha. We're all one being. Our life is one whole, unbroken, undisturbed, inconceivable, ungraspable, Eternal peace. That's your destiny. If you don't trust that, then you've made it into something you are familiar with and you're anxious, miserable. And if you can't stand that, put it in the future and then you can be afraid too. That's how I deal with destiny today. But tomorrow I won't do it that way. If you want to see how I do it tomorrow, come and see me. And tell me what you're talking about. And that will be my destiny as you're talking to me. So my destiny is your destiny. If you change your destiny, then my destiny changes.

[74:05]

My destiny is connected to your destiny. And that's why your destiny you have no choice about. Because my destiny also makes your destiny. The universe is not making mistakes. And it's not going to take back the challenges this offers us. In other words, challenge means insult. The root of the word challenge is insult. When you throw your gauntlet down, challenge, it's an insult. Everything's an insult. Everything's an insult. Everything, everything is an insult. Because everything is something that happens and announces itself as separate from other things, as an insult. You have to figure out and not be caught by that. That's your destiny. Your destiny is to deal with the way things are happening right now.

[75:06]

And the best way to deal with it, if you want to be free, is to not move, is to be quiet, and thereby You enter into a living relationship with all the ancestors and all the Buddhas. You enter into a living relationship with the way the world is coming together here, which is the only place you can work. You enter into a living relationship with the land. Not just the land like a thing, but the land that's actually being born right now. And you change the land and the land makes you. Your psyche comes out of the land as it's being born. That's your destiny. Your destiny is to use the whole universe to be yourself. And that's exactly who you are. You have quite a destiny. And you said, doing what I'm supposed to be doing. You are doing what you're supposed to be doing. You should do this completely.

[76:09]

That's your destiny. And if you don't be this woman moment by moment, you're not living up to your destiny. And you're not requiting the kindness of all of us who let you be like this. We make you, we support you to be like this. And if we don't do the same, we're not requiting your kindness. We're not expressing our gratitude. But there's some insults, there's some challenges which are very difficult. Either to not be fooled by or not run away from it. Well, I'm not saying it's easy. I didn't say it was easy. It's not easy. Okay? Sure. So let's go. Yes. Yes. Completely. The destiny of one group or one person determines the destiny of the other. And right action is, you know, some people say that some people do something which is good for them and not good for others.

[77:20]

There's no such thing. If some people do something that makes them rich and other people poor, it isn't good for the people who get rich. Because the people who are rich who take from other people are scared shitless. They're all scared. Whenever you take something that isn't given to you by all beings, you're scared. You're wondering when you're going to get it. And as soon as you wonder when you're going to get it, it's already over. The result is already there. You're already anxious. There isn't a way for one of us to do something that's beneficial for one of us or some of us and not be beneficial for others. If it's not beneficial for others, it's not beneficial for us. It is... Sitting doesn't mean sitting. Sitting means that you're upright in whatever position you're in.

[78:23]

Sitting means that when you're walking, you're walking not in order to do something, but you're walking in order to walk. You're not walking and then what? You're walking. Walking just to walk saves the world and benefits everyone. And if you're walking that you're doing and you're doing it just to walk doesn't benefit other people, then you're not really walking just to walk. You're walking with some agenda. If you want to help all beings, you have to have this mind which doesn't have an address. If you have a mind which doesn't have an address, you naturally harmonize and find the right thing with everybody, not just according to your own self-righteous view. You ask everybody else what they want, but you can't ask enough people. So what you do is you do what you're doing exactly. without being ahead or behind that, and you imperceptibly, inconceivably harmonize with all beings.

[79:27]

And there should be a proof of that. And it isn't just that you do something and you say, oh, I think that was right, or I think that was beneficial. If you think it wasn't beneficial, that might not be right. If you think it was beneficial, that might not be right. You're always open to whether it was or wasn't. You always want to do good and you never fall for this was good. You can say this was good, but you don't believe that. You don't get hooked by that. And if you are hooked by it, you admit it. And that's a sin. It's a sin to say to yourself that your actions were right and believe that. It's self-righteousness. It's insanity. but you say, I did this, my conscious intention was to do good, I did this, now what is it? What activity is this? What is this?

