So the people who just walked away with it and just stopped it, that's ridiculous. The tragic ones, that's as far as they went. But the faith, I think, in this is ridiculous. It's quite common, because the Dharma is not going to be in a form that makes sense to you, that goes with your program. But when you're walking around in a certain world, and I'm walking around in a certain world, then certain things are not ridiculous in this world. And certain things are, and a lot of things that are ridiculous are things that I've never heard of before, or totally refute everything I've been thinking, or at least suggest that maybe I'm a little off. Or maybe even suggest that I'm way off. And things that suggest I'm way off, generally speaking, I think they're ridiculous. That's just the way I am. How come all those people that I'm studying with are so peaceful?

[01:12]

And everybody was nice to me, and even when I grumbled and I left, and I said this is ridiculous, people didn't, they said, well, nice to see you, everybody was really nice to me, and they didn't say anything. You're going to burn in hell! So maybe I'll go back and try again. So that story has been repeated quite a few times, that students thought the teachers were way off, and they went back and checked, and they got, the mooding occurred, the faith-based transmission occurred. So I think, don't push yourself to believe, and I don't think that's good. Let yourself disagree. And I think, you know, most of those teachers, let those people disagree. It's like, you have to agree with me, you're going to put me in trouble. You're going to go to hell if you don't agree with me. And sometimes the guy leaves, and somebody says, that guy really was worried about his teacher.

[02:16]

He's good, he'll be back. He's fine, don't worry about that guy. In some other cases, the guy comes in and acts like he is disrespectful. Actually, I told this story last Sunday about Dushan, the guy who was an expert on the Diamond Sutra, and the lady, the tea-cake, did you hear that story? The tea-cake lady? Anyway, that story about Dushan, later in Dushan's career, he went to see Guishan, and he stormed into Guishan's place and acted like he thought he was hot stuff. And, you know, put down Guishan, and he stormed out. But Guishan said, he's good. Sometimes the person who appears to be rude is really exercising his deep faith-based transmission about the teacher. So that apparent disagreement or disrespect can sometimes then just be a way to emphasize the deep meaning between teacher and student.

[03:23]

And oftentimes the teachers are the ones who say, yeah, that was a great meeting you had. I know it didn't look like it, but... And then later, after the teacher dies, the person says, that meeting him was a great moment in my life. And I know I acted very poorly, but that was really great. Have you met the Buddha and spoken about your experience? Have I met the Buddha? No. You mean, have I had divine inspiration? Well, you're talking about meeting the Buddha. That's something that was discussed a few minutes ago. If I say that I have, I think I would perhaps be bragging and going against the precept to claim that I've had such a meeting. And if I say that I didn't, I would be lying.

[04:24]

Yes. Yes. Yes, Lane. Yes. That's better than him piggybacking on you. The people who listen to the tape may probably don't understand that. But if you were here, you would. Yes? So, if he... So... So, um... The... [...] ...might have to be that different than saying, he'll burn in hell. Uh...

[05:33]

I think... I think to say that somebody will burn in hell... Well, actually... Uh... If... If the person rejects the Dharma, and then leaves, and the teacher could see that the person was rejecting the Dharma, the teacher might say, if people ask the teacher, how's that guy doing, the teacher might say, this guy's going to burn in hell. I was talking about saying it to the person, to threaten them. Usually Buddhists don't do that. I'm wondering whether there's a difference between the two paths. I guess between accusing the teacher or just acknowledging that he or she is helping them out, but not that he or she is helping them out, but that he or she is helping them out, and then some downward spiral. The difference between accusing the person?

[06:36]

Yes. I would think we shouldn't accuse them unless it would be beneficial, and usually it's not beneficial to yell at people and tell them that they're going to get in trouble if they do that. So the Buddha didn't usually do that. As a matter of fact, he was careful not to give the teaching if he thought someone would think it was ridiculous. So I'm actually being a little... I'm taking a risk here to tell you about this story because there's a risk that you'll reject it long term, and I don't want that. But I hope that by telling you that it's a story and you don't have to believe it, but you can just listen to it, and encourage you not to reject it and drop it at that. But just if you feel like, not for me today, that's fine. But be careful not to reject it. But at the same time, I'm not really the Buddha saying this, so what I say is not so important if you reject it. It's not quite as bad as if you would reject what the Buddha gives you.