[80:29]

Tell me. And when I hear, then I say, what is this? Because again, what is this? It's to continue to be open. But of course we can't do that, and when we don't, we admit it, and when we admit it, we're open again. And then there we are. And then we can't stand that, so we bring that back into some familiar realm where we can get a hold of things and we admit that. So we constantly are confessing our biases and in our confession we're righted again. And we do that in every arena of life. Zen is very much about daily life. If we go into Zen though and we can't come out there and interact in a flowing way with our destiny and be with all the different kinds of destinies we fall into, then our sitting practice in the meditation hall is not on. The test of it is to bring it into the street. We keep our eyes open when we're meditating in Zen.

[81:31]

Some forms of meditation close their eyes because they get into a calm more easily. But when they open their eyes, they can't bring it out into the street. The concern in Zen is to bring it back into the street, to bring it into... you know, the home of rich people, to bring it into every possible situation, to bring it into the most comfortable and most difficult situations. Some people are really good under difficult circumstances. They really do well when there were very poor, miserable people. One of the Buddhist disciples was very good at ascetic practices and when he went begging, he generally begged in slums. And the Buddha said, That's not the way. You should beg in all neighborhoods. You should beg from the rich, too. Now, some of the other monks just begged from the rich. But they knew that they were just trying to get better donations.

[82:32]

This other guy thought he was more pure because he was begging from people that didn't have much to give materially. But that's not the point either. You should beg from everybody. Everybody you should beg from. one after another. And the way you choose who to beg is you don't say, okay, now today I'm going to beg from the poor and I'm going to beg from the rich. You don't beg that way. You just walk straight ahead and you see who comes. You may get a glut of rich people. You may get a glut of poor people. You may get no people. You may just get raccoons. You don't know what. You're not choosing. You're entering the realm of no alternative. If you have alternatives, if you can choose who to beg from, then you're complaining all the time. You always complain. The rich people had more they could have given you, or they gave you too much, or blah, blah, blah. You're always complaining if you have alternatives, but if you have no alternatives, you just go straight ahead.

[83:35]

Who was first among you people? There's three of you over there. Would you raise your hand too, please? Yes, what would you like to... I didn't think you did. Well, Martha... By the way, Martha, thank you very much for that sutra box. That was great. Just when you said that about complaining just now, I was thinking, well, what would be the opposite or the antidote maybe to complaining would be like rejoicing? Would that be it? The antidote to complaining? Or not... The antidote to complaining... The antidote to complaining is just complaining. And? And the and is what makes you complain. You know, being grateful, you could say, of course, that's the antidote to... In the world of choice, the antidote to complaining is gratefulness, I suppose.

[84:52]

But gratefulness, if it's real gratefulness, it doesn't wait until the complaining is over to happen. you know like you could be complaining and then the complaining is over the complaining is gone I'm grateful or you know you're complaining about something and then you stop complaining and they give you something else so the antidote is is is gratefulness but gratefulness should apply to the it should apply not just to things you like that's you think you have some alternative to complaining then you're complaining again so really the antidote to complaining is just to complain when you're complaining that's gratefulness When you're complaining and you just go ahead and complain, that shows you're grateful. The proof of gratefulness is that you can apply it to really bad situations. Like I said to somebody last time I talked, I said, cruelty is as much a miracle as kindness. Cruelty is the worst thing we do. There's no question in my mind about that, really.