[07:39]

Rejecting what a bodhisattva gives you is much more harmful. And if a bodhisattva offered you something and you rejected it and then they walked away and people said, was that okay? You might be able to see, no, it wasn't okay, I'm really sorry. There's a number of stories of where the person has a really good meeting with the Buddha and goes away and has some kind of unfortunate thing happen. There's a couple of examples where the person had a really good meeting and the person wanted to become a monk and the Buddha said, go get Robin Bolt and come back and I'll ordain you. In two cases the person got killed by some kind of physical accident. And in both cases the monk said, gee, that guy had this really good meeting with you and he was going to come back and get ordained, is he okay? And the Buddha said, yeah, he's fine. I know of some other examples where the Buddha pointed out

[08:41]

that somebody was heading for some big trouble. But in Buddhism, burning in hell isn't a permanent thing. So, in Buddhism, if you reject the Dharma, you go burn in hell, but then you can be brought out and reincorporated into the path. And if you again reject the teaching, you'll go burn in hell again. Huh? So burning in hell means, if you reject Buddha's compassion, you will go to hell, you will experience great suffering if you reject great love. It's very painful for us to reject the thing we want most. And if you do reject it, then it's a tragedy. If you really want to be miserable and you reject love, then it's not a tragedy. But if the thing you want is happiness and peace and love among all beings

[09:44]

and then it's offered to you and you slap it in the face, it's a tragedy because it's exactly what you don't want. And I just remember a story that Katagiri Roshi told me one time about this monk he practiced with in a Zen monastery, you know, in Zen monks' clean monasteries, right? They clean the halls every day, you know. And so they were cleaning and after the cleaning was over, the teacher came to this guy and he pointed to a piece of paper that he missed cleaning. And the teacher said, what's that? And the guy picked it up and said, what's this? And the teacher said, yeah. And he said, it's a piece of paper. He tossed it out the window and left the monastery. And, you know, and then the guy had a really very unhappy life after that.

[10:45]

Even though he was like doing okay, you know, practicing and kind of like harmoniously getting along, having a nice life as a monk. And then he kind of said, blank you, blank you Buddha, blank you Zen master, I'm not going to play this cleaning the temple thing anymore. I think a lot of people are cleaning the temple are kind of saying, what's the point of this? And again, you can say to the teacher, I don't get the point of this. I don't see why we're doing this. But to say, you know, blank you, you know, spit on the tradition, that may do irreparable damage to your heart. Not irreparable, but I would say long-term damage to your heart. To reject a practice which, you know, actually it may be right in the verge of coming to fruit for you.

[11:47]

And it gets very difficult. And if you get impatient and disrespectful of the practice or the people you're practicing with then forget that anybody could be a bodhisattva. And also being a little cynical is okay, but if you get too cynical you might reject something that's really important to you. So it's dangerous. And in some ways, if you don't get into spiritual practice, in some ways it's not so tragic, because you're so far from doing what's going to bring you happiness that you can't make certain mistakes, it's not tragic mistakes, but when you're really getting close to this meeting and it gets difficult, you kind of go... But you don't usually do that if you never even get close to it. From a distance you say, so what? But as you get closer, if you get more difficult then you can... That's all you really need. And you need to take your meditation sedative.

[12:51]

So that we don't blow up. So we don't blow up and something touches us. What? Sedative is like a relaxing drug. They give you sedative when you have an operation. Do you understand now? But we don't take it. You should take meditation as a sedative. You want us to take meditation as a sedative. Samatha. Samatha is a sedative. Samatha means sedative. Is that? Yeah. It relaxes you, it makes you relaxed. So people can come up to you and poke you and you don't like blow up. But you still feel the poke, right? You still feel the poke, yeah. Sedative don't mean you don't feel anything. It just means that you don't go...

[13:55]

Like when I broke my leg. They wanted to move it to take an x-ray and I said, I just can't let you do that. I just... I had these two kind of swords in my thigh, you know, they're going like this. And they wanted to move those things. I just can't let you do that. So they gave me a sedative. Then they could, you know, put them in a line again. But there's certain times, you know, the pain's too much, you're going to blow up. And sometimes that's not... So it's kind of... People are having some difficulty with each other sometimes, right? It's normal. And so we need to practice... Tranquility needs to be part of... We need to have a lot of tranquility floating among us

[15:00]

to absorb all these difficulties we're having. And then... But a word, too. Done? Yeah. Yeah, I think that... I think that... You know, there's this cartoon that you probably see in New Yorker where they have this beautiful Zen temple and there's a lovely screen there. And behind the screen is all this, you know, old TV and... Computer screen and, you know... Molded boxes of books. So... It is kind of silly that you have this pristine situation and then chaos below. Right?

[16:03]

It's ridiculous. But... And I think... And Zen is... Zen is sort of known for emphasizing that. It does seem like that. Zen is known for that. Right. But that's the way it's known for. What it actually is... You've already seen it. Right? You see it the way it really is. But if it was known for that, no one would come. So, you know... So they make these brochures and they don't... They don't take pictures of...

[17:05]

But maybe if you were in charge of the guest program here, you'd take pictures of the basement and put them in there and people would say, that was really nice. Everybody would be honest there. Oh, what a sloppy place. But really... That's what really does... Of course it touches our heart when we go into a nice clean Zen. It's beautiful. But in a way it touches our heart more when we go back into the closet and we find that somebody's gone in there and stripped it out. It may touch... You know, like going to tools or like put back with my things. Well, no one would see. That really touches our heart. Right? Exactly. Exactly. So... And... And... In some sense that's really more the point rather than putting a big trunk in there. So I totally agree with you.

[18:11]

But we're working toward this ideal. Zen's known for its ideals. Its ideal is that we would take care of a dirty place with the same... In some sense we treat the dirty part like we treat the clean part. We would take care of the small things as though they were heavy. We take care of the heavy things as though they were small. You know, the balanced attitude towards everything and everything is a direct realization of this teaching we're talking about right now. No matter what it is, it's not like there's this low thing and this high thing. It's all really mind. And therefore everything is just going on. There's nothing we shouldn't take care of. Uncertainty.

[19:14]

Maybe not uncertainty but kind of no faith. There's doubt sometimes. Like this feeling of like well, maybe it's just me and maybe it's not. And I feel like knowing you has been keeping me going. It's just because I remember a long time ago you were treating me without a doubt and saying there's this thing of kindness. And so I've got a lot of things to keep going. it's really hard for me to integrate that feeling that I have of kindness or love with the teaching that I'm going to let go of. Is there a way that you can help me with that? You can try. It's hard, isn't it? So if you find something that you can be kind to, that's nice. And that's the easy part. There's other things. Certain people

[20:15]

that are doing certain things it's maybe harder for you to be kind. So if somebody's being an intellectual maybe it's hard for you to feel kind to them. So that's the growing edge of this practice. So that's where you're having to challenge to be kind in situations where or to go someplace where people don't seem to be taking care of things very well. You have a kind response. You know, like if you see children not crying out back at themselves you might get angry at them or not. Or you can tell them to clean up and maybe they do and then 10 seconds later you're messing with them. And you can be kind towards that patient and generous and respectful and attached to it of these messy children. Or you could be not kind. But kind of hard sometimes. And the word hard is the word hard but that's also where we grow up and we're kind.

[21:15]

And for some people it's very hard to be kind towards intellectual presentations because they're very uncomfortable with them sometimes. And it's hard to be patient with their discomfort if the patient's isn't making agreements about compassion. So. Well. So we got to the main teaching here about family. And so we can continue to go into it more deeply if you wish. Yeah. Enough for this morning? Yeah. Alright. You can keep those or you can return them and pass them on again.

[22:21]

But you're welcome to keep those if you like. But we're not going to make a new set of copies for your class. Well, the problem with that is if you want to bring your copy of the suture book and bring your copy back to your place. But if we bring them all collect them all it's hard to get them back to the place. If you want to bring yours and bring it back you can do it. But I don't want to bring all of them over here and bring all of them back. If you want to take a sample of yours. Something small? Sure. In a conceptual way responsible for the basement I felt a very personal sense of distress that that's gone. Even though I'm in no way literally able

[23:22]

to clean that basement up by myself as I've been asking for a long time. But it felt really personal to me. And I know it wasn't aimed at me or anything but I received this sense of distress that's gone. Yeah. Craig and I and a couple of others that have been on the project today working on gathering the things in the basement which is hard to believe that we do that at least once a year sometimes three times a year. Behind this project is one of the facts that so many people come to me out of here and the treasures that we find that are left in there are sort of amazing. I mean they're really absolutely kind of we've had a wonderful time working on them. I was going to show how Craig got the cage just a few months ago. It's beautiful things out

[24:22]

and already it's full of stuff. We keep the keys. We've got this image of It wasn't that important. Don't tell me else about my tree. It's the collective unconscious. The unconscious collective. I feel like for me it's not anyone particular thing. It's this feeling of having a high and low. And it's not anyone I don't feel like it's I feel like it's a metaphor and it's also a reality.

[25:23]

It's not any particular person I don't know anyone who has made the decision that like you know okay we're going to take the position of like cleaning the altar three times a day or whatever I don't know how often but you know and then we're we're not going to bother with something else that might also be so important. And I guess it's not trouble with people but yeah there's this thing with people. And I definitely did not mean it as a slight against anyone. With this world and I was just thinking you know it's not exactly that we put the zendo I say the zendo is more important but it is higher than the basement. And we have to deal with this thing of altitude. And also people do not

[26:26]

usually ask if they can store their bicycle in the zendo. And if they didn't probably say why don't you do it someplace else? And they said well where? And then we have a meeting where can people store their bicycles? They want to put them in the zendo and we don't want them in the zendo. Where can we put them? In the basement. People want to store their old computers in the zendo. Well we don't want them in the zendo. Where can they put them? In the basement. So it's kind of like it's kind of a problem where do we put this stuff? And I said well let's just kick all these people out of here. But then after they leave we'll just destroy them. Where are we going to put the stuff? Where are we going to put the ashes? After we burn them we can have a really nice place to put all the ashes.

[27:27]

But there will be no people here. We don't have any people here anymore. Well at least we don't have any mess anymore. But if we had people... Yes? I just want to say that it looks like my life. I feel I have a shining area and a very very messy area and I wouldn't be able to show up unless it looked like this. That was something I was entirely aware of that was one of the reasons. If it all looked shiny here I don't think I'd dare cross the threshold because this way it would enable me to come here. Well no matter what we hear we still have difficulty. We still don't get through.

[28:30]

Illusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. This way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it.

[29:20]

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