[85:53]

I mean, I do have a question about it, but I still say that. Cruelty is the worst thing we do. But the worst thing we do is as much a miracle as the best thing we do. And the best thing we do is to see that everything we do is a miracle, including complaining. Complaining is a miracle. It's a miraculous thing that we can think of being something other than we are. It's a miracle that we're alive and we have minds which can imagine that we're not in the room. We can do anything. One of the things we can do is think of some other world that we could be in right now and be anxious and complaining and miserable and feel enslaved. This is a miracle. If it's not, then we're exactly in that same world. To not like the world we're stuck in is a miracle, and to not think that it's a miracle is to even be more stuck. And to think it's a miracle, you shouldn't go around thinking you're a miracle either, unless you're thinking you're a miracle.

[86:57]

So really, the antidote to everything is just to sit still. Because the antidote to everything is exactly everything being itself. So when you walk in the world, and you're just walking, you save the whole world. When you stand and you just stand, not stand and then what? Not what antidote to standing, not what am I going to get out of life, but just plain life. That's what it is. That's your destiny. Do your job. Just a minute. Did your and work? Is that your question? I feel sort of in a different direction now. It's okay. Is it? Yeah. It's always straight ahead. I was wondering when it related to her question about destiny, how that relates to karma.

[88:02]

How destiny relates to karma? Yeah. Karma is part of our destiny. We are destined to be karmic beings. We are destined to think in terms of myself doing things. Is that the way you think? Yeah, that's what I think. That's part of her destiny and my destiny. I don't know about you guys, but over here, we're destined to think of ourselves as independent beings as we do things. We sometimes don't think. Everybody's helping us. Like, sometimes I forget that all of you are helping me speak. I think I'm doing it on my own. And if you don't like it, that it wasn't because you all made me say this. So I'm destined to think that way. So karma and destiny are inseparable. The world of karma is inseparable and is the contents of non-dualistic wisdom. Just like I said, nirvana has no way to distinguish itself from the world of birth and death, from the world of karma.

[89:14]

There's no way to tell the difference. And the way you tell the difference between the two is the world of birth and death. And exactly how you tell the difference between birth and death and samsara, the way you do that, there's no way to tell the difference between that and nirvana. Except that you do. And that's samsara. Can you rejoice when you're in nirvana? Can you rejoice when you're in nirvana? Well, first of all, you're not in nirvana. Oh my gosh. We don't get into nirvana. Where we are is birth and death. But the world where we are is indistinguishable from the world of nirvana. But you can't bring yourself into nirvana. But you yourself, just as you are, is nirvana.

[90:19]

I didn't say this this morning, but you have to check yourself at the door. Come to the gate of nirvana and say, may I take yourself? You check yourself when you enter nirvana. In the Dharma world, it has nothing to do with you. The world of truth has nothing to do with you. Now, if you're not there, if nothing to do with you means you're not there, then it has something to do with you. If you're annihilated from it, then it has something to do with you, right? A lot to do with you. It has nothing to do with you. It doesn't make you get bigger or smaller or doesn't help you or not help you. If you're trying to get help out of nirvana, that's not nirvana. That's just the world of birth and death where you're trying to get something. In nirvana, you don't try to get anything anymore. You try to not get anything anymore. You're just free. And when you're really free, you don't need any way to prove it. And you don't need to know about it.

[91:23]

When you're not free, then you need to know that you're free. Then you want to know. When you are free, you don't care. You say, okay, I'm not free, fine. Yeah, I'm stupid, fine. What else is there? Okay? Who was talking? Okay. I can resist this to like... You could, but you won't. I could, but I won't. Good. It's called slugging it out. I'm looking at two parallel worlds that basically are the same, only different. We can only know about one. They're not the same, and they're not different. Oh, okay. They're not the same. They're not the same, and they're not different, and we can only know about one of them. Right. However... if the one we know about, if we don't run away from it, we realize the other one. The other one's here anyway, but we make it real by the way we live in this one. If you live in this one in a strange way of not running away from this one, you demonstrate that you're free.

[92:29]

You demonstrate that you're free of pain by not running away from it. And again, I'm not saying, okay, now start beating yourself up just to show that you're free. You know? But, you know, to some extent, you know, all the bad things that people say about saying...

[92:45]

